Six of us gathered in the Mary Pellatt Room for a quiet morning. We entered into prayer through the practice of Lectio Divina - a sacred reading where we listen for a single word or phrase that becomes, in stillness, God's word to us.
An outline on the process of Lectio Divina
We reflected on the passage of Isaiah 30:
Truly, O people, you shall weep no more. God will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when God hears it, God will answer you. Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
We discussed a paragraph called: A Pilgrim into the Word by Jan Richardson
Whether with a written text or the sacred text of our own lives, lectio invites us to approach the text not as a map that will precisely show us our path, but rather as a doorway into the presence of the living God who goes with us and prepares a way that we cannot always see. Lectio cultivates in us an ability to be surprised by the Word, to be open to it, to give up our assumptions about what it means or what shape it may take. This can be risky, because in order to truly encounter the God who dwells in the landscape of the text and of our lives, we have to give up the belief that we know the lay of the land.
From In the Sanctuary of Women: A companion for Reflection and Prayer by Jan Richardson
And we lit candles as we named what we sensed the Spirit was inviting us into.
A gift of a slow morning in the midst of a busy December!