[quote:exk5rnim]I thought Lectio was specifically for the Scriptures. I hadn’t heard that you could do it with other types of reading.

So you just read and think about what you read? How is that any different than any other type of reflection? :what:[/quote:exk5rnim]

Lectio Divina is a stuctured time of the day at which all manual labor stops and the community settles down into that private spiritual reading. Divina because it is focused on something spiritual, there are many who relax in the break room at work or at their desks by reading the paper or a pulp novel. In the case of Lectio Divina, it is definatly a spiritual work.

One has to remember that until St. Benedict wrote the Rule for his new community there was no organized form of Contemplative Monastics in the West. Even in the East most of the Monastic Communities where individuals who went out into the desert and would meet from time to time for Mass. Most had not written rule. St. Benedict’s innovation was to have a written rule that all from the newest novice to the Abbot would use as their daily guide. The Lectio Divina prior to Vatican II included either Sacred Scripture or the Fathers, (who commented primarily but not exculcivly on Scripture) or other Religious writings. This [url:exk5rnim]http://www.valyermo.com/ld-art.html[/url:exk5rnim] site is a Benedictine community in California and covers the process in greater detail. Like many communities after Vatican II they reformed their process to be primarily Biblical reading in response to the Ecumenical movement which de-emphasised anything that would separate us from the Protestants, thereby de-emphasis was placed on non-Biblical reading.

This link [url:exk5rnim]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectio_Divina[/url:exk5rnim] at Wikipedia (which sometimes gets things wrong) is actually quite good, and far more clear than what I have written.