Lectio Divina, or “sacred reading”, is a powerful meditative process for allowing the Lord to speak to us through scripture. It asks us to quiet our hearts and minds in order to immerse ourselves in the words, so that God may reveal something to us that can meet our stories in the here-and-now.
Each Friday morning I gather with some people from our community to center ourselves on a psalm, meditate on what the Lord might be saying, and use those revelations to intercede for the Church and the world around us. It has been a discipline now for seven years that has fed my soul in numerous ways. From time to time I will be sharing some of what I feel God speaking to me, in the hopes it might encourage you in this season.
This is a reflection on Psalm 42.
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As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
This psalm deals with the mystery of the soul, the part of my person most in tune with the reality of God. I recognize in these words that, even as my mind and my heart and my body may be deceiving and distracted, my soul is always anchored to God, always oriented to His love. It knows what I truly need and that I’m not getting what matters.
Recently I have been sitting under the heavy weight of these confusing times - the pandemic disorienting our rhythms and the moments we take for granted, the mass exodus from church among young Christians, and more. It has caused me to feel despair, anger, and powerlessness to do much about it. Yet even as my mind spins in place out of frustration and my heart breaks from the weight of change, my soul is still seeking out the face of God.
These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One
with shouts of joy and praise
among the festive throng.
What a psalm to sing after a year in this pandemic! Even though we have returned to in-person gathering with restrictions, it is not the same as it was. Not everyone can be there, and I mourn that. We cannot lay hands or sing unencumbered or participate in holy communion. My soul is not in charge, nor is it the most resolute past of my person, it’s simply the most sensitive to deeper realities.
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
I remember, years ago, walking the beach at a particularly low point in my life. As I’m mulling (and possibly wallowing) in my pain, I sense an old hymn begin to rise from the depths of my soul. A song I recognize is probably always being sung in my depths, even if I’m not consciously aware of it. I was thankful for that moment of recognition that there are deeper things within me that I often realize in the mundane day-to-day.
If my soul is not in charge, then I need to have an interior conversation with myself to orient back to God. My should provides the grounding and trajectory, but I need to will my soul to get in line and see God as my true hope. Out of my mind (knowing the truth) and heart (having the desire and will) I must command my soul to praise, an embodied full-self act of allegiance.
My soul knows. My heart and my mind may be distracted and distraught by the surface things of life, real as they are, but they are not the whole truth. I may be disconnected from my body from the burden of daily life. But my soul will not let me forget what is true. May I learn to better listen to my soul in times of trouble, and find the will to encourage it to praise. Amen.
+Ryan