Spiritual Reading Process

1. Sit quietly for at least two minutes paying attention to the movement of your breath and the steady beat of your heart. Imagine the charged thoughts in your mind becoming as still as a soundless pond under the reflection of the sun. As you feel your mind becoming more settled and silent, notice the presence of the Holy One around you, and let yourself rest in that presence.

2. Begin to read the material before you slowly and deliberately. Whisper the words or phrases that attract your heart. Linger over them, waiting for them to empty themselves over your mind and soul. You might ask the words what they really want to say to you, and then wait patiently for their reply.

3. You may be tempted to move quickly to the next sentence, but try to remain with what you have read – turning it over in your mind, looking for nuances, chewing it as a cow chews a cud. When you feel the words have nothing more to give you, begin to read again.

4. Continue this process for the time allotted. You may find that you read through an entire chapter, or perhaps only one small paragraph. The amount of text covered is unimportant. The encounter and dialogue with the text is what is critical.

5. Say a prayer of thanksgiving to heaven for the wonder of knowledge and the gift of wisdom. Sit in silence to see if God has a response to make to you.

6. Spend a few minutes recording in your journal a few of your new learnings or the questions that have emerged from your reading and reflection.

7. End your journal entry with the one short thought that you will carry with you throughout the day.

"This is My Body"
by Jonathan Callard

You can find heaven and hell at the corner of 16th and Mission. Bodegas gleam with fresh bananas and tangerines; sagging, half-naked bodies surround the subway stairwell. The clumped bodies talk to each other in the loud, slurred voices of heroin and booze, as if they are the only ones there and the rest of us do not exist.

I walk north up Mission, then west down 15th. Bodies lean against the walls in the shadows. A few beckon to me and I avert my eyes. I find the church at the next block, its fresh coats of paint and neat white trim overlooking trash-strewn streets.

It is evening in San Francisco, Maundy Thursday. I’ve just moved to California, and I’ve seen an ad for a foot-washing service at a church in the Mission district.

The head priest stands in the center aisle and reads the story of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet the night before he died. Jesus did the wrong thing in the wrong place with the wrong people, the priest says. Jesus turned everything upside down.

The foot-washing ritual begins at the altar but I remain seated, a stranger in a strange city. The faded blue running shoes of my seat mate tap nervously on the marble floor.

“Are you going up?” I ask him.

“No, I’d never be able to get back into my shoes,” he says.

We stare at a curly-haired woman in a grey business suit. She walks down the aisle, sits stiffly in a folding chair, and removes her pumps. A priest kneels before her and lifts her pale foot into a white plastic bin. Her eyes widen as he douses it with water, massaging it with his hands. The splashing echoes against the stone walls. It takes forever. He dries her foot with a white hand towel, cradling it like a baby.

An elderly man, hooded like Obi Wan Kenobi, celebrates communion. Hours before his own painful death, he reminds us, Jesus gathered his friends together. Urged them to take and eat the bread. Drink the wine. This is my body, he told them. Whenever you do this, remember me.

We reach the altar in waves, forming rings around the celebrants and servers. When we bow to each other, the circle bends in and out like a sea anemone. I notice a woman with matchstick legs and a cane, smelling of the streets. Her stringy dust-mop hair frames a face aging too fast. Someone steps towards her, offering a golden loaf of bread on a ceramic plate. She tears off a huge chunk. Her jaw cracks as she chews with her mouth open. I bury my head in the wide wine goblet, seeking the red liquid.

We are our bodies, my yoga teacher once said. We tend to forget that we have them most of the time.

The service ends. One priest strips the altar in silence. I can hear matchstick-leg woman breathing, like someone dragging their hands across a grate.

We fall into a procession, me and matchstick-leg woman and my sneakers friend and the woman in pumps and everyone else, headed toward a smaller chapel on the side of the church. People will keep watch there every hour until Easter. Outside the chapel wall, bodies perch on stoops, and I imagine some with bands around their thigh, a needle jammed into their flesh, waiting for the drug’s effect.

“Now my tongue, the mystery telling, of the glorious Body sing,” we chant, just our naked voices, our heads bowed low. If you walked into the church then, you’d think the blue hymnals were singing, not us, their spines cracked open and lifted up and forward by our hands. We step slowly, the march pulling people out of pews, a coiling snake shedding skin.

Copyright ©2005 Jonathan Callard