Bring Scripture on Your Run
Before jumping into Belden C. Lane’s five legs of the journey, I want to explore the power of wilderness and the reading of dangerous texts. God calls us into the wilderness and the transformative experiences of our lives, and so it is important that we look at this long-held practice called Lectio Divina alongside something Lane calls Lectio Terestris. The first is a method of reading a sacred text while listening for God’s promptings. The second one is a method of reading the world while listening for God’s promptings. Lane works out his book by doing both of these together. He brings sacred texts into the wilderness, and they come alive in new ways. He references St. Augustine.
“In the final book of his Confessions, Augustine explains what makes outdoor spiritual reading so potentially life-changing. It touches the human soul with such power because it occasions the simultaneous reading of two books—God’s truth inscribed in writing and God’s voice proclaimed in nature. These two different “texts,” when read together, ruthlessly cut through human defenses and draw the soul to beauty.” -Lane, 25
How can we bring a sacred text along with us while running?
This is a great opportunity to discuss another spiritual discipline. Sure, we can have something on our phone that we read when we stop on a trail somewhere, but I would like to invite you into another discipline that has shown fruit over the ages. Maybe you found it a chore as a child to memorize Scripture, but this can be a beautiful way to carry Scripture with you in your body. It doesn’t have to be an achievement or something to show off. Sometimes, we can sit with a passage long enough that we can have a dialogue with it. While running, that may be an opportunity to “read” it in another context to see how it speaks to you there. It is a setting for physical and spiritual depth of intimacy with God, which is a matter of tasting and savoring.
Spend time in sacred texts, be they Scripture, poetry, or writings from the saints.
Listen to the promptings that come up for you.
Sink into the passages that call to you and listen.
Bring those passages along with you into the wilderness on your runs.
Listen for how they sound there.
Be aware of what other passages might come up for you out there.
Ask how God is calling you to respond in that moment.
Creation: The First Sacred Text
So we bring sacred texts into the wilderness, which is another sacred text. It is the original revelation of God, and it persists in inviting us into dialogue. Lane writes, “The book of nature communicates a danger and beauty that stirs the senses, opening the soul to a corresponding truth found in the text of Scripture.” (p. 25) There are certain risks that we take when we go out into the wilderness, just as we do when we reach out for relationship with God. Lane notes a few lessons from going into the wilderness, including: how little we require to be happy, deliberately abandoning unimportant things, that pilgrimage is a metaphor for the spiritual life, that wandering is a form of soulcraft, and that these experiences call forth our courage to act.
Again, I return to consistency. When we show up for relationship with God and others daily, we build up this connection. We bring that along with us on our runs and especially our runs into the wilderness. There, we meet God in a new way. If you’re reading this, I’m assuming you already have pieces of this in your life. I assume you already feel the call to connect with God and others in the wilderness. I assume you may already be doing some of the things I described above without even planning it, like a Scripture verse coming up while you run at sunrise.
Pilgrim Endurance is about integrating in community these practices of reading, and listening, and running, and encountering wilderness. Lane describes this as wilderness spirituality. I hope Pilgrim Endurance will be gathering an honest community, no longer isolated in our running and spiritual lives, who embody simplicity, devotion, and public virtue. That first part of our vision is what I’m talking about here. One of the things that bonds us is that we have encountered God in the wilderness and on our runs, but it has been difficult for us to find community around that. It has seemed like a solo venture without much encouragement or community. Pilgrim Endurance is designed to provide a response to that in three main ways: one-on-one with your coach, in community with others here, and on retreat. May our reading and praying these dangerous texts be fruitful for God’s kingdom.
