Thanks for praying with me during December! In gratitude, let me offer some reasons why a funny thing might happen to you, too, if you explore Visio Divina. When I took responsibility for my spiritual life, practices like Visio Divina enchanted me. May these Flash💥Devos enrich your experience of the Divine in 2025. Thank YOU!
Seeing Anew with Visio Divina
by Marianne Abel-Lipschutz
Today’s image of the back cover of this handmade bible from the 8th Century astonished me — and made me wonder what the front cover looks like! Each time I examine it, my fingertips tingle as I imagine rubbing the smooth gems, tracing the twined filigrees, and turning the cover this way and that. Without a single word of text, I perceive a powerful impression of Almighty God. What do you see?
I love picturing the monks’ workshop more than thirteen hundred years ago where skilled artisans brainstormed how to honor the world-changing prophesies inside. The cover’s elaborate patterning, gems, cultural histories, and spiritual energy merge into an order of the whole that’s saturated with time, place, meaning, and creativity.
A Morgan Library entry on the Lindau Gospel covers describes some of its cosmological dimensions that may have already captivated your spirit. “The Greek letters alpha and omega are inscribed on the vertical arm of the cross and refer to the beginning and end of time.
“Likewise, the mass of snakes and other creatures filling the four carved plaques between the arms of the cross establish a link between the Gospels and the primordial act of creation.”
Once we open to revelation beyond the text, Presence lives. Turquoise, topaz, emeralds, gold, and moonstones speak of the glory of paradise itself.
How does what you perceive connect or clash with who you are right now? That’s where Visio Divina begins.
…people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of God’s divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. ~Romans 1:20 MSG
For several years, I participated in Visio Divina sessions once or twice a month at Prairiewoods, a Franciscan eco-spirituality center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, about an hour away from my home. Our ecumenical group of seekers included artists, writers, readers, and prayer warriors who collaborated in wide-ranging dialogues with the Word. God inspired us with creative interpretations, uncanny wisdom, and honest reflections about our faith.
The Prairiewoods sessions, guided by Pastor Rodney Bluml, included two hours of prayer using an illumination and an accompanying verse from the St. John’s Bible. This edition offers exquisite testimony through terrific writing and remarkable illustrations inspired through community practice in the Benedictine tradition.
Artists collaborated for more than a dozen years to reimagine the scriptural texts for our new century, blending the traditional crafts of the monastic scribes of the Middle Ages with the book arts skills of the modern era. Texts and images meld to communicate a true message from God.
My sensory focus deepens with Visio Divina as foreground and background shift in a kaleidoscopic array. Some days my take-away was a silent knowing or a realization that no one answer prevails. I learned to align with vitality. I could see the hope in the world more clearly after simply being there.
Scripture is beamed out to us on the same screen as ads and porn. What are we looking for? How do we recognize the Word or acknowledge when Presence is with us?
Visio Divina, or divine seeing, joins prayer with Bible study in an active process of entering the presence of God with a teachable heart. Each encounter with a Bible story, even a familiar one, is a way God comes to us.
Visio Divina offers a structured time of contemplation about an image and a scriptural text. Every person receives the Spirit differently.
Studying a nature scene on different days or in the context of lectionary readings, I might see the water flowing or tall trees as guardians. The forest may loom as a wilderness that draws me into solitude. Maybe the immanence of rocks, the sky, or the vastness of creation would fascinate me another day. I invite the Spirit’s action within and welcome the community energy of focused prayer.
God speaks to us through intuition, colors and sounds, even the sweet minty aroma from the porcelain teacup on the mahogany table. Our prayer becomes our conversation and we listen in while God gives individualized hope, encouragement, counsel, or direction.
A logical extension of this spiritual practice is to see things in new ways. Scripture is beamed up on the same screen as ads and porn. How do we recognize the Word or acknowledge when Presence is with us?
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—God’s eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. ~Romans 1:20 NIV
Visio Divina infiltrated all aspects of my world. I’d been using two troubling pictures from 1955 in an intensive memoir writing project over the past five years. After practicing Visio Divina with very different visuals, I saw information in those family album snapshots that I couldn’t perceive before. I couldn’t see what I couldn’t even look at. These fruits of the Spirit sprang from looking at hard things that grew through our community practice.
No matter what mood came with me, I’d take home a sense of revival and wonder. The deep fellowship, the laughter and silence, our songs and stories, everything drew me closer to God. I kept the printed librettos, with the St. John’s Bible illumination on one side and the verse on the other, in a binder. When I travel, I pick out a few sheets from my bootleg bible for daily devotions or spiritual fellowship, a renewable resource of word and image that keeps the Spirit alive.
Without my conscious intention, God shapes me through Visio Divina. Many ah-ha moments connect me to the Spirit, such as when I realize something that later seems so obvious, I’m surprised I didn’t “see it” earlier. Everyday images and interactions become fields where new awareness grows.
A “Rough Road” highway maintenance sign I placed as the visual focus for the most recent Flash💥Devo came from a time when family dynamics had crashed around me. I felt bereft and without recourse in our troubles. On the drive home after a Visio Divina session, I saw beyond the “Rough Road” construction warning I’d read many times. These real words suggested I could lean into the process and accept a bigger perspective. “Rough Road” became my therapeutic text for coping with life.
The point is to get people to peel off their visors, to remove the goggles, to abandon the screens. Those screens whose very purpose is to screen the actual world out. Who cares about virtuality when there’s all this reality—this incredible, inexhaustible, insatiable, astonishing reality—present all around! ~Robert Irwin
Our prayers over each other and our lives in God touched me the most at Prairiewoods. If I missed a Tuesday, I’d imagine a circle of intent and focus for a few moments of prayer. Openly sharing the surprise and mystery and heartache of our days where peace and transformation are the norm changed me. When we hear God speak through each other, we experience the hundred-fold divine benefit of community.
Visio divina is one of several spiritual formation disciplines, such as worship, fasting, solitude, silence, service, prayer, or study. Find a few that fit you well. I’ve grown immensely by relying on visual images and visualization to add depth to my faith.
I pray that my FLASH💥DEVOS will delight you with surprise and revelation. Perhaps you, too, will recognize Divine Presence in unlikely places nearby.
God's eternal power and character cannot be seen. But from the beginning of creation, God has shown what these are like by all God has made. That's why those people don't have any excuse. ~Romans 1:20 CEV
I love collaborating with photographer Jill Hinners and sculptor Maureen Seamonds whose creative work draws us inward and inspires us to look outward. I’ll be offering more artists’ images of art, daily life, and nature in FLASH💥DEVOS in 2025. Join us!
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