Sunday
In honoring Dr. B, may we continue the struggle she so passionately embraced—the struggle for justice, the healing of the human spirit, and the call to radical creativity. May her “intelligence on fire” continue to burn within us as we move forward in love, action, and contemplation.
—Brian McLaren
Monday
What was it like growing up as an ordinary mystic? Dreams and visions were shared, discussed, and interpreted. Ancestors and elders communicated with us from the life after life. It took a while for me to realize that what I considered normal was considered weird by everybody else.
—Barbara Holmes
Tuesday
In the midst of worship, an imperceptible shift occurred that moved the worshipping community from intentional liturgical action to transcendent indwelling. There is no way to describe this shift other than to say that “something happened.” During this sacred time, the perpetual restlessness of the human heart was stilled and transformed into abiding presence.
—Barbara Holmes
Wednesday
The world is the cloister of the contemplative. There is no escape. Always the quest for justice draws one deeply into the heart of God. In this sacred interiority, contemplation becomes the language of prayer and the impetus for prophetic proclamation and action.
—Barbara Holmes
Thursday
When the ordinary isn’t ordinary anymore and the crisis is upon us, the self can center in this refuge that I am calling “crisis contemplation,” a space that is neither the result of spiritual seeking nor the voluntary entry into meditative spaces.
—Barbara Holmes
Friday
We can contemplate and consider together. We can expand our spiritual and cosmic vocabulary and allow the mysteries of life to permeate every cell. We have waited long enough. It’s time to take the transcendent leap forward in hopes of personal and communal healing as well as a shared cosmic future.
—Barbara Holmes
Week Forty-Seven Practice
What Are Our Priorities?
Dr. Barbara Holmes and Rev. Donny Bryant hosted The Cosmic We podcast together for five seasons. They considered our cosmic relatedness as the organizing principle of the universe and interviewed guests in the overlapping fields of science, mysticism, spirituality, and the creative arts. In this episode, “Dr. B” shares the call she heard to shift her priorities in the latter half of her life.
The journey of life is absolutely a sacred journey, but we don’t know that when we’re younger. We don’t want to think about life in terms of a sacred journey, because we don’t know for certain where we came from, and we don’t know for certain where we’re going….
In the everyday maelstrom of life, people don’t want to think about any of that. They just want to get through their day…. But when we get to the halfway point in our lives, we begin to realize that all the things that we have accumulated don’t mean a whole lot. We can’t take them with us when we die. As we age, we begin to take into account what really matters in life: family, relationships, love, commitment, service to others, all that matters…. It warms your heart to work with others. It changes who you are to lead with love….
I’m on the other side of fifty now, and all of my priorities have shifted. The ambition and all of the things that I was striving for don’t make a lot of sense at this point. The fulfillment comes in doing what you are led to do. In the Christian tradition, the Holy Spirit is supposed to lead you into all truth. I see the Holy Spirit as a guiding light—we’re walking by the path and there’s a lamp unto our feet that helps us to know what to do, how to do it, and to be still.
This is where contemplation comes in. It is impossible to shift priorities if we are in a constant, busy, frenetic lifestyle. There has to be that pause, that breath, that waiting, that willingness to be still until we know. Be still and know—but the stillness doesn’t immediately lead to knowing. At first, we have to be still, and then we have to be patient until the knowing comes about.
Honoring Dr. Barbara Holmes
In honoring Dr. B, may we continue the struggle she so passionately embraced—the struggle for justice, the healing of the human spirit, and the call to radical creativity. Watch her speak about how death does not have the last word.
Reference:
Adapted from Barbara Holmes and Donald Bryant, “Futurism and Cosmic Rebirth,” The Cosmic We, season 4, ep. 6 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2023), podcast. Available as MP3 audio and PDF transcript.
Image credit and inspiration: Unknown, Dr. Barbara Holmes Headshot (detail), photo, United States. Click here to enlarge image.
