Lectio Divina with the Apostles

Predictably, every spiritual author has a chapter, somewhere, in which the method of Lectio Divina is described.  Typically, it goes something like this "over the course of three, slow readings, the practitioner is to answer three questions: first "what word or phrase jumps out at me?" second "Why is that word or phrase jumping out at me?" And finally "what do I believe this scripture to be calling me to?"

This method is fine and good, I suppose.  But it can lead to simple confirmation bias--we see what we want. And It leaves in place the very thing that humility seeks to reduce: ego. Luckily, the apostles had a different method.  [bxA] Be forewarned: it is not fun.  It demands a great deal of those who practice it.

In this method, tension gathers at the question words.  Initially, because we're looking for help outside ourselves, we become focused on "empty space" (as it is written "watch, therefore, for you know not when the master of the house is coming.") We have heroic work to do.  See, we're inclined to see it emptiness as negative--because silence surfaces the heart's negativity.  But this is only so that we can recognize our appointed conversion experience, "aha" that moment when the background becomes foreground and emotional options expand.  Only after he was nailed to the cross did Jesus find the means to forgive his persecutors.

Let me clarify what I mean when I say "tension gathers at the question words."  Faith isn't a matter of certainty or doubt.  It's keeping our attention and intention focused on time, distance and agency until the answer is given to you, by intuition instead of intellect, realization instead of reason, in the here and now.  In this process, the ego-cancelling tensions will outlast the self of the questioner. Nebuchadnezzar attempted to execute 3 youths in a fiery furnace, saying "who is the God who will deliver you out of my hands?"  Scripture says they were unharmed in the flames, and that a fourth appeared, looking like a God.  Psalm 121 says "I lift my eyes to the mountains, from where shall come my help?"  As if answering his own question, the psalmist says "My help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth."  St. Paul is meditating on the prophet Isaiah, which says "at an acceptable time I have heard you, in a day of salvation I have helped you."  Paul later reports "now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation."  So you see, three things have happened here. First, questions like "who, where, and when" have become unbearable--and they've surfaced fears of being wrong, being judged.  Second, the "self doing the asking" has been, at least, purified, if not cancelled out entirely.  Finally, the solution we expected to be remote has come close. 

There are further things to say: done in this way, lectio divina corrects misconceptions.  One misconception is causality.  The apostles ask "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus replies "this happened so that the works of God might be revealed in him."  In other words, our sense of cause and effect aren't always accurate. Another misconception is avoidance.  Of the cross, one thief said "if you are the messiah, save yourself and us."  Another thief said "remember me when you come into your kingdom."  But Jesus knew the kingdom wasn't later: and he had already said "if this cup could not pass unless I drink it, thy will be done." Christ's robust acceptance opened the moment to everything, and even suffering was transformed.  A third misconception is dualism.  When Abraham's servant asks Laban and Bethuel for their permission to wed Rebekkah to Isaac, they reply "we cannot speak to you bad or good, the thing comes from the Lord."  In the book of Ezra, a group of mixed returned-exiles attend the consecration of the second temple.  The old remembered the first temple, and mourned.  The young had no such memory, and rejoiced.  The text says "the weeping was indistinguishable from the laughter.

First we imitate Christ--we do what he did, simply because he did it.  Then we are intimate with Christ--we take him into our own experience, especially what is difficult.  Finally we internalize Christ--he disappears from our sight because it's our own eyes he sees out of, our own ears he hears out of.  And all of this transforms how we read the scripture--we recognize increasingly difficult emotions by seeing them on the page, and see our shadow side by the extensive list of rogues with whom we are brought to identify.  This is the kindness of the scripture: that we see who we are, gently, looking back through the mirror of the page.

Greeks desire order: indeed, the logos is pitched as "the order of creation."  But we proclaim Christ crucified, and that broadens the word's definition.  What we're talking about, here, is "word as paradox."  And this is a wake up call: we find that we cling to what we enjoy, push away what disgusts us.  This is why it's important that Christ suffered--so that we can be devoted to the very thing we have a tendency to push away.  This is why Christ chose what is low and despised in the world, to teach us to set our faces like flint, show devotion to the things that are not instead of running from them.  In the end, death and life are happening simultaneously--not to us, so that we can be filled with self pity, but to Christ, to God's glory. 

To sum up "Allow your questions to crucify who you think you are" said the apostles. "What is remote will draw close, and what's left is who you are." This is the truest way to do lectio divina. All that's needed is waiting, watching, prayer.

Christ the non-self part 2

In a way that, perhaps, struggled to find words, the last post said: after long disorientation, our fragmented identities seek non-self, stillness and quiet. Figures like St. Paul, in the letter to the Galatians, propose that the one in us who's capable of such motionlessness--who is us but not ego--this can only have one name: Christ.

Fair enough: but let's dig deeper. [bxA] If "the Christ of stillness" is the identity that's to be given its head. the rest of the identities must be still. In Matthew's gospel, two blind men go to Jesus and say "Son of David, have mercy on us!" Jesus says "Do you believe that I am able to do this?" If you're able to hear it, Jesus is implying a different question. "Do you you believe that I am able to do this" is also asking "have you given up doing it for yourselves?"

So, to tug at strains of thought contained in the last post: we can imagine Legion going home at Jesus' request, only to find "the gratitude he was called to" in short supply. Scripture is sympathetic--it says Legion "proclaimed Christ in the Decapolis" though it was most likely not evangelization, but rather what the modern age calls "trauma dumping:" Christ had unsettled his identity, and relating to Christ became a way of answering the "WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED" question. It probably overtaxed even those who loved him the most: busy lives can give only so much time to "verbally hashing out journeys of becoming." The psalmsist says "friends and family you have taken away, my one companion is darkness"--and how lonely it must have been to fulfill that bit of the scripture.

To Christ, the demoniac had said "my name is Legion, for we are many." Post-healing, we can imagine the flood of resentment, as his many, old identities reveal their fruitlessness. We can imagine the gradual discovery of "stores of trauma" which, since the man no longer gashed himself with rocks, he was now compelled to feel. And underneath the pain, we can imagine a store of nervous energy. And we can imagine the slow work of befriending that energy through to its gradual reframing: anxiety, see, is just the Spirit, being judged by ego instead of physically felt. The trouble is, burning alive from within is intense. Just as Elijah had a rough time getting to the point where he could bear hearing "the sound of everything"--he had to shed an identity in the doing of it--we can perhaps imagine that Legion had to do the same thing on the level of sensation. It's entirely plausible that "Feel everything, don't judge" became, with practice, possible for longer and longer stretches.

At the risk of redundancy, let's restate something quickly that--if we're making useful but baseless assumptions anyway--could also have possibly been true: the Jewish God concept is a method of nervous system regulation, and Jesus' "new spin on an old classic" was this: he used it to accept the divine lesson in painful emotions and sensations, instead of just in joy.

We've said two things, let's break them down. "The Jewish God concept is a method of nervous system regulation." Any psychologist will tell those suffering from anxiety attacks to breathe in and out. God's name is YHWH: some scholars think that is a breath cycle, transliterated. In other words, God revealed his name when Moses was still and quiet enough to hear his own breath. Any psychologist will tell those suffering from anxiety to name 5 things they can hear. Deuteronomy would codify "Hear O Israel" into a profession of faith. Any psychologist will tell those suffering from anxiety attacks to name 4 things they can feel. Ezekiel was "brought to a field of dry bones"--which, for our purposes, could well have been simply "an invitation to feel deeply the sensations of his own body." Psalm 22 says "I can feel all my bones" so we know that pain, in particular, can cause hyperawareness. Lastly, any psychologist will tell those suffering from anxiety to pick a word and lightly hum or say it in times of stress. Mantra fills the body with "the feeling of sound." When the apostles talk about being "in the name of Jesus" it may well have pointed to an apostolic practice of "repetitively praying Jesus' name"--and doing it, not only till nervousness subsides, but until the The Name showed itself to be bigger than the one pronouncing it. As was said to the Colossians, "[Jesus] is before all else that is, and in him all things hold together...he is the beginning, the firstborn of the dead." If scholars disagree, maybe argue that "Breathe, Listen, Feel, Mantra" isn't a "method for nervous system regulation" built into a god concept, it is perhaps time to listen, instead, to the body itself. We remember the scriptures that said "the spirit, the water and the blood, these three agree."

If the Transfiguration was "Jesus mining bliss for divine lessons," we know that at some point, he began to intuit that pain contained teachings as well. Remember when Jesus said "I am troubled now, but what can I say 'Father, save me from this hour?' It is for this hour that I came into the world. 'Father, Glorify your name!'" We know that, at the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus wept. We remember that, in Gethsemani, Jesus said "my soul is sorrowful, even unto death."  Jesus predicted that the messiah would be rejected, suffer, die, then rise on the third day.  This made sense, because pain focused attention and intention just as effectively as bliss--it's simply judged and rejected by egos much more consistently.  And Jesus knew that it is incumebent on one fulfilling the law, prophets and psalms to do this bit of unpleasant work, along with all else.

But he also said "sit here while I pray" and it brings us back to a beginning of sorts. If, in the end, the Christ within is quiet and still, he is perceivable only by becoming quiet and still ourselves. The profound surprise is this: in perhaps blinding realization, we see that he has felt, within us, what we couldn't bear to feel ourselves. He's the one who traverses the via dolorosa of our own spine, to be crucified at "the place of the skull." (The skull in question simply happens, fortunately or unfortunately, to be our own.) And it simply makes the point eloquently: we can leave the tempting "case of the 'poor me's" alone. Pain isn't ours, it belongs to Christ. Bliss isn't ours, it belongs to Christ. (It is written "always carrying in the body the death of Christ, so that the life of Christ may be made known in our mortal bodies also.) We have become willing to feel everything, and it has heightened our tolerance. In the same place the scripture says "we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed." Whether or not we enjoy it, we know this to be true.

The psalm known by latin enthusiasts as the "Te Deum" says: "Not to us, Lord, but to your name give the glory." In our flesh, our nervous systems themselves, we see God. In accepting that pain and pleasure are not two, that life and death are one, the Christ whose name we've taken for a "walking around mantra" has given us something we simply had to stop attempting to secure for ourselves. And this is what Christ, who died for us while we were still sinners, reveals for our eyes to see, for our ears to hear: Acceptance--blessed acceptance of everything, from which our egos once turned their faces. Thanks be to God, who gave Christ alone the victory, while, in our own flesh, we found quiet stillness.