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.

The Example of the Prophets

For Father Richard Rohr, the work of justice is rooted in the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures. He says: 

Christianity has given little energy to prophecy, which Paul identifies as the second most important charism for building the church (1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11). Too often, when Christians talk about prophecy, we think prophets make predictions about the future. In fact, prophets say exactly the opposite! They insist the future is highly contingent on the now. They always announce to the people of Israel that they have to make a decision now. You can go this way and the outcome of events will undo you or you can return to God, to love, and to the covenant. That’s not predicting the future as much as it’s naming the now, the way reality works. The prophet opens up human freedom by daring to tell the people of Israel that they can change history by changing themselves. That’s extraordinary, and it’s just as true for us today.

The prophets ultimately reveal a God who is “the God of the Sufferers” in the words of Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965). [1] I’d like to put it this way: it is not that we go out preaching hard and difficult messages, and then people mistreat and marginalize us for being such prophets (although that might happen). Rather, when we go to the stories of the prophets and of Jesus himself, we discover the biblical pattern is just the opposite! When we find ourselves wounded and marginalized, and we allow that suffering to teach us, we can become prophets. When we repeatedly experience the faithfulness, the mercy, and the forgiveness of God, then our prophetic voice emerges. That’s the training school. That’s where we learn how to speak the truth.

The prophets were always these wonderful people who went to wounded places. They went to where the suffering was, to the people who were excluded from the system. They saw through the idolatries at the center of the system because those who are excluded from the system always reveal the operating beliefs of that system. Speaking the truth for the sake of healing and wholeness is then prophetic because the “powers that be” that benefit from the system cannot tolerate certain revelations. They cannot tolerate the truths that the marginalized—the broken, the wounded, and the homeless—always reveal.

Are we willing to take the risk and become prophets ourselves? It’s not that we get to preach or speak hard words and then feel justified and righteous when we are excluded. It’s that we experience some level of exclusion or heartbreak, and then we have the inner authority to preach what may sound like hard words. Sadly, they will sound like very harsh and even unfair words to people who have never been on the edge, or the bottom, or who have never suffered. The prophets always bring the sufferers to the center.

God’s Loving Justice

Richard Rohr writes that justice is an essential part of God’s nature. It does not manifest as vengeance or “getting even” but as a method of restoration and healing: 

God’s justice begins to be revealed in the Torah. If you are God, you don’t have any criteria outside yourself that you can conform to and make yourself just. God is simply faithful to who God is. God can only be true to God’s own criteria. For God to be just, therefore, is for God to be faithful to God’s own character and words. This is very different from any vengeful and retaliatory understanding of justice, which is the later juridical understanding.

God’s power for justice is precisely God’s power to restore people when they are broken or hurt. God uses their mistakes to liberate them, to soften them, to enlighten them, to transform them, and to heal them. No text in the Hebrew Scriptures equates God’s justice with vengeance on the sinner. It might look like that on the surface, but if we read the whole passage and understand the context, chastisement is always meant to bring us back to love and union. God’s justice is always saving justice, always healing justice. What is experienced as punishment is always for the sake of restoration, not for vengeance. Therefore, justice for the people is to participate in this wholeness and spaciousness of God, to be brought into God’s freedom.

Richard describes the freedom of contemplatives who have discovered the “prophetic position”:

True contemplatives have changed sides from inside—from the power position to the position of vulnerability and solidarity, which gradually changes everything. Once we are freed from our paranoia, from the narcissism that thinks we are the center of the world, or from our belief that our rights and dignity have to be defended before those of others, we can finally live and act with justice and truth. Once these blockages are removed—and that is what contemplative prayer does—then we just have to offer a few guiding statements of social analysis to name what is really going on beneath the surface of a system, and people get it for themselves. They start being drawn by God and by love instead of being driven by anger and retaliation.

True contemplation is the most subversive of activities because it undercuts the one thing that normally refuses to give way—our natural individualism and narcissism. We all move toward the ego. We even solidify the ego as we get older if something doesn’t expose it for the lie that it is—not because it is bad, but because it thinks it is the whole and only thing! We don’t really change by ourselves; God changes us, if we expose ourselves to God at a deep level. This is why Christian meditation will never fill stadiums; not so many people want their narcissism and separateness to be exposed as the silliness that they are.

The Seventh Core Principle of the CAC: True religion leads us to an experience of our True Self and undermines our false self. Father Richard teaches: 

The True Self is who you are because of divine indwelling, the Holy Spirit within you (Romans 8:9). We are all tabernacles of God, says Paul (1 Corinthians 3:16). What happened in Christ, the Anointed One, is an announcement of what is happening in all of us, too. We are children of heaven and earth, both at the same time. Much of the work of enlightenment is bringing those two identities together, just as Jesus did.  

Putting the human and the divine together is what it means to be “the Christ” (Colossians 1:17–20), and what it means for us to be “the new Adam and Eve”  
(1 Corinthians 15:45–49). Ephesians could not make it much clearer: “You too have been stamped with the seal of the Holy Spirit that was promised—this is the pledge of your inheritance” (1:13–14). Few Christians have ever been seriously taught about their inherent union with God and will find all kinds of self-hating reasons to deny it. Only the True Self can dare to believe the gospel’s Good News.  

The false self, or smaller self, is characterized by separateness. Jewish and Christian traditions call this state of disconnectedness “sin.” When we’re separated from our deepest Being, we are in the state of sin. When we are disconnected from our True Self in God, we look for various false and addictive ways to fill our emptiness. The small or false self is who we think we are, but our thinking does not make it so. It is our identity created through culture, education, class, race, friends, gender, clothes, and money. That’s all that Adam and Eve had once they left the Garden where they walked with God. But let’s not feel too bad for them or even guilty ourselves. It seems that we have to leave the Garden. We have to create a false self to get started; the trouble is that we take it far too seriously. It is always passing away—in stages and then all at once at death. Only the True Self is eternal. We all suffer from a terrible case of mistaken identity. 

The True Self is characterized by communion and deep contentment. It’s okay, right here, right now. The True Self is the realigned self; religion’s main purpose is to lead us to experience this Self, which is who we are in God and who God is in us. It has to do with participating in a Universal Being that is beyond our being. Ultimately, our lives are not about us. We are about life! That doesn’t mean we stay in the True Self twenty-four hours a day. Life is three steps forward and two steps backward. Yet once we know the big picture, we will never be satisfied with the little picture.  

Sarah Young….

Be prepared to suffer for me in My name. Pain and problems are opportunities to demonstrate your trust in Me. When suffering strikes, remember I am able bring good out of anything. When experiencing suffering; surrender, connect and live out of that.

James 1:2-4
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[ a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 …

Psalm 110:21-22
1 The Lord (God) says to my Lord (the Messiah), Sit at My right hand, until I make Your adversaries Your footstool. (2 The Lord will send forth from Zion …

Psalm 38:21
Do not stand at a distance, my God. Do not forsake me, O LORD! O my God, be not far from me!

The Sixth Core Principle of the CAC: Life is about discovering the right questions more than having the right answers. Father Richard expands on this counterintuitive wisdom: 

This principle keeps us on the path of ongoing discernment, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:10). The key concept here is the contrast between the words “discovering” and “having.” A discerning and inquiring spirit will make us discoverers in touch with our hidden unconscious and the deeper truth. A glib “I have the answers” spirit makes us into protectors of clichés. Answers are wonderful when they are true and keep us on the human and spiritual path. But answers are not wonderful when they become something we hold as an ego possession, allowing us to be arrogant, falsely self-assured, and closed down individuals.  

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways. . . . As high as the heavens are from the earth so are my thoughts above your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9). The depth and mystery of God leaves all of us as perpetual searchers and seekers, always novices and beginners. It is the narrow and dark way of faith. “Search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you,” says Jesus (Luke 11:9). There is something inherently valuable about an attitude of spiritual curiosity and persistent “knocking.”  

The ego is formed by contraction; the soul is formed by expansion. The ego pulls into itself by comparing, competing, and separating itself from others: “I am not like that,” it says. The soul, however, does exactly the opposite: “I am that.” (Tat Tvam Asi, as the Hindus say). It sees itself in God, the other, flowers and trees, animals, and even the enemy: similarity instead of separateness. It participates in the human dilemma instead of placing itself above and beyond all tensions. The long journey of transformation leads us to ask new questions about our own goodness, and where goodness really lies; to recognize our own complicity with evil, and where evil really lies. It is humiliating.  

Only those led by the Spirit into ever deeper seeing, hearing, and surrendering—spiritual seekers and self-questioners—will fall into the hands of the living God. This will always be “a narrow gate and a hard road” that “only a few will walk” (Matthew 7:14).  

We want to encourage those few and invite many more on a journey of seeking God. In the sixth century, St. Benedict said the only requirement for a monk’s admission is that they “truly seek God.” [1] Not security or status, not education, not roles and titles, not a portfolio of answers, but simply and humbly seeking God. Spiritual seeking will make a person be a perpetual and humble student instead of a contented careerist, a quester rather than a settler, an always impatient, yearning, and desirous lover. I will bet on such spiritual seekers any day. They are on the real and only quest.

______________________

Sarah Young….

Take time to be still in My presence. The more hassled you feel, the more you need my peace. My peace is an inner treasure growing as you surrender and trust in Me. Circumstances cannot touch the peace you receive when you surrender, connect and live out of that.

Psalm 46:10
Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”

Numbers 6:25-26
The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: 26 The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

John 14:27
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

The Fifth Core Principle of the CAC: We will support true authority, the ability to “author” life in others, regardless of the group. Richard grounds this principle in both Scripture and Tradition: 

St. Vincent of Lérins (died c. 450) in the year 434 was the first to define the word “catholic.” Scholars used his definition for much of the first millennium of Christianity to discern the true belief of the Church. Vincent’s in-house principle was amazingly simple and clear and yet also shocking and seemingly impossible: “In the Catholic Church itself, every care should be taken to hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.” [1] That is truly and properly ‘catholic,’ as expressed by the very force and meaning of the word, which comprehends everything almost universally. In other words, if it is true, then it has to be true everywhere and all the time, or it is not true!  

Most of history has been content with cultural truth, denominational truth, national truth, scientific truth, rational truth, factual truth, personal truth, etc. These are all needed and helpful, but true religion affirms the Big Truth beyond any of these limited truths. This is what makes authentic religion inherently subversive and threatening to all systems of power and control. It always says, “Yes, and!”  

Such recognition of “authority” beyond our own group is structurally demanded of Christians by the fact that our Bible includes the Hebrew Bible! Inclusivity is valued from the start. Every Christian liturgy reads authoritative texts from the Torah, the Jewish Prophets, and the Wisdom Writings. We listen to Abraham, Moses, and Elijah, all of whom never knew Jesus. The implications should be clear: we have been taught by non-Christian authorities from the beginning! The door is opened and must remain open or we become insular Christians instead of catholic ones.  

The pattern continues with John’s Gospel using the concept of the Logos (John 1:1), which was first used by Heraclitus and Greek Stoic philosophers. Paul is willing to quote non-Jewish sources and worldviews to the Athenians (Acts 17:26–29) in order to preach a more universal message. We also have centuries of reliance by many first millennium Fathers of the Church upon the “pagan” categories of Plato and Aristotle—to make their Christian points! This clear pattern with Aristotle kept Thomas Aquinas from being recognized and canonized for some time. Augustine and Bonaventure did much the same with Plato. Certainly, Catholic scientists and theologians have significant overlapping discussions today. This is our heritage: using universal wisdom to teach Christian truth.  

If it is the Perennial Tradition, it will somehow keep recurring at different levels and in different forms from different voices and disciplines. In Vincent of Lérins’s daunting phrase, it will have “been believed everywhere, always, and by all,” which is still the best argument for Great Truth. No single group will ever encompass the magnificent and always mysterious Reign of God. 

……

Sarah Young

See yourself through My eyes as one who is deeply loved. Rest in peace with this knowledge. Start with surrender, find connection then live out of that.

Hebrews 11:6
But without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]. Man cannot please God without because in unbelief he cannot do what is pleasing to God.

Romans 5:5
and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

John 4:23-24
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

The Edge of the Inside

The Third Core Principle of the CAC: The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. For a week of Daily Meditations on this principle, see here. 

The Fourth Core Principle of the CAC: Practical truth is more likely found at the bottom and the edges than at the top or center of most groups, institutions, and cultures. Father Richard explores the power of this prophetic position: 

The edge of things is a liminal space—a holy place or, as the Celts called it, “a thin place.” Most of us have to be taught how to live there. To function on the spiritual edge of things is to learn how to move safely in and out, back and forth, across and return. It is a prophetic position, not a rebellious or antisocial one. When we are at the center of something, we easily confuse essentials with nonessentials, getting tied down by trivia, loyalty tests, and job security. Not much truth can happen there. When we live on the edge of anything, with respect and honor (and this is crucial!), we are in an auspicious and advantageous position.  

In the Gospels, Jesus sends his first disciples on the road to preach to “all the nations” (Matthew 28:19; Luke 24:47) and to “all creation” (Mark 16:15). I’m convinced he was training them to risk leaving their own security systems and yet, paradoxically, to be gatekeepers for them. He told them to leave their home base and connect with other worlds. This becomes even clearer in his instruction for them “not to take any baggage” (Mark 6:8) and to submit to the hospitality and even the hostility of others (Mark 6:10–11). Jesus says the same of himself in John’s Gospel (10:7) where he calls himself “the gate” where people “will go freely in and out” (10:9). What amazing permission! He sees himself more as a place of entrance and exit than a place of settlement.  

The unique and rare position of a biblical prophet is always on the edge of the inside. The prophet is not an outsider throwing rocks or an insider comfortably defending the status quo. Instead, the prophet lives precariously with two perspectives held tightly together. In this position, one is not ensconced safely inside, nor situated so far outside as to lose compassion or understanding. Prophets must hold these perspectives in a loving and necessary creative tension. It is a unique kind of seeing and living, which will largely leave the prophet with “nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58) and easily attracting the “hatred of all”—who have invariably taken sides in opposing groups (Luke 21:16–17). The prophet speaks for God, and almost no one else, it seems.  

When we are both inside and outside, we are an ultimate challenge, possible reformers, and lasting invitations to a much larger world.

Jesus Is Our Central Reference Point

This week we will share the Eight Core Principles that are the foundation of the CAC’s work. The First Core Principle: The teaching of Jesus is our central reference point. Father Richard Rohr writes:  

Without the assurance of Jesus’ teaching and example, I would not have the courage or confidence to say what I have said throughout my years of teaching. How can I trust that values like nonviolence, the path of descent, simplicity of life, forgiveness and healing, preference for the poor, and radical grace itself are as important as they are, unless Jesus also said so?  

Jesus consistently stands with the excluded, the outsider, the sinner, and the poor. That is his place of freedom, his unique way of critiquing self-serving cultures, and his way of being in union with the suffering of the world—all at the same time. That is his form of universal healing. It also puts him outside any establishment thinking.  

It is rather obvious that Jesus spends most of his ministry alongside the marginalized and people at the bottom of society’s hierarchies. His primary social program and main form of justice work is solidarity with suffering itself, wherever it is. Jesus stands with the demonized until the demonizing stops. This is the core meaning of his crucifixion, and why the cross is our unique agent for salvation and liberation (see 1 Corinthians 1:17–18).  

Jesus’ agenda has led us at the CAC to our central emphasis on contemplation and spiritual conversion. Our work is the work of human and divine transformation. The experience of universal kinship and solidarity with God, ourselves, and the rest of the world is a grounded runway for significant peacemaking, justice work, social reform, and civil and human rights. Such work flows from a positive place, even a unitive place, where “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). We want people to bear much fruit in the world “and fruit that will endure” (John 15:5, 16).  

True spiritual action (as opposed to reaction) demands our own ongoing and radical transformation. It often requires us to change sides so we can be where pain is. It even requires a new identity, as Jesus exemplified in his great self-emptying (see Philippians 2:6–8). Instead of accusing others of sin, Jesus “became sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He stood in solidarity with the problem itself, hardly ever with specific “answers” for peoples’ problems. His solidarity and compassion were themselves the healing. This was his strategy and therefore it is ours. It feels like weakness, but it finally changes things in very creative, patient, and humble ways. Such solidarity is learned and expressed in two special places—contemplation (nondual or unitive consciousness) and specific actions of communion with human suffering. 

Jesus Is Our Central Reference Point

This week we will share the Eight Core Principles that are the foundation of the CAC’s work. The First Core Principle: The teaching of Jesus is our central reference point. Father Richard Rohr writes:  

Without the assurance of Jesus’ teaching and example, I would not have the courage or confidence to say what I have said throughout my years of teaching. How can I trust that values like nonviolence, the path of descent, simplicity of life, forgiveness and healing, preference for the poor, and radical grace itself are as important as they are, unless Jesus also said so?  

Jesus consistently stands with the excluded, the outsider, the sinner, and the poor. That is his place of freedom, his unique way of critiquing self-serving cultures, and his way of being in union with the suffering of the world—all at the same time. That is his form of universal healing. It also puts him outside any establishment thinking.  

It is rather obvious that Jesus spends most of his ministry alongside the marginalized and people at the bottom of society’s hierarchies. His primary social program and main form of justice work is solidarity with suffering itself, wherever it is. Jesus stands with the demonized until the demonizing stops. This is the core meaning of his crucifixion, and why the cross is our unique agent for salvation and liberation (see 1 Corinthians 1:17–18).  

Jesus’ agenda has led us at the CAC to our central emphasis on contemplation and spiritual conversion. Our work is the work of human and divine transformation. The experience of universal kinship and solidarity with God, ourselves, and the rest of the world is a grounded runway for significant peacemaking, justice work, social reform, and civil and human rights. Such work flows from a positive place, even a unitive place, where “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). We want people to bear much fruit in the world “and fruit that will endure” (John 15:5, 16).  

True spiritual action (as opposed to reaction) demands our own ongoing and radical transformation. It often requires us to change sides so we can be where pain is. It even requires a new identity, as Jesus exemplified in his great self-emptying (see Philippians 2:6–8). Instead of accusing others of sin, Jesus “became sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He stood in solidarity with the problem itself, hardly ever with specific “answers” for peoples’ problems. His solidarity and compassion were themselves the healing. This was his strategy and therefore it is ours. It feels like weakness, but it finally changes things in very creative, patient, and humble ways. Such solidarity is learned and expressed in two special places—contemplation (nondual or unitive consciousness) and specific actions of communion with human suffering. 

This is our formal name and our task, and both come from watching Jesus. 

A Second Gaze

The Second Core Principle of the CAC: We need a contemplative mind in order to do compassionate action. Richard shares how contemplation has transformed his view of reality through a “second gaze”: 

The first gaze is seldom compassionate. It’s too busy weighing and feeling itself: “How will this affect me?” or “What reaction does my self-image demand now?” or “How can I regain control of this situation?” Let’s admit that we all start there. Only after God has taught us how to live “undefended” can we immediately stand with and for others, and for the moment.  

It has taken me much of my life to begin to have the second gaze. By nature I have a critical mind and a demanding heart, and I am so impatient. These are both my gifts and my curses, yet it seems I cannot have one without the other. They are both good teachers. A life of solitude and silence allows them both, and invariably leads me to the second gaze. The gaze of compassion, looking out at life from the place of Divine Intimacy, is really all I have, and all I have to give, although I don’t always do it.  

I named my little hermitage “East of Eden” because of its significance in the life of Cain, after he killed his brother Abel. God sent Cain to this place after he had failed and sinned. Yet ironically God gave him a loving and protective mark: “So YHWH put a mark on Cain so that no one would do him harm. He sent him to wander in the land of Nod, East of Eden” (Genesis 4:15–16). I have always felt God’s mark and protection. 

By my late 50s I had plenty of opportunities to see my own failures, shadow, and sin. The first gaze at myself was critical, negative, and demanding, not at all helpful to me or to others. I am convinced that such guilt and shame are never from God. They are merely protestations of the false self when shocked by its own poverty. God leads by compassion, never by condemnation. God offers us the grace to weep over our sins more than to perfectly overcome them, to humbly recognize our littleness rather than to become big. This kind of weeping and wandering keeps us both askew and awake at the same time.  

My later life call is to “wander in the land of Nod,” enjoying God’s so-often-proven love and protection. I look back at my life, and everybody’s life, the One-and-Only-Life, marked happily and gratefully with the sign of Cain. Contemplation and compassion are finally coming together. This is my second gaze. It is well worth waiting for, because only the second gaze sees fully and truthfully. It sees itself, the other, and even God with God’s own compassionate eyes. True action must spring from this place. Otherwise, most of our action is merely reaction, and cannot bear “fruit that will last” (John 15:16).

Professor Joan Mueller, a Franciscan Sister of Joy, shares how Clare of Assisi taught her version of Franciscan prayer (1194–1253):

Often, when we think of mysticism, we conjure up images of difficult prayer techniques and workshops with meditation gurus. Prayer, we believe, is for professionals. . . . We love God, believe in God, but just don’t feel that we can talk with God like the “professional pray-ers.”

But, Franciscanism is a spirituality of the people. The largest order of Franciscans is made up of lay people, and both Francis and Clare chose a quasi-lay lifestyle over the monasticism of their time. Neither Francis nor Clare participated in prayer workshops, nor did they have extensive monastic training, and yet both experienced profound union with God. What was their secret?

Although we have prayers that were written by St. Francis, it is St. Clare, in her fourth letter to St. Agnes of Prague, who explains what is meant by Franciscan prayer. In this letter, written on her deathbed, Clare teaches Agnes to make a habit of daily prayer. This daily practice of prayer, however, is not a difficult task as Clare explains it. . . .

Clare suggests that we . . . “consider the midst of Jesus’ life, his humility, his blessed poverty, the countless hardships, and the punishments that he endured for our redemption.” [1] Here Clare is asking us simply to reflect on the public life of Christ.

Medievals had a great way of doing this type of meditation. When a cathedral or local church was being frescoed, a painter would come to town and the subjects for the paintings that were being commissioned for the church’s walls and ceilings would be decided. But whom would the painter use for his artistic models? Most often, he wandered the local streets, interacted with the villagers, and decided whose faces he might portray. One day you might go to church and find yourself in a fresco listening to Jesus preach. Maybe your face would represent one of the disciples, or one of the women who cared for Jesus. Perhaps one of your children would be listening to Jesus teach. In any case, you would be placed right in the story of the gospel; your face would actually be central to the story.

This is what Clare is asking us to do. Take the gospel for the day, a gospel from mass or the liturgy of the hours, or a gospel passage from a daily devotional and imagine yourself in the midst of the story. Who would you be most comfortable portraying? What are you hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting? Clare asks us to spend a few minutes really entering into the gospel story of Jesus’ public life and imagining what it would be like to be there. . . .

This perseverance and commitment to engaging deeply in ordinary, Christian prayer is what identifies the friar, Poor Clare nun, the Franciscan lay mystic, or the person inspired by Francis.

___________________________

Sarah Young

In order to hear My voice, you must surrender all your worries and concerns into my care. Thank Me in all circumstances; trust in Me and rest in my sovereignty. Surrender, connect with Me, live and rejoice out of that.

1 Peter 5:6-7
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you

Psalm 118:24
Good morning, Lord. I am grateful that, once again, you have offered me a new day as an incredible gift to unwrap and enjoy. Thank you that it is not a blank slate waiting to be filled, but a treasure chest beckoning to be explored.

1 Thessalonians 5:18
Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.