reflectere

“Reading without meditation is arid,
meditation without reading is erroneous;
prayer without meditation is tepid,
meditation without prayer is fruitless.”

(Guigo, The Ladder of Monks: 12th-century manual of spiritual)

“Those who have abandoned themselves to God always lead mysterious lives and receive from him exceptional and miraculous gifts by means of the most ordinary, natural and chance experiences in which there appears to be nothing unusual. The simplest sermon, the most banal conversations, the least erudite books become a source of knowledge and wisdom to these souls by virtue of God’s purpose. This is why they carefully pick up the crumbs which clever minds tread under foot, for to them everything is precious and a source of enrichment.”
JEAN-PIERRE DE CAUSSADE
The Sacrament of the Present Moment

Much of what is sacred is hidden in the ordinary, everyday moments of our lives. To see something of the sacred in those moments takes slowing down so we can live our lives more reflectively.

The word reflect comes from two Latin words: re, meaning “back,” and flectere, meaning “to bend.” To reflect, then, is to bend back something, like the way a mirror bends back an image, providing an opportunity for a closer look. Living, and in this case, reading reflectively provides opportunities during our day for a closer look at things, at people, at ourselves, and at God. The faster the pace of our life, though, the more we will miss those opportunities.

Therefore, it is essential that we take pauses. Pauses create spaces in reader’s heart so the words the writer has written have room to live. The space we give words – whether those words are the text of Scripture or the texts of our daily lives – allows them a place to live in our hearts. Without creating spaces of time in our lives, we stunt whatever growth the words were meant to produce.

Believers throughout the Bible were used to putting pauses into their lives. They structured pauses such as set times for daily prayers, strict observances for weekly Sabbaths, and holy days that punctuated the year, such as Passover and Yom Kippur. This habit of structuring pauses made it easier for them to take spontaneous pauses during the day, which is so essential for living a reflective life.

If we stop reading and don’t pause or reflect, how can our hearts have a chance to respond to what is written, to be touched by it in some way, or to be softened by it, even broken by it?

The pauses give resonance to the words, giving them a place to live in our heart. That is why it’s important to schedule pauses into our day. A busy schedule crowds out those pauses. When life pressures us to put as much as we can into a day, we start reducing the type, combining paragraphs, editing out the spaces, eliminating the margins. And after a while, we simply stop reading.