I’m convinced that we are all spiritual creatures—whether we are religious or not. To live a fulfilling life, I believe we must be mindful of the dimensions that make us human—the physical, mental/emotional and the spiritual. We can think of spirituality in terms of our inner life; while the way we engage the world is primarily through our outer life. When we bring our inner and outer lives into harmony, we are talking about contemplative activism.
(photo credit: Hope Jewell)
If you choose to be a part of social and ecological change then you are someone who is connected to Love. That love may take the different shapes of compassion or justice, but it’s love all the same. You may not be a religious person, but regardless, if you care about making a just impact in in the world, you are driven by something greater than you—a powerful source of energy, optimism and creativity.
We are caught in a global web of unrighteousness and injustice and it’s a wonder any of us can do any good at all. If only we were more conscious, more mindful of the choices we make and the actions we take. It seems that we are often asleep to our unconscious motivations. Contemplative spirituality helps us wake up.
I’ve spent nearly 20 years cultivating relationships and building community all over the world among children who are victims of AIDS, former child soldiers and war brides, abandoned widows, children who live on the streets and victims of human trafficking. Though there are many good things happening on behalf of people in need, I’ve also seen how some of the best intentions can breed violence. Hind-sight is 20-20. It’s easy to pick on the Christian crusaders of Europe or the Christian slave-holders of America. They thought they had divine approval and even divine sanction for their actions of exploitation, abuse and slaughter. But what about us today? How are we repeating the sins of our ancestors? What shameful things will history write about us? Could it be the absurdity of recycling while continuing to over-consume? Or fighting to end wars in Africa while continuing to purchase computers and cell phones that use the very minerals that are the object of the wars?
I’m convinced we cannot live and endure with real life-giving impact in the world without a deep spirituality. A surface, shallow existence has little effect on the world at best, and damaging consequences at worse.
Thomas Keating—a Cistercian monk and founder of Contemplative Outreach—says that our
spiritual life is marked by 2 key questions. At the point of initial conversion we ask, “What can I do for God?” And this initial question is what compels many of us into working for change. But, as Keating says, we don’t really begin the spiritual journey until we ask, “What can God do for me?” To sustain a life of just impact in our world, we must dare to step into the spiritual journey and continually ask ourselves, “What can God do for me?” This question alone takes us into a deep spirituality that is the well of living water springing forth and watering all of our activism in the world.
(photo credit: Danielle Powell)
For years, I thought community was the very thing that would make it possible for me to stay faithful to my service in the world. But it wasn’t long before the face of community started changing. The same group of us that started the work together hasn’t ended up together. People come and go and relationships change. After several years of living in community and doing my best to respond to a world of need and always coming up short in meeting those needs, I found my faith, hope and determination to work for change shaken. The answers I’d heard over and over again growing up in the pews of mid-America weren’t meeting the very real challenges of inequality, oppression and exploitation that I encountered on a daily basis. It was then that I was introduced to the rich heritage of contemplation and my life and service since has been transformed from the inside out and has endured for nearly two decades. Contemplative spirituality, more than anything else, has made it possible for me to stay engaged in social justice work.
Contemplative spirituality supports a deep life journey. It is nurtured by Christian prayer practices such as lectio divina, centering prayer, breath prayer and prayer of examen and practices from other traditions like yoga and meditation. Contemplative spirituality addresses our divine humanity, supports us in making lasting moral impact in the world and begs 3 purifying questions of us:
Who are you?
What path are you on?
And how do you nurture your spirituality?
(photo credit: Hope Jewell)
I believe like the Buddha, that we live most of our lives asleep. I hope this blog in some part helps us wake up.
Our true or essential self is not defined by what we have, what we do or what others say about us. Our Divine Center, our Core Self, knows that we are liberated people with access to unending love and no life circumstance can deny us that. We have divine DNA. That means we are capable of exquisite creative work. That means that by the grace and presence of God, we really can change the world? But it’s not going to be easy. The signs of the time are troubling. Poverty and exploitation, war and terrorism, environmental degradation and over-consumption plague our planet. It is estimated that 27 million people are victims of modern day slavery—trafficked into all forms of bonded labor, including the commercial sex industry. Today in Kolkata India some of my friends are fighting for their freedom from such an exploitative “trade.” Though there are marks of beauty, creativity, justice and peace, we have a long way to go before our world is as it ought to be. God knows the world needs us to engage in the creative work of the Great Spirit.
(photo credit: Danielle Powell)