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Explore My Reflections
Following the contemplative rhythm of Lectio Divina
Moving from Attentive Reading (Lectio)
To Reflection (Meditatio)
To Prayerful Response (Oratio)
And finally into Silent Resting in God (Contemplatio)
Grappling With Divinity invites a slow unfolding of Scripture, Spiritual Wisdom, and Lived Experience.
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The Useless Hour: On Prayer, Surrender, and the Freedom of Doing Nothing With God (Lectio Divina)
On a morning stacked with obligations — an event to host, a class to teach, a daughter to get on the bus — something interrupts the momentum. Not a solution. A stillness. Henri Nouwen calls prayer primarily a “useless” hour, and this reflection takes that claim seriously: what does it mean to sit down…
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Going By a Way You Do Not Know: Faith, Darkness, and the Unseeable Horizon (Lectio Divina)
The spiritual journey often begins in darkness — not knowing where we are going, led by a voice we cannot hear, consoled by a presence we cannot feel. Drawing on James Finley’s reading of Merton, this reflection moves through the cloud of witnesses who walked the same way before us: Abraham setting out for…
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Given Freely and Eternally: Spiritual Gifts as Participation in God (Lectio Divina)
We do not get to decide our spiritual gifts — not what they are, not how they come, and not what shape they take in us. This reflection traces the movement from gift received to gift poured out, asking why hoarding grace leads to desolation, and why the gifts were never ours to claim…
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Outmatched By Love: The Grace We Can Neither Earn Nor Repay (Lectio Divina)
Teresa of Ávila saw her debt clearly — and knew she could not pay even the smallest part of it. This Lectio Divina begins there: with the unsettling discovery that grace cannot be earned, manufactured, or even desired without grace first making the desire possible. What does it mean to be so utterly outmatched…
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Borrowed Faith: How Sacred Company Carries Us Back to God (Lectio Divina)
What does the company we keep do to the soul? Drawing on Paesius of the desert, the friendship of David and Jonathan, and the ruin of Samson, this reflection traces the relational gravity that pulls us toward God or away from him — and asks what it means to borrow the faith of another…
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The Desert Of No Obvious Name: On Addiction, Recovery, and Spiritual Malady (Lectio Divina)
Most of us know the saying from recovery circles: don’t get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. It is practical wisdom for the alcoholic and addict. But this post asks whether it is something more — whether hunger, anger, loneliness, and exhaustion are not just warnings for those in recovery, but the universal conditions…
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Becoming Worship: Silence, Consent, and the Sacred Dance (Lectio Divina)
At the heart of worship is not a transaction but a dance — a mutual pouring out of love between creator and creation, lover and beloved, in which the lover is at once beloved and the beloved is at once lover. This reflection traces the sacred logic of consent: the yes given over to…
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The Gift of Patience: Waiting In God’s Presence (Lectio Divina)
Most of us know what it feels like to wait without knowing what we are waiting for — or how long it will last. Sabbath names that experience and reframes it: not as absence, but as the very place where God’s love is most fully given. This reflection moves through the great biblical figures…
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Sacred Intentions: Brother Lawrence on the Sanctification of Every Moment (Lectio Divina)
Most of us divide our lives into two categories: the sacred and the ordinary. We show up for worship, prayer, and praise — and then we return to everything else. But what if that division is exactly what Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection spent his life quietly dismantling? Drawing on his simple and searching…
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Not Good to Be Alone: Discernment and the Need for Spiritual Accompaniment (Lectio Divina)
Henri Nouwen warns that discernment performed alone often becomes delusion — but what does it mean to need each other in the work of hearing God? This post holds the tension between the irreplaceable necessity of solitude and the equally irreplaceable necessity of community, tracing the thread from Genesis through the desert tradition to…
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The Useless Hour: On Prayer, Surrender, and the Freedom of Doing Nothing With God (Lectio Divina)
On a morning stacked with obligations — an event to host, a class to teach, a daughter to get on the bus — something interrupts the momentum. Not a solution. A stillness. Henri Nouwen calls prayer primarily a “useless” hour, and this reflection takes that claim seriously: what does it mean to sit down and…
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Going By a Way You Do Not Know: Faith, Darkness, and the Unseeable Horizon (Lectio Divina)
The spiritual journey often begins in darkness — not knowing where we are going, led by a voice we cannot hear, consoled by a presence we cannot feel. Drawing on James Finley’s reading of Merton, this reflection moves through the cloud of witnesses who walked the same way before us: Abraham setting out for a…
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Given Freely and Eternally: Spiritual Gifts as Participation in God (Lectio Divina)
We do not get to decide our spiritual gifts — not what they are, not how they come, and not what shape they take in us. This reflection traces the movement from gift received to gift poured out, asking why hoarding grace leads to desolation, and why the gifts were never ours to claim in…
