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I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.
Romans 12:1

Contemplative prayer cultivates the more receptive side of our relationship with God, a side that most of us need to grow in. Through it we discover a new vocabulary of intimacy with God. Over the course of twenty minutes or an hour of silent prayer we also come to appreciate the transformation that takes place in us as the topic of this dialogue shifts from ourselves to God.

The first stage of our prayer is often an opportunity for us to talk to the Lord about our lives. Questions are usually the most appropriate way to dialogue at this stage. How am I doing Lord? What do you think of this or that in me?  It is a time to also consider our relationship to people and circumstances. What about my friends Lord? What about so and so who is struggling right now? And what about that worrisome situation coming up Lord? We also find ourselves dialoguing with God about the inner movements of our lives. What about this deep desire that keeps welling up in me Lord? What relationship should I have to this movement? And what about those fears that keep coming back to me? Am I worrying for nothing?

In the midst of such prayers, we often sense the Lord interacting with us. Perhaps it is a fresh enthusiasm that comes to our hearts, or a gentle spirit of peace that suddenly wafts into our soul and we suspect this might be God, who is subtly communicating His presence to us.

Eventually, though, we find ourselves less concerned with details and more able to focus on the non-verbal communications we are enjoying in God. The environment of prayer has changed from an active dialogue with God to a more passive one. Our attention is now more on our relationship with the Divine than with ourselves or our circumstances.

As we alternate in and out of this more simplified prayer, we perhaps note the difference between the prayer of the mind and the prayer of the heart. We realize there is a choice to be made as to which will claim our focus. We sense an invitation from the Holy Spirit encouraging us to surrender to this call. And, like clay, we offer ourselves to Jesus for whatever He is doing in us. Our desire now is to place ourselves more completely in the Lord’s hands, trusting our Creator with our lives.

For these few and precious moments, we are truly Christ’s servants. At long last, our lives are no longer our own, but His. As living sacrifices, and out of love for our Maker, we more fully yield to His will. It is what Paul appropriately calls our “true and proper worship.”

Rob Des Cotes
Imago Dei Christian Communities

For Reflection:
1. Reflect on how the initial stages or settling into prayer unfold for you. Do you notice a shift to quietness and less verbal prayer as the time progresses?

2. The weather of the heart may vary considerably in times and seasons of prayer, moving between lightness and consolation and desolation and darkness. What patterns have you noticed in your experience?

3. What special graces have you noticed in prayer, especially in relation to the sense of being in God’s loving and consoling presence?

For Prayer:
To you O Lord, I lift up my soul; in you I trust, O my God. Psalm 25:1, 2a.

We may often enter prayer with particular burdens and requests. In times when we don’t know what to pray or how to be in prayer, these words of the Psalmist are brief and beautiful, relinquishing the mystery of our lives to the wisdom and care of God. Offer them to God as you enter your time of rest and quietness in his presence.

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
 Luke 12:13

In his book, The Transforming Friendship, Dr. James Houston offers a helpful definition of the spiritual life when he says that we are “in the discipline of exercising the heart of desire for God.” This simple statement fully encompasses the motivation, the direction, as well as the ultimate destination of the spiritual life – that we are in a relationship of mutual desire with God. Like two lovers running to embrace each other, God draws near to us as we draw near to God (James 4:8).

To bring into focus the many longings of our heart so that they find expression in the foundational desire that underlies all our seeking is our spiritual direction. And the more intentional we are in participating with this underlying desire the more we will discover the living waters of God’s highest vision for our humanity. In the merging of our own desires with God’s we will find our lives abundantly expressed.

As we are weaned from the many alternatives that misdirect our yearnings for God we also discover a greater sense of unity in our lives. In the consolidation of our heart’s longings we become directly engaged with their true object. We also find, as our desires align with those of God, that our longings become fewer, but stronger. It is a slow process, but one that ultimately leads us from dissipation to an undivided heart.

A sustained desire for prayer is evidence of the extent to which our lives are given over to God. If we are self-oriented, our longings for God and our motivation to prayer will be quenched. Bu the more we abandon ourselves to God’s desires, the more sustained we will be in our zeal. As Houston puts it,

Self confidence robs us of the incentive to pray as we should. But when all our significance, security, identity and future are in the hands of God, then prayer is bound to follow.

The spiritual life invites us to return to our Father’s house. And the countless choices we make each day are what determine our direction, either towards or away from God. They reveal the truth of Jesus’ teaching that “where your treasure is, there your hearts will be also.” (Luke 12:34).

Unless your soul is continually lifted up to God, your flesh will drag it down. Therefore, you must renew your determination for the spiritual life each day.
St.Frances de Sales

Rob Des Cotes
Imago Dei Christian Communities

For Reflection:
1. How is James Houston’s simple but all-encompassing definition of the spiritual lifehelpful to you (opening paragraph)?

2. Consider influences within you and in your circumstances that may quench your desire for God. The meditation names the many alternatives that misdirect our yearnings, as well as self- orientation and self-confidence as examples. Reflect on these as well as others from your experience.

3. How have you known your heart to be nurtured toward increasing desire for God? What spiritual practices align with this nurturing?

For Prayer:
Consider the wonder of the invitation to reset one’s whole life around seeking and desiring God. Draw near to him and ask for his grace to make this as a growing reality for you. Open the door of your heart to him both to love him and to receive his love.

“He replied: ‘Whether he is a sinner or not I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see.’” John 9:25.

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
An odd opening for a meditation! The source of this fragment of a fable is believed to be the Greek poet Archilochus, (7^th century B.C.) In spite of its ancient and obscure origins, over the centuries this saying has morphed and been used in everything from children’s stories (“The Fox and the Cat,” Aesop) to scholarly essays, (“The Hedgehog and the Fox”1953, by British philosopher Isaiah Berlin).

Scholar Martin Laird uses it in the introduction to his book on contemplation, A Sunlit Absence. For Laird, the one big thing in regard to contemplation is God’s mystical closeness to us. He cites Augustine’s famous statement, “God is closer to me than I am to myself.” Laird writes further, “While this is the simplest and most fundamental fact of our spiritual lives, it takes a lifetime to realize it”(page 2).

As I thought about the idea of knowing one big thing in regard to God and our walk of faith, more than one big thing came to mind! For Laird, God’s mystical closeness is expressed in Acts 17:28 where Paul addresses the Athenians, “In him we live and move and have our being.” This big truth defines the very reality we inhabit. There are other big things. Is there anything bigger or more foundational to our faith than the love of God? Paul prays for the Ephesians that they’d be able to grasp the vast dimensions of God’s love deep within their hearts and so be settled and secure in their life with Him (3:17-19). In the same chapter Paul speaks of yet another big reality, that of believers being indwelt by God and graced by his “mighty power” that works within them (3:20).

Is it possible to summarize what we know of God into a single big thing? Of course not. Perhaps another fable is relevant here. In the Blind Men and the Elephant,” (John Godfrey Saxe) the blind men touch different parts of an elephant and use words to describe what they’ve touched.  Their descriptions are completely authentic, completely diverse, and yet completely inadequate to describe the fullness of the elephant. Such is our relationship to the wonder and mystery of God.

And yet somehow by God’s infinite grace we come to know him. The blind man in John 9 knew one big thing, and it was the fruit of his encounter with Jesus. One thing I do know, I was blind but now I see. So it is with us. We know that a mystery infinitely beyond us has touched us. And we sense that this mystery is also infinitely good.

The idea of one big thing has its limits. It may be just another version of “can’t see the forest for the trees.” But the essence of our relationship to God is encounter with him, an encounter that’s the result of his initiative of grace and that’s sustained as we seek his abundant ongoing grace (2 Corinthians 9:8) in prayer and obedience. Keeping the big thing or the forest in view guards us from our tendency to reduce the walk of faith to a subset of spiritual practices or a set of beliefs. It also reminds us of the basis of our relationships with others in the body of Christ whose practices and theology may not be exactly the same as ours. We are a fellowship of people who have encountered Jesus, each of us recipients of his grace and each of us drawn to unique aspects of his wonders.  “If we are living in God’s presence, just as Christ is, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from every sin” (1 John 1:7).

Paul Woodyard
Imago Dei Christian Communities

For Reflection:
1. Everyone’s faith story is wonderfully unique. Reflect on a graced encounter(s) with God that has been formative for you. Can you express the experience as knowing something of God that you hadn’t known before?

2. What one big thing, among the many things that you know about God do you find your heart drawn to in this season of your life and walk of faith?

3. What implications might there be for the practice of prayer in holding loosely what you know about God in favor of being receptive to other things He may wish to impart to you?

For Prayer:
“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.”
  Psalm 8:1, 3, 4,and  9.

Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, “This far you may come and no farther? “
Job 38: 8 – 11

The Lord sets limits to all things. This far you may come and no farther. While God calls us to grow, He also places boundaries that limit our growth. If we can accept the fact that there are God-ordained purposes to the limitations of our life we can perhaps be more open to acknowledging them and learning how to work within their constraints.

Our lives are as circumscribed as the contours of the sea. If we could draw a topographical map of the shape of our gifts in terms of the present limits of our capacities, we would recognize what God sees and we would know why our grasp is often much shorter than our reach.  This far you may come and no farther.  To accept the God-set contours of our lives doesn’t mean settling for mediocrity, nor does it offer divine justification for us to be underachievers, but it does allow us to consider the possibility that limitations, in themselves, are not necessarily problems to overcome on the road to self-fulfillment.

If we consider the vision we perhaps had for ourselves in our youth and compare it to the relatively less impressive life we have since lived, we might feel like we’ve failed in achieving over potential, or that we’ve been short-changed in life. But could it be that God has directed you as much by your limitations as by your potential? Could it be that you are exactly where you are because God didn’t give you the capacity to be anywhere else at this time? And could it be that He see the limitations of your life more as an opportunity than as an impediment? In directing our lives God is able to use the things we lack as much as the things we have.

Perhaps the Lord has given you a measure of talent, but no more. What is His purpose in this limitation? Perhaps God has given you these few resources to work with, but no more. What is His purpose in this limitation? Perhaps God has given you some opportunities for ministry, but no more. What is the purpose of this limitation? Or perhaps the Lord has given you insight, allowed you to understand this much truth, and no more.  What is the purpose of this limitation?

God establishes limits, and Christian theology assumes that freedom is realized through and in relation to such purposeful constraints. It is the narrowness of the river banks, after all, that gives strength to the river.

Rob Des Cotes
Imago Dei Christian Communities

For Reflection:
1. How have you responded over time to limitations of various kinds in your life? Are there one or two that stand out as being especially difficult to come to terms with?

2. Can you think of examples in which your limitations have served as guides to paths in life that were fruitful and redemptive?

3. From the thoughts in this meditation what opportunities for peace, grace and a renewed perspective on life’s restrictions and limitations can you identify?

For Prayer:
In his sermon to the Athenians, Paul says that God set boundaries on nations, determining their rising and falling. God’s purpose in doing this was that the nations would seek him.
Let’s ask God that we may have hearts that seek him in everything, and that recognize his love and grace to us in areas of frustration and limitation. Let’s embrace the promise that whoever seeks him will find him. And let’s remember (as Paul says in the same sermon) that God “is not far from any one of us. For in Him we live and move and exist.” Acts 17:27,28.

“He has filled the hungry with good things.”  Luke 1:53.

Every saint has come to recognize the one basic requirement for a growing spirituality—that in order to be filled with the fullness of Christ, we must first be emptied of that which already fills us.  As Mother Teresa so plainly puts it,

• God cannot fill what is already full, He can fill only emptiness –deep poverty.  We have to be completely empty to let God do what He wills so that we can receive Him fully in our life and let Him live His life in us.

To be open space for God is to imitate Christ, who “made Himself nothing” (Phil. 2:7).  In the example of His own life, Jesus modeled the posture of self-emptying “kenosis” as the most perfect vehicle through which the Father’s will might be expressed.  Mother Teresa urges her sisters to follow the Lord in this same disposition saying,

• God has shown His greatness by using our nothingness.  So let us always serve Him by remaining in our nothingness, so as to give God a free hand to use us without even consulting us.

Incarnate within us, Jesus continues the life He lived on earth—that of complete submission to the Father’s will.  The Lord receives the offering of our compliance and then draws us deeper into His own relationship to the Father.  Regarding the action of Jesus’ kenosis, now continuing in us, Mother Teresa writes,

• Jesus wants to relive His complete submission to His Father in you today.  Allow Him to do so. Take away your eyes from your self and rejoice that you have nothing, that you are nothing, that you can do nothing.

Prayer is what helps us to be more given to God.  But a life consecrated to the will of God is always challenged by our propensity to fill our lives by our own volition.   Recognizing this, Mother Teresa wisely asks her sisters to pray for her, that she would not be tempted with self-reliance.  Even when struggling in the depths of spiritual darkness she writes,

• Pray for me that in this darkness I do not light my own light, nor fill this emptiness with my self.  I want with my whole will only Jesus. Pray for me that He may use me to the full.

Saints, over the centuries, have demonstrated to us how to live according to the paradoxes of the spiritual life—that to become more, we must become less; that to be filled, we must become empty; that in order to gain, we must first let go.  Their obedience to such instincts, and the fruit they have borne as a result, give us confidence to believe that those who offer themselves as space for God will find that space gloriously filled.

Perfect faith is when we are nothing but space for God to be God in us.
Simon Tugwell

Rob Des Cotes
Imago Dei Christian Communities

For reflection:

1. What has been your experience of spiritual poverty or emptiness in your faith journey? How has this experience evolved over time?

2. What aspects of the pandemic have resulted in loss or a sense of emptiness for you?

3. How does prayer help us to remain in a posture of emptiness and poverty before God?

For Prayer:

Reflect on Mother Teresa’s lovely words: Jesus wants to relive His complete submission to His Father in you today. Sit with this in prayer, recognizing not only the invitation but also the grace and empowerment to submit to God that is implied.

“All my longings lie open before you, O Lord.” Psalm 38:9.

“It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills… with the wind and the sunshine.… And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing… Somewhere else there must be more of it.”

This quotation from C.S. Lewis’ novel “Till We Have Faces” offers a glimpse into his life-long experience of a mysterious longing, the pursuit of which he described as central to the story of his life ( A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis, Devin Brown). The longing for beauty, joy and for the place of their source was planted in his awareness as a very young child and was part of what eventually drew him to faith from atheism.

The depiction of longing in the quotation is one of goodness. We know the inner tickle of joy when we long for something we’ve experienced as good, and hope that there’s more where that came from. Longing breathes oxygen into creativity, into the appreciation of beauty and into life itself. Yes, longing can also be painful, arising from searing loss, nostalgia or an indefinable ache for something we can’t name. Whatever our experience, longing is not an aberration but part of our human and spiritual nature. And as so many have observed, we bring longing to prayer.

The opening prayer of the anonymous 14^th century work The Cloud of Unknowing (cited in full below) begins with a reference to longing that echoes the Psalmist’s words: “God, unto whom all hearts are open, and unto whom all our longings speak…” This line of the prayer from the translation of The Cloud by Carmen Acevedo Butcher carries the implication that in prayer our inarticulate and even unperceived longings are directed to God and known by him.

Butcher highlights another beautiful aspect of the prayer. “I beg you to cleanse and purify the intentions of my heart, with the unspeakable gift of your grace…” She notes the frequent use of a Middle English word translated intent in The Cloud.  Intent, as well as its derivatives, means to stretch towards. The author of The Cloud desires that his readers understand prayer as the practice of stretching towards God. As we witness in the Psalms, we may do so from every imaginable state of heart and circumstance of life. And with the Psalmists we seek God’s grace in purifying the disorder of our longings and desires to align towards him who is our ultimate good. (Psalm 27:11; 51:10-12).

“All my longings lie open before you, O Lord.” We reflected earlier (October 8) on how The Cloud of Unknowing distills our diverse notions of prayer into the simple act of being with God, reaching for him in love and receiving from him. Paying attention to the longings and desires that continually swirl in our hearts and minds and bringing them before God is another expression of this simplicity. Our prayers arise from the gift of what already exists within us, including our longings.

The invitation of prayer is to open and submit to God in the present moment and circumstances, thankful for the longings within us whether joyful or painful, which by his grace draw us to him.

“This longing, this need of God, however dimly and vaguely we feel it, is the seed from which grows the strong, beautiful and fruitful plant of prayer.” Evelyn Underhill. 

Paul Woodyard
Imago Dei Christian Communities

For Reflection:

1. How aware are you of your longings from day to day? Do you find them surfacing in prayer?

2. How might the idea of intention as stretching towards something shed light on our attachments, motivations and our relationship with God?

3. Reflect on the prayer below as an expression of your desire for God and thanks to him for his presence and grace.

For Prayer:

God, unto whom all hearts are open and unto whom all longings speak,
And to whom no private thing is hidden,
I beg you to cleanse and purify the intentions of my heart,
With the unspeakable gift of your grace,
That I may love you perfectly, and worship you worthily.  

 From: “The Cloud of Unknowing.”

“Each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God.” 1Thes. 4:4-5

How often in the day do we push ourselves to be somewhere just ahead of where we actually are?  Maybe it’s a deadline, or an urgent need that creates an imperative in us for its fulfillment.  Or perhaps it’s just the tedium of “what is” that makes us want to rush ahead to be somewhere other than where we actually are.  Regardless of the reasons, whenever this mode overly defines our lifestyle the result is always the same—we end up losing touch with our souls.

Often, when I am trying to herd my family out the door to get somewhere, I will catch myself moving ahead to the next position I want them to be, perhaps standing at the doorway with my keys in hand, hoping that this might speed them up a bit.  How is this similar to the ways we often rush ahead of ourselves, as if to force us to pick up the pace?   And how does our refusal to accept or wait for ourselves contribute to feeling separated from our souls?

Feeling disjointed has a lot to do with the inner pace we set for ourselves in the course of our day.   This includes the many ways we overstep the truth of “what is” in favor of our projected ideals of what we wish it were.  “In patience,” we are told, “you shall possess your souls” (Luke 21:19 KJV).  St. Frances de Sales, a 16^th cent. spiritual director, wrote similarly that, “to possess fully our souls is the effect of patience, made more perfect as it is less mixed with disquiet and eagerness.”

Peace and patience integrate us towards wholeness.  To “possess your soul” then, is to allow time throughout the day to literally catch up with yourself.  It asserts the reality of “what is” as the starting point of our lives rather than the imagination of where we would otherwise wish it to be.  Being patient with the actual pace of our lives is ultimately a matter of self-control.  And whenever we lose this virtue it leads to a less honorable expression of life.

Paul instructed the Thessalonians to “learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God” (1Thes. 4:4-5).  In other words, self-control better exemplifies a person who knows the sovereignty of God in their lives.  In the context of his letter, Paul was of course referring to moral self-discipline.  But the same exhortation applies to any lack of self-control we exhibit in relationship to our souls.  When the “passionate lusts” of our imagination drive us to live out of sync with the reality of who we actually are we tend to lose our sense of wholeness.  “In patience, you shall possess your souls.”  Perhaps this is what the apostle had in mind when he wrote, “…since we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25).

The obvious antidote to “losing our souls” is to simply allow times in our day to catch up with ourselves—times to reclaim the peace that we’ve lost track of in the frenzy and distractions of our busy lives.  To “possess our souls” is to accept the reality of “what is” as more true than even the most attractive and urgent alternatives we can imagine.  And the more we exercise such times of restorative patience in our day the more in sync we will be with the truth of our lives.

Rob Des Cotes
Imago Dei Christian Communities
written for April 15, 2010

For Reflection:
1. What kinds of compulsions cause us to run ahead of ourselves and forfeit peace?

2. How may we live with healthy foresight and yet not be swept into restless agitation?

3. What graces of God and spiritual practices help us to “possess our souls” and stay present to the moment?

For Prayer:
“This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24.

As we seek God in prayer, let’s give thanks for the day and even the moment that we’re in, being present to our life as it is as a gift of God. Let us receive from God his grace as sufficient for whatever challenging circumstances we may be facing. May we seek the rest for our souls that may only be found in him (Psalm 63:1).

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”  (Jn. 6:44).

God the Father, through the action of the Holy Spirit within us, draws us to His Son Jesus.  Such is the dynamic relationship of the Trinity with regards to our spiritual direction.  There is no other way for us to approach the Lord than by the grace of the Holy Spirit shed in our hearts by the Father.  And it is this movement of God that we find ourselves responding to in contemplative prayer.  Because of the Father’s love for His Son, we find our hearts being drawn towards Jesus.

There is great mystery to be fathomed in this action that causes us to respond to Jesus through prayer.  The Father’s love which wells up in our hearts leads us to desire Divine relationship.   Through the Holy Spirit within us, the Father draws us to prayerful union with the Son He loves.

St. John of the Cross referred to the love of prayer that draws us to Jesus as a “loving infusion from God.”  The Jesuit writer Thomas Green also spoke of such “infusions” in his book, Opening to God.  Green describes the gift of the Father’s initiative as essential to our spiritual life.  He writes,

• The invitations to contemplation are those spontaneous moments of prayer when, indeliberately, we are aware of God’s presence to us. These encounters are the very essence of prayer at every stage of our development.

• As we respond to God through our life of prayer and service, the time may come when God takes over more and more—when we do less and God does more.  We become more and more like the clay in the hand of the potter. 

Such exchange is implied in the invitation we sense to yield to God’s initiative in our hearts.  It is the spiritual direction that John the Baptist recognized when he said, “He must increase, I must decrease” (Jn. 3:30).  As we mature in the spiritual life, we too must learn to “decrease” in favor of God’s initiative. Here’s how Thomas Green describes it.

• From the very beginning, God’s grace is essential to any prayer, to any response of ours; but the time may come when he not only gives us the grace to seek him, but himself does the work in us.  This is what is known as infused contemplation.

That the Father draws us to Jesus is to His praise.  That His mercy invites and disposes us to love His Son is to our eternal blessing.  That we desire because of the Holy Spirit such an increase of God’s will in our lives is what makes us more like Christ in all we do.

Rob Des Cotes
Imago Dei Christian Communities

For Reflection:
1. How may we recognize to a greater degree that our desire for God is a gift of his grace? What hopes and encouragements are present in this reality?

2. While it’s unwise to assess our prayer based on experiences, what occasions have you known in which you were particularly aware of God’s love and presence?

3. What does it mean to yield and respond more completely to God’s work with in us? What does this yieldedness look like both in practice and in the posture of our hearts?

For Prayer:
O God, we celebrate your mercy in drawing our hearts to you in love. We ask for your help to increasingly yield to this work of grace within us. Amen.

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Matt.9:36.

“And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8.

Scripture reveals God as both seeing and feeling the suffering of humankind and the injustice that is perpetrated against the weak and vulnerable. In Exodus 3:7 God assures Moses that he has seen the suffering of Israel at the hands of their Egyptian captors, and that he will act on their behalf. The Psalmist sees oppression and injustice and declares: “But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted, you see their grief and take it in hand” (Ps. 10:14). And further:  “Lord you know the hopes of the helpless. Surely you listen to their cries and comfort them. You will bring justice to the orphans and the oppressed, so that people can no longer terrify them” (Ps. 10:17,18). Among the many beauties of the incarnation is the identification of God in Jesus with humanity in its neediness and suffering.  And God’s desire is that those who walk with him live lives of justice and compassion.

By sheer grace, all of us have been touched by God’s compassion and have known its outworking in our lives toward others. Recent events invite us to reflect more deeply about suffering and oppression, both in the world and close to home. Against the backdrop of the spike in racial tensions in the U.S. over the last many months, as well the extreme and ongoing inequities in our society, Richard Rohr speaks of the need for a conversion to solidarity in which Christians both see and feel the pain of injustice and oppression. According to Rohr, progress in this conversion involves recognizing that we don’t see, and that we’re often blind to suffering and injustice as well as to our own privilege.

Keeping company with Jesus in prayer will lead us to a conversion to solidarity that deepens our awareness of the hardships of those around us. For author Martin Laird, this is a central aspect of prayer. Compassion and solidarity will be the fruit of prayer. He writes:

•  Fruit suggests something far more organic and nourishing than mere ‘results.’  Fruit bears within it the seeds of new life and provides nourishment for others. The fruit of practice (of contemplation) is compassion born of the fragrant wound of solidarity with all that is. We cannot behold what we are trying to assess (An Ocean of Light, page 128).

Thus the conversion to solidarity that we seek is not about acquiring a new point of view or a more informed assessment of injustice, but rather a growing solidarity with the heart of God in his love for all people. And God’s love is active.  John speaks of following Christ’s example of love in the giving of his life for us, and how real love compassionately supplies the needs of others when it is within one’s power to do so (1 John 3:16,17). And there’s much within our power to do. How encouraging that Jesus assigns eternal significance to a simple act of kindness like giving a child a cup of cold water! (Matthew 10: 42). May God have mercy on us by giving us eyes to see, hearts that are aligned with his love and the grace to act in compassion and on behalf of justice as he directs.

“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of this world.”  Karl Barth

Paul Woodyard
Imago Dei Christian Communities

 For Reflection:

1. What injustices, or to use Barth’s word “disorder,” in our world and close to home do you find the most pressing?

2. What blind spots towards those who are oppressed, in need or who are simply ‘other’ have you come to recognize in your own life?

3. Reflect on Rohr’s phrase, conversion to solidarity. Have you noticed this as being a fruit of contemplation? What opportunities for active compassion do you feel invited to?

For Prayer:

O God, we thank you for Jesus who:
humbled himself and identified with us by taking on human form,
who wept with the friends of a dead man;
who bore real wounds in his body and died to bring us to God.
May we be agents of your compassion to the world which you love.