NeuroDivine

This week’s readings speak of exile, endurance, and unexpected healing. Jeremiah writes to those displaced, urging them not to resist the place of their constraint, but to inhabit it fully: build homes, plant gardens, seek the peace of the city. It’s not a call to resignation, but to rootedness—to a kind of holy dwelling, even in foreign soil.

Psalm 66 echoes this rhythm: “We went through fire and water, but you brought us out into a place of liberty.” The psalmist does not gloss over affliction. Instead, he sings through it, naming the burdens and the refining, and still choosing praise. There is dignity in that choice—a liturgical defiance that honours the journey, not just the deliverance.

Paul, writing from prison, insists that “the word of God is not chained.” His body may be bound, but the rhythm of faith continues. He speaks of endurance, of holding fast to truth, of remembering Jesus Christ risen from the dead. There is a quiet insistence here: that vocation is not cancelled by limitation, and that memory itself becomes a form of resistance.

In the Gospel, ten lepers cry out for mercy. All are healed, but only one returns to give thanks—and he is a stranger, doubly excluded. Yet it is his gratitude that opens the door to deeper wholeness. Healing, in this story, is not just physical—it is relational, liturgical, communal.

And then, from the Rule, we are given a pattern for praise in the night. The Night Office begins with repetition: “O Lord, open my lips,” said three times. Not excessive—just spacious enough for the mind to settle, the body to join, the spirit to be led. Psalms are chanted, lessons read, responsories offered. There is rising and sitting, silence and speech, reverence and rhythm. It is a choreography of presence.

For those of us shaped by medical routines, neurodivergent needs, or the quiet ache of constraint, this liturgical scaffolding is not burdensome—it is sanctuary. It honours the slow unfolding of praise. It allows for participation without pressure, for reverence without rush.

So perhaps this Sunday invites us to dwell more deeply in the place we are. To seek its peace. To notice grace. To rise when the “Glory be” begins—not because we are unburdened, but because we are held. And in that rising, to join the leper, the exile, the imprisoned apostle, and the psalmist in a single act of praise: not despite constraint, but through it.