Review: Lectio Divina as Contemplative Pedagogy: Re-appropriating Monastic Practice for the Humanities

Lectio Divina as Contemplative Pedagogy: Re-appropriating Monastic Practice for the Humanities by Mary Keator
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was something of a chance purchase because I bought it pretty much sight unseen while looking around on my online bookstore. It intrigued me because it combined two parts of my life, my vocation as a teacher and interest in Benedictine spirituality. I mean, how could I leave this on the virtual shelf?

This book, of course, has to be understood within the context of the contemplative teaching movement, which has been gaining steam since the 1990s, with the writings, especially, of Parker Palmer, bell hicks and such educational commentators. It is an attempt to recover a spiritual focus on the whole learner by deepening the experience of learning through contemplative techniques. Much of the literature has tended to draw its inspiration from Buddhism or a secularized version of Buddhist thinking around mindfulness. This book caught my eye because it was trying to apply a specifically Christian spiritual discipline to contemplative learning.

The focus of the book is trying to use the spiritual practice of lectio divina, a monastic way of reading texts (especially the Bible) slowly and reflectively. Keator applies the lectio approach to her college literature courses, discusses the background to the practices, how one can reflect them in a modern classroom and what the pedagogical challenges are. She isn't the first to think of this- Maria Lichtmann did it before her- but what I like about this book is that she applies it very practically and gives suggestions about how to do it with a flesh and blood class. It is still a difficult process because it runs counter to so much in our culture- careerism, the speed of technology, the reluctance to dig deep. But Keator makes it feel possible.

A caveat though. This approach works best, I think, when the instructor has more or less total control over the curriculum. That is, it presumes that one person is making the decisions and can structure their course whatever way they like. I'm a high school teacher and, while I teach Latin and have that freedom, I also teach English and that is a little harder to manage. Full independence is difficult to achieve in a high school, which may explain why the contemplative teaching movement seems to be slower to catch on in that context.

However, I still think it is important to consider these insights and, honestly, I think this is going to be a book that I read and re-read several times to see what I can do. I may not be able to structure my whole course like this, but I think that I can take some of the insights and use them to good effect.

View all my reviews