Immersion in the narrative
Categories : Bible, Celebration, Podcasting, Religion |
Just to further comment on an element of chapter 2 of Celebration of Discipline, where Richard Foster talks about meditatio Scripturarum, the meditation upon scripture. Foster talks about personalizing what we read, imagining ourselves as first hand observers or participants in the narrative. When I read it I thought it was a good idea but didn’t give it too much thought after that, however this morning in church we had a great message from Jason Gray which really brought this principle home to me. In it he really vividly described how he would have felt if he was there in Gethsemane, or there with David as he fleed Absalom. And he even took it the next step, not only imagining himself into the biblical story, but transporting one of the biblical characters Shimei into his own life, mocking him as his car broke down after a long bad day. Now that’s a great way to apply the Bible to your life, not simply trying to extract abstract principles which you can try to live by, but by immersing yourself in the narrative, using your imagination to try and get what it’s all about, as St Ignatius of Loyola encouraged “to apply all our senses to the task. Smell the sea. Hear the lap of water along the shore. See the crowd. Feel the sun on your head and the hunger in your stomach. Taste the salt in the air. Touch the hem of his garment.” (Celebration of Discipline p29)
Anyway if you want to have a listen to this great message by Jason for yourself you can download it here from the Warnbro podcast.
Also for more links on the topic of Christian meditation try the wikipedia article. As always with wikipedia there’s a lot there to explore and I’ve barely scratched the surface of it yet.
