Friend,
When I founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987—and even when we began sending my Daily Meditations in 2007—I never imagined how this work would evolve and grow. Over the years, our readers’ generosity has made so much possible! As I witness how hearts and minds have changed, I’m convinced that the CAC’s mission is still important.
Twice a year we pause the Daily Meditations to ask for your support. Even with all the suffering in the world and my own experiences of heart attack and cancer, I trust that God is healing and transforming all pain. In the time I have left, I have a renewed passion to help others recognize the divine image in themselves and every other created being. I believe this divine seeing will help reconcile our differences and change the way we live. These are the eyes that have taught me everything important.
I hope the CAC’s contemplative teachings awaken Love within each person. If you’ve been impacted by this work, please consider donating. Even a few dollars make a big difference!
We are committed to keeping the Daily Meditations free. As our online community grows, both our joy and our costs increase. But donations keep the daily emails going—day in and day out. Donations also fund scholarships and the creation of other programs that bring this critical, prophetic wisdom to new light.
Take a moment to read our Executive Director Michael’s note below about how you can help and the special gift we’d like to share. Tomorrow the Daily Meditations will continue exploring the surprising places in which God’s “image and likeness” is found—even in loss and dying.
Together let’s continue cultivating the likeness of God in ourselves and in our world.
Dear Friends,
I’m so grateful for this beautiful, diverse group of over 300,000 people around the world! In this year’s Daily Meditations, Father Richard has shared many ways in which we all are “made in God’s image and likeness.”
We’ve explored tough topics over the past year. We stretched the boundaries of what some consider “spiritual.” But as Richard reminds us, the separation of sacred and secular is an illusion. So too is the separation of human and divine, of you and me. We are all in this—life, the planet, our cultural and political circumstances—together.
Thank you for sticking with us, even if you’ve disagreed or been challenged at times. We need a wide range of perspectives and experiences to address very real issues like poverty, racism, violence, and climate change . . . not to mention the struggles within each of our own hearts. That’s why we’ll continue to share views and voices that challenge the status quo. In the Franciscan tradition, we’ll keep offering an “alternative orthodoxy” rooted in contemplative Christianity.
Our wide and diverse support from readers like you ensures that our faculty are free to speak their convictions. We try to make our resources as accessible and inclusive as possible, sending the Daily Meditations at zero cost to subscribers and providing a steadily growing number of scholarships for the Living School, online courses, and events.
This path is not about becoming more spiritual, but about becoming fully human, incarnating God’s love on Earth. Catholic priest and pacifist John Dear writes in our latest edition of Oneing:
If we deny anyone their humanity, if we do not recognize everyone as a sister or brother, if we oppose others who are different and seek to dominate everything according to our group or nation, we disregard the Gospel and lose our vision. More fundamentally, we lose our humanity.
The Center for Action and Contemplation supports the transformation of consciousness so that we might be our most compassionate, human selves. Oneing is an old English word used by Julian of Norwich to describe the divine unity that undergirds all of the divisions, dichotomies, and dualisms in our world.
Join us in praying and working toward Jesus’ vision “that all may be one” (John 17:21).
Peace and Every Good,
Michael Poffenberger
Executive Director, Center for Action and Contemplation
P.S. Please consider making a contribution to the Center for Action and Contemplation (tax-deductible in the United States). We invite donations of any size! You can donate securely online at cac.org/dm-appeal or send a check (USD only) to CAC, PO Box 12464, Albuquerque, NM 87195. Learn more about charitable giving at cac.org/support-cac.
