Marilyn McEntyre - Word by Word: A Daily Spiritual Practice

Marilyn McEntyre

Word
by
Word

A Daily Spiritual Practice

William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505
www.eerdmans.com
2016 Marilyn McEntyre
All rights reserved
Published 2016
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McEntyre, Marilyn Chandler, 1949- author.

Title: Word by word: a daily spiritual practice / Marilyn McEntyre.

Description: Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016019029 | ISBN 9780802873866 (pbk.: alk. paper)
eISBN 9781467446174 (ePub)
eISBN 9781467445788 (Kindle)

Subjects: LCSH: Meditations. | VocabularyMiscellanea. |
Language and languagesReligious aspectsChristianity.

Classification: LCC BV4832.3 .M3484 2016 | DDC 242dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019029

Contents

A while ago I was driving one of my favorite four-year-olds to the public library, chatting with him about what we might find there. He asked if he could play word games on the computers in the childrens section. I said he could do that if a computer was available. He was quiet for a few moments; then I heard him mumbling to himself contentedly, Available. Available. Available. Apparently the word appealed to him.

I smiled, knowing how the sound and taste of a certain word can sometimes surprise me into sudden pleasure in the midst of conversation. Ill find myself turning the word over and over in my mind like a beach pebble that glimmers in sea water and summons the eye to closer inspection.

When a word calls particular attention to itself in that way, it awakens associations, memories, reflections. One instance I remember vividly is an encounter I had with the word dwell. I was reading the opening line of Psalm 91: He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the almighty. Its a line I had loved for years, but this time the word dwell moved for a moment into the foreground, and I found myself lingering over it, struck by something gentle and kind and hospitable about the quality of at-homeness it suggests.

Over time I found that my experience is a common one: sometimes a word floats into mind like a few notes from a familiar tune and stays a while. You find yourself hearing it with noticeable frequency, using it a little more consciously, and carrying it through the day. Its good to pay attention to these words when they come, usually in the course of reading a passage of Scripture or a poem, a new book or the daily paper. Its good to consider what stories and teachings the words bring with them, what kinds of questions attach to them, what they evoke and invite.

This series of meditations on single words is an invitation to dwell with and reflect on a single word over the course of a week, to consider one word used seven different ways, in seven different phrases. In this process you recall the words personal, biblical, and sometimes literary contexts, consider experiences the word brings up, how your use or sense of it has changed over time, how it has acquired new layers of meaning. And you allow the word to become a focus for prayer and meditation.

A week allows spacious time for layers of meaning and memory to unfold. Each day we may turn the same word to a new angle, find it in a different poem or passage, be more attentive to it in conversation, turn it to new purposes. The practice of living with a single word for a week can become a complement to centering prayer and to lectio divina , allowing us to hear that word in new ways, and allow it to invite us into new places of the heart.

Both these time-honored practices, lectio divina and centering prayer, remind us of the power of a single word or phrase to open a window or a path, incite an epiphany or an insight, or let in a rush of feeling we didnt know had been buried in a deep place. The one practice leads to the other. In lectio divina we listen as we read a passage from Scripture for a word or phrase that summons us to pause and hear the voice of the Spirit. That word or phrase becomes a focal point for the reading that daya new avenue of grace discovered even in the heart of a very familiar passage. In centering prayer we begin with a sacred word that quiets and focuses the mind and gradually dispels the clutter of preoccupations and internal chatter. This word gathers silence around it, silence in which we may become newly aware of divine presence.

My hope is that this collection of reflections on single words will encourage you to experiment with these practices and extend them into daily life by carrying a particular word with you for a whole weekone that has been given to you and that brings with it, if you let it, a cascade of thoughts and feelings worth exploring. I offer these words in the spirit in which one monastic brother would ask another to give me a word to provide focus and direction. As you listen for the word spoken to you, you will very likely find that more words emerge as you need them.

Dwelling, lingering, pondering, listening, prayingthese are all countercultural practices. They slow us into a silence that has to be reclaimed, sometimes with fierce intention, from the noise and haste and forward momentum of daily life. Many of us have normalized busyness to the point of chronic overload. Staying with, being still, and coming back rather than going on are spiritual survival disciplines on the choppy seas of distraction.

The words in this volume come from my own meditations, from morning readings of Scripture, from poems read at bedtime, from conversations where suddenly Ive noticed and heard words in a new way. Each of them has taken its place as a key term in my spiritual lexicon and, I would say, my personal theology. Returning to them focuses my faith and equips me as I continue the journey.

As it happens, the words in this volume are all verbs. Though I didnt initially plan it that way, I recognize that verbs are a good place to start. Theyre the fulcrum of every sentence, and the keys to many kinds of seeking. Receive, enjoy, and ask offer invitation and direction and a little nudge to move into the day and act in the world with renewed focus and life-giving energy. A few of the verbs are phrases: let go and be still arrive with the force and conviction of imperatives that are also promises rooted in two ancient, holy words by which all creation was spoken into being: Be and Let. In the story of creation and of Gods work with humankind, verbs have a special place and power.

The choice of words and the sequence in which they occur here have no necessary logic, though you may see in the table of contents some alternation between invitation and challenge, between receptivity and activity. But I invite you to read the words in any order, allowing the table of contents itself to be a little exercise in noticing where your interests, desires, and life currents lead you as you open the book on any given day. In spending time with these words, allowing them to awaken mind and spirit, I have found each of them to be a way into the interior castle. Each of them has offered its own singular teaching.

I hope these reflections will encourage you as you pursue your own practices of word work and word play. And if you havent developed such practices, I invite you to discover, as I have, to my lasting delight, how words may become little fountains of grace. How a single word may become, for a time, equipment for living. How a single word may open wide wakes of meaning and feeling. How a single word may, if you hold it for a while, become a prayer.