Each Lent, our Community engages in Visio Divina, a contemplative practice in which we meditate using a work of art or another appropriate image. The practice of Visio Divina is based on Lectio Divina, a more ancient practice with which contemplatives tend to be more familiar. Whereas Lectio Divina teaches us to “listen with the ear of hearts” (Rule of St. Benedict), Visio Divina teaches us to see with the eyes of our hearts.
Our Community first encountered this practice while on a visit to the Benedictine monks at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. There we explored The Saint John’s Bible, a hand-illuminated, hand-written manuscript of the bible that the monks of the Abbey commissioned. It took teams of artists, calligraphers, and theologians over 11 years to complete the book. In “Seeing the Word,” the Visio Divina practice developed at St. John’s, the illuminations of The Saint John’s Bible are described as “spiritual meditations on the word of God.”
One of our co-founders, the Rev. Morgan Mercer Ladd, adapted our Visio Divina practice from Seeing the Word as well as Lindsay Boyer’s excellent book, Centering Prayer for Everyone. Morgan expanded our practice beyond the illuminations of The Saint John’s Bible, and even beyond traditional religious art altogether. The most important aspect of our practice was not what we were seeing, but how we were seeing it. Even the most commercial art found in the discount section of a home goods store had the potential to train us to see with the eyes of our hearts. Our practice included videos of bioluminescent creatures, pop art, and everything in between.
Although choosing traditional religious imagery is an excellent way to begin a Visio Divina practice (and it is the type of work we generally use as our subject), we believe that our practice needs to emphasize the training of our hearts through the use of our eyes, over and above worrying too much about whether the work of art is especially worthy of our practice. During the Protestant Reformation, even using the greatest religious art available for worship was considered suspect. A profound mistrust of religious imagery and artwork had taken hold. The practice of using religious icons for prayer and worship or the use of stained glass windows in churches became associated with idolatry. While the reformers were perhaps right in challenging the excesses of their day, they may have missed Jesus’s teaching that it is not what goes into one’s body from the outside that defiles, but what is in our hearts. (Matthew 15:11-20) Still, we do have a preference for artwork that will challenge us. The use of overly sentimental religious images, for instance, may be comforting and “beautiful,” but will they help us to enlarge our hearts?
Jesus described the eyes as the lamp of the body: “If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.” (Matthew 6:22-24) How does our Visio Divina practice make our eyes “healthy”? Fundamentally, this practice is an exercise of the heart that teaches us how to see the presence of God in the material world. This makes it an especially important practice for a community that is named for the Incarnation.
The stages of Visio Divina
If you would like to try this practice, visit an art gallery or museum and choose an artwork without reading the title or artist at first.
Look. We begin by registering our initial gut reactions to what we are seeing. Our visual cortex is profoundly connected to our emotional processing1. In the social media age, we often consume images quickly, barely registering how they have impacted us. In this practice, we deliberately take time to bring our awareness to how this image makes us feel.
Be curious. Next, we ask wondering questions. We move beyond our initial gut reaction (which can sometimes be reactive) and become curious. What is drawing our minds and hearts in this image?
Reflect on the context. In the initial two stages, we had not yet considered information about the art, such as the title, artist, or time period. Once we have spent time exploring our initial reception to the image and engaging our curiosity, we are ready to consider the context. Who created this artwork and why? We allow this information to expand our understanding of the work. This may provide clarity around questions we had about what we were seeing. Or perhaps it conflicts with our initial understanding of the image and disrupts our interpretation. We sit with the context and allow it to speak to our hearts as we continue the practice.
(Why do we wait so long to consider the context? Sometimes the title of an artwork or the artist’s statement restricts our ability to be curious and ask wondering questions. We tend to jump into intellectual interpretations before we have had our own subjective experience of the art. While the artist’s intentions are important and should not be disregarded altogether, our experience of the art is just as valid.)
Study the margins. In the fourth stage, we consider the margins. We look at the edges of the image–what is marginalized or obscured in this image? What is not pictured at all? Training our eyes and hearts to question what has been excluded or deemphasized can help us become aware of biases, including those of the artist. We question why we are shown one thing and not another. Who or what is being left out?
Consider yourself. Then, we ask where we are in relation to this image. Recognizing that we are a part of this image means we have to take our place as an observer or participant in what is being depicted. We ask ourselves, “what does it mean to be the one who sees this image?”
Consider God. Finally, we consider where God can be found in this image. God is unseen but always present in the world. How can we look for the presence of God in even the most challenging images?
We conclude by engaging in a conversation with God about all that we have seen. We reflect on what this image may have to say to us about our relationship with God, the material world, other humans, and creation itself. Once we have said all we have to say, we close our eyes and rest in silence, trusting in the presence of God that exists beyond our seeing and knowing.
Visio Divina, like all contemplative practice, is “a long loving look at the real.”2 We grow in our capacity for wonder, curiosity, and questioning. We take time with images rather than scrolling through them mindlessly. Instead, we enlighten the eyes of our hearts (Ephesians 1:18) so that we can see and understand the spiritual reality that is present and available to us in things seen and unseen.
Kristin Vieira Coleman is a co-founder and Program Director at the Center for Spiritual Imagination, assisting in developing the Community of the Incarnation's formation program and envisioning our public programs. Kris has been an active lay minister for over a decade, leading small groups and teaching classes on contemplation, 12-step spirituality, and Scripture. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband Jeremy and their cat Benedict.
https://sites.tufts.edu/emotiononthebrain/2014/10/24/vision-and-emotion/
This phrase was coined by the Jesuit Walter J. Burghardt, based on the description of contemplative prayer by the Carmelite William McNamara. https://www.alliesonthejourney.com/uploads/7/4/7/4/74742015/burghardt_-_contemplation_a_long_loving.pdf