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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Week Twenty-seven
Wisdom in Times of Crisis
Sustained in God's Love
Monday, July 6, 2020
In the light of eternity, we’re here for a very short time, really. We’re here for one thing, ultimately: to learn how to love, because God is love. Love is our origin, love is our ground, and love is our destiny. —James Finley
CAC faculty member James Finley offers a contemplative practice to help us experience the love of God even in the midst of chaos. Living out of that love transforms both ourselves and the world.
What is the practice that matters now? A practice is any act habitually entered into with our whole heart that takes us to the deeper place. Some of these practices, we might not think of as prayer and meditation: tending the roses, a long, slow walk to no place in particular, a quiet moment at day's end, being vulnerable in the presence of that person in whose presence we're taken to the deeper place, the pause between two lines of a poem. There are these acts that reground us in the depth dimensions of our life that matter most; so if we're faithful to our practice, our practice will be faithful to us. . . .
In this contemplative practice, sit and renew your awareness that you're sitting in the presence of God all about you and within you. As you inhale, inhale God's silent "I love you," in which God is being poured out and utterly given away to you as the miracle of your very life. Then when you exhale, exhale yourself in love: “I love you.” And so, we are breathing [along with God], "I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you." From the reciprocity of love, destiny is fulfilled, and the foundations of suffering are healed.
As we sit this way, suffering arises. The suffering then might be our anxiety and concerns today, for ourselves, for our loved ones, for the world. As we sit in the midst of the arising of the anxiety, when we inhale, we inhale this love of God loving us through and through, anxiety and all, finding no hindrance in our anxiety, loving us so unexplainably forever. Then when we exhale, we exhale ourselves in love, anxiety and all, to the love that loves us. This requires gentle perseverance, because anxiety arises again. It doesn't automatically go away. We sit with it, we lean into it again, and we hold fast to this love that sustains us in the midst of things. It is in this way, little by little, that we come to understand the unsubstantiality of everything but love. Love and love alone has the authority to name who we are.
This practice, then, experientially grounds us in this love wisdom. This love wisdom—grounded in practice—empowers us to go out and share this with other people in the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Gateway to Action & Contemplation:
What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do?
Prayer for Our Community:
O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen.
Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer.
Story from Our Community:
I hear sirens constantly [where I live], ambulances transporting more and more people suffering from COVID-19. Inspired by a recent podcast episode of Another Name for Every Thing, I started to pray, “Lord, have mercy” every time I heard [an ambulance]. Over the weeks, I’ve added onto it: “Lord, have mercy. Give them the breath they need, both oxygen and the life-sustaining breath of the Holy Spirit. Grant them comfort and peace.” —Elizabeth G.
From James Finley, “Practice That Grounds Us in the Sustaining Love of God,” Wisdom in Times of Crisis (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2020), faculty presentation (April 26, 2020), YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A16N4hKou0.
Epigraph: “Renewing That in Us Which Sees the Light,” Wisdom in Times of Crisis (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2020), faculty presentation (April 20, 2020), YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I3RVlPCEtE.
Image credit: Cueva de las Manos (detail), Cañadón del Río, Santa Cruz, Argentina. Photograph copyright 2012 Pablo Gimenez.
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In these times of suffering and disorder, we look for a path to solidarity with those held down by dehumanizing systems of oppression. We invite you to read Contemplating Anger, a 2018 ONEING essay by faculty member Dr. Barbara Holmes, in hopes that her words will help us step across the boundaries of our comfortable certainties and embrace a communal contemplative movement of racial solidarity.
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Action & Contemplation
2020 Daily Meditations Theme
What does God ask of us? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. —Micah 6:8
Franciscan Richard Rohr founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987 because he saw a deep need for the integration of both action and contemplation. If we pray but don’t act justly, our faith won’t bear fruit. And without contemplation, activists burn out and even well-intended actions can cause more harm than good. In today’s religious, environmental, and political climate our compassionate engagement is urgent and vital.
In this year’s Daily Meditations, Father Richard helps us learn the dance of action and contemplation. Each week builds on previous topics, but you can join at any time! Click the video to learn more about the theme and to find reflections you may have missed.
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Inspiration for this week's banner image: As a spiritual practice we can wake up to the possibility of building a new order. We can improvise those possibilities; try them out in the creative microcosm of a shared public life, realizing that our way of life before the pandemic was not perfect. —Barbara Holmes
