Recognizing Our Lost History

For too long, little or no honor has been paid to those who have laid the foundations in Africa for the preservation of Christianity throughout the world…. The roots and headwaters for this monastic flourishing had their source in African soil.
—Paisius Altschul, An Unbroken Circle

CAC teacher Barbara Holmes reminds us of the forgotten gifts of early Christianity, particularly from its African legacies:

African participants in the early church remained in the shadows of the main theological discourse despite the scholarship of Tertullian, Augustine, Cyprian, and others of African descent who were instrumental in the expansion and theological grounding of the early church. Although initially the spread of Islam limited the expansion of North African Christian practices to sub-Saharan Africa, the trajectories of today’s Christian contemplative practices can be traced to early Christian communities in the Middle East and Africa.

Some of these communities were led by women…. After Christianity became a state religion, the freedom that women found in Spirit-led Christian sects was foreclosed by an increasingly hierarchical religious structure. In response, many retreated to remote desert areas to continue their spiritual quests.

This desert may initially seem barren, dull, and colorless, but eventually our perceptions start to change…. Here we empty ourselves of our own obstacles to God. In the space of this emptiness, we encounter the enormity of God’s presence…. The ammas [Desert Mothers] teach us that the desert becomes the place of a mature repentance and conversion toward transformation into true radical freedom. [1]

If the desert is a place of renewal, transformation, and freedom, and if the heat and isolation served as a nurturing incubator for nascent monastic movements, one wonders if a desert experience is necessary to reclaim this legacy.

One need not wonder long when there are so many deserts within reach. Today’s wilderness can be found in bustling suburban and urban centers, on death row, in homeless shelters in the middle of the night, in the eyes of a hospice patient, and in the desperation of AIDS orphans in Africa and around the world. Perhaps these are the postmodern desert mothers and fathers. Perhaps contemplative spaces can be found wherever people skirt the margins of inclusion. Perhaps those whom we value least have the most to teach.

We are in need of those values central to African monasticism and early Christian hospitality; they include communal relationships, humility, and compassion. Laura Swan sums up these virtues in the word apatheia, defined as “a mature mindfulness, a grounded sensitivity, and a keen attention to one’s inner world as well as to the world in which one has journeyed.” [2] Inevitably, the journey takes each of us in different directions; however, by virtue of circumstances or choice, each of us will at some point in our lives find ourselves on the outskirts of society listening to the silence coming from within. During these times, we realize that contemplation is a destination as well as a practice.

References:

[1] Laura Swan, The Forgotten Desert Mothers: Sayings, Lives, and Stories of Early Christian Women (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2001), 168.

[2] Swan, Forgotten Desert Mothers, 25.

Barbara A. Holmes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), 10–12.

Image credit: A path from one week to the next—Jenna Keiper, Taos Snow. Benjamin Yazza, Untitled 2, used with permission. Les Argonauts, Camino de Santiago, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image.

In the midst of thorns, the mystic watches, waits and receives.

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Story from Our Community:

As I read this morning’s Daily Meditation about desert ascetics, I imagined enjoying the luxury of drifting off to the desert to pursue God in the desolate quiet. As compelling as that scenario is, it isn’t possible for most of us. We simply can’t pull away because so many depend upon us. Most of us play the role of a spouse, parent, corporation president, teacher or caretaker of a loved one and it can be difficult to sneak off to that desert. But of course, we can find other ways to encounter God: in the midst of a diaper change or a corporate board meeting or while washing our loved one’s face.… While I appreciate the draw of the desert, I find God to be very much alive in the cacophony that is our lives. I am most grateful that God remains among us wherever we are. —Mary P.

Prophecy is Love Manifested

In a teaching for the CAC’s Living School, Dr. Barbara Holmes invites the students to reflect on Jesus’ prophetic tasks:

What did Jesus the prophet do? As a prophet, Jesus performed miracles, exercised authority over nature and spiritual entities, walked on water, turned water into wine. As a prophet, Jesus healed. As a prophet, Jesus fed the hungry. As a prophet, Jesus taught prophetically.… He sat at the feet of elders, but he also taught with his heart: hearing the whispers of the Holy Spirit and allowing it to speak through him. You know teaching, if not anointed, is just the ego strutting and repeating information. Teaching prophetically goes beyond facts and material, and it reaches into the unutterable and allows silence and Spirit to do the teaching.

Jesus also exercised spiritual gifts.… Prophecy is a spiritual gift. Paul wrote about the gift of prophecy in his letter to the Romans. And he said, “We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us … prophecy in proportion to faith” (Romans 12:6). And although prophecy is mentioned more than any other gift in the Bible, it’s also stated that prophecy will pass away, and the only thing left will be love.…

Prophecy comes to life as love. Jesus the prophet is love manifested. We also can be love manifested in the world.…

As Christians, Jesus is the prophet who guides us. And this is what I want to share with you. You don’t have to eat locusts [John the Baptist] or lay on your side in rags [Ezekiel]. Perhaps all it requires is the willingness to offer your life “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God” [Romans 12:1]. All we have to do is recognize that the time has come to make full use of our gifts, that we are the embodiment of a new order. We’re following the example set by the prophet Jesus. During his time, Jesus was the embodiment of a new order, he was a fulfillment of the prophecy of those who had gone before.…

Because Jesus has come and truly overturned and overcome the systems of the world, he beckons us to do likewise. You see, the system says, “It can’t be done. You cannot walk on water. Gravity wins.” The system says that “religion is of no use except to placate the people, and you’d better put your money in growth mutual funds.” Jesus says there’s another way, the prophetic way, and even now Jesus beckons, saying, “Step out on the water, come.”

Now, you may be thinking, “How am I going to walk on water? I don’t even know how to swim.” Well, we offer our gifts to God and our neighbors, that’s how we walk on water. Your gift may be prayer or art or business or teaching, but the prophetic call will hone your gifts so that your very lives are a prophetic witness to the world.

Reference:

Adapted from Barbara A. Holmes, “We Shall Also Be Prophets,” July 2022, CAC Living School curriculum. Unpublished material.

Image credit: A path from one week to the next—Benjamin Yazza, Untitled 8, 13, and 7. Used with permission. Click here to enlarge image. Jesus used the mystery and variety of the natural world to teach us.

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Story from Our Community:

As a fallen away Catholic, I read the Daily Meditations seeking the lost intimacy I once felt with God. This morning I understood, for the first time, the true value of the Incarnation. The miraculous idea that Jesus (and all of us) became fully human through Mary’s conception eluded me until today’s reading. I have been asking for God’s light to wake me and this morning, s/he truly did! —Roberta H.

Prophets Belong in Community

CAC teacher Dr. Barbara Holmes describes our natural resistance to prophets in our midst:

Prophets are difficult to have around. No one wants to claim the title or do the work because of it. In this postmodern age, everybody is uncomfortable with prophets. They yell when you don’t want them to. They ask for trouble when you could avoid it. They don’t have a politically correct bone in their bodies.…

Prophets are leaders, but not leaders of their own choosing. Inevitably, they have some sort of divine encounter. A burning bush, a ram in the bush, a call in the night, visions, dreams. They’re quirky and more than a little weird. Take Jeremiah as an example, crying all the time. And Isaiah fasting and lying in the dirt, and John the Baptist eating locusts, and Huldah prophesying doom. Finally, one of the most important characteristics of prophets is that they are dangerous to the system.…

In bringing messages from God—and God doesn’t mince words—God speaks directly through them. They have a relationship and intimacy with the Divine. They communicate with God through prayer, direct speech; God walks and talks with them. Maybe not literally but in other ways. They have gifts, and they offer signs and wonders associated with the verification of the presence of God. They have communal connections. They act on behalf of community, not for their own gain, and are dependent on the community for help when they need it.

Holmes emphasizes the communal nature of the prophetic role:

This is a neglected but important aspect of the prophetic call. In Numbers 11:24–29, Moses is exhausted with the people. Basically, God says “Okay, okay, assemble the elders. Look to the community. You were never supposed to do this alone. I told you to do it; I didn’t tell you to do it alone.” How many of us are carrying burdens that are not ours, and we’re feeling pretty righteous about it? The work of living and dying and raising children, leading congregations, was never meant to be solitary work. So after the elders assemble, Joshua tells Moses that the elders are prophesying, and he says, “Moses, make this stop!” And Moses’ reply in Numbers 11:29 is, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that God would put God’s Spirit on them!”

Let’s just sit with that for a minute. Have you ever felt as if God’s Spirit was on you? Although many of the prophets in the Bible are presented as single carriers of God’s word, often there was a community of other prophets that they came from or were associated with. And so, who is your community? .… If you’re called to the prophetic task, and I think in some aspects all of us are—where is your prophetic community that will feed you and support you and guide you and help you?

References:

Adapted from Barbara A. Holmes, “We Shall Also Be Prophets,” Living School Symposium (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2022), unpublished transcript.

Image credit: Jenna Keiper, Untitled Bosque (detail), New Mexico, photograph, used with permission. Benjamin Yazza, Untitled 10 (detail), New Mexico, photograph, used with permission. Click here to enlarge image.

Image inspiration: This year’s images are inspired in form by the 2023 Daily Meditation theme. This week’s main photo takes up most of the image, but we also see a sliver of the image for next week: the next step on our journey.

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Story from Our Community:

I left the faith in my twenties . . . [but after a long journey] I still did not find a sense of peace and deep “knowing.” I finally felt that “knowing” when I heard an interview with Richard Rohr. It made my whole being sing. He gave words to what I have always felt intuitively but couldn’t explain. Reading Richard’s work and the Daily Meditations has brought me back to the well of my childhood faith with the added components of centering prayer and non-dualistic thinking. I would now say that I am an inter-spiritual person, aware that I must go down in order to go up. This is both frightening and exhilarating. I am so grateful! —Kael S.

The Living Church

CAC teacher Rev. Dr. Barbara Holmes finds hope in the innovative, Spirit-empowered resilience of the Black church in the United States. In CAC’s recent webcast, The Future of Christianity, she reflected:

The contemplative movement—which is now finding roots in BIPOC [1] congregations and African-American traditional denominations—is growing, and I’m watching more and more people turn away from an entertainment-focused worship style and leaning more toward a growth that is internal rather than external. One of the reasons that the Black church has focused so much on music and exhortation is because in order to survive or to remain Christian, we had to look beyond the tenets of Christianity to the mystical. We had to be able to transcend, and the transcendence comes when you are singing a song that reaches a place that words can’t.

I was in church last Sunday, and we go to a very tiny little church on purpose, because I’m always looking for places where there’s a breakthrough of the presence of the Divine. I’m not so interested in articulate sermons. And they started singing a song “God Did It Suddenly”—this is before the preacher even took the pulpit—but suddenly there was this moment where everything changed: “God changed the way I walk, the way I talk, changed my attitude, and God did it suddenly.” It’s that understanding—that God can enter in, no matter how devious the Christian tenets have become with regard to race, and suddenly change everything, can change the hearts of your enemies, can make you strong enough to be able to stand, can give you power and can give you strength.

The other thing that made us stay Christian, I think, is that we read the Bible differently, thank God. We saw Jesus walking on water and acting like a shaman. We know shamans. We saw the walls of Jericho fall from walking. And we knew that this God that allowed us to be transported in chains from Africa was the God who could also free us. So we weren’t listening to what they told us Christianity was; we had an understanding of Christianity rooted in our own African understandings.

In Holmes’s experience, leadership and ministry didn’t come from official ordination, but from the movement of the Holy Spirit among the people:

You always knew who had the gifts, ’cause they couldn’t fake it. If in their presence folks got healed, that was a healer. If they could walk up to you and tell you what your life had been and what was going to happen tomorrow, that was a discerner. And so there are all these gifted people around but they didn’t have any power within church structures, which made people like me realize that the real power was not in the structure of the church, but in the living church. The gifted prophets in our midst.

References:

[1] BIPOC is an acronym for Black, Indigenous, People of Color.

Adapted from Barbara Holmes, “The Role of the Pastor,” and “Read the Bible Differently,” in The Future of Christianity: A Virtual Summit, Center for Action and Contemplation, streamed live on August 23, 2022, YouTube video, 1:56:18.

Explore Further. . .

Watch the Future of Christianity summit with CAC faculty.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Image credit: Christopher Holt, Newgrange Triple Spiral (detail), 2014, Ireland, photograph, Wikimedia. Joanna Kosinska, Untitled (detail), 2017, photograph, Unsplash. Nasa and ESA, M104 Sombrero Galaxy (detail), 2003, United States, photograph, Wikimedia. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge image.

Image inspiration: From a past shrouded by time, we hold the known candle of our present moment toward an unknown and expansive future. Past, present, and future— Christ is present in each.

Story from Our Community:

The daily meditations and prayers from the CAC have strengthened my relationship with God in ways I didn’t know were possible. I have retrospectively seen how I was led to hear your wisdom through a complete stranger who was also on the journey for transformation. Throughout my life, I have felt an inner dissonance between the outer shell of my existence and what lies deep in my heart and soul. Daily, I read words from your meditations that continue to remind me that I am a steward of God. God is in me. —Gretchen B.

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Prayer for our community:

God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough, because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord, Amen.

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Experiencing Ancestors through Grief Rituals

On The Cosmic We podcast, hosts Barbara Holmes and Donny Bryant interviewed minister and scholar Dr. Walter Fluker, who shares a transformational experience he had during an ancestral grief ritual:

Walter Fluker: We hardly know the grief of our suffering. Certainly among Black people, but it’s true for all of us as you think of the Cosmic We and this universal moan [of suffering]. Even creation is moaning. Why shouldn’t we? . . .

I was involved in a grief ritual on Cortes Island off Vancouver, British Columbia. This island, all of these people from around the world were just going through these rituals. One evening . . . during what the Dagara people called the grief ritual, where we pay our debt to the ancestors through grief, through weeping and moaning that universal moan. . . . So [my friend Malidoma Somé] said just be free, so they started playing the drum and Sobonfu [his wife] was hitting some kind of shaking instrument. I just started getting down. . . . All at once, out of nowhere, my father is there. . . . I fell to my knees and I cried. I said, “Daddy, we miss you.” He had died in 1984.

I had performed a eulogy but never mourned him. I was too busy being me. I said, “Daddy, we miss you. Mama misses you, B. misses you.” I just went through the whole family. When I came to myself, all of the women had taken me to a corner in the room and they were rocking me. This Japanese woman whispers in my ears. She says, “You’re only five years old.” I didn’t know what that meant then. It was years later [that] I discovered, when daddy left Mississippi in a hurry, he sent for us, thanks be to God. I was five years old. I was still grieving my daddy’s departure.

That was one of the most healing moments in my life. He was more real than even in life real. So, I have no doubt that ancestors not only exist, but they are present for us. They come to us in moments of great need and trial, and they also celebrate life’s moments with us. They want to celebrate with us. . . .

Holmes and Bryant invite listeners to give space to their own need to grieve:

Donny Bryant: I guess the question is for our listeners . . . what trauma, what healing, what hurt, what pain that we need to be healed from could benefit from the practice of our own unique grief ritual?

Barbara Holmes: Yes, and how can the organized religious institutions, the churches, the places where we assemble to finally shed some of our arrogance, how can they help us to grieve, to lament, to begin to get free? . . . What are you grieving that you don’t know that you’re grieving? How will you process that grief?

Reference:

Adapted from Barbara Holmes and Donny Bryant, “Ritual Journeys through Grief and Joy with Dr. Walter Earl Fluker,” September 17, 2021, in The Cosmic We, season 1, episode 4 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2021), podcast, MP3 audio.

Explore Further. . .

Read Mirabai Starr on the abyss of grief.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Image credit: Jeremy Bezanger, Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut (detail), Egypt, photograph, Unsplash. Jon Tyson, Untitled (detail), 2018, photograph, Unsplash. Rasam, Takht-e-Jamshid (Persepolis) (detail), 2020, Iran, photograph, Unsplash. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge image.

Image inspiration: Human ancestors leave legacies in physical and cultural bones, while stones carry meaning and memory. How will you listen to the wisdom of your ancestors?

Story from Our Community:

I’d like to share a moment of contemplation I experienced recently. My mother was born in 1914 to a Portuguese farming family in Bermuda, close to where I now live. Some of her fondest memories were natural ones—the rain, wind, the sea, the hoot of an owl, a restless dog, or a galloping horse and rider approaching with a message. One evening, I walked to the dock next to my house, just around the corner from where my ancestors lived. In the silence of the night, I was transported back 100 years to join my ancestors, and I gave thanks. —Sandra R.

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Prayer for our community:

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Love Beyond the Veil

At CONSPIRE 2021, Dr. Barbara Holmes shared a story of her “beyond the veil” childhood encounter with her deceased Aunt Grace. Meeting her ancestor in this unexpected way influenced her faith journey and provided comfort that she was surrounded by Divine Love:

This particular evening, I was laying on the hassock [in my grandmother’s living room] when something very strange happened. . . .

I became aware in a hypersensitive way of sound that was recognizable to me as music, but at the same time, it was more than music. It was a sound that tuned my soul and it alerted me to the fact that nothing was happening in an ordinary way. For one thing, I was no longer on the hassock. I was floating toward the ceiling in a slow and circular movement that delighted me. I mean, I should have been scared because I could see my slumped body still on the hassock, but I wasn’t afraid at all.

I was happy to the point of bursting, and to top off this sense of euphoria, my beloved, deceased Aunt Grace was there. I didn’t see her, but I knew she was nearby and her closeness to me made me even happier. As I floated toward the ceiling, I thought about calling the adults in the next room, but I had no speech. There was no sense of distress as I approached the ceiling, but I knew that if I did nothing, I would pass through it and leave the Earth forever.

There was only a moment of conflict as I contemplated what it would mean not to be a child, what it would mean to turn to the hassock and to my supine body. I remember a farewell from my Aunt Grace, the fading of the music that was more than music, and then my speech returned. I was elated. I was breathless as I ran to the next room to report to the adults that I flew, I flew and Aunt Grace was playing with me. The mention of my deceased aunt stopped everything.

See, most families would’ve pooh-poohed my account of flying and visitations from a dead relative. But my family has roots in the Gullah culture of South Carolina on my father’s side and the Maryland eastern shore mystics on my mother’s, so they share a belief: everybody knows that the dead come back. They come back and forth to offer warnings, to bring messages from the other side. I was quizzed by the elders.

When I couldn’t come up with any deep wisdom or any important message from the other side . . . one aunt said rather pointedly, “Let us know if she comes to you again.” There it was, I had received affirmation Aunt Grace had been there and might come again. . . .

We live in a world saturated with the love and intentionality of an ever-present God, and we are not alone.

Reference:

Adapted from Barbara Holmes, “God in Thin Places,” CONSPIRE 2021 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2021), video.

Explore Further. . .

Read Richard on the meaning of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Image inspiration: Human ancestors leave legacies in physical and cultural bones, while stones carry meaning and memory. How will you listen to the wisdom of your ancestors?

Story from Our Community:

When I was a child, my mother would take us on nature walks in rural Connecticut, often to a special tree we named the Grandfather tree. In the shade of the tree, we would share a picnic of peanut butter sandwiches and milk straight from a jar. In my teen years, I would return alone, finding spiritual strength and comfort from Grandfather tree. I am grateful to the Daily Meditations for stirring the memory and for reigniting my deep gratitude that my parents instilled a reverence and connection for all creation. —Johanna Y.

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Prayer for our community:

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The Continuum of Life

This week’s meditations celebrate the gift of our ancestors in family and in faith. CAC faculty member Dr. Barbara Holmes writes of the broad and deep life to which her ancestors helped awaken her:

A world without ancestors is lonely. I am so grateful for the elders in my family who introduced me to the continuums in life. It matters how we understand our sojourn in this reality. If we consider our lives to be comprised of segments separated by a dash that encompasses birth and death dates, we will be inconsolable when trauma truncates our realities and delays our destinations. But, if we consider ourselves to be part of a continuum of life that does not end with death, but transitions to a life after life, our perspectives can change.

The community of the ancestors, already inhabiting the life beyond life, kept in constant contact with us. They sent messages and intervened when necessary. They prayed with me and whispered warnings. . . . Whether we call them ancestors or elders, only those women and men who led good lives in the physical realm are considered to be wise guides in the spiritual realm. In some African cultures, they are called elders, “the old ones.” Any elder represents the entire legal and mystical authority of the lineage. For me, ancestors, living and dead elders, commanded my respect and were always present, abiding and guiding me. [1]

At the passing of his mother, Father Richard Rohr experienced a connection or “bridge” to the life after death:

I believe that one of the essential events that we must walk through is the experience of the passion and death with someone we love, with someone we are bonded to, with someone we really care about. When my mother passed over, I had no doubt that she built a bridge—I don’t know what other words to use—she built a bridge and she took some of me over with her, and she sent some of herself back. I understand now at a deeper level what Jesus meant by “unless I go, the Spirit cannot come” (John 16:7). I think the normal pattern in history is for each generation to pass over, and to build the bridges of love and trust for the next generation coming afterwards. The all-important thing, for all of us, is that we be bonded somewhere. If you have never loved, there is no bridge. . . .

When you walk through someone’s passion with them, through someone’s learning to let go, and pass over with them in a moment of death, I’m convinced it’s then and only then that you really are prepared to understand the resurrection. . . . All Jesus came to teach us, and only needed to teach us, was how to walk through the great mystery, and not be put to shame and to trust that God is on the other side of it. [2]

References:

[1] Barbara A. Holmes, Crisis Contemplation: Healing the Wounded Village (Albuquerque, NM: CAC Publishing, 2021), 90, 91.

[2] [2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Gravity and Grace: Insights into Christian Ministry,” Collected Talks, vol. 3, On Church (Cincinnati, OH: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2000), Audible audio ed.

Explore Further. . .

Read author Nadia Bolz-Weber on God as a mothering hen.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Image inspiration: Human ancestors leave legacies in physical and cultural bones, while stones carry meaning and memory. How will you listen to the wisdom of your ancestors?

Story from Our Community:

The Daily Meditations bring me great deal of clarity and direction. I was inspired to think of my own ancestors when I read Felicia Murrell’s reflection: “We cry the tears our ancestors could not. We feel the fatigue they were not allowed to feel. We give in to the vulnerability that would have cost their lives.” In the past, I have blocked an emotional response to my mother’s life, but those words allowed me to feel for her with different understanding. Thank You. —Alpha H.

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Prayer for our community:

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Everyday Mysticism

The Rev. Dr. Barbara Holmes shares her experiences of the Holy Spirit and being an “everyday mystic”:

There is no template; there is no right way to encounter the spirit world. It can occur as a simple understanding of unity, the nonduality of an observer and the observed, oneness, feelings of sacredness, peace, bliss, transcendence, a feeling of changing and transforming time and space, or an intuitive conviction that the experience is a source of objective truth and ultimate reality. The ordinariness of my mystical experiences taught me that being an everyday mystic is not limited to ritual, visitation, and mysterious power. It also just broadens the scope of your personal identity. It includes normal gifts like healing, grounds us in faith, grounds us in our ancestral heritage.

Being an “everyday mystic” for Dr. Holmes is also connected with her time spent in Pentecostal churches. She draws upon what Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner (1904–1984) described as “mysticism of the masses”:

The mysticism of everyday life is an opportunity to deeply mine the depths of human experience, relationships with others, and our encounters with nature. Rahner says to be a mystic is to occupy the core of human experience. . . . Mystery is mysterious. It is! Sometimes it comes in stillness when you’re alone. Sometimes it comes without drama and fanfare. Sometimes it comes as an epiphany, an awakening. And sometimes, it comes while you’re practicing the gifts of the Spirit. . . .

The “mysticism of the masses” [1] that Rahner refers to is a manifestation of charisms, Pentecostalism, dramatic conversions, glossolalia (speaking in tongues), prophecy, being drunk in the Spirit or slain in the Spirit in the language of Pentecostalism. [2] Rahner calls this “noisy mysticism,” and he considers it just fine and real if it increases faith, love, and charity. [3] He urges adherents to self-examine their own enjoyment of the phenomena.

I have inhabited those spaces most of my life. If I had a choice between a tall steeple church and a pew in a storefront in the middle of an impoverished neighborhood, I’d pick the storefront, because I’d know that there’d be more happening in the storefront than in the tall steeple church. There’d be mysteries inside those walls. . . .

One of the reasons I was attracted to this “mysticism of the masses” is because it was a recovery of Africanism’s long-lost past—in the transport from Africa to the Americas that my ancestors made. We’re always looking for ways to reconnect and this type of worship was very, very stimulating, and given the fact that my profession lawyering and academic work was very cool and wintry, when I came home on weekends and wanted to visit faith spaces, I tried to find the most mysterious, strange, storefront, noisy mystics that I could. . . .

Perhaps I am not the embodiment that Karl Rahner imagined but I am a mystic all the same. . . . Every ordinary thing is infused with mystery.

I am an everyday mystic. So are you.

References:
[1] Karl Rahner, “Religious Enthusiasm and the Experience of Grace,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 16, Experience of the Spirit: Source of Theology, trans. David Morland (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1983), 47.

[2] Rahner, “Religious Enthusiasm,” 35.

[3] Harvey D. Egan, “The Mystical Theology of Karl Rahner,” The Way 52, no. 2 (April 2013): 49.

Adapted from Barbara A. Holmes, “Everyday Mysticism,” unpublished Living School curriculum (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation), 2018.

Explore Further. . .

Read Barbara Holmes on how God includes us from the very beginning.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Image credit: Arthur Allen, Daily Meditation Spring 2022 Series (detail), 2022, photographs, France. Jenna Keiper, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge the image.

This year we invited a few photographers to share their vision with us in an artistic exploration for the Daily Meditations. The inspiration questions we asked each artist to create from were: How do you as an artist connect to and engage with (S)spirit and/or tradition(s)? How can we translate deeper truths through a lens? How can we show our inherent connectedness (of humans, nature, other creatures, etc.) through imagery? This week’s images by photographer Arthur Allen appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Image Inspiration: My point of departure for this project was a question: Do precious things Glow, or are we casting Light on them? I found no answer (in any philosophical sense) but I did notice in my searches that some images—some “strikes to the eye”—positively wanted me to look at them. They called to me as if I had been ignoring them unfairly, the way I might ignore children’s jokes while I am trying to finish taxes. My goal became to ignore them less. I was surprised by how many of these children can fill a day, how many stories they can tell, and just how dream-like their jokes are. —Arthur Allen

Story from Our Community:

I set aside attending Mass, even before Covid. It just happened, this feeling of “I can’t anymore.” I didn’t lose my faith in God. I didn’t set God aside. But what I set aside was the “outward” sign. I instead, went inward. I found the voice of God inside me, stronger, yet gentler than ever. I am deeply grateful. It blows my mind and heart the words I receive from within.
—Gerarda C.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

It Can’t Be Carried Alone: Weekly Summary

Sunday
Just as salvation is one collective reality, so too is evil. It is always collective. —Richard Rohr

Monday
Francis and Clare of Assisi had total trust that Jesus’ way of the cross could not, and would not, be wrong. They trusted that Jesus’ way was the way of solidarity and communion with the larger world which is indeed passing and dying. —Richard Rohr

Tuesday
Twice a year we pause the Daily Meditations to ask for your support. If you’ve been impacted by these Meditations, please consider donating. Any amount is appreciated to help us keep these messages accessible to all. We deeply appreciate your partnership and support.

Wednesday
In loving solidarity, we each bear what is ours to carry, / the unjust weight of crucifixion, / in expectant hope for God’s transformation. —Richard Rohr

Thursday
In the midst of crises, a solidarity guided by faith enables us to translate the love of God in our globalized culture, not by building towers or walls . . . but by interweaving communities and sustaining processes of growth that are truly human and solid.
—Pope Francis

Friday
Solidarity is love crossing the borders drawn by self-centrism, in order to enter into the situation of the other, for the purpose of mutual relationship and struggle that heals us all and enacts God’s beloved community. —Stephanie Spellers

Spiritual Practice for Crisis

The Rev. Dr. Barbara Holmes offers pastoral comfort and prophetic challenge in times of crises:

The crisis begins without warning, shatters our assumptions about the way the world works, and changes our story and the stories of our neighbors. The reality that was so familiar to us is gone suddenly, and we don’t know what is happening. Where there is no understanding, we create it. When we are anxious about our lack of control, we conjure theories that quell our anxiety. The truth of the matter is that we live on a mysterious planet, with other living beings whose interiority and spiritual realities are just beyond our cognitive reach.

Embodied contemplative practices allow us to meet the challenges that crises bring to our lives. Today, we invite you to try one or more of these practices suggested by Dr. Holmes:

Breathe deeply and exhale slowly three times.
Your ancestors survived many crises. What were the crises of their days that required a communal response?
What is the crisis of your day that requires a communal response?
Sit for ten minutes. Feel the “troubles of this world.” Breathe deeply, exhaling your sense of helplessness, inhaling Ella Baker’s strength, channeling Rosa Parks’ quiet resolve. (Substitute exemplars as needed, but include one exemplar from a cultural community that is not your own.)
Remember an instance of oppression against a group that is not yours.
- What, if anything, did you feel called to do as an ally? Did you do it? If you did something in response to the crisis, what did you do and what happened as a result? . . .
- If your community were under siege, what help would you need or want?

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

Reference:
Barbara A. Holmes, Crisis Contemplation: Healing the Wounded Village (Albuquerque, NM: CAC Publishing, 2021), 19, 37.

Explore Further. . .

Read a week of meditations featuring Barbara Holmes on crisis contemplation.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Image credit: Jenna Keiper, Wire (detail), 2021, photograph, New Mexico, used with permission. Paul Thompson, Untitled Icons (detail), 2021, video still, New Mexico. Jenna Keiper, Wire II (detail), 2021, photograph, New Mexico, used with permission. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States.

This week’s images appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Image inspiration: When the weight of the suffering of the world closes around us, we can easily feel suffocated from the grief and pain. What would happen if in these moments we reached out to connect with others? In grief and pain, together. Not alone. Together.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

The Experience of God Unites Us

CAC teacher Barbara Holmes recounts her visit to Fellowship Church, a visionary, multi-racial church co-founded in 1944 by Howard Thurman and his wife Sue Bailey Thurman. This faith community is a lived example of how diversity can be honored and held together by a shared experience of God:

On Russian Hill in San Francisco, in the midst of a densely populated neighborhood, is the building that was the site of . . . the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples (or Fellowship Church). There, the mystic and contemplative Howard Thurman and his wife, Sue Bailey, began an interfaith worship experience. In the fall of 2002, I journeyed to this place. It was a pilgrimage of sorts. . . .

Here, contemplative practices are given priority. Time is devoted to a guided meditation, which is an element of congregational life that is unusual in black worship. But then, this is not black worship—this is just worship. . . .

It was odd and wonderful at the end of the service to watch the embraces and connections across chasms of race, gender, and social devastation. In my pew, an elderly African American gentleman extended a hand to an Anglo male sitting in the seat next to me. No matter what the older man did, the younger man would not shake his hand. Instead of turning away to end the embarrassing situation, the older gentleman kept asking, “Why not?” with his hand insistently extended. “I can’t,” the younger mumbled nervously . . . “I can’t because my hand sweats too much.” The older man patted him on the back and began to walk away, but thought better of it and returned to embrace the young man. How wonderful, I thought. When had I been in a predominantly Anglo or black congregation where the people were so different that this kind of thing could occur? [1]

Howard Thurman (1900–1981) writes about the conviction that shared worship and encounter with divine presence could unite diverse people:

Sue and I knew that all our accumulated experiences of the past had given us two crucial gifts for this undertaking: a profound conviction that meaningful and creative experiences between peoples can be more compelling than all the ideas, concepts, faiths, fears, ideologies, and prejudices that divide them; and absolute faith that if such experiences can be multiplied and sustained over a time interval of sufficient duration any barrier that separates one person from another can be undermined and eliminated. We were sure that the ground of such meaningful experiences could be provided by the widest possible associations around common interest and common concerns. . . . One basic discovery was constantly surfacing—meaningful experiences of unity among peoples were more compelling than all that divided and separated. The sense of Presence was being manifest which in time would bring one to his or her own altar stairs leading each in his [or her] own way like Jacob’s ladder from earth to heaven. [2]

References:
[1] Barbara A. Holmes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017) 86, 87, 88.

[2] Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 148.

Explore Further. . .

Read Jacqui Lewis on God’s vision for multi-racial worship.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

Image credit: Barbara Holmes, Untitled 24 (detail), 2021, photograph, United States, used with permission. Warren K. Leffler, View of the huge crowd, 1963 (detail), photograph, public domain. Warren K. Leffler, Demonstrators sit, 1963 (detail), photograph, public domain. Jenna Keiper and Leslye Colvin, 2021, triptych art, United States.

The creative team at CAC sent a single-use camera to core teacher Dr. Barbara Holmes as part of an exploration into contemplative photography. Her photos are featured here together with historical images in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story.

Image inspiration: Humanity is One although we are as diverse as flowers in a field. There is power in many different individuals coming together for one purpose—the March on Washington reminds us that together we have the capacity to be a transformative body and force for change.

Story from Our Community:

Here I sit, in the highest foothills of the Rockies. I’ve eaten my breakfast, read my devotions, and it’s time for my 15 minutes of meditation. It’s so hard to keep my eyes closed while God is before me in every bird and blade of grass. I see God in every living thing until I go up the hill where I’m spraying away thistle. I’ve always had trouble with the challenge of appreciating ‘oneness’ when I come to something, someone, or some idea I don’t like.
—Joyce S.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Recognizing Our Lost History

Explore Further

Practice With Us

Meet The Team

Prophecy is Love Manifested

Explore Further

Practice With Us

Meet The Team

Prophets Belong in Community

Practice With Us

Meet The Team

The Living Church

Experiencing Ancestors through Grief Rituals

Love Beyond the Veil

The Continuum of Life

Everyday Mysticism

It Can’t Be Carried Alone: Weekly Summary

The Experience of God Unites Us

Category Archive

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Stay connected

explore more

Recognizing Our Lost History

Prophecy is Love Manifested

Prophets Belong in Community

The Living Church

Experiencing Ancestors through Grief Rituals

Love Beyond the Veil

The Continuum of Life

Everyday Mysticism

It Can’t Be Carried Alone: Weekly Summary

The Experience of God Unites Us

Category Archive

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