Eat This Book :: Lectio Divina

Today, I continued my reading of Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book.  I have moved into part two of the book and today I began Chapter 7 "Ears Thou Hast Dug for Me."  I have to admit that he's gotten a little "heady" and I'm going to wade gently through the posting waters here because so much of what I am reading today is wrapped in the context of what I've read in the previous six chapters.  But nonetheless, I said I'd let you enter my world of reading this book, so here we go.

"So, lectio divina...A way of reading that refuses to be reduced to just reading but intends the living of the text, listening and responding to the voices of that "so great a cloud of witnesses" telling their stories, singing their songs, preaching their sermons, praying their prayers, asking their questions, having their children, burying their dead, following Jesus."  - Peterson, p. 90.

Lectio divina is a spiritual discipline, developed and passed down from our ancestors, which helps us to recover the livelihood of context and relationships that are weaved throughout the Scriptures.  The discipline is comprised of four basic elements: lectio (read the text), meditatio (meditate on the text), oratio (pray the text) and contemplatio (live the text).

Over the past couple of years, I have written all of my studies using this simple format, including our current INTAKE 2 Go and our Kids' take-home materials.  It's simple - Read, Think, Pray and Live.  Today, my reading centered around the lectio, or reading component.

I have already posted that how we read our Bible is probably more important than that we read it.  Reading it incorrectly can cause much more damage than good.  Peterson focuses on the issue of "metaphor" when listening to the Scriptures.  A metaphor states something as true, which is literally not true.  He cites biblical examples like, "God is a rock," "the Lord is my shepherd," and "I am a rose of Sharon" to illustrate his point.

For those of us who are intent on taking the bible seriously, metaphor plays an interesting role.  We must not assume that seriously equals literally.  We must learn to listen to the Bible's metaphors and its literal writings together.  The danger in my religious heritage is to minimize metaphor or to attempt to literalize it and in doing so we strip the text of its richness and meaning.

Metaphors are meant to enhance what is otherwise inconceivable.  When discussing the transcendent God, there is no better use of language than metaphor.  Rather than diminishing the subject, in this case God, it opens our understanding of who He is and what He is like.  Metaphor reveals the connectedness of our stories.  God is connected to us, we are connected to each other.  Metaphor is often the bridge that connects our varying worlds together.

Okay, enough of the lesson for today.  My take-away from the reading today was that I need to embrace the biblical metaphors rather than attempt to dissect them away or literalize them.  Because "the primary organ for receiving God's revelation is not the eye that sees, but the ear that hears," I want to transform my reading of the Bible into a hearing of God's word.