Finding your desert

Building a habit of lectio divina requires the very thing modern life destroys

This is part of an occasional series of meditations on the practice of lectio divina.

He found him in a desert land,
and in the howling waste of the wilderness;
he encircled him, he cared for him. (Dt 32:10)

Each day, to meet God, we should try to find our own patch of desert. It will not be the howling wastelands. We will not seek Him in Sinai, Kadesh, or Paran. Our modern deserts have different characteristics.

Sometimes our seeking may bring us as far as a retreat house, or a stand of old oak by the side of the road, or a small portion of forgotten fen, but it doesn’t have to be any further away than a quiet corner of a tiny room. A chair and a light and a book in our laps, in the right place and at the right moment, can be a daily desert.

Those of us with children and obligations and pressures know that ten uninterrupted minutes in a quiet place is as precious as Jericho, and as holy a retreat as the wilderness of the Jordan. It isn’t sand or heat or hardship we seek in these little deserts, but the place where the world isn’t, in order to recognize that God is already there.

For the practice of lectio divina, the purpose of retreat is to slow down and engage with words in a different way. We tend to gulp information, scrolling through websites at a breakneck pace, barely reacting before moving on to the next thing, learning little and retaining less. We're stones skipped across the surface of deep lake. Instead, we should be like explorers in a bathysphere dropping ever downward to new depths, slowly, peering through the glass as new life and new vistas are revealed.

The Hardest Virtue?

To do that, we must be patient, and that is a hard virtue to cultivate. Patience goes hand in hand with a receptivity to learning. When it comes, it will come gradually. There are no shortcuts. In a world that gulps everything, we need to slow down long enough to savor. Our focus shifts from the scale of a book down through chapter, paragraph, verse, word, and dot, because until He comes again, not one iota will pass from the Word. That means He is there, the word incarnate, in every jot and tittle.

In those deep waters, there is a serenity. It is placid and calm. Though teeming with life, there is a silence lacking in the modern world. In that calm, we can open ourselves to the word enough to hear the still small voice whispering to us.

In addition to a calm attentiveness, we also need a receptivity. We have to let the love of God bend us like the sapling to conform to his will. We have to be pliant and open, and most of all we have to be willing to be disturbed. God is an earthquake as well as a whisper. He will break us and reform us, but only if we allow it. And only if we allow ourselves to be molded will anything come of lectio divina.

We don't find time for lectio: we make it. In Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina, perhaps the best book on the subject, Michael Casey suggests making room for thirty minutes of lectio a day. That can be a pretty tall order, particularly if we are already committed to other devotions. Thirty minutes can be a goal if you like, but don't let it be an obstacle. Start with five if that's all you have, then try to extend it.

If possible, try to set a time and a place to perform lectio. For example, wake fifteen minutes earlier and do it before breakfast, every day after lunch, or at night before bed. Bind the practice through habit to some other routine you perform every day. You wouldn't skip eating, dressing, or brushing your teeth. Make it so that you wouldn't skip daily lectio.

Choose your desert. Leave the phone in another room. Close the door. God's talking to you in the text of scripture, not in the text beeping on your phone. You wouldn't say to God, "Hang on a minute, I have to answer a call" if He was in the middle of a conversation with you.

Embrace the silence, turn down the volume on the world, and enter into God. We fill our lives with technology, our eyes with pictures, our ears with sounds, our minds with insignificant trifles. In their own proper portion, this may be fine, but we use it like a drug to numb boredom or fear or pain, and in the process silence the part of our soul that is receptive to the divine.

In lectio, we open our ears and heart to the voice of God in the printed word. Approach it with reverence, attention, silence, and submission. Use it as an opportunity to subdue the appetites and the inclinations to distraction that plague modern man so insistently.

There are, of course, may obstacles to proper lectio. We all have other obligations, and as life changes even the good habits we cultivate may fall by the wayside. Distraction is an ever-present danger to the spiritual life. There's a reason Jesus, monks, and spiritual masters of many faiths withdrew to the desert for a time to be stripped of the things of the world.

We may lack the willpower to make the effort. Perhaps we’re sunk in acedia: the spiritual depression that smothers. To deal with the hardship of our lives, the world encourages us to escape into fantasy, offering unreality as the only option to an oppressive reality. But there is another alternative--hyperreality. A reality so true and clear and present and intense it can only be divine.

That's what God offers, and good lectio, practiced regularly, is a sure and certain way to encounter that hyperreality. Make no mistake--these temptations away from spiritual works are the stratagems of the devil, and thus overcoming them is an act of spiritual combat. It becomes a cycle, then, when the spiritual food we need for this combat--prayer, scripture, worship, lectio--is snatched from our hands by the dark one through temptation, oppression, and other ways of the world.

If the big devotions like lectio are too much weight, then start with the very smallest. Practice the presence of God prior to picking up the book. This very simple technique, known from a small book by Brother Lawrence, encourages us to simply lift our hearts and minds to God constantly, if only for a moment, if only to say the name of Jesus, throughout the day and in all our actions. At work or play, in idleness or chaos, it takes almost nothing to reach out to God in heart and mind. It’s simply a thought, a word, a brief prayer--done throughout the day, day after day, loading the dishwasher or walking the dog.

This simple practice of the presence of God loosens the grip of the world and lets us mount, if only fitfully, to the Divine Love who calls us to him. When it is merely the width of a toothpick a root may press beneath a slab of concrete, but day by day, year after, it pushes and grows until it breaks through.

I started this way. There was a time when I could barely say an Our Father at bedtime, and now I have a growing daily spiritual routine. It took time. Frankly, it took years, and there was much backsliding. There are days when some devotions still don't get my full measure. But, bit by bit, I found the way to where regular devotions are the norm and missing them are the exception. And when I miss them, I feel the loss.

The way to routine lectio is different for each of us, but everyone proceeds step by step, through the grace of God, by seeking him every day, all day. God is already calling to you in many ways--from the world, in your heart, and on the page. Call out to him in return, ask his help, and put yourself on the paths he travels in the deserted spaces of the world.