On The Cosmic We podcast, hosts Barbara Holmes and Donny Bryant interviewed minister and scholar Dr. Walter Fluker, who shares a transformational experience he had during an ancestral grief ritual:

Walter Fluker: We hardly know the grief of our suffering. Certainly among Black people, but it’s true for all of us as you think of the Cosmic We and this universal moan [of suffering]. Even creation is moaning. Why shouldn’t we?. . .

I was involved in a grief ritual on Cortes Island off Vancouver, British Columbia. This island, all of these people from around the world were just going through these rituals. One evening . . . during what the Dagara people called the grief ritual, where we pay our debt to the ancestors through grief, through weeping and moaning that universal moan. . . . So [my friend Malidoma Somé] said just be free, so they started playing the drum and Sobonfu

was hitting some kind of shaking instrument. I just started getting down. . . . All at once, out of nowhere, my father is there. . . . I fell to my knees and I cried. I said, “Daddy, we miss you.” He had died in 1984.

I had performed a eulogy but never mourned him. I was too busy being me. I said, “Daddy, we miss you. Mama misses you, B. misses you.” I just went through the whole family. When I came to myself, all of the women had taken me to a corner in the room and they were rocking me. This Japanese woman whispers in my ears. She says, “You’re only five years old.” I didn’t know what that meant then. It was years later [that] I discovered, when daddy left Mississippi in a hurry, he sent for us, thanks be to God. I was five years old. I was still grieving my daddy’s departure.

That was one of the most healing moments in my life. He was more real than even in life real. So, I have no doubt that ancestors not only exist, but they are present for us. They come to us in moments of great need and trial, and they also celebrate life’s moments with us. They want to celebrate with us. . . .

Holmes and Bryant invite listeners to give space to their own need to grieve:

Donny Bryant: I guess the question is for our listeners . . . what trauma, what healing, what hurt, what pain that we need to be healed from could benefit from the practice of our own unique grief ritual?

Barbara Holmes: Yes, and how can the organized religious institutions, the churches, the places where we assemble to finally shed some of our arrogance, how can they help us to grieve, to lament, to begin to get free? . . . What are you grieving that you don’t know that you’re grieving? How will you process that grief?

………

Sarah Young

Transform Your Disappointments

Every time your plans or desires are blocked, use that as a reminder to be surrendered and connected to Me.

Our communication will be a blessing for you, and you will learn disappointments are transformed into opportunities for good.

Begin to see all your setbacks as opportunities and you will transform your disappointments into blessings.

Proverbs 19:21
There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.

Colossians 4:2
Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving;

Philippians 3:7-8
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ

Part of One Body

Father Richard connects the church’s teaching on “the communion of saints” and our ancestors:

Humans throughout history have often had a strong appreciation for and connection with their ancestors. I think the collective notion of oneness is what Christians were trying to verbalize when they made a late addition to the ancient Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the communion of saints.” They were offering us the idea that the dead are at one with the living, whether they’re our direct ancestors, the saints in glory, or even the so-called souls in purgatory.

Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022) wrote of experiencing a tender oneness with his mother in a dream and in nature:

The day my mother died, I wrote in my journal, “A serious misfortune of my life has arrived.” I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut of my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet . . . wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine alone but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. These feet that I saw as “my” feet were actually “our” feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil. [1]

Father Richard continues:

The whole thing, all of life, is one, just at different stages, all of it loved corporately by God (and, one hopes, by us). Within this worldview, we are saved not by being privately perfect, but by being “part of the body,” humble links in the great chain of history. This view echoes the biblical concept of a covenant love that was granted to the Jewish people as a whole and never just to one individual like Abraham, Noah, or David.

For those of us committed to nonviolence, what do we do with the warrior imagery in our religious traditions?  Zen priest and activist angel Kyodo Williams writes about living with a nonviolent “warrior-spirit” inspired by the Buddha:

The man who became the Buddha was known as Gautama, and he was born into a warrior clan known as the Shakyas. . . .

But even before Gautama was born as a Shakya warrior, he had been a warrior of another kind. In previous lives, Gautama had been a bodhisattva. Bodhisattva means “awakening being” and refers to a person of any culture that is brave and willing to walk on the path of wakefulness. . . . They are awakening warriors that give up floating through life aimlessly and being concerned only with themselves. Awakening warriors live in a way that is of benefit to all, and their work is done here in this world. They see that we must all take responsibility for ending suffering, not just for our own individual freedom, but for that of others as well. What these awakening warriors realize is that in order to live harmoniously and with joy, they must take their natural place in the world.

Does this mean that in order to live with more joy and grace and less fear and anger we need to run out and take up arms or develop aggressiveness and a warlike stance? Not at all. What we want to do is embody the spirit of a warrior and bring that to function in our daily lives. “Spirit” refers to that which gives life. “Warriors” live a life of action and clear direction. We can bring warrior-spirit to the cause of peace and harmonious connection because it is about life and living, not power and aggression. . . . Warrior-spirit is a frame of mind that lets us make a habit of cultivating the qualities and skills that are already available to all of us. [1]

Valarie Kaur of the Revolutionary Love Project understands her Sikh warrior tradition through a nonviolent lens that asks “Who will you fight for?” on behalf of justice and peace.

What does it mean to be a warrior-sage for a new time? Who will you fight for? What will you risk? It begins with honoring the fight impulse in you. Think about what breaks your heart. Notice what it feels like to have your fists clench, your jaw close, your pulse quicken. Notice what it feels like to want to fight back. Honor that in yourself. You are alive and have something worth fighting for. Now comes the second moment: How will you channel that into something that delivers life instead of death? Breathe. Think. Then choose your sword and shield. You don’t have to know the answers. You just have to be ready for the moment when the world says: Now. [2]

____________________________

Sarah Young

Do not expect to be treated fairly in this life. When someone mistreats or misjudges you, see how quickly you can grow in grace by forgiving them. Do not try to set the record straight, it is my view of you and our connection that matters. When treated unfairly, see this as an opportunity to be surrendered, connected to Me and to move on living out of that.

Colossians 3:13
Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord

Isaiah 61:10
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation,

Ephesians 1:7-8
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,

Romans 5:15
But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God,

In today’s meditation, Father Richard summarizes Martin Luther King Jr.’s principles of nonviolence:

1. Nonviolence is a way of strength and not a way for cowards. It is not a lack of power which allows us to be nonviolent, but in fact the discovery of a different kind of power. It is a choice, not a resignation; a spirituality, not just a tactic.
    
2. The goal of nonviolence is always winning the friendship and the understanding of the supposed opponent, not [their] humiliation or personal defeat. It must be done to eventually facilitate the process of reconciliation, and we ourselves must be willing to pay the price for that reconciliation. King based this on Jesus’ lifestyle and death and on Ephesians 2:13–22 and Romans 12:1–2.
    
3. The opponent must be seen not so much as an evil person, but as a symbol of a much greater systemic evil—of which they also are a victim! We must aim our efforts at that greater evil, which is harming all of us, rather than at the opponent.
    
4. There is a moral power in voluntarily suffering for others. We call it the “myth of redemptive suffering,” whereas almost all of history is based on the opposite, the “myth of redemptive violence.” The lie that almost everybody believes is that suffering can be stopped by increasing the opponent’s suffering. It works only in the short run. In the long run, that suffering is still out there and will somehow have to work its way out in the next generation or through the lives of the victims. A willingness to bear the pain has the power to transform and absorb the evil in the opponent, the nonviolent resister, and even the spectator. This is precisely what Jesus was doing on the cross. It changes all involved, and at least forces the powers that be to “show their true colors” publicly. And yes, the nonviolent resister is also changed through the action. It is called resurrection or enlightenment.
    
5. This love ethic must be at the center of our whole life, or it cannot be effective or real in the crucial moments of conflict. We have to practice drawing our lives from this new Source, in thought, word, emotion, and deed, every day, or we will never be prepared for the major confrontations or the surprise humiliations that will come our way.
    
6. Nonviolence relies on a kind of cosmic optimism which trusts that the universe/reality/God is finally and fully on the side of justice and truth. History does have a direction, meaning, and purpose. God is more fundamental than evil. Resurrection will have the final word, which is the very promise of the Jesus event. The eternal wind of the Spirit is with us. However, we should not be naïve; and we must understand that most people’s loyalties are with security, public image, and the comforts of the status quo. ……………

                Sarah Young…

As you become more aware of MY Presence, you find it easier to discern the way you should go, When you are surrendered and connected and are living out of that you no longer need worry about what is ahead or what you should do…if or when….. Stay connected and I will lead you along fresh paths of adventure.

Psalm 32:8
I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will give you counsel and watch over you. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. The LORD says, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life.

Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void;

Isaiah 58:11
The LORD will always guide you; He will satisfy you in a sun-scorched land and strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.

God Is a Peacemaker

In New Mexico, where the CAC is located, there are two national nuclear laboratories. In a recent pastoral letter, Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe called for a conversation toward nuclear disarmament. He rooted his invitation in Jesus’ teachings: 

I invite us to reflect on how Jesus practiced nonviolence and how we can do the same in the United States.

When he began his public ministry, Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). In part, he was saying the days of violence, injustice, war, and empire are coming to an end. We are invited to welcome God’s reign of peace and live in God’s universal love and nonviolence here and now.

In the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), Jesus commanded us to be peacemakers and to love our enemies, saying: “Blessed are the peacemakers, they will be called the sons and daughters of God” (5:9). “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ but I say to you: ‘offer no violent resistance to one who does evil’” (5:38–39). “You have heard it said, ‘Love your countrymen and hate your enemies.’ But I say love your enemies and pray for your persecutors, then you will be sons and daughters of the God who lets the sun rise on the good and the bad and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (5:43–45). In these teachings, Jesus says that God is a peacemaker, and since we are God’s sons and daughters, we are peacemakers too, not warmakers. He says that God practices universal nonviolent love, and since we are the sons and daughters of the God of universal nonviolent love, we practice universal nonviolent love, too. There are no exceptions, no justifications for warfare, and no “just war theory.”

Many would question these teachings as naïve, impractical, and idealistic. But as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote so well about this call to love our enemies, “Jesus is not an impractical idealist: he is the practical realist.” [1] Dr. King also stated:

Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to
love one’s enemy is an absolute necessity for our survival. Love even for enemies is the key to the solution of the problems of our world. [2]

Archbishop Wester continues:

I invite us to have a conversation together about what it means to follow the risen, nonviolent Jesus, who calls us to be peacemakers, put down the sword, and love everyone, even the enemies of our nation. Certainly, these commandments challenge us to face the violence that is being prepared in our name here in New Mexico, and to start the process of nuclear disarmament so that no one ever again calls down hellfire from the sky. As Dr. King concluded, “May we . . . hear and follow [Jesus’] words—before it is too late.” [3]

Women Working for Peace

Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee founded a women’s nonviolent peace movement that helped stop the second Liberian civil war in 2003. One night she heard a clear spiritual call:

I had a dream.

I didn’t know where I was. Everything was dark. I couldn’t see a face, but I heard a voice, and it was talking to me—commanding me: “Gather the women to pray for peace!”. . . 

In some ways, that dream [and] that moment, were the start of everything. We knelt down on the worn brown carpet and closed our eyes. “Dear God, thank you for sending us this vision,” said Sister Esther. “Give us your blessing, Lord, and offer us Your protection and guidance in helping us to understand what it means.”

My dream became the Christian Women’s Peace Initiative. In April 2002, about twenty Lutheran women from local churches gathered to follow the message I’d been sent, praying each Tuesday at noon in the small upstairs chapel of the St. Peter’s compound. Sometimes we fasted. Soon, other church women heard what we were doing and began to join us. “Jesus, help us. You are the true Prince of Peace, the only one who can grant us peace.” . . .

We lived in a closed, guarded box, and the most ordinary acts could bring down terrible punishment. . . . Nobody seemed willing to do anything. . . .

Now, finally, we women were going to take action.

Gbowee describes the tireless efforts of organizing for peace in a country that had undergone immense suffering, violence, and corruption:

Three days a week for six months, the women of WIPNET [Women in Peacebuilding Network] went out to meet with the women of Monrovia; we went to the mosques on Friday at noon after prayers, to the markets on Saturday morning, to two churches every Sunday. . . . We gave all our sisters the same message: Liberian women, awake for peace! . . .

It wasn’t always easy. Women who have suffered for nearly as long as they can remember come to a point where they look down, not ahead. But as we kept working, women began to look up and listen. No one had spoken to them this way before.

We handed out flyers: WE ARE TIRED! WE ARE TIRED OF OUR CHILDREN BEING KILLED! WE ARE TIRED OF BEING RAPED! WOMEN, WAKE UP—YOU HAVE A VOICE IN THE PEACE PROCESS! . . .

As the women of WIPNET gathered together, my fear, depression and loneliness were finally, totally, wiped away. Others who felt the way I did stood beside me; I wasn’t alone anymore. And I knew in my heart that everything I had been through, every pain, had led me to this point: leading women to fight for peace was what I was meant to do with my life.

A Nonviolent Love

Richard Rohr reflects on the spiritual foundations of nonviolence embodied and taught by Martin Luther King Jr.

Part of the genius of Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), inspired by the teachings of Jesus and Gandhi, was that he was able to show people that violence was not only immoral but also impractical and, finally, futile. In the long run, violence does not achieve its own stated purposes, because it only deepens the bitterness on both sides. It leaves both sides in an endless and impossible cycle that cannot be stopped by itself. Instead, some neutralizing force must be inserted from outside to stop the cycle of violence and point us in a new direction.

King would insist that true nonviolent practice is founded on spiritual seeing. . . . He took it as axiomatic that the attitudes of nonviolence were finally impossible without an infusion of agape love from God and our reliance upon that infusion. He defined agape love as willingness to serve without the desire for reciprocation, willingness to suffer without the desire for retaliation, and willingness to reconcile without the desire for domination. This is clearly a Divine love that the small self cannot achieve by itself.

We must live in and through Another to be truly nonviolent. [1]

At a 1960 lunch counter sit-in protesting segregation in Arlington, Virginia, Quaker peace activist David Hartsough discovered God’s power in the power of nonviolence: 

“Love your enemies . . . do good to those who hate you.” 

I was meditating on those words when I heard a voice behind me say, “Get out of this store in two seconds, or I’m going to stab this through your heart.” I glanced behind me at a man with the most terrible look of hatred I had ever seen. His eyes blazed, his jaw quivered, and his shaking hand held a switchblade—about half an inch from my heart. . . .

I turned around and tried my best to smile. Looking him in the eye, I said to him, “Friend, do what you believe is right, and I will still try to love you.” Both his jaw and his hand dropped. Miraculously, he turned away and walked out of the store.

That was the most powerful experience of my twenty years of life. It confirmed my belief in the power of love, the power of goodness, the power of God working through us to overcome hatred and violence. I had a profound sense that nonviolence really works. At that moment, nonviolence became much more than a philosophical idea or a tactic that had once made a difference in Gandhi’s India. It became the way I wanted to relate to other human beings, a way of life, a way of working for change.

My response had touched something in my accuser. He had seen me as an enemy. But through my response, I believe I became a human being to him. The humanity in each of us touched. [2]

Nonviolence Is Power

Lifelong peace activist and priest John Dear curated the CAC’s forthcoming edition of Oneing on nonviolence, which features Dear’s interview with Methodist minister and activist James Lawson. After visiting followers of Gandhi in India to study nonviolent resistance in the 1950s, Lawson began training civil rights activists in the principles and tactics of nonviolence. His students helped desegregate lunch counters and became Freedom Riders who pushed to integrate interstate travel. In response to a question about how he defines nonviolence, Lawson offers:

It is hard to define nonviolence. I think it was Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) who first used the term. [1] He maintained, in his book Non-violence in Peaceand War, that the term is his translation of the Jainist theory of ahimsa. Gandhi translated ahimsa as “Do no harm; do no injury.” Jainism was an ancient religion of India, begun around the time of Jesus of Nazareth. That’s one definition I cling to. It allows me to live, to function, to practice.

Gandhi also stated that nonviolence is love in action, compassion and truth in action. Of course, he coined the word satyagraha [often translated as truth force or soul force] to further explain tenacity in truth, in the soul, in God, and in struggle.

So, for me, nonviolence is that quality that comes out of all the great world religions: the notion that the creative force of the universe is love, that God is love, and that love is all-encompassing. Gandhi insisted—and I think this is Gandhi’s great contribution—that the creative force of the universe is the force that we humans must learn to exercise because that force is the only force that can cause the human race to do God’s will.

And nonviolence is power. It is not, as I was taught in college in 1947, just persuasion. Persuasion is a form of power. Aristotle wrote that power is the capacity to achieve purpose. It is a God-given gift of creation to human beings. Nonviolence has its deep roots in the long journey of the human family as people operated out of love and truth despite all that was raging around them.

As Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. also said, nonviolence is the science of how we create our own life in the image of God, how we create a world that practices justice, truth, and compassion.

Gene Sharp (1928–2018) was the first scholar to pull together the science and the methodology of nonviolence. So, I have a two-fold definition. First, the religions of the world reflect on love as truth and power, as the way the human race discovers how to carry out the will of eternity. Second, we’re still learning about nonviolence as the science of bringing about personal and social change and establishing a world where all life is honored. 

Father Richard understands justice as loving solidarity with those who suffer:

We must not separate ourselves from the suffering of the world. When we’re close to those in pain, their need evokes love in us. Very few of us have the largess, the magnanimity to just decide to be loving. Someone has to ask it of us. We have to place ourselves in situations with people who are not like us, outside our systems of success and security, so we can read life from another perspective. The needs we witness will pull us toward love, toward generosity and compassion.

I think the icon of the cross does this on a spiritual level. The bleeding body pulls us into itself and into bleeding humanity, too. I experience this pull when watching the news, witnessing the suffering of people all over the world. I realize much of the broadcast is superficial and even biased, but it takes me out of the protective bubble of my little hermitage where I can live far too peacefully and comfortably. It makes me more aware that right now there is a woman in Syria or Ukraine carrying her baby and running for her life. I must take that in and be in solidarity with her in whatever ways I can, witnessing what she is going through: the anxiety, the pain, the fear. That’s what teaches us how to love. That is the pain we must allow to transform us and inspire us to act somehow.

All of us are called to the work of justice, which will look different for many people. My primary work is to send prayer and love toward those who are hurting. I do believe consciousness is the deepest level of reality. I also use my voice, through my teaching and writing, to awaken others to the reality of suffering and injustice in the world. I hope to encourage them to allow God’s love to flow through them, transforming and healing pain. I also hope that our Living School and other programs are helping to train and equip people to meet the suffering in the world. [1]

For theologians Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill, we restore justice when we practice “hospitality of heart” inspired by Jesus:

Jesus embodied the justice of God in his love, hospitality, truth, and grace. Jesus had a just mission. Revealing the justice of God, Jesus welcomed the stranger, rejected social discrimination, confronted economic injustice, spoke against institutional power, and repudiated war and violence. . . . Carol Dempsey says that the spirit of justice is “hospitality of heart.” [2] When we open our hearts to hospitality, we feel compelled to seek justice. When we embrace creation, the poor, our enemies, strangers, foreigners, outcasts, and others, we desire justice for them. We welcome without judging. We love our neighbors as ourselves. We reflect the justice, love, and hospitality of God. This hospitality leads us to desire and work for the flourishing, well-being, and good of others. [3]

Sarah Young…..

Lasting abundant life can be found in Me alone. As you learn to surrender and connect with Me you learn about the inner strength available to you for day to day living.

Revelation 1:18
 I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.

Psalm 139:4
Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely.

Colossians 1:29
For this purpose I also labor, striving according to His power which works mightily within me.

Isaiah 2:15
And upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall. ] Which may signify everything that serves to support and defend the antichristian hierarchy, particularly the secular powers.

A Theology of Somebodiness

On the CAC podcast Love Period., Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis interviews Civil Rights leader and longtime activist Ruby Sales. Here Sales considers how embracing our God-given identity provides healing amid society’s injustices and empowers us to love others.  

Ruby Sales: One of the things that I discovered is that when we think about love, we think about how is it that we love other people? But the first question is how is it that we love ourselves so that we extend [to] other people the love that we feel for ourselves? . . .

It’s hard to love yourself when you follow people who degrade your humanity and teach you to hate other people. It’s hard to love yourself when you’re being used by powerful people to carry out an agenda that buttresses their power but disempowers you. And so I think that the critical question that white people must deal with, and all of us must deal with in the 21st century, is how is it that [we] can love ourselves so that we might extend that love to others? Because I think that we have been taught to hate and despise ourselves. . . .

I think that in many ways, the society that I grew up in, in the South . . . if we had learned to hate ourselves the way the official requirements required us to do, then we would’ve never survived, and so I think that out of the Black community in the South, you have a kind of agape [the Greek word for unconditional love] growing up. I loved everybody, and in order to love . . . we had to counter the narrative that we were nobody with the sense that we were somebody, and that meant self-love. And I think many communities who stood on the outside of the gates of power have had to come up with a way of finding themselves worthy and beloved.

Jacqui Lewis: I love hearing the stories of your childhood community, Ruby. How did your folks, your elders, your village, how did they raise Ruby Nell Sales and your contemporaries to love yourselves? . . .

Ruby Sales: The theology and pedagogy of somebodiness—that I might be enslaved, I might be small within the state, but I’m somebody, not only with God, but with each other, and about myself. And so the pedagogy and theology of somebodiness. I’m a child of God, and being a child of God, I’m essential, and no one has the right to limit, or the power to limit, my ability to be somebody. So I grew up in a society where that theology was so powerful. . . . The white view of Black children as being inferior never penetrated my being because I was surrounded with the possibility that I could live into my highest capacity and to love myself.

Aligning Ourselves with God’s Heart

The real contemplative takes the whole world in and shelters it, reveres it, and protects it with a body made of the steely substance of a justice that springs from love. —Joan Chittister, Illuminated Life

Like Father Richard, Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister connects contemplation with the pursuit of justice: 

The contemplative responds to the divine in everyone. God wills the care of the poor as well as the reward of the rich; so, therefore, must the true contemplative. God wills the end of oppressors who stand with the heel in the neck of the weak; so, therefore, does the true contemplative. God wills the liberation of all human beings; so, therefore, must the true contemplative. God desires the dignity and full development of all human beings. Thus, God takes the side of the defenseless. And, thus, therefore, must the true contemplative; otherwise, that contemplation is not real, cannot be real, will never be real, because to contemplate the God of justice is to be committed to justice. The true contemplative, the truly spiritual person, then, must do justice, must speak justice, must insist on justice, and they do, and they always have, and they are.

Thomas Merton spoke out from a cloister in Kentucky against the Vietnam War. Catherine of Siena walked the streets of the city when women were not permitted to walk the streets of the city feeding the poor. Hildegard of Bingen preached the word of justice to emperors and to popes. . . . A spiritual path that does not lead to a living commitment to the coming will of God, to the present Reign of God, to the Kingdom of God within and around us everywhere for everyone, is no path at all. . . .

From contemplation comes not only the consciousness of the universal connectedness of life, but the courage to model it as well. Those who have no flame in their hearts for justice, no consciousness of personal responsibility for the Reign of God, no raging commitment to human community may, indeed, be seeking God, but make no mistake, God is still at best only an idea to them, not a living reality.

Indeed, contemplation, you see, is a very dangerous activity. It not only brings us face to face with God, it brings us, as well, face to face with the world, and then it brings us face to face with the self; and then, of course, something must be done . . . because nothing stays the same once we have found the God within. We become new people, and in the doing, see everything around us newly too. We become connected to everything, to everyone. We carry the whole world in our hearts, the oppression of all peoples, the suffering of our friends, the burdens of our enemies, the raping of the earth, the hunger of the starving, the joyous expectation every laughing child has a right to. Then, the zeal for justice consumes us. Then, action and prayer are one.