In a recent Christianity Today article (February 2011) Marilyn Chandler McEntyre wrote of the ancient practice of lectio divina. She explained the way that slowly reading a text allows the reader to “prayerfully consider the gift being offered within the words.”
I was excited to read a few sentences following these introductory remarks: Ms. McEntryre observed, “The practice can be adapted and imported into the reading of other texts.” Aughh.. A soul sister.
Let me tell you what I mean by this deep exhale. In the Winter 1990 issue of Leadership (Volume 11, Issue 1) I read a four page article by Eugene Peterson (author of The Message) that was, (a name I would assign now) Literary Lectio. The article was titled, Recovering Passion for God- the tag line read this way: How an unlikely mentor helped one pastor rediscover the heart of ministry.
Pastor and Bible scholar, Eugene Peterson, wrote in his article that he found within a deep cynicism about the transmission of truth through Sunday sermons. His vocatIonal disillusionment was at an all time high. During this season in ministry he could not generate love for his congregation or hope that they were curious about any part of the sermons that he labored over each week. He believed he was tapping in to his creativity when he studied but he felt a deep disconnect to the people. He could not find any good reason to continue the weekly routines of teaching his congregation in a small Montana township.
He sensed that logging in more hours at a library to dredge up good illustrations or stories would avail him little. Every flint he struck to kindle a spark of hope that he could last another year in the pastorate did nothing to ignite and invigorate his calling. That experience is not unusual or rare today. What is unusual is what Eugene Peterson did! As he outlined in the Leadership Journal; he studied great lierature to find his passion for preaching. Peterson documented (in detail) how the works of one author were effective for naming his problem, revising his angle of approach to the problem, and then restoring his faith. It astonished me to read that a Russian novelist (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) brought the refreshment of repentance over such a long reach of time and geography to heal a reader in Montana! What could the revelatory power be of two novels?
I began to ponder this question: Could literature bring fertile self examination to me if I asked the text to speak in more interactive ways? I was fascinated by this notion but I had no idea or context to understand it. I thought it was only for the contemplative pastor types. Peterson was a man of the word… thus, the lectio (word +divine) and he stumbled upon a divine way to read in order to pull forward the moral insights he needed for the time that were hidden within the great characters in The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot. If I remember correctly, (it is decades later as I write a blog today) what I did was simple. I read that article, copied it for my files, and kept it in my mind as a resource for the day I might need it if I grew lethargic vocationally. I never forgot Peterson saying he was mentored by a long deceased author back to faith and health.. and I never forgot his unusual way to examine literature and let it speak back to his spiritual life.
It would be ten years later that I would encounter another saint practicing something very similar to Peterson’s gazing at Dostoyevsky’s protagonists. The year was 1986 and this time it was Henri Nouwen gazing at a painting by Rembrandt titled, “The Return of the Prodigal”. Like Peterson, he had descended from an effective and successful teaching ministry to the valley of loneliness. He was asked to leave his community and find psychological healing alone in another city. He saw a poster of the Rembrandt and then made his way to the gallery housing this painting. He went every day for hours to ask the hardest internal questions of his existence to each of the principle characters in the parable of Jesus. He gathered enough in front of the painting to write a book! All of his content came while looking intently at the relational honesty that was radiating from the eyes, hands, feet, and postures of the four men depicted by Rembrandt. *
The experience shaped his emotional recovery. Once again lectio had been imported to read another “text” –It was limited to a portion of the psalms as monastic communities practiced it.. but it was practiced with a painting that told a parable of the New Testament. I think today I can venture to say that Nouwen participated in visual lectio. So deep in my spirit I ponder visual lectio, literary lectio, and then I begin to study monastic practices and learn the method of praying known as lectio divina in the years of 2007-2010.
So fast forward to December, 2010. I was in a pastry shop in Denver having coffee with a gifted poet and therapist named Joy Sawyer. I was sharing the creative delight I had found in using a wide variety of prompts for contemplation in three groups that I was facilitating. Joy had been writing the updated edition of the textbook for Poetry Therapy and delving into the origins of this profound expressionistic therapy model that was birthed in the 1960′s. I felt a bit sheepish describing my work in Nashville because in my classes I was drawing on movie clips, poems, art, and prose while guiding the participants through “holy listening”–and often expressive work would flow out of that. Joy was very familiar with lectio divina and found that it was a key ingredient in the inaugural years of establishing the protocols for poetry therapy. We talked about what we often talk about: God is uncanny. It was on the heels of those words that the process of discovery about my calling and the enterprise I am taking on now was unvieled. I told Joy how my classes unfold and Joy, with her irrepressible smile and knack for embracing new things, leaned forward in her seat and said, “Why, Nita, what you are doing should be called, “Creative lectio.”
It wouldn’t be an exageration to tell you that this was a big ” aha!” moment for me. Within a short space of time I ‘woke up’ from a blur to see a mountain of gifts (poems matched to themes of life) two inches from my nose. Granted some were embedded deep in the crevices of the sheer cliff in front of me but I love to dig things out so I was pumped to get started. I was eager like a veteran mountain climber to “gain purchase” against the rock! I wanted to capture what I had been diligently teaching for years and shape them into a curriculum.
I began the sorting and naming process and it lasted through the winter and spring of 2011. I started gathering together the music, DVDs, art, biographies, poems, audio files, and paintings. I began by digging each one out and printing it or filing it.. then I would see where the edge of one art form best illuminated the center of the meaning of another. I looked for relationships across my resources. Then, I looked deeply at my life and the themes that unfolded with the seasons of my years. Soon, sitting in the pile of files in my guest room, I named the topics and found homogenous groupings for each one. I stopped at one hundred. (feel free to poke fun at me about that number!)
The type of topics I worked out were things like: The Peaks and Valleys of my Parenting pilgrimage or What we can learn from the art of Marc Chagall. I realized somewhere along the way that it is not an accident that for several years I was an adjunct professor teaching Human Growth and Development. This was perfect grounding for the task of building my scaffolding of what actually happens to us as we move from childhood through all the bumpy places to later adulthood. My work for 26 years as a therapist also prompted me to ask, “What is crucial to know? What do I wish I had known in advance?” I asked, “What is refuse and what is food for the journey?” So what was left was thinking through how to have CreativeLectio shared and embraced in a group setting? I am so fortunate to have 7 semesters of students to help me with that piece of the work. Let me share a few examples: One lesson plan might be about birds. . . very simple creatures that are anchored in our everyday experiences if we have eyes to learn from them. Birds may be out to the far sides of a participant’s peripheral vision…non existent or inanimate. So, what happens that day with CreativeLectio? My lesson plan highlights correlating qualities. Poets through the ages have witnessed small, obscure signs of loveliness hidden like secrets on our paths every day. So, Water Ouzel week we may read four different poems on that one bird! We may look at the passionate research and curiosity of John Muir and from there we might look at art or make art. We may write a free verse poem that delineates the traits of that bird to us and for our story. We may find that God is using this bird to pose a question to us and this takes us back to Scripture.
Many weeks I hear back from participants. “I have seen the color yellow everywhere since class… God is teaching me about being attentive!” Another might say, “I never felt the weight of a kitchen table and all that it means to a family. I see it now! I cherish the sacrament of lighting of the table. I remember the song you played in class and today I wrote my own dinner blessing. Thank you for showing me my kitchen table .. it was there all along and I missed it!” That is CreativeLectio. Here is a way to understand the larger themes of the topics
I have loosely clustered them in six groupings.
• 1) Personhood- Made in the Image of God
• 2) Biography
• 3) Our Web of Relationships
• 4) Creative Writing Process
• 5) Spiritual Foundations and Beliefs as we Intersect with the World
• 6) Personal Spiritual Journey
I find that every semester it is good to draw from each genre. We all need to meet new spiritual guides, but we may need a week to stretch and do more of our own writing. If your demographic is facing the challenges in a web of generational relationships you may choose more from that category. If it has been structured as a faith based class you may pull more topics from that cluster. If it was a neighborhood book group and seeker oriented you can not choose any of the faith based topics. Thank you for reading my story of fining my vocational love. I haven’t had a single person that has known me long and then hears of this endeavor doubt that all of the good and bad days I have had up until now were the perfect preparation for the gestation and birth of crazy poetic liscense blended with a dash of formal monastic order– this new thing called CreativeLectio!
