Contemplation - Be Still and Know

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The Chapter of Maryknoll Fathers & Brothers will take place in July. The Sisters Assembly in September.  MKLM initiated the first part of their Global Assembly in April, and the Affiliates the first part of their Joint Meeting in June.  For all of us, this is a pivotal time.

If we hope to attract the young to Maryknoll; if we are to move into the future (survive) with confidence, energy and renewed commitment at this time in history, incremental change (deck chair shuffling) won’t be enough. Personal and collective transformation is needed.  That can feel threatening. As Richard Rohr’s friend James Finley once put it, “We’re afraid to lose control that we think we have over the life we think we’re living.” 

Thankfully, the contemplative space in all of us is not unsettled by transformation but moves towards it.  Below are 7 quotes that might help us to better understand and embrace that contemplative space:

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  • To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter. (Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury)

  • Contemplation is the highest expression of a person’s intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive.  It is a spiritual wonder. It is a spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, for being. (Thomas Merton)

  • If we are absolutely grounded in the absolute love of God that protects us from nothing even as it sustains us in all things, then we can face all things with courage and tenderness and touch the hurting places in others and in ourselves with love.  (James Finley) 

  • Prayer is looking out from a different set of eyes, which are not comparing, competing, judging, labeling or analyzing, but receiving the moment in its present wholeness and unwholness. (Richard Rohr)

  • My life has an inside. (Teresa of Ávila)

  • There is no light to guide you save the one that burns in your heart. (John of the Cross)

  • Act out of prophetic stillness.  This is the act that changes the world. (James Finley)

Robert Short1 Comment