Flunking Sainthood Page 5

  “But Brother Lawrence should have been a saint. He served people for all those years without complaining. And in the end, there was nothing to show for it. He didn’t even write his book himself—somebody spoke a eulogy at his funeral, and somebody else gathered those thoughts together and published them. If they hadn’t done that, and collected his letters, we wouldn’t know anything at all about Brother Lawrence; he’d be totally lost to history.”

  “Projecting much?” she asks me wryly.

  That comment hits home. It suddenly strikes me why I’m so sensitive about Brother Lawrence’s lack of official saintly creds: He’s an underappreciated housewife, the one everyone takes for granted. He’s . . . a bit like me, and like a whole lot of people I know, primarily women. Anna’s grandmother. My own grandmother.

  So even though I’ve failed at his spiritual practice and can’t stop criticizing his holier-than-thou attitude, I’m thankful to have met Brother Lawrence, and glad that there is a not-quite-saint in the canon of also-rans who focused on elevating the daily chores that take up so much of my life and energy.

  At the end of the month, though, I don’t feel any better off spiritually than I did at the beginning. At least with the fasting, I improved with my basic ability to accomplish the practice, even if I didn’t have any profound spiritual awakenings. With Brother Lawrence and mindfulness, I feel I’ve missed the mark. I’ve experienced no spiritual epiphanies, no moments of transcendence while mindfully loading the dishwasher. Other than a few helpful (if one-sided) conversations with Jesus, this month has been a wash from a spiritual point of view.

  There is one bright spot: my mind and heart may be the worst-trained in Christendom, but at least my house is almost unrecognizably clean. That’s got to count for something.

  4

  April

  lectio divination

  The Bible is a most comforting book; it is also a most

  discomfiting book. Eat this book; it will be sweet as honey in

  your mouth; but it will also be bitter to your stomach. You can’t

  reduce this book to what you can handle; you can’t domesticate

  this book to what you are comfortable with. You can’t make it

  your toy poodle, trained to respond to your commands.

  —EUGENE PETERSON

  As April dawns I’m relieved to put behind me the nebulous, guilt-inducing “practice of the presence of God” in favor of something more concrete. This month brings a spiritual practice I can sink my teeth into, one about which entire books have been written. How-to guides. With concrete steps. I think I’ll be in better hands than I was with Brother Lawrence.

  I’m trying out lectio divina (LEX-ee-oh de-VEEN-ah), an ancient spiritual practice that prescribes a way of discernment through reading and prayer. It’s not about praying for things so much as it is about becoming one with God’s will. That kind of union sounds a little too Brother Lawrence-y for my taste, but I look forward to the reading part. Lectio divina teachers want me to read deeply in the Bible, to cherish its people and stories. In other words, they want me to read the Bible as diligently as I have been known to study Harry Potter.

  HOLY READING

  I’ve always been a reader, thanks to my family. When I was three and my brother John was five, he taught me how to read. This is what my mother claims happened, anyway. That story has the whiff of the apocryphal to me, since I don’t remember it at all. However the instruction occurred, by the second day of kindergarten the principal realized I was already reading fluently and understanding difficult words, so she zoomed me ahead to first grade. I was happy to make the switch, though I missed snack time and never met the mysterious Letter People my peers discussed on the playground.

  Reading became a creative and intellectual outlet throughout childhood, as well as a refuge when times got bad in my family in my teens. The public library was like my church, a library card the equivalent of a passport to other places, even other worlds. As an adult I tend to inhale books, especially novels, tearing through from start to finish. I suspect, though, that this devouring approach is not going to cut it with the lectio divina teachers. Lectio divina is like your mother telling you not to bolt your food; it’s about slowing down, chewing methodically, absorbing nutrients. Yet we are often impatient with this kind of reading. Oprah Winfrey once complained to novelist Toni Morrison that she would often have to go back over the same sentence several times to truly understand it. “That, my dear, is called reading,” Morrison responded.

  To help me learn how to practice lectio divina, I’ve enlisted two expert sources. Eugene Peterson opens his book on spiritual reading with an analogy of us reading Scripture like a dog might gnaw a bone. His dog is joyful to have the bone; for a time he plays with it and enjoys having others interact with it. Then he settles in to chew it in a more private area, turning it over for a long time, then burying it only to retrieve it again later and pick up where he left off. Peterson says that in Hebrew, the word we tamely translate as “meditate” on the Scriptures actually means “growl,” like an animal growls over its prey. God wants us to growl in triumph over the Bible before settling in to wrestle with it and worry it like a bone. It’s a marvelous image.

  Peterson’s overriding metaphor for lectio is also one I love: he draws upon a story from the nutty book of Revelation about how an angel came to John to impart a scroll of the Bible. John asked the angel to give him the scroll; the angel responded instead that John should eat it. Peterson says this is how Christians have to be with the Bible: we have to ingest it entirely, to let it bring oxygen to our veins and seep into our nerve endings. It is breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  I am madly enjoying Peterson’s book, but there’s little in it about how to do lectio divina, unless you take that whole swallow-the-scroll metaphor literally, which the surgeon general does not recommend. So in addition to Eat This Book, this month I’m also consulting more of a how-to guide called Sacred Reading by Michael Casey, an Australian monk. Casey follows ancient practice and breaks up lectio divina into four seemingly manageable steps:

  1. Lectio: reading the text.

  2. Meditatio: meditating the text. I learned last month while practicing the presence of God that meditation is hardly my strong suit, but I’m determined to keep an open mind.

  3. Oratio: praying the text. We’re supposed to ask God what it means for our lives.

  4. Contemplatio: contemplating and living the text.

  These last three steps blur together, but I hope the process will become clearer as I go along. Both Casey and Peterson make the point that the “steps” aren’t necessarily linear; you don’t start with the first and march purposefully through the fourth in chronological order. You constantly spiral back, make new connections, skip around, or repeat something you didn’t understand.

  LECTIO

  Before I dive in to lectio divina and relearn how to read, I need to decide what to read. Casey recommends taking an entire book—a book of the Bible, a Christian classic, a commentary—and reading the whole thing, slowly, using lectio divina. I’ve chosen to focus on the Gospel of Mark, and I’ve decided to “read” it both in print and on audio. Centuries ago in the monastery, there would often be only one copy of a Gospel or sacred text, so the monks would read it aloud slowly to each other. It seems like an excellent practice to me, so I’m using a set of CDs called The Bible Experience, a beautiful and powerful dramatization of the entire Bible with an African-American cast, to supplement my dog-eaten (literally) print copy of the NRSV.

  No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

  —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

  Aside from its drama and beauty, I’m choosing to read all of Mark because I don’t much care for the selectivity of other approaches to reading the Bible. I’m stubborn about the canon. I don’t want to turn Eat This Book into Eat This, Not That, picking and choosing only the loveliest passages that fit with my exist
ing understanding of faith. One of the lectio divina guides I consult has a “greatest hits” approach to help people get started with sacred reading, with a list of several hundred prayable Scriptures at the back. These are pretty much what you’d expect, and include some of the most beloved passages of the Bible: 1 Corinthians 13 on love, the Twenty-Third Psalm, and Jesus forgiving his killers from the cross. It’s powerful stuff, but what about the rest of the Bible? Leviticus 21 has a verse about dwarves, hunchbacks, and blind people not being welcome in the kingdom of God, which is a troubling message in our more inclusive era; the book of Samuel has a funky story about David earning his chops as a tribal leader by collecting Philistine foreskins to present to his would-be bride. I’m not finding these passages anywhere in the lectio divina textbooks. On second thought, it would be hard to sustain serious prayer about harvesting foreskins. Maybe these lectio divina types do know what they’re doing in selecting the most spiritual passages for deep prayer. But at the very least, I’m going to take Casey’s suggestion and do the whole of Mark. Luckily for me, it’s the shortest Gospel, and I believe it’s foreskin-free.

  Lectio divina advocates suggest that you find a quiet place to start this practice, sitting down with the text and reading aloud slowly to yourself. Instead of this, I take our dog, Onyx, for a walk. I’ve got my headphones blasting the Gospel of Mark for an initial read-through as I stride west past coffeehouses and restaurants. I want to get the big picture before narrowing down to the details.

  I’m struck by the way Mark dives right into the story of Jesus. Not for him the introductory begats, the annunciation to Mary, the cozy nativity scene. Mark’s pilot episode is fast-paced, with the adult Jesus’ baptism, a brief introduction of the supporting cast, some exciting exorcisms and healings, an offstage forty-day temptation, and a montage of a preaching tour. Mark would have been a sought-after action writer in Hollywood. Everything happens “immediately” and “at once.” His Gospel is plot driven. A half-hour walk up through the observatory grounds gets me about halfway through Mark’s Gospel, which is rapid progress for this chilly April morning.

  I continue listening a few times a week until I’ve heard the Gospel several times. Sometimes I zone out or become distracted by random thoughts (say, what’s the difference between a jonquil, a crocus, and a daffodil?), but small details keep pulling me back into the text. For example, Jesus resurrects a twelve-year-old girl at the same time he heals a woman who has been bleeding for twelve years; a few chapters later there are twelve baskets of food left over after he miraculously feeds the five thousand—a miracle the twelve disciples can’t quite wrap their heads around. And I wonder: what is the significance of the number twelve?

  Lectio is the first step in lectio divina, so this kind of observation is a strong start. However, it feels like an academic exercise—interesting, but hardly life-changing. What’s missing is that I’m not praying for inspiration. I’m supposed to approach the text expecting to be changed, not just hoping to someday dominate a Jeopardy category about Jesus trivia. I can’t keep relating to the Bible with just my head. I’ll have to find where it’s speaking to my heart.

  MEDITATIO: THE ANGRY JESUS

  “Mom, is Jesus mad about something?” Jerusha asks. We’re riding in the car on the way to an appointment, and I’ve left a CD of the Gospel of Mark in the disc player from when I was running errands earlier.

  At this moment on the CD, Jesus sounds apoplectic. He’s railing about how we honor him with our lips while inwardly we are the worst kind of hypocrites. “Sexual immorality! Theft! Murder!” he cries.

  I stare straight ahead but sense Jerusha becoming uncomfortable with this new side of Jesus. This is not the sweet shepherd she met at Sunday School. Jesus barrels on: “Adultery! Greed! Slander! Pride! Envy! Folly!” I hastily silence him with the press of a button.

  Jesus’ rage makes me uncomfortable too. In the second stage of lectio divina, once we’ve gotten past a literal understanding, we’re supposed to dig for the meaning, and hopefully find Christ in each passage. The divine Christ is here in Mark, certainly, but the human Jesus is melting down a surprising number of times. It’s not just the Pharisees and the scribes that tick him off; it’s his own disciples. They’re stand-ins for us, always demanding a sign, not understanding about the miracles, too frequently wanting concrete explanations for mystery.

  Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

  —MARK TWAIN

  The disciples don’t realize who Jesus is (though interestingly enough, the demons comprehend right away). His followers are jockeying for position, and they don’t understand why Jesus has to suffer—or, perhaps more to the point, why they have to suffer. Jesus wants them to understand about suffering and death. They want to fast-forward to the good parts, arguing about which of them will be most prestigious in heaven.

  When I follow up the audio listening with a print read-through of the Gospel of Mark, I realize that hardly a page goes by in the entire Gospel when the disciples aren’t misunderstanding something—and Jesus doesn’t always bear their incomprehension with Christlike patience. Why have I never noticed before how angry he is? In chapter 8, after the miraculous feeding of the five thousand and the four thousand, the disciples have a hissy fit because there’s no bread. No bread! Jesus responds like an exasperated parent who has repeated the same lesson 1,547 times and can’t believe the kids still don’t grasp the point. “Why are you talking about having no bread?” Jesus demands. “Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember?”

  In other words, What kind of idiots are you people, anyway?!

  This is the kind of passage that I often skip over or, if I read it at all, want to ascribe to others: the clueless, bumbling disciples in their day, or the people I disagree with in my own. They are the “other.” But the audio version has a power and proximity that my usual skim of the same material doesn’t impart. This isn’t about the disciples; it’s about me. It’s one thing to read a nice, tidy print Bible in which Jesus chastises his followers with words in brilliant red. It’s quite different when Jesus is shouting, “You hypocrite!” in your very own ear. The lack of safe distance is palpable.

  And don’t even get me started on how angry he sounds at the money-changers in the temple in chapter 11. Panting, screaming. The fury I hear in Jesus’ usually well-modulated voice seems meant just for me. I have made his temple a den for robbers. I have let him down. Listening to Mark’s Gospel feels like an über-intense therapy session, with accusations flying and disappointments made plain.

  Lectio divina, I’m finding, is hard-hittingly personal. I’m starting to understand why Peterson calls it “a way of reading that guards against depersonalizing the text into an affair of questions and answers, definitions and dogmas.” I also see why, in the book of Revelation, the angel warns John that when he eats the scroll it will taste as sweet as honey on his tongue but then turn to bitterness in his stomach. Peterson says the point is that we like the idea of the Bible and often find it sweet at first introduction. Then, as we begin to dig, it becomes increasingly less comfortable.

  Not only am I less comfortable, but the Bible is giving me indigestion.

  The Bible isn’t really at all good at being an instruction manual. It’s good at leading us into a tangle of wild poetry, heartbreaking stories, contradictions, twists and turns, the concrete struggles of a vast array of unruly, disparate human beings being sought after by God. . . . The Bible isn’t a cage that contains God, making God available to take out or hang in our living room, it’s a witness to the fecund, ungraspable Other (and our relationship to that Other).

  —DEBBIE BLUE

  ORATIO: LECTIO DIVINATION

  When the Bible makes us uncomfortable, as Jesus’ anger is doing, it’s time to pray. Ora is Latin for “praye
r,” the third of my four steps. Strange as it sounds, oratio is the stage of lectio divina where I hit a wall—not because I don’t believe in prayer, but because in the past I may have believed in it too much.

  Call it lectio divination: expecting the Bible to cough up a sought-after insight every time you open it. In the oratio stage of lectio divina, we’re encouraged to engage the text and come at it with questions: What does this mean for me? How does this passage relate to my life? What does God want me to do? But the danger is in assuming that a particular passage was preordained to answer the question of the moment, like a divining rod pointing straight to lifesaving water.

  I wish things did work that way, that the Bible were more of an answer guide than a pastiche of enigmatic tales. Occasionally prayer and Scripture do appear to work this way together. When I was in my mid-thirties, I went on a retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani to write and also to pray about a strong spiritual impression I’d had some weeks earlier, suggesting that Phil and I were supposed to have a second child. To be honest, the suggested “impression” had been very specific: there was a son who wanted to join our family, and he loved music. Phil and I worried the question of a second baby endlessly. The timing was not great; Phil was getting his doctorate, and we had the worst health insurance in the Western world. (“So you lost a finger. Big deal! You still have nine others.”)

  Before I left on the retreat, I prayed that God would use the time to show me what we were to do. And there, at every turn, were what seemed to be clear answers to my prayer: in the chanting, we sang a psalm about how the person with many children is blessed with a quiverful of arrows. In fact, we actually sang it twice because of a rare screwup in the service order that had us repeating the same psalm twice in one day. This seemed like a profound confirmation, a sign that God had heard my prayer and was speaking to me through the time-honored language of the Bible’s oldest music. That, coupled with the ubiquitous images of the Madonna and her infant, gave my heart confidence that a second child was the right path to take. These were signs from God!