This chapter of Casey's speaks of an ancient way to encounter the Scriptures as a way of prayer and as an act of listening to God.
I suspect that many people who love the Bible and who turn to it for the feeding of their souls have discovered this old way, for it is not a secret. The impressive-sounding name from monastic tradition is lectio divina, sacred reading. Casey makes plain that lectio divina is a form of prayer first of all. It is a way of listening to God and of entering into conversation with the living God.
Perhaps that is why this form of prayer-reading seems like some sort of esoteric secret guarded by "spiritual professionals." Many of us do not really want this sort of encounter with a living God. It's scary. It makes us vulnerable and brings up any trust issues we carry about. It raises any fear that we have that there really is "nothing there" and that our trust is built on air. Paradoxically it risks as well that there really IS "something there" or rather "Someone there" who is not a projection of our wishes and desires and about whom we may learn more and more the more we listen and converse. And what is more, we suspect that we shall be changed in the encounter, and few of us really want to change.
All of these concerns are correct. We shall be vulnerable, we shall be asked to truly live faith and not simply entertain it as a pleasant possibility, we shall be invited to progressively encounter a living God who is not just a projection of our own desires or fears. And we shall be changed, in ways we cannot predict.
But this is what it means to follow a path with heart, to answer a sense of living Call, to truly believe. Because to believe is to entrust oneself, to give one's heart. To believe is not to clutch at certitudes, to guard pet ideologies or fixed ideas. That sort of faith is at best a clinging to childish images. We either cling harder to these or abandon them as we grow older, refusing to take the deeper road into the mystery who is God.
I speak here out of my own experience, out of the tangle of fears and delusions which have made up the bird's-nest in my own soul lo these many years and which the holy Three have been kind enough, patient enough, to let me see and perhaps begin to untangle for me. I count it a grace that I have some sense of just how much untangling needs to take place.
The ancient school of prayer called lectio divina holds promise as one simple way to allow God to do this work of untangling. Casey speaks of this way as "one of deep seriousness and submission. We do not seek to control or manipulate the Word, but allow it the freedom of our minds and hearts. We come as disciples for whom it is more fitting to be silent than to speak. There are times for sorting out thoughts, speaking about problems and putting into words what we feel towards God; there is also a time to be still, to wait, to listen."
So often we approach the Bible as a problem, looking for our own beliefs or even ideologies to be supported or challenged, attempting to justify the Scriptures or prove them inadequate to directly address modern issues depending on our point of view, "mining" them for a few favorite verses. Lectio divina attempts to allow the Scriptures to "just be" in their integrity and in their purpose, which is to allow the living God to speak the living Word by means of the written word.
Casey describes the "technique", if such a simple process needs to be called such. Prayerfully, slowly, move through a text, putting it in one's mouth--the ancient way is to "murmur the Word" as the Jerusalem Bible's translation of Psalm 1 puts it. To stop when it seems that one has been struck--by comfort, by challenge, by discomfort, by puzzlement--to be attentive to and respectful of our own response. To stay with that moment, to not be in a hurry to move on, to ask God to speak, to pray that moment. The classic progression is: read, consider (and not in a complicated fashion but as one who hears powerful words spoken), and pray. This may lead to the silent state of attention sometimes called "contemplation", which the Desert Mothers and Fathers simply called "rest" (quies).
I'm not good at any of this, really. In addition to the bird's-nest of inner tangle that I referred to above, my mind is restless and curious and constantly struggles to move on. As prayer, the Prayer Book Daily Office has worked well for me. In my praying of the Psalms I find that I can sometimes slow and linger, especially if I has arisen early enough in the morning so that I can take my time. The words of the Psalms can take me to a place of quiet attention, until I slide into simple blissed-out reverie or distraction due to lack of sleep and caffeine and fretting. The long Biblical readings, although they do me good, at best provide me with some tidbit that will re-surface at odd moments throughout the day. They are over and done with rather quickly, even long passages from Genesis or Kings, and that is not the approach that Casey is speaking of.
But I am hoping and feeling called to a deeper way these days and perhaps it has taken me all these years of getting somewhat more comfortable in my own skin to venture it. I think my attraction to monastic spirituality has this healthy element to it: I long for a deeper and more honest encounter with the living God. I hope to make more space in my life for this form of prayer. And as I am a beginning, I am glad to hear the pilgrim tales of any of us who have knowledge of the road to share.
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