Dear Editor,
For some months now I have been using Anne Louise Bannon's Lector Workshop as reference material for our lectors. I have been responsible for lector training in our parish over the last few years.
Several years ago, I was asked to be a reader at Beginnings & Beyond Institute. A priest helped me practice the readings. He kept having me read them over and over, drawing out more and more expression as I read.
Something happened to me in the reading of those Scriptures. I passed over a line, let go, and gave myself over to them. Hard to say, but I entered the reading.
I remember that priest each time I give a training and encourage and push people further than they think they need to go to read well. The last training remains so vivid. I could see the Spirit enter into the lectors as they read and as they talked about how they felt about their reading.
I read the February article "Emotions Again" (ML 23:1) and March's "Speaking Heart to Heart" (ML 23:2). A big "yes" went through me.
I am beginning to see the power in proclaiming. I am beginning to understand some truth about the way to develop Spirit in people by learning how to proclaim. We do need to know "how the emotions in a reading feel."
Bannon is right when she says, "You need to be committed to going the distance with emotions in your reading." And it is so true that it "will not make you overly dramatic." It makes a person real because the Scripture is eternally real. There is a big difference between reading "I cry out to you, violence" because a person is trying to be dramatic (which sounds fake) and getting in touch with his or her own outrage at news items and seeing in those items the common human pain that the prophet is crying out against within the context of his writing.
We "commit to the emotion" because we commit to the human reality it evokes. I loved the comment, "Dull, blah reading is not reverent.? Yes, yes, yes! Word doesn't become flesh unless flesh becomes Word -- which brings me to your March issue. It blew me away! It was so honest and so human. "True, true, true!" I said as I read it. "We must speak heart to heart." Yes, yes, yes!
"We must know our hearts." Yes, the Good News for me is that I am finding a way through the ministry of lector to incarnate life.
I hope Bannon will write more about the heart in her articles.
Jude Waggoner
Elma, NY