3. Practice
All my life as been a relearning to pray --a letting go of incantational magic, petition, and vain repetition "Me Lord, me," instead of watching attentively for the light that burns at the center of every star, every cell, every living creature, every human heart.
Chet Raymo
Natural Prayers
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| (c) Jane Redmont, Orcas Island, 2011 |
Robert M. Hamma, an editor at Ave Maria Press and Sorin Books (full disclosure: they're my publishers), is also a writer and the author of the wonderful little book Earth's Echo: Sacred Encounters with Nature. Hamma quotes science and nature writer Chet Raymo in that book and challenges his readers to go deeper into their appreciation of nature. Nature, Hamma writes, "is not simply the setting in which the presence of God is encountered, it is, in itself, a form of divine presence."
Hamma continues: "For many of us, this appreciation of the sacred dimension of nature requires a change of perspective. Although we may have an appreciation for the role of nature in our spirituality, it is often limited. Nature may serve as a refuge for us, a place to go to get away from the pressures and distractions of our ordinary lives. We may find that nature's beauty or grandeur inspires us, that the beauty of creation reminds us of the Creator. But is there more to it than that?"
Hamma reminds us of two pieces of traditional wisdom:
1. Christianity (other traditions too, but we expect this less of Christianity somehow) in some of its most ancient traditions understands that there are two holy books: the book of scripture and the book of nature or creation.
Hamma tells the story of the ancient hermit Anthony, living in the Egyptian desert in the 3d and 4th centuries, who was asked by a philosopher (desert hermits did have visitors) what he would do if he could no longer read the scriptures. Anthony replied: "My book, sir philosopher, is the nature of created things, and it is always on hand when I wish to read it."
2. There is an ancient practice with which some of you are familiar, lectio divina or holy reading, which can lead us to deeper prayer and relationship with the divine. Originally a monastic practice, lectio (as it is sometimes called these days) is now practiced not just by vowed monastics but by laity in various settings and across several Christian communions.
2. There is an ancient practice with which some of you are familiar, lectio divina or holy reading, which can lead us to deeper prayer and relationship with the divine. Originally a monastic practice, lectio (as it is sometimes called these days) is now practiced not just by vowed monastics but by laity in various settings and across several Christian communions.
This practice of sacred reading involves four stages or movements: reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation. (In Latin, as the monks of the Western Christian tradition described them, lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio.)
What Hamma then does --and this is our spiritual practice this week-- is to invite his readers to what he calls a sacred reading of nature.
In other words, he combines the ancient understanding of the "book of nature" with the ancient practice of lectio divina to make a new, contemporary spiritual practice for us.
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| (c) Jane Redmont, Orcas Island, 2011 |
Hamma renames the four stages. He calls them:
1. Paying attention
2. Pondering
3. Response
4. Surrendering
In his book, Hamma takes his readers to five different regions: shore, forest, desert, river, mountain. He then guides them through the four stages above in ways related to those regions.
You can use Hamma's four-step method with any of these regions or you can use them simply with your neighborhood, your street, your daily walk with the dog, your garden, a city errand down the street. I used it the first time I practiced the exercise with yard work near my house in North Carolina, knowing I was going to be moving back to Boston within months. (I noted then, as I first wrote this post, that I was still in the process, somewhere between stages 2 and 3.) This week I will be practicing this method by the ocean on Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
So take any part of nature you wish and apply lectio divina to it.
Let me say more about the four stages which we are applying this week (and beyond) to our reading of nature.
In his book, Hamma takes his readers to five different regions: shore, forest, desert, river, mountain. He then guides them through the four stages above in ways related to those regions.
You can use Hamma's four-step method with any of these regions or you can use them simply with your neighborhood, your street, your daily walk with the dog, your garden, a city errand down the street. I used it the first time I practiced the exercise with yard work near my house in North Carolina, knowing I was going to be moving back to Boston within months. (I noted then, as I first wrote this post, that I was still in the process, somewhere between stages 2 and 3.) This week I will be practicing this method by the ocean on Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
So take any part of nature you wish and apply lectio divina to it.
Let me say more about the four stages which we are applying this week (and beyond) to our reading of nature.
Reading is a broad term, of course: we read visual texts when we gaze at an icon or a painting, we read the look on someone's face, and we read books, essays, poems, on paper and online, in a variety of ways. Hamma reminds us that the ancient monks read often by hearing or by memorizing or repetition; books were scarce. The word and the Word, capital W, came to monks through chanting and reciting of Psalms, through listening to scripture at worship, through hearing books read at meals in the refectory. Our relationship to reading is different. Here our practice is to read nature around us --or if you would like, to read nature in its relationship to the build environment (you decide - adapt your practice to your living environment, urban, suburban, rural)
1. Paying attention
Prayer, really, is mindful attention. Can you, can we, pay attention to nature --in whatever small or large setting we have chosen for our practice of lectio, the bit of nature that we are going to "read"-- in a new, different, fresh way? What is there? What do you see?
2. Pondering
2. Pondering
What happens when you being to ponder what you see? Is a memory awakened? Or your imagination? Do you see the grass between the cracks of sidewalk more clearly? Does the rising of the tide speak to something going on in you? Or is the response a moral response? A righteous anger? A call to compassion? Or do you simply, in Hamma's words, "want to be in that place at that moment without any active use of [your] mind or stirring of emotion"? One monastic writer Hamma quotes calls meditation the "rocking of the heart," as in the gentle rocking of a boat on swells of water. Another monk compares the process of meditation to a cow chewing her cud. "The cow," Hamma explains, "is not looking for any insights, not feeling great consolation, not making any plans; she's just chewing."
3. Response
Hamma describes this as a response "to the One whose voice we have heard." Our aim is not a particular response: it is to recognize the movement of our heart in response to the "word" to which we have paid attention and which we have pondered. You response may not be verbal prayer, though it certainly can be. It can be art, dance, music, going for a run --these four are Hamma's examples-- or tears or sitting still. Your response doesn't seek resolution or insight. It is your heart's response to what you have seen and heard. Make room for it.
4. Surrendering
"Contemplation begins," Hamma writes, "where all our efforts at meditation and prayer end and we find ourselves caught up in the movement and presence of God. Such experience is a gift, not something we can cause or accomplish. We can engage in spiritual practices that open us to such experiences, but we cannot create them."
Hamma calls this step surrendering rather than contemplation. Here the call, beyond the response, is to let go into the loving heart of the One in whom we live and move and have our being.
This fourth stage is not something you can construct. Simply, slow down, move through the other stages, slow down some more, and make room.
Hamma writes: "All we can do, as the mystics say, is dry the wood and stack it carefully so that when the match is laid, it catches fire."
3. Response
Hamma describes this as a response "to the One whose voice we have heard." Our aim is not a particular response: it is to recognize the movement of our heart in response to the "word" to which we have paid attention and which we have pondered. You response may not be verbal prayer, though it certainly can be. It can be art, dance, music, going for a run --these four are Hamma's examples-- or tears or sitting still. Your response doesn't seek resolution or insight. It is your heart's response to what you have seen and heard. Make room for it.
4. Surrendering
"Contemplation begins," Hamma writes, "where all our efforts at meditation and prayer end and we find ourselves caught up in the movement and presence of God. Such experience is a gift, not something we can cause or accomplish. We can engage in spiritual practices that open us to such experiences, but we cannot create them."
Hamma calls this step surrendering rather than contemplation. Here the call, beyond the response, is to let go into the loving heart of the One in whom we live and move and have our being.
This fourth stage is not something you can construct. Simply, slow down, move through the other stages, slow down some more, and make room.
Hamma writes: "All we can do, as the mystics say, is dry the wood and stack it carefully so that when the match is laid, it catches fire."
