16 Comments

Amazing conversation

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What an important discussion for our time and for life itself. Thank you.

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Great conversation. Would you be able to offer any thoughts about what Bonhoeffer's treatment of Scripture has to say when it comes to reading disciplines like Lectio Divina? Are there 'wrong' questions we could be asking entering into such readings?

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The centrality of Christ in scripture is key for Bonhoeffer and also in Lectio, and I like this passage in Life Together that may speak to your questions: “The Word of Scripture should never stop sounding in your ears and working in you all day long, just like the words of someone you love. And just as you do not analyze the words of someone you love, but accept them as they are said to you, accept the Word of Scripture and ponder it in your heart, as Mary did. That is all… Do not ask ‘How shall I pass this on?’ but ‘What does it say to me?’ Then ponder this word long in your heart until it has gone right into you and taken possession of you.”

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Dear Fr. David, thank you for your response, which makes a lot of sense. I am not sure exactly where I was coming from with this comment, I think I'll have to re-listen. There was some intuition about possibly entering lectio with an attitude that seemed contrary to what you were advocating here. But as I said, I need to listen again and keep in mind what you're saying here.

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Okay, I think it is pretty clear to me now that I've listened again. There are some (perhaps contemporary) lectio resources that supply questions to guide the meditation. And I guess I had a sense that such questions can tell us that we're supposed to "get" something out of our reading (even your bonhoeffer quote about asking what the text says to you can potentially be misinterpreted that way, that we're supposed to come out of the reading with a specific "thing" that speaks to us right now). Does this make sense?

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I’m maybe the result of being in Spiritual Direction with Franciscans, but I *think* what Lectio helps us “get” from the text is Christ. So I’m often trying to be present to see how that’s what the text is saying to me.

For sure these things can all be abused and made to curve inwards. But for me I have learned to love deep study with the text and deep prayer with the text - Christ seems to be all in both if we pay attention.

I hope that makes some sort of sense.

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Yes, sorry, I am not saying the practice itseld is what leads to this, just maybe suggesting that there might be some ways of approaching it that could lead to that kind of mindset. But it sounds anyway like I need to practice it more and then see what I think after that :) thank you for sharing your thoughts!

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Forgive me if I’m not being helpful or properly hearing you.

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You were helpful, and I think you heard me well. Thank you :)

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I wonder if our word “application” isn’t often doing some of the same work that Bonhoeffer identifies as “contemporizing.”

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For sure

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Lord have Mercy

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So ‘left brain’

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A great conversation with heavy weight. I love the pushback against the dissection of wisdom here, a serious violation and short-sighted task that we do every day in our thinking, a symptom or side-effect of this condition that has been programmed in us as post-modern persons. Thank, you Chris and David. I hear the same boldness and gentle audaciousness in both of your statements that Bonhoeffer also rings in history. There is no "takeaway", but recognition of harmonization in light of what's being asked of us by the melody maker Himself.

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stunner. so. much. beauty.

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