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Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

Finally, the student should be invited to contemplate the text in the manner one would contemplate Scripture in lectio divina: by putting the mind at rest and allowing the text to reveal its meaning. This can be encouraged through activities like florilegia, that great monastic literary genre, in which excerpts and phrases from literature are collected in a journal without commentary or analysis, and over time committed to memory more like a lyric from a song than a text to be studied. Through receptive contemplation, literature becomes a means by which the Holy Spirit moves the student to the love and apprehension of wisdom, thereby integrating what one reads with how one lives. For, as Augustine demonstrates, the object of literature is not merely information or even formation, but transformation.  Lectio Divina's Transformation of the Art of Reading


Last January  I revived this blog.   And apparently, two years before, I started it.    January is the two-faced month, looking both forward and backward, so perhaps this will fit into that tradition.   

Having said that, I don't have much more to say, but I intend to keep trying.    I am not on social media, or message boards, or email groups (at least not as a voice speaking up) so this blog is it for my public presence.   I said all the reasons I think it's important to keep speaking up, in the linked posts.  

I like the whole article about lectio divina, quoted above.  Lectio Divina started in the monasteries, but now is practiced even by non-Catholics, and the principles seem to slowly work their way into everything in life -- even in the most obscure tasks.  

“My only ambition is to serve God in the most obscure tasks.”  St Andre Bessette 

 I've been reading this article:  Thomas Aquinas on the Development of Doctrine -- and trying to reflect on it.    Also just finished The Pearl, by John Steinbeck.   It's a kind of parable or folk tale.    I didn't know much about it before I read it, so I didn't know what to expect.   The site I linked to has a plot synopsis so don't go there if you plan to read it and don't want spoilers.   


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