The previous excerpt described carrying a contemplative-open-awareness into everyday life. The next excerpt will begin to describe the deep and radical trust involved in contemplative living. Afterward, I will reflect briefly and offer a few more guiding questions for your own reflection.
Contemplative Spirituality: A Shalem Senior Staff Monograph
Written by Carole Crumley, Bill Dietrich, Ann Kline, and Gerald May
March 2004
“Implicit in contemplative living is a deep and radical trust in God’s presence and mercy. Theologically, the trust involves living into the following assumptions:
- The spiritual life is completely about love. God is love, and we are created in and for love. Every person has at their core a desire to grow in love with God and others. This desire may become severely distorted, as in in ordinate attachments to power and violence, but it is never absent. As St. Paul proclaimed to the Athenians, ‘God created us to seek (feel for) God’ (Acts 17:26-27). This is the purpose of our being. Contemplatives of all generations have echoed St. Augustine’s famous prayer, ‘Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.’
- Though we may not feel it, God is indeed present everywhere and at all times. There is nowhere that God is not present (Ps 139). Not only do we ‘live and move and have our being in God,’ (Acts 17:28), but also God resides within each of us, and in all of creation, closer than our breath, closer to us than we are to ourselves. The contemplative life then, may not be a journey in which one actually gets closer to God, but rather a gradual realization of the incomprehensible union that has always existed.
- This divine presence in and with us is not static or inactive. Instead, it is dynamic, continually moving flow that continually seeks goodness, truth, beauty, peace and justice. God is willing for and desiring of our co-participation in this movement, and stands ready at all times to guide us, to lead us into the dance of life. This co-participation is an endless invitation. These is no time or occasion, ever, where God leaves us to act on our own.
- God’s true being and movement are essentially incomprehensible to our human faculties. Thus much of the contemplative life is girded with mystery. Although one naturally makes every attempt to be open and responsive to God’s guidance, we usually do not completely comprehend where God is leading us or what God is guiding us to do at any particular time. In the absence of such certainty, we humbly honor the Divine Mystery and pray that what we are doing is indeed in harmony with God’s desire.
One of the things I enjoy about the United Church of Christ is the way it views different spiritualities and their practitioners as important and serious companions on the spiritual journey. This is how we and engage and work with our ecumenical partners in the wider Body of Christ as well as our interfaith partners. Instead of competitors, we view them as partners. You can learn more about our denomination’s work with our ecumenical and interfaith partners here: Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations – United Church of Christ
As a spiritual seeker, my heart has been (and continues to be) restless. One thing I can rest in (and stand on in trying situations) is that Sacred Love is at the core of other spiritual and religious traditions. While understood differently according to tradition and life experience, Sacred Love is the root of them all. If we take seriously the wisdom within the Christian Contemplative Tradition, this is because Love is central to the human experience. As the above excerpt described, there is within everyone a force pushing them toward goodness, truth, beauty, peace, and justice. This is quite amazing if you think about it!
Keeping in mind that my worldview has been shaped by a particular Christian tradition, resting here allows me to see a unity amid the diversity, to listen deeper to the soul yearnings of those around me. It helps me to work with others instead of compete or fight with them. Love nurtures this mixture of trust and humility that makes ecumenical and interfaith partnering possible. Love is an active partner in creating these partnerships through everyday folks like you and me. This also is very cool. Emmanuel – God is with us!
What about you?
What surprising places have you found Love?
What effect has Love had on you and your life?
How does it motivate you?
How has it pushed you/ your community/ creation toward goodness, truth, beauty, peace, and justice?
How do you/we sometimes limit it? Why? What effect does this have?
Peace,
Pastor Karsten
