Basking in the Tension
When I lived in Venice, California from 2013–2018, I made a habit of getting outside for sunset. At the time, I lived near family, including two of my nephews. In autumn, I’d hustle home to Venice from Pasadena just so I could lay my eyes on the pinks and oranges hovering above the Pacific Ocean. I’d often holler at my nephews to see if anyone wanted to go and watch with me (they often did). We’d wander out to the beach, marvel at the sky, see the silhouettes of our neighbors with their dogs playing nearby, and lose ourselves in the feeling of sand between our toes.
When I moved to Indiana in 2018, the habit became a bit more of a struggle. Finding a horizon line between homes was a little more complex. Not having nephews join me made it all a little less playful. Getting outside for the sky’s color scheme began to feel less urgent.
But recently, I’ve realized just how important the practice is for me. It might seem like a silly little routine in a world falling apart, but it reminds me more vividly than anything that there is hope. “You get the bad news and the sunrise in the same day,” writes poet Karen Salmansohn. “The world is both burning and blooming / Let it all in.” [1]
I’ve begun to look more closely for the subtleties of the sky—the cotton-candy clouds, the streaks of yellow, the shadows cast on the fencelines as I walk the trail. These tangible signs of hope amid the wreckage of life’s realities keep me going. And they keep me excited about the ways contemplative practices can change our lives and help us survive.
On the hard days, my practices may feel a little cliché, and maybe that’s okay. As the CAC has focused on humility as one of its core values this year, I can’t help but ask and hope that our humility includes humor. It must, right? We get humor from the Latin umor, relating to fluid, and humility from the Latin humus, meaning ground or earth. What if we played a little more in the resulting mud of it all? I find I’m needing to take myself a little less seriously, to engage my practices with a little more lightheartedness, with more immersion in the imperfections of the present moment. I can laugh at the house blocking my view. I can allow interruptions from loved ones to be a monastic bell, as Paul Swanson once reminded us. When I release my own agenda and my own expectations within my practices, I engage in the undistracted now. “The time of mysticism,” wrote German theologian Dorothee Sölle, “is the time of the pure now, the now that is not distracted.” [2]
The day’s tensions aren’t going anywhere. “This is the dual citizenship of being alive,” writes Salmansohn. “Rage and reverence. / Grief and grace. / You are allowed to feel both.” [3]
And while it’s important for us to stay informed and present, it’s also important for us to take ourselves a little less seriously, to release the tension in our bodies so we might engage in the world with more presence, tenderness, awe, and bafflement.
“You don’t have to choose,” writes Salmansohn. “Let it all in.”
The Rev. Dr. Cassidy S. Hall, MDiv, MTS, MA, DMin (she/her) is an author, award-winning filmmaker, podcaster, and LGBTQ+ contemplative scholar. She is ordained in the United Church of Christ and is a Formation Specialist at the CAC.
The Center for Action and Contemplation’s mission is to introduce Christian contemplative wisdom and practices that support transformation and inspire loving action. In this issue of the Mendicant, we are honored to share with you articles from five members of CAC’s community about what loving action looks like in their lives.
References:
[1] Karen Salmansohn, “The world is both burning and blooming,” Facebook, January 19, 2026
[2] Dorothee Sölle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance, trans. Barbara and Martin Rumscheidt (Fortress Press: 2001), 175.
[3] Salmansohn, “The world is both burning and blooming,” Facebook, January 19, 2026.