Daily Nourishment for May 24, 2024: In All Things
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 55 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 15 minutes
“If You have given me no single place to which I can flee and be sure of finding You, if anything I do can mean the loss of You, then I must be able to find You in every place, in each and every thing I do…. Thus, I must seek You in all things.” - Karl Rahner
Pause.
Take six deep breaths with a six-count inhale and a six-count exhale.
Prompt.
Here’s a quote from an essay I wrote for The Millions on reading as a spiritual practice:
I recently read Lydia Davis’s Essays Two: On Proust, Translation, Foreign Languages, and the City of Arles, in which she describes her early-morning routine of reading and writing—a routine that neatly parallels my own predawn ritual of contemplative prayer…
“I may attempt a translation of it even before getting my first cup of coffee. This is partly a result of inertia: I am still tired or half asleep, and I don’t want to move from my chair. If I do have my cup of coffee by me, I’m likely to sit even longer.”
Her description of her process of literary translation struck me as very similar to lectio divina, a form of contemplative prayer that involves slowly reading a passage of scripture several times:
I begin by trying to read the story. I read the first line. More than once, it has contained the word bosrand, “edge of the woods”—something Snijders sees from his kitchen window and a place I like to be, or imagine. Or it has contained something about the author’s problematic chickens, or his dogs. One begins with a woman (vrouw) in the distance (distance is verte, which, confusing me for a moment, is identical to the French for green, but whose root is ver, sharing a past with the English far). Still half dreaming, I am transported to the Dutch countryside, among the chickens and buzzards, foxes, shepherds, swans, and the occasional cyclist or hiker coming along the pad (cognate of path) in front of the author’s house…
Practice.
Set a timer for 12 minutes and read a few sentences from a favorite book. Read them slowly. Read them again and again. Where do the words take you? What images come to mind? What do you remember? How are your senses stirred?
Take notes for a few minutes if there’s anything you’d like to capture.
Want More?
Read “Prayer Consists of Attention: On Reading as a Spiritual Practice”
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Upcoming Workshops & Gatherings
—The May Co-Writing Schedule is live. Learn more here.
—This month’s Revision Stations Designed by Lauren Winner gathering will be TOMORROW Saturday, May 25th from 10:15-noon CT.
If you have something that needs revision attention, you will not regret attending. Promise.
Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Charlotte Donlon.
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