The Foundation Is Contemplation

Thursday, April 3, 2025

Reverend Liz Walker is the founder of the Can We Talk… network, which creates safe spaces for people to connect through sharing their stories. She describes the importance of contemplative, healing practices to support the work of social justice:  

[In contemplative practice] we are fully claiming the space and community we are in. We are seeking help in tending to our suffering. We are honoring our ancestors who testified, danced, and sang their way to transcendence in the midst of chaos and pain. In celebrating those past practices, we gently hold this community in hope and possibility. We trust that whatever needs to be healed will be healed by the Spirit of a creative God who works in and through us…. 

Dr. [Barbara] Holmes writes that the civil rights movement was born through the contemplative spirit of the Black church.  

The spark that ignited the justice movements did not come from the hierarchical institutional black church. Rather, it was the quixotic and limber heart of that institution, its flexible, spiritually open, and mystical center, that ignited first the young people and then their elders to move their symbolic initiatives from ritual ring shouts to processional and contemplative marches. [1] 

The contemplative practices of Can We Talk… are no less important than those of the civil rights movement. By lovingly joining our neighbors and sharing our painful stories in the interest of finding peace within our own souls, we are taking seriously the interior work necessary for our collective healing. 

Some people would not consider a healing community like ours to be part of a social justice movement. They’d argue that our work is anemic—not the “on the ground” activism necessary to catalyze social change. But such critics may not be aware of the centrality of contemplative action in the work of social movements across history. 

They may not be aware of the contemplation that sat at the center of the work of interracial groups of students who, in 1964, protested segregated Presbyterian churches in Memphis, Tennessee, by kneeling in public prayer….  

The exterior work of social justice is only as strong as the interior work that births and fuels it. We can’t heal as a community if we do not concern ourselves with healing our inner lives. Storytelling, listening, movement, and music all represent the gentle, interior healing necessary to empower the hard work of social change. During the civil rights movement, Howard Thurman came under criticism for not taking a lead in the marches and protest and activism. But his writing and thinking and contemplative commitments helped the movement remain rooted and grounded in nonviolent resistance.  

The people who come to our events may not lead marches or protest efforts against institutional racism. But they participate as truth seekers, unashamed to process their own pain. They show us that authentic joy is reached through a healing process. We help solve our community’s problems when each of us faces our own sorrow, authentically and creatively.  

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Sara Young Jesus Calling

In Me you have everything. In Me you are complete. Your capacity to experience Me is increasing, through My removal of debris and clutter from your heart. As your yearning for Me increases, other desires are gradually lessening. Since I am infinite and abundantly accessible to you, desiring Me above all else is the best way to live.
    It is impossible for you to have a need that I cannot meet. After all, I created you and everything that is. The world is still at My beck and call, though it often appears otherwise. Do not be fooled by appearances. Things that are visible are brief and fleeting, while things that are invisible are everlasting.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Ephesians 3:20 (NIV)
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,
2nd Corinthians 4:18 (NIV)
18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Today’s Prayer:

Dear Jesus,

In You, I find completeness. As You remove clutter from my heart, my longing for You grows, diminishing worldly desires. You are infinite, able to fulfill every need I could ever have.

Please grant me the wisdom to prioritize my yearning for You above all else. Help me to see beyond the fleeting appearances of this world and fix my eyes on the eternal, which is You and only You.

Thank You for Your immeasurable power at work within me, exceeding all I can ask or imagine. May I always seek You above all else. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Gospel Instructions

Episcopal priest Adam Bucko offers encouragement for action and contemplation amid circumstances of systemic injustice:  

That is the heart of the challenge—what do we believe? What is our ground? What narratives have shaped us and are shaping us? We must have the clarity to name evil for what it is, yet without losing ourselves in othering, understanding that in some way or form, we are part of what we are naming. We must engage not just with what’s out there but with what’s within us as well. History is filled with revolutions that promised liberation only to replicate the cruelty they overthrew. Justice movements have struggled against the pull of ego. Institutions built to resist oppression have, over time, become oppressive themselves. 

Jesus called his disciples to be fishers of people—to be caught up in love and drawn out of the world’s illusions. Have we been caught? Have we been pulled out of a system that thrives on violence, on stepping over others to climb higher? Or are we still trapped in it, confused and disoriented? 

If we have been pulled out, then we must see clearly. We must commit to both inner and outer work. We must say no to violence, no to greed, no to power that exploits and destroys. And we must do it even when it costs us—because that is what it means to live in truth. That is what it means to allow ourselves to be caught in the net of love.   

Returning to the gospel and tending to our spiritual lives are essential practices in times of crisis and unknowing:   

It may not be in our power to determine how things will unfold, but it is in our power to decide how we respond. It is in our power to hold on to the practices that nourish us, inform us, and give us courage. It is in our power to remain in integrity, to choose nonviolence and noncooperation in the face of all the violence we are already seeing. 

Jesus was clear: Love always. Bless those who persecute you. Forgive even the unforgivable. Turn the other cheek, not in surrender but in defiance of violence. Do not repay evil with evil, but overcome evil with good. This may not change the world, but sometimes it is important to do things simply because they are the right things to do. In the end, all we have is our integrity. So let us stand in it, grounded in the One who renews us each moment and calls us to a nonviolent witness of love—one that is big enough to hold both our friends and our oppressors, knowing that love endures beyond violence.  

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Nonviolent Resistance of the Saints

MARK LONGHURST MAR 30

In the Oscar-winning film “I’m Still Here,” we witness the resilience and endurance of Eunice Paiva, the wife of a disappeared politician under Brazil’s military dictatorship. Rubens Paiva was a Congressman when the military overthrew the government in 1964. He returned to his previous career as an engineer but helped smuggle letters to relatives of regime opponents. Members of the Brazilian military descended upon his home in Rio de Janeiro and imprisoned him, along with Eunice Paiva. And, like so many people taken and killed by the military dictatorship—he disappeared. Eunice was released after several days, returning to her shaken family, but Rubens was never heard from again, nor was any official information provided about his whereabouts or fate. Whispers from a journalist friend pointed to the obvious—that the state murdered Rubens. Eunice held her family together, advocated for twenty-five years until after the eventual re-emergence of democracy, until she finally received the official death certificate. It’s a harrowing and simultaneously beautiful movie about the story of one woman’s slow and persistent resistance and one family’s loving endurance amid authoritarian rule.

The Brazilian military initiated a coup d’etat after President Goulart introduced sweeping reforms aimed at helping the poor. Policies like land reform that redistributed unused rural land to peasants were deemed by the Brazilian right-wing as “communist-inspired,” and the military took action. The United States was right there, ready to aid the military coup, with a mission that would have lent U.S. Navy and Air Force officers to the cause named “Operation Brother Sam.” The military takeover was not opposed, and the U.S. did not implement its secret operation.

I’m thinking these days about the United States’s long collusion with dictators in Latin America, from its readiness to participate in the Brazilian coup to the CIA-involved Chilean overthrow, friendly relations with dictator Augusto Pinochet, and many more. The disappearances that happened in Brazil and elsewhere are now starting in my own country. Instead of the scapegoating category of communism and the “red scare,” it is now terrorism, “support for Hamas,” and an imagined immigrant crime problem. 

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Kahlil is a legal resident of the United States with a green card who led nonviolent actions opposing the Israeli genocide in Gaza at Columbia University. Now he sits in an ICE detention center in Louisiana. The list is growing.

Coverage in Democracy Now and The New York Times tells me the following. Georgetown professor Badar Khan Suri—who studies and teaches about religion and peace—is not an activist. Still, Homeland Security agents raided his home in Virginia, arrested him without cause, and now he, too, sits in a (different) Louisiana ICE detention center. Momodou Taul is a PhD student at Cornell University and a pro-Palestinian activist facing deportation. This week, Homeland Security agents apprehended Tufts student Rumeysa Oztur. She is a Turkish citizen in the United States on a student visa who was on her way to a dinner to break her Ramadan fast. She signed an op-ed that criticized Tufts for failing to acknowledge the Palestinian genocide. The reason Homeland Security provided for terminating her visa? That she had engaged in activities in support of Hamas.

Here is a call for the nonviolent resistance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and hold fast to the faith of Jesus. —Revelation 14:12

The readers of John’s apocalyptic vision lived under an imperial state: the Roman Empire. They were very familiar with the imperial tactics of disappearances, erosion of civil liberties, persecution, and imprisonment. The South African theologian Allan Boesak considers Revelation a subversive book—the critique of unjust power in the book is so symbolically incisive that it became underground literature:

Because of their political perception and challenge in such dangerous times, these [apocalyptic] books could not be written in the “normal” way. Any person who has ever lived under political oppression, where every move is watched and every word carefully weighed and where every other person could be an informer, knows this.… These books were, in the real sense of the word, underground protest literature.

John uses a word to encourage his readers-hearers to continue in faithful resilience: hypomone. It’s often translated as “patient endurance.” But a commentator I trust named Brian Blount says that the Greek is much more active and determined than passive waiting. He renders it instead as “nonviolent resistance.”

In the cascade of visions in Revelation, here’s a quick summary of where we’ve been around chapter 14. In chapter 13, readers witness beastly monsters: a dragon, a sea beast, and a land beast, all symbolizing structures of evil and oppressive imperial power. Rome is writ large in metaphor and archetype. 

The beast’s followers even have their bodily brand of 666, a tricky linguistic way to refer to the Roman emperor. At the beginning of chapter 14, we see the Christ-Lamb standing on the sacred mountain of Zion. The followers of Christ-Lamb, too, have their own brand, with God’s name written on their foreheads. 

Then, John gives us three angels flying and heralding the good news (14:6) of divine love and justice, which is always true, and the terrible news that divine judgment is coming. (Much more on this in future weeks). John lists some of the horrible things that will happen—fire, sulfur, and the like—and then provides his pastoral clarity: Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and hold fast to the faith of Jesus.

The endurance John calls Revelation readers to is not passive withdrawal. It is faith-filled nonviolent resistance. When John uses the word hypomone, he links it to faith. The faith he has in mind is inherently political. It is faith that God holds reality with love, justice, and peace, even when we can’t perceive it. It is faith that the realm of Jesus Christ will last and the rule of empires and power-hungry leaders will pass away. But this resistance is fiercely embodied and, to quote Blount quoting another scholar, involves “unbending determination, an iron will, the capacity to endure persecution, torture, and death without yielding one’s faith. It is one of the fundamental attributes of nonviolent resistance.” This resistance is revealed in the tenacious patience and courage of Eunice and Ruebens Paiva, the determined resolve of civil rights organizers like Ella Baker and Bayard Rustin, climate organizers like Greta Thunberg and the Sunrise Movement, democracy-defenders in courts and communities across the United States, and those decrying the genocide in Gaza like Mahmoud Kahlil.

There is the fierce side of “nonviolent resistance,” but there is also the patient side of enduring. The endurance John of Patmos counsels is not only for activists. It is for those who, in small and large, ordinary and extraordinary actions, live their lives with the faith that oppression and evil do not have the last word. I often experience my meditation sits as “patient endurance.” I’m not solving anything when I sit in silence, nor am I succeeding at anything. Contemplative prayer is an exercise in failure by any measurable standards. But it’s also the place where I bring my powerlessness, my cries, and my personal and political pain to God. Like the cyclist or runner, I’m training. Somehow, the act of prayer day in and day out trains me to remember and participate in a deeper reality. Contemplative practice sustains me in a trust that reality is far more expansive and truth far more piercing than authoritarians would have us believe. 

It’s time to cry out to God, to our legislators and to anyone who will listen. I recommend reading this thoughtful Substack post by Cameron Bellm about the necessity of crying out prayerfully at this time. All of us are asked to do what we can to edge us collectively toward greater love, compassion, liberation, peace, and community. The diversity of our actions will mirror the diversity of who we are.

Not Joining the Crowd

Religion scholar Diana Butler Bass ponders the crowd’s outrage after Jesus’ first sermon in Nazareth (Luke 4:18–30)—and the courage required to resist it:  

A preacher gets up, quotes scripture, and reminds the gathered congregation that God loves the outcast—those in fear for their lives—the poor, prisoners, the disabled, and the oppressed. 

In response, an outraged mob tries to kill the preacher…. 

Jesus spoke directly to the congregation saying that God loved widows and those stricken with leprosy—implying that his neighbors had not treated widows and lepers justly. They praised God’s words about justice but were not acting on God’s command to enact mercy toward outcasts. 

That’s when they “all” got angry and turned into a mob. At least, the majority of them didn’t want to hear this. They flew into a rage. 

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way. [Luke 4:28–30] 

… What do you do when the mob turns ugly? When widows and lepers, when LGBTQ people and immigrants, are afraid and treated cruelly—and when a brave prophet calls out the self-righteous? What do you do when there’s a lynch mob or a cross-burning? 

I suspect the unnamed heroes of this story stepped outside of the “all,” not willing to be part of the totality, and made a way for the intended victim to pass safely. Did they spot one another in the angry throng? A furtive glance, seeing another hesitant face across the room? Maybe they moved toward one another, hoping to keep each other safe. Did a few others notice the two and the small band then began to multiply? The “all” was furious; the few didn’t understand how it had come to this. 

It was frightening for them; it must have been hard to go against their family, friends, and neighbors. As they followed the mob to the bluff, they must have worried that if they spoke up they could be thrown off, too. But instead of submitting to the tyranny of the “all,” maybe they formed a little alternative community in solidarity with each other. When Jesus was herded to the cliff, perhaps it was they who saw an opening—made an opening—and helped him escape. He passed through the midst of them and went on his way. 

That is, indeed, a miracle. The bystanders find the courage to do something. 

If Jesus needed that, so do we…. We must form squads of love and make a path through together … no matter how fearsome the mob. 

And that’s the overlooked miracle of Luke 4: Only a community—even one that goes unnoticed in the crowd—the band that refuses to join the rabble—can keep us from going completely over the edge. 

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Untangling Twisted Teachings: 

A Journey to Joy and Identity

by Jennifer Cochrane. (@Life Model Works)

At 45, I began the painful but freeing process of learning to live from the heart Jesus gave me. Ironically, it was “church hurt” that became the catalyst for discovering true healing and identity. 

I was raised in environments steeped in legalism and performance-based Christianity—a rigid home, a fundamentalist school, and a denomination more focused on theology than genuine connection. Joy—the deep assurance that God and others delighted in me—was missing. 

I internalized damaging messages: 

• God’s acceptance was conditional. 
• I was inherently worthless. 
• My emotions and needs were dangerous and needed to be suppressed. 

After becoming a believer at 32, these lies only deepened as I absorbed teachings on biblical womanhood: that my primary role was to serve men, that my discernment was inherently flawed, and that forgiveness meant unconditional relationship—regardless of harm. 

These teachings fractured my sense of self and left me with no voice, no confidence, and a deep ache I couldn’t name. When my suppressed emotions of grief and anger finally surfaced, I felt overwhelmed and lost. 

But in that painful season, I began to hear God’s voice for myself. 

One night, in the midst of my confusion, I heard Him whisper: 
“You have value to Me. And I’m not okay with the way you’re being treated.” 

It was a turning point. 

God gently began dismantling the lies that had bound me. I slowly reclaimed my agency and began trusting my own discernment again. Though I wrestled with triggers—tightening in my chest, swirling anxious thoughts, and a sense of dread when stepping into traditional church environments—they gradually lost their power as I allowed God to meet me in my pain. 

God’s promises of “hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11) and “wide open spaces” (Psalm 18:19) began to manifest. He provided a life-giving, multi-generational community at work and supportive friendships that mirrored my true identity. Healthy men in my life challenged my distorted view of masculinity, showing me compassion and kindness. These people held space for my grief and didn’t rush my healing process. Over time, I began to see myself through heaven’s eyes and experience the joy and freedom I had longed for. 

I also began learning about attachment, relational circuits, and fear/love bonds, which brought clarity to my past and healing to my present. 

Looking back, I’m amazed at God’s faithfulness to redeem what was broken. 

If you’re walking through the pain of “church hurt,” know this: 
God’s commitment to your healing is deeper than your own. 

Courageously face the pain. 
Let Him untangle the lies. 
And ask Him to bring even a few safe, like-hearted people who will walk with you toward wholeness. 

From Living from the Heart Jesus Gave You, p.20:  

“Central to the Christian experience is an unchanging belief that God is at work in all things for the good of those who love Him (Rom. 8:28), and that means all things. He is particularly at work when we are stuck in pain that seems to be endless and meaningless. The time-honored Christian approach to pain and wholeness involves our activity as well as God’s: His work in us is to bring redemption to all of the traumas that have broken us, and our work is to strive for maturity as we progress to wholeness. The word ‘redemption’ is sometimes difficult to understand, simply because it is used in so many contexts. Here is the way it is used in the Life Model: Redemption is God bringing good out of bad, leading us to wholeness, and the experience of God’s amazing power. Redemption means that out of our greatest pain can come our most profound personal mission in life.”