Learning on Discerning

Lectio Divina

Same as yesterday, but I will post it again:

Hear the sound of my pleading when I cry to you for help when I lift up my hands toward your holy place.

Psalm 28:2

Library

Continuing Resurrection and Priscilla and Aquila. Did not return to the pamphlets from The Franciscan Institute, choosing Tolstoy for hermitage time. But I have personal time all day tomorrow, and I will open one of the pamphlets then.

Log

Today: Wednesday is hermitage time, and I kept a low profile, as is my wont on this day. Stayed in my room this afternoon to read Tolstoy and reflect on what we have heard in our classes this morning on discernment. Revisited our lessons on personality types, namely the insights of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the enneagram.

An interesting excursus on heresies in class today, with the moral being that an openness to truth, the wholeness of truth, is just as important in spiritual discernment as an openness to love. If sin gets in the way of following God with all our heart, so error gets in the way of following God with all our mind. As I am beginning to understand it, heresy is not a Church conspiracy to suppress forbidden truths or forbidden expressions of truth, but the symptom of distorted or narrowed conceptions of truth. One tries to steer clear of heresy not so much out of a fear of error as from a desire to receive truth more fully and to live by it. Of course, this is just my perspective and I am willing to have it expanded further. I have been loath to read about or study heresy and the Church's response to it over history because it usually depresses me. And I have always felt that sin and its defeat by love is the important thing. Jesus saves us from our sins. But our gracious God who is love is also truth, and so I have to reckon with error.

This evening, we celebrated the birthday of a novice brother. Now, to relax after a day of silent reading, reflection, and what I hope was genuine contemplation.

Weather

Less hot than yesterday, and less breezy. The coming of the full moon in the cool of evening makes my heart rise.