Lectio Divina

One of the most intimate scenes I've read in a novel happened in Grapes of Wrath. Ma Joad--the pillar of the Joad family in increasingly bleak circumstances--calls her daughter to help her with a task. She calls out the daughter's name "Rose of Sharon" and then repeats it over and over to herself under her breath, "enjoying the feel of it in her mouth." I've often felt a need to read quickly over that passage, as it isn't meant for the 3rd person omniscient narrator, let alone the unworthy reader.

I enjoyed Matt's Lectio Divina lesson at church last night. Lectio Divina is fancy Latin for purposeful meditation of scripture, involving prayer, silence, meditation, and memorization. I've been doing a lot of reciting to myself these days, and this was a way to focus that memorization and meditation on scripture, which I do less often than I do with other writings.

"I love you. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, would be my treasure still."--from Jane Eyre

"Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, protects all things."--I Corinthians 13:6

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." --Matthew 7:12

"For his withdrawal would have been a flight, his deliverance an accident, his reward dishonor, his future perhaps damnation. Then he would have borne witness, not to his faith or to God's mercy, but to how dreadful was the journey to the mountain in Moriah."--Kierkegaard's Fear & Trembling

JL Gerhardt is a good writer, and a better thinker. I recommend this post of hers:
http://jlgerhardt.tumblr.com/post/370894461

My niece has learned a new song about the Fruits of the Spirit:
The fruit of the spirit's not a kiwi.
The fruit of the spirit's not a kiwi.
So if you wanna be a kiwi, you better hear it.
You can't be a fruit of the spirit.

The fruits of the spirit are:
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control
The fruits of the spirit are:
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.

I told Layla that I was proud of her for knowing them and for being able to count them all on her fingers. And then I went home before I started crying.

Lately, I'm the kiwi.