Lectio Divina

Doing the sacred reading or Lectio Divina was a new and interesting experience for me. Once again, it was better than I had expected. At first I agreed with some of the other people in the class who were saying how it made them uncomfortable because it wasn’t the bible, Josh even said it “almost felt sac-religious”. Once they voiced their opinions though, I really started to think about it and realized that I didn’t have a problem with it at all because it was basically just meditation.

During the sacred reading I didn’t really get anything out of it the first time through. But as we continued the part of the story we were reading really started to come to life in my mind. Now I didn’t necessarily have anything to share with the group, but I feel like that doesn’t mean that it didn’t serve its purpose for me.

The one thing that really stuck out to me as we continued to read a segment of the story over and over again, was the relationship being described between the piano and Sonny. Being a guitar player, and coming from a musically inclined family, it was really cool to read someone trying to describe the relationship between the instrument and the instrumentalist. “He and the piano stammered, started one way, got scared, stopped; started another way, panicked, marked time, started again; then seemed to have found a direction, panicked again, got stuck.” That phrase describes beautifully what it sounds like when someone is struggling to find themselves in a song. Especially knowing what that feeling feels like. So, I’ve said all this to say that I really thought the sacred reading (or Lectio Divina), was a cool exercise and I plan on trying to implement it from time to time in my readings.