Contemplative Seeing...
“Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply. I call that kind of deep and calm seeing ‘contemplation.’ - Fr Richard Rohr
I begin my first entry today, Feb 7, 2021 with a quote from one of Fr Richard Rohr’s recent daily meditations. Inspired by Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, I wanted to add my voice to a way of seeing and approaching this time in our history with a call to go deeper. As Psalm 42 states…”the deep calls unto deep” and I hope to write from the depth of what I am seeing in hopes of calling out that depth in others. I hope to bring a sense of unity and calm to the social media landscape with whomever wants to come along.
I have been teaching World Religions for the past 25 years and my approach will be grounded in that global perspective. My own journey has stayed closest to the Christian and Buddhist paths of awakening, that is, awakening to our true nature, which both traditions point to as being one of unity and of love. You will see these themes of Oneness and Love repeated throughout these “Letters.” I hope to provide a place from which you can encounter your own depths and your own journey wherever you find yourself at this time.
Thomas Merton, one of my spiritual teachers and guides since my grandmother first introduced me to him after my father passed away, says this about contemplative seeing, “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream.”
Given the unprecedented division that exists today, I want to begin by saying, at the deepest level, this division is not fundamentally true, rather it is created by us and not representative of what the better angels of our nature call us to. Merton speaks to this, so does Rohr. “The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream,” as he noticed the everyday person shopping in downtown Louisville. My hope in this Letter from a Contemplative is to remind us of this deeper unity and the call to live this out in our local and global community…what MLK Jr called the Beloved Community.
I will also conclude each Letter with one concrete action that can help us to see and live out of this contemplative depth.
As I head off to watch the Super Bowl with my wife and son, I offer this as a beginning:
Begin to find a time for silence, 5, 10, or 20+ minutes, in your day. Walking, eating, sitting, unplugged, even from reading a letter like this and see what you notice…contemplative seeing requires a certain stillness and silence…the seniors in high school I have the grace and privilege to teach have shared with me how simple and powerful it is to just sit and be, letting go of the worries of the day for a few minutes. For those from theistic traditions, it is time to sit in God’s Presence. For those from non-theistic traditions, it is time to sit in Presence. Here are 2 possibilities to get you started: