Dear Friends,
As we build the Beloved Community, we pray for you every day that you might continue to bring it about in your little corner of the world.
Today's Meditation is a reflection by Joan Chittister fortifying us as contemplatives.
We invite you to join us as we commit
ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in the church, in healthcare, in the workplace--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that it is God's economy of abundance: when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
We hope and pray that you find peace, healing, hope and the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron and Jean
MEDITATION: Joan Chittister: "Open to the Divine...To be a Contemplative"
Reflection
Open to the Divine
We have become a world of insiders and outsiders when, in reality, there is no such thing as an outsider anymore. The whole city, the whole world lives in our living rooms. The whole city, the whole world is warring for my heart. Only the contemplative lives well in a world [whose security] depends on the open heart. . . .
The contemplative sees in the other what is lacking in the self. It is in the stranger that God’s new word comes most clearly to light for those who behold behind appearances . . . the divine mystery in a mundane world. The stranger, to the contemplative, is the angel of Tobias, the visitor to the tent of Abraham and Sarah, the sound of “Hail, Mary” in the garden calling us to a life we do not know and cannot predict. It is the stranger who disarms all our preconceptions about life and penetrates all our stereotypes about the world. It is the stranger who makes the supernatural natural. It is the stranger who tests all our good intentions.
To be a contemplative we must open our hearts and our doors to the stranger in whom lives the Word that is calling to our boundaried hearts to become wider. . . . To be a contemplative we must live in peace. We must speak peace everywhere to everyone. We must speak good about everyone we do not know—and yet do know to be just as full of God as we are.
Sr. Joan Chittister, adapted from Illuminated Life
Joan Chittister, OSB, is the author of numerous books, an international lecturer, and a leading voice in spirituality.