A few weeks ago, I started experimenting with Lectio Divina. I have been trying to find a personal spiritual practice for some time, and now that I’m working two Sundays a month (and am therefore unable to go to church regularly), this seemed like a particularly good time to try.
Photo credit: Éric Bellefeuille, a L'Arche community member in Quebec. This is part of a photo essay he made on his trip to visit L'Arche communities in Haiti. The last that I've heard, the Chantal L'Arche community has still not been heard from since the earthquake. http://www.larche.ca/en/images_of_larche/photoessays/larche_haiti
Last night, as I was finishing dinner and preparing for prayer, I found myself reading an article about the awful news coming out of Haiti. Like with so many global disasters, I have been surprised by how many people I know have lived in Haiti, have friends or family there, or have done work there. Sometimes, it takes a disaster to realize how interconnected we all are, and how small the world is becoming.
At the same time, this has been a reminder of how incredibly privileged I am to have a life where that sort of suffering seems so incredibly distant and unreal. When I was a child, I experienced the death of a close friend. I remember driving with my father moments after he had told me about my friend’s death. I looked out the car window and saw people walking their dogs, talking, laughing and enjoying the beautiful weather. “How strange,” I remember thinking “that they could be so unaware that the whole world has changed.” As I’ve enjoy a relaxing week at work, vegan mac & cheese and DC’s unseasonably warm weather, I feel very much like those people walking their dogs.
It was these thoughts that ran through my head last night as I opened my Bible to begin Lectio Divina. I have been slowly making my way through the Book of Wisdom and it just so happened that on that day, I was going to start Chapter 3:
But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them.
They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction
and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace. (Wisdom 3:1-3)
Amen.
