Rethinking “Leaping Too Quickly”
I’m not very good at the contemplative “time-out” in life. I’ve tried but have never been able to meditate in any frequent or ordered way. I want action, I say to myself. I want us to get out there and work for justice, march for peace, witness for inclusion and equality, not just sit around thinking about or on it! Let’s move! Let’s get into the fray! Let’s untangle our legs from that yoga position (yeah, right!), snuff that incense, cease that chanting, get up, get out and start making change happen…for heaven’s sake…literally!
Just the number of exclamation points used in the above paragraph may tell you that perhaps I could use a little quiet, calming down time. I just can’t – or couldn’t until now – see the point.
Reading an interview with Fred Bahnson in Spirituality & Health helped me see the value in contemplation differently. He is the author of the book Soil and Sacrament and numerous articles in Harpers, The Sun, Christian Century and Best American Spiritual Writing among others. I was intrigued by the interview’s title, “How An Earthier Christianity Might Save Us,” because it spoke, indirectly, to a multi-gendered approach to church and what church can be. I was also captivated by the title of another article of his, “The Ecology of Prayer.” How do prayer, spirituality, contemplation fit in with saving the earth and all of us?
He believes that early Christianity, as the desert mothers and fathers particularly taught us, saw God entwined in all of creation, present in ourselves and all around us. Unfortunately, Greek traditions of dualism reinforced by Enlightenment era philosophies, led to separating body and spirit, heaven and earth, elevating one side and desecrating the other. What Christian contemplation does, he says, “is return us to that non-dualistic, pre-Enlightenment realization that we are already one with creation…God is everywhere present in creation and in us.”
And here is where he particularly caught me: “Among certain progressive Christian circles in the U.S., I think we have leapt too quickly into a kind of shrill activism that’s devoid of self-reflection.” Although he agrees we need to act to force corporate destroyers and polluters to heal and protect the earth, we cannot let the kind of activism focused on others become a substitute for the “need to deal with ourselves, to confront that line between good and evil that…runs down the center of every human heart.” He calls, as many of the Psalms do, for actual lamentation over our current conditions because lamentation “returns us to our humanity.” We need to feel our loss, cry over and mourn it, let our emotional response to destroyed beauty overcome us. He recommends that we not only express our grief and talk about it, but, critically important for a renewed and revived Church, “give it a liturgical framework.” Only then, can we think clearly and act for change in a profound way.
Contemplation works well here because the focus is on changing the inner person. The result can be what Pope Francis in Laudato Si called “an ecological conversion” where we see everything created on earth as a “caress of God.” Daily meditative practice will give us the inner wisdom and insight to deal with the outer world with this kind of depth and integrity.
His conclusion is both poignant and inspirational. “Our consumer culture now,” he posits, “is filling a void that is better addressed through prayer and stillness. Christian contemplative practice means sitting with God, dwelling with God, being nourished by God. When we allow ourselves to be fed that way, we find we really don’t need much more than food, shelter, stories, and love.”
No exclamation points needed.