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Center for Action and Contemplation

2025 Daily Meditations: Being Salt & Light

2025 Daily Meditations: Being Salt & Light
CAC Dean of Faculty Brian McLaren, Publications Manager Mark Longhurst, CAC Founder Richard Rohr, and Daily Meditations Editor Ali Kirkpatrick

The process of choosing a Daily Meditations annual theme is months in the making. This year’s theme of “Being Salt and Light” began with listening. The Daily Meditations editorial team invited CAC Dean of Faculty, Brian McLaren to dialogue with staff about what theme would be most helpful to our readers and the world this year and in these uncertain times. We listened to each other and considered the need for the DMs to create a prayerful reflection space while we collectively engage in the work of transformation.  

Since so many hands go into creating the Daily Meditations, from citation research to image creation to posting excerpts on social media, we make sure to talk to many staff members across departments and roles. We considered all the other programs and initiatives burgeoning this year at the CAC, bringing insights from our editorial team alongside those who work on communications, formation, learning, and planning. The theme development process is collaborative and often leads to some unexpected results. A potential theme that might have been “alive” in one round of conversations lies dormant days later, while something that only skimmed the surface early-on ultimately leads us to deep and restorative waters.  

In 2025, “Being Salt and Light” will allow us to explore what it means to be a transformative presence in the world, participating in the realm of God. As Father Richard writes in his new book The Tears of Things

When Jesus said we are “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14), he said we must extend this light to “everyone in the house” (5:15) in the form of our own “good works” (5:16), not just exposing others’ bad works. But light does what light does. It clarifies, helps us see fully, and gives us the insight, freedom, and courage to perceive ourselves rightly. Divine light does not inflate us with the pride of “I know,” but illuminates those around us with the gratitude of “I am, too”—a kind of joining “everyone in the house.” Both light and love reveal not our separate superiority, but rather our radical sameness. That quality is, in fact, the way you can tell divine light from human glaring.

Over the course of this year, the Daily Meditations will turn often to the Scriptures. Reflecting on Jesus’ teachings, life, death, and resurrection, we will draw courage from his compassionate ministry, especially to people on the margins of his society. Focusing on specific ways that people and movements are embodying change in the world, we will highlight how people are “being salt and light” in our time. In a video introducing the 2025 theme, Brian McLaren expressed his hope for the coming year:  

We’d like to focus on being a presence in this world that radiates and flavors the world with Divine love—a warm and healing presence to a world that is dealing with so much. Salt of the world, light of the world, will be our theme for daily meditations in 2025. A contemplative way of seeing the world leads to an active way of being in the world as a warm and loving presence, radiant with the light of love and truth, salty with justice and compassion, flavorful as salt that preserves and enhances all that is good in the world. Welcome to being salt and light.

If you haven’t subscribed to the Daily Meditations, we hope you will consider joining us on this communal journey of devotion, discovery, and transformation.

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