This week we read a quote of Pope Francis’ from the second chapter of his encyclical Laudato Si’. This part of the chapter is called “The Wisdom of Biblical Accounts”....
One document that is crucial to read for our day and time is Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato Si’. Parts of Laudato Si’ will be presented as food for thought for you during April as the earth wakes and we celebrate the new life of our glorious Easter time. Here are the opening paragraphs of the Pope’s moving words on caring for...
According to an article on the World Wildlife Federation website, of the water that covers 70% of our planet, only 3% is fresh water and two thirds of that is in frozen glaciers or otherwise unavailable for...
Suffering plays a key role in the contemplative life. We all experience fundamental needs for safety and security, belonging and acceptance, and control. One way to think of suffering is as a state in which one must trust God alone for safety and...
At the MMOC Contemplative Core Team’s recent workshop on The Welcoming Prayer, Deacon Bob Smerek summarized a practice to welcome all of life as an opportunity to love as the Divine loves and be one with the Trinity: Sit quietly and think of three issues/things that...
The Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed an update to a rule to cut methane and other pollutants from oil and gas operations across the country. This would be a huge step forward in ...
When we speak of silence in Centering Prayer and other contemplative practices, we are not speaking primarily of the physical, exterior absence of noise, but rather of an interior awareness of the always-present Presence of God beneath and between our thoughts, feelings, and sensations. As such, while exterior silence may ...
One way of understanding forgiveness is as the ability to accept reality for being what is, rather than what we would have it be. All of us face an addiction to our own ways of thinking and myopic visions of a “perfect world” (which, if we’re honest, is...
It is generally accepted that the first step in healing is to recognize the wound, that which needs to be healed. According to Thomas Keating, “Easter, with its grace of interior resurrection, is the radical healing of the human condition. Lent, which prepares us for this grace, is about what needs to be healed, [forgiven and celebrated]. Oftentimes, our deepest wounds become part of our shadow, those ....
Often during Black History Month, we hear of the same names over and over. Of course there are many unsung heroes also. Read below to learn about one of them. If you’d like to read about more ...
Many people know that Brown vs Board of Education was decided in 1954, that the “Little Rock 9” made news in 1957, and that little Ruby Bridges made her brave walk into school in 1960. But did you know...
“Contemplative practice” is just that: practice. The existence of a practice implies that there must be a “real thing” for which we are preparing, and in the case of contemplative practice, the thing for which we are preparing is life itself. While a practice can serve as an end in itself (in as much as God can and use the space created by our practice as an opportunity for direct awareness/encounter). But, our contemplative practices really start ...
February was first officially designated as Black History Month by President Ford in 1976. The origin of the celebration began in 1926 as Negro History Week. It was expanded to a month in the 1940’s in West Virginia. By the mid 1960’s in Chicago, several events were...
Commenting on Mary’s response to the Annunciation, author and chaplain Charles W. Sidoti recognizes patience as a form of contemplative action: To understand how “having patience” can be a form of action, it is first necessary to realize that having patience is about...
Generally speaking, growth in the Divine life is a process of gradual unfolding. For instance, the process of creation took eons to get from God’s first physical manifestation to now, with creation still evolving. The salvific journey took millennia to get from Abraham to Christ, and we still await the full, final realization of our union with...
Father John Dear wrote in the Center for Action and Contemplation’s Journal Radical Grace about the non-violent impact that interfaith cooperation can make. “ At the heart of each major religion is the vision of peace, the ideal of compassion and love and justice, the fundamental truth of nonviolence.” “Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948) was the first ...
arbara Brown Taylor, an author, preacher and a member of the Center for Action and Contemplation, writes about what she calls “holy envy,” “ befriending followers of different traditions, and allowing such friendships to enrich our own faith. She summarizes an insight by ...