Steven T. Savides

Month: February 2012

Lectio Divina: Part 2

February 23, 2012 / / 0 Comments

We met in a small room off the sanctuary before worship one Sunday afternoon. I was facilitating group lectio divina for the first time and of my six companions five had only recently returned to church after many years away. One of the beautiful things about the aptly named Hope Church, a church start in Boston, was that it attracted seekers from a broad spectrum of society, including many who had been rejected and alienated by churches because of their sexual orientation or gender expression.

I did not know it at the time, but of the six present four did not even own a Bible. That was about to change. Over the course of the next 45 minutes of praying the text together the rich tapestry of the scriptures came into focus. The insights each participant brought transformed our perception of the Bible from a single dimension (dominated by a few who claimed the authority to rightly interpret it) into a multidimensional reality where God is still speaking. The experience enriched not only our study that day, but our relationships with each other to this day.

The method I used I first encountered at First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, UCC. I was told the method originated in South Africa, which I found intriguing for obvious reasons.

Here’s the process:

Select a text. Then find three different versions (translations) of the text, which is easy to do at BibleGateway. Have a copy of each available.

Gather a group. From my experience in Bible studies and committee settings, I’d limit the group to 8. Any larger and it would be wise to split into two or more groups.

Ask for three volunteers to the scripture and hand them each the version they will read. (At this point it’s wise to summarize the process for the participants so that they know what to expect. Assure the group you’ll guide it every step of the way.)

Open in prayer:
You can ask for openness, reverence, a listening heart, the kind of silence into which another voice may speak. Then leave space for silence.

First reading of the text:
Before the first reader begins, ask the participants to listen for a word or phrase that stands out to them.
After the reading, encourage them to share, as they’re comfortable, the word or phrase that stood oout. Ask them just to mention the word or phrase (we’re not looking for explanations). When the sharing has ended, leave space for silence.

Second reading of the text:
Before the reader begins, ask the participants to listen for the way this text intersects with their lives. After the reading, encourage the participants to share, as they’re comfortable, this insight. Once again, we’re not looking for explanations. When the sharing has ended, leave space for silence.

Third reading of the text:
Before the reader begins, ask the participants to listen for what they believe, through this scripture, God is calling them to do. After the reading, again encourage participants to share this insight.

Close in Prayer:
After a few moments of silence close in prayer. At First Church we each prayed for the person sitting to our left and concluded with the Lord’s Prayer.

Debrief:
You can ask participants what surprised them, what they learned from the process, and how they might practice it in their lives going forward.

Lectio Divina: Part I

February 22, 2012 / / 0 Comments

In my personal prayer life, I find lectio divina an effective practice for quieting down, focusing, and reaching a more contemplative place in my prayers.  It’s often difficult for many of us to carve out the time to intentionally pray, let alone pray deeply to the point where we can rest in the arms of the Divine. Yet these days of Lent provide us a great opportunity to begin making time to pray.

From personal experience lectio divina is one of the most accessible of the spiritual disciplines. All you need is a block of private quiet time, a Bible, and the desire to engage the Word of God in a slow, purposeful, and ultimately contemplative way. One of the most ancient Christian practices, once widely used, lectio divina empowers one to cultivate deep listening, or “listening with the ear of our hearts,” as St. Benedict said in his Rule.

Lectio can also be a communal prayer activity that can greatly enrich those burdensome church committee meetings or even one’s time together as a family, but I’ll get there tomorrow. For today I’ll offer a brief description of individual lectio divina:

Find a passage of scripture that resonates with you or perhaps one of the texts prescribed for the week in the Revised Common Lectionary. Take notice of the parameters of the text, where it begins and where it ends.

Then take a few moments to prayerfully quiet yourself and to open yourself to the word God has in store for you. It’s useful to breathe deeply and ensure that you’re sitting comfortably yet attentively.

Then begin reading. This is not speed reading, the kind we’re used to in practically ever other setting of our lives. Rather it is slow, reverential, deliberate reading. One might even call it meditative reading.

As you’re reading notice what word or phrase starts to resonate with you.

Read through the text a second or third time, keeping your pace slow and deliberate and being attentive to that word or phrase. Memorize it. Hold on to it and then begin to prayerfully ponder it in your heart.

When your thoughts begin to wander, come back to that word and simply rest with it. Let it become a focal point for you, drawing you more deeply into your prayer, into communion with God. Think of this communion with the Divine, this contemplative place, in the words of the Psalmist: “Be still and know that I am God.”

Be still and know that I am God
Be still and know that I am
Be still and know
Be still
Be

On The Eve of Lent

February 21, 2012 / / 0 Comments

In worship last Sunday, when I asked in the children’s message what we do in Lent, someone said, “You give up your favorite things.” I, however, heard “You give up your favorite sins,” much to the delight of many in the congregation if the laughter was any indication. There’s certainly a measure of truth in both, yet the child’s actual definition was by far the more useful. After all, we should be giving up our sins all the time, including our favorite ones!

The more orthodox notion of giving something up in Lent is not so much related to one’s favorite things, but rather to fasting. This means eating only one full meal a day and, in many cases, abstaining from eating meat. One can also abstain from certain activities or behaviors, like giving up chocolate or those expensive coffees from Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts. Some choose to take the money they save by not buying luxury items and give it to the church at Easter to distribute to those in need.

Abstaining can be an extremely valuable practice. Adding something can be too, depending on whether or not it feeds one’s soul. Adopting a new spiritual practice can be a rich experience. It could be as simple as reading the Bible daily for ten minutes or spending five minutes at night writing in a gratitude journal. There are many spiritual practices (ways of communing with the Divine) and in the next few weeks I’ll explain some of them here, starting tomorrow with Lectio Divina (Sacred Reading).

I invite you on this journey and encourage you to earnestly consider the Lenten practice or practices that will be most meaningful for you. Remember that grace abounds and it’s OK to build up to a discipline rather than attempting too much all at once and feeling you’re failing when lapses occur, as they inevitably do. I’m not in favor of cookie-cutter approaches and feel it’s important for each of us to create space to learn about and adopt practices that work uniquely for us and our individual quests to draw closer to the Divine.

As Ash Wednesday approaches, I offer you this Lenten blessing from the Roman Catholic tradition:

Merciful God, you called us forth from the dust of the earth;
you claimed us for Christ in the waters of baptism.
Look upon us as we enter these Forty Days bearing the mark of ashes, and bless our journey through the desert of Lent to the font of rebirth.
May our fasting be hunger for justice;
our alms, a making of peace;
our prayer, the chant of humble and grateful hearts.
All that we do and pray is in the name of Jesus.
For in his cross you proclaim your love for ever and ever.
Amen.

The Power of a Letter

February 11, 2012 / / 0 Comments

How I would have loved to be a fly on the wall as Col. P.H. Anderson read the letter below from a former slave. The colonel had asked the emancipated Jourdon Anderson to return from Ohio to Tennessee to again work for him. The response is filled with grace, justice, humor, and truth-telling. (I came across the letter at Letters of Note while on my regular perusal of Arts and Letters Daily.)

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson.

The Responsibility to Act

February 8, 2012 / / 0 Comments

This week’s article for the church newsletter is a call to action in solidarity with the people of Syria who are under assault by their government. Here’s the extended version:

As I write this the city of Homs in Syria is under fierce bombardment by forces loyal to that country’s president. Syria is a nation divided, on edge, at war. Diplomatic efforts by Arab nations and the international community have come to naught. Efforts at the United Nations to hold Syria’s leader to account and force a peaceful end to an increasingly violent conflict have been stifled by China and Russia, where powerful governments fear international support of popular uprisings of the kind they too face.

Rising on the tide of last year’s “Arab Spring,” which saw oppressive regimes overthrown in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, many in Syria took to the streets to oppose their government’s repressive policies and iron grip on power. The response from the government was violent, so violent that some of the people took up arms to fight back. Unlike the people of Libya, they’ve done so with little or no material support from the world’s powerful North American and European democracies.

This conflict seems a world apart from us in West Medford, Massachusetts, USA, where we have the privilege of tuning out what’s happening in the rest of the world. We’re far from Syria, which is a Middle Eastern country. And what distances us ever further from the Middle East is the way we’ve been taught to “other” our brothers and sisters in that part of the world. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we’ve been taught to exoticize and vilainize Middle Easterners, especially Muslim Arabs. Our unquestioned racism runs deep, as does our desire to live comfortable lives at the expense of paying attention.

Yet there’s a lot at stake for us in the Syria situation and in other nations where people are rising to free themselves from oppression. If we truly value our God-given right to live freely into our full potential we need to stand in solidarity with those whose freedoms are crushed. It doesn’t matter on which continent their countries are. It doesn’t matter what religion they follow or what their racial or cultural heritage is.

We need to ask ourselves what is the cost of us doing nothing? What is the cost of us turning our gaze away because the truth is simply too inconvenient or the call on our hearts too burdensome? Many civilians are being killed in Syria as in other nations. Many children are being deprived of an existence that is peaceful and promising. Too many lives are being shattered by shells and bullets. We simply cannot be complacent.

Whether we offer our prayers, our influence, or material support, we have to do something. But first we have to be aware. Remember Jesus’ words: “watch and pray.” We have to follow the news, finding it on foreign websites if the coverage in our own country falls short. Then we need to pray and act consistently with our prayers by writing the Syrian representatives in Washington and at the UN, calling our Congressional representatives and urging them to take this situation seriously, participating in letter-writing campaigns organized by human rights organizations, or supporting the Red Cross/Crescent with donations so that the wounded can be cared for.

The time has come for us to act. The cost to democracy is too great for us to ignore the perils of our sisters and brothers in other nations. The cost to our souls is too great for us to live so comfortably that we ignore the plight of others.

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