Post 14

In class on Monday, we learned about a practice called lectio divina. This process of spiritual meditation and reading dates backs to the earliest of Christian monks. The idea behind lectio divina was to repeat portions of scripture in order that one may be able to understand more deeply God’s Word. This process involves reading than re-reading, reflecting, and listening for anything new that can come to mind through this method. The purpose of lectio divina is to slow down the intake of Scripture. I had tried lectio divina one time before in one of my first team meeting, but this time in class was a lot different. I think the main thing that influenced this difference was that it was not scripture. The story Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin discusses racial issues as well as the power of music. The story I thought was very moving and applied to my life a lot. I think that music is extremely powerful and has helped me to feel as though there are people in the world that can relate to me in some way. It almost gives feeling of community, like there is a bigger picture out there. The portion of text we choose to read by lectio divina I felt really helped to show the importance of music; or at least that’s what I got out of it. Music is powerful. Music I feel actually has the power to heal. Music and lyrics can touch ones soul in ways that mere words alone could never do. I believe that through music that world can be changed. Music brings down defenses and allows the message to resentant deep within our hearts. This effect directly corresponds to the effects of lectio divina. Both involve the opening of your mind in order to receive whatever the message is that your trying to find or need to hear. I guess that maybe we should all consider lectio divina in every area of our life. When our world seems to flood our lives with the chaos of humanity, maybe it would help to slow things down to open our hearts and minds for things hidden that we were to busy to see.