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:

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.

Listen to the prayer.

Christ Suffers with Us

Father Richard reminds us that while we are invited to be in solidarity with the pain of others, God carries all pain:

Many people rightly question how there can be a good God or a just God in the presence of so much evil and suffering in the world—about which God appears to do nothing. Exactly how is God loving and sustaining what God created? That is our dilemma.

I believe—if I am to believe Jesus—that God is suffering love. If we are created in God’s image, and if there is so much suffering in the world, then God must also be suffering. How else can we understand the revelation of the cross and that the central Christian logo is a naked, bleeding, suffering man?

Many of the happiest and most peaceful people I know love a crucified God who walks with crucified people, and thus reveals and redeems their plight as his own. For them, Jesus does not observe human suffering from a distance; he is somehow in human suffering, with us and for us.

The suffering that we carry is our solidarity with the one, universal longing of all humanity, and thus it can teach us great compassion and patience with both ourselves and others. Some mystics even go so far as to say that there is only one suffering; it is all the same, and it is all the suffering of God (see Colossians 1:24).

Episcopal priest Stephanie Spellers helps us understand how our one “entwined” suffering spurs us to take action in solidarity:

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.

Solidarity is the voice that finally comprehends: “You are not the same as me, but part of you lives in me. Your freedom and mine were always inextricably entwined. Now I see it, and because of what I see, I choose to live differently. I will go there, with you, for your sake and for my own.”. . .

Latina theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz [1943–2012] sums up solidarity as “the union of kindred persons” who work together toward “the unfolding of the ‘kin-dom’ of God.” [1] The bottom line is not who wins or loses the struggle, or even who secures enough allies to flip the power dynamic. Isasi-Díaz wants us to see that the loving, sacrificial friendship at the heart of solidarity is itself the antidote to sin and oppression.

Domination, control, and self-or group-centric behavior alienate and separate us from God, from each other, and from ourselves as beloved children of God. By contrast, embracing union with oppressed and despised peoples, placing any privilege you hold at the disposal of the movement to dismantle oppression and alienation and to restore balance and wholeness to human community—this solidary love is how we most closely and faithfully follow Jesus and join him in beloved community. [2]

References:
[1] Ada María Isasi-Díaz, “Solidarity: Love of Neighbor in the 21st Century,” in Lift Every Voice: Constructing Christian Theologies from the Underside, ed. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite and Mary Potter Engel, rev. ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998), 32.

[2] Stephanie Spellers, The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline and New Hope for Beloved Community (New York: Church Publishing, 2021), 107, 109.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, A Spring Within Us: A Book of Daily Meditations (Albuquerque, NM: CAC Publishing, 2016), 120, 122.

Explore Further. . .

Read Richard on how suffering can’t be carried alone.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

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

Story from Our Community:

Deep bow… to the early light, / And the new day, / And the good night / To all creatures large and small / To the Mastermind who loves us all / Deep bow to the morning new / To the sacred silence / And the holy view / From the deepest deep / From where grace flows / To the highest high / Where all things know / In The quiet calm / In the here and now / All hearts beat together.
—Gloria C.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Coming through Crises Stronger

In September 2020, Pope Francis spoke of the pain and suffering caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Ongoing crises around the world have brought his message of solidarity into greater resonance:

To emerge from this crisis better than before, we have to do so together; together, not alone. Together. Not alone, because it cannot be done. Either it is done together, or it is not done. We must do it together, all of us, in solidarity. . . .

The big wide world is none other than a global village, because everything is interconnected, but we do not always transform this interdependence into solidarity. There is a long journey between interdependence and solidarity. The selfishness—of individuals, nations and of groups with power—and ideological rigidities instead sustain “structures of sin.” [1]

Pope Francis speaks of Pentecost (Acts 2:1–3) as an example of God’s Spirit inspiring solidarity, diverse creatures united to share the liberating love of God:

The Spirit creates unity in diversity; he creates harmony. . . . Each one of us is an instrument, but a community instrument that participates fully in building up the community. Saint Francis of Assisi knew this well, and inspired by the Spirit, he gave all people, or rather, creatures, the name of brother or sister. Even brother wolf, remember.

With Pentecost, God makes himself present and inspires the faith of the community united in diversity and solidarity. Diversity and solidarity united in harmony, this is the way. . . . Diversity in solidarity also possesses antibodies that heal social structures and processes that have degenerated into systems of injustice, systems of oppression. Therefore, solidarity today is the road to take towards a post-pandemic world, towards the healing of our interpersonal and social ills. There is no other way. Either we go forward on the path of solidarity, or things will worsen. I want to repeat this: one does not emerge from a crisis the same as before. The pandemic [Father Richard: and the war in Ukraine] is a crisis. We emerge from a crisis either better or worse than before. It is up to us to choose. And solidarity is, indeed, a way of coming out of the crisis better, not with superficial changes, with a fresh coat of paint so everything looks fine. No. Better!

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—and how many walls are being built today!—that divide, but then collapse, but by interweaving communities and sustaining processes of growth that are truly human and solid. And to do this, solidarity helps. . . .

In the midst of crises and tempests, the Lord calls to us and invites us to reawaken and activate this solidarity capable of giving solidity, support and meaning to these hours in which everything seems to be wrecked. May the creativity of the Holy Spirit encourage us to generate new forms of familiar hospitality, fruitful fraternity and universal solidarity.

References:
[1] Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (On Social Concern), encyclical, December 30, 1987, part 36.

Pope Francis, General Audience, September 2, 2020.

Explore Further. . .

Read Beatrice Bruteau, Stephanie Spellers and others on solidarity and structures of domination.
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

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

Story from Our Community:

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

“It Can’t Be Carried Alone”

Father Richard wrote the following poem in response to the collective suffering of the people of Ukraine.

How can we not feel shock or rage at what is happening
to the people of Ukraine—
As we watch their suffering unfold in real time
from an unfair distance?
Who of us does not feel inept or powerless
before such manifest evil? In this, at least, we are united.
Our partisan divisions now appear small and trivial.

Remember what we teach: both evil and goodness are,
first of all, social phenomena.
The Body of Christ is crucified and resurrected
at the same time. May we stand faithfully
Inside both these mysteries (contemplation).

In loving solidarity, we each bear what is ours to carry,
the unjust weight of crucifixion,
in expectant hope for God’s transformation.
May we be led to do what we can on any level (action)
to create resurrection!

The people of Ukraine have much to teach the world.

Explore Further. . .

Listen to Richard’s homily “One Body, One Suffering, One Happiness.”
Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.

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

Story from Our Community:

I first experienced unconditional love in a 12-Step group. This enabled my faith to grow in a truly loving God. After years of Church experiences that left me wounded and wondering, my primary identity as a child of God came when I embarked on the Christian Contemplative path—thanks to Fr. Richard and many others. Today I’m able to experience true kinship and belonging with Christians and non-Christians alike.
—Jo-Ellen D.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

A special note from Fr. Richard: In Loving Solidarity With All

Dear Friend,

The last homily I delivered was a little over two years ago, in March of 2020, right before the pandemic shut down the world. The gospel reading that morning was Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration of Jesus (Matthew 17:1-9).

In this story Jesus is preparing his disciples for the cross—it’s going to come, so be ready, he seems to say. Jesus knows it’s the only thing that’s going to transfigure them, and the same thing goes for us, too. You see, suffering has this strange and marvelous ability to pull us into oneness. Maybe you’ve seen it happen in your family, at the funeral of a loved one or some other communal tragedy. I think many of us felt it in the early days of the pandemic—before our dualistic politics got in the way—there was a sense that we were in it together.

Until we find the communal meaning and significance of the suffering of all life, we will continue to retreat into our individual, small worlds in our misguided quest for personal safety and sanity. A Crucified God is the dramatic symbol of the one suffering that God fully enters into with us—not just for us, as we were mostly taught to think, but in solidarity with us. The Good News is we do not have to hold that suffering alone. In fact, we cannot hold it alone.

As we approach Easter, let us remember that we too can follow this path, actively joining God’s loving solidarity with all. What starts in God ends in God. All of reality is moving toward resurrection. This is the great hope of our tradition and one that is becoming more and more necessary for the world to hear.

Twice per year, we pause the Daily Meditations to ask for your support. If you have been impacted by the CAC’s programs (including these Daily Meditations) and are financially able, please consider donating.

It is my prayer that our work at the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) has been a source of hope for you in these difficult and trying times. The CAC is not funded by any large institution or big foundation, but by thousands of people who have been impacted by this work—people just like you. Through your support we are able to introduce more people to the wisdom and practices of the Christian contemplative tradition, many for the very first time.

Thank you for being a part of this community. Please take a moment to read our Executive Director Michael’s note below. Tomorrow the Daily Meditations will continue exploring the theme of “It Can’t Be Carried Alone.”

Peace and Every Good,

Dear Friend,

When you make a contribution to the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC), financial or otherwise, you partner with us in our mission to introduce Christian contemplative wisdom and practices that support transformation and inspire loving action.

We can’t overstate the importance of nurturing the emerging movement of contemplative consciousness in the world today. But it’s not something that we–any of us–can do alone. That effort is going to take all of us playing our part in the great and unified body of Christ. While we live in different places and come from different backgrounds, when we participate together in the work of Love, amazing things will happen.

We believe that contemplative wisdom should be open and accessible to all. This is a big aspiration, but we trust that it is possible because of the generosity of so many of you who support it. We are deeply grateful for your partnership.

If you have benefited from the work of this CAC community, please consider making a one-time donation or recurring gift to support it. If you are able, please consider making your donation a monthly one. Recurring support helps us to fund new offerings, many at no cost, that can help others who have yet to experience the liberating value of contemplative wisdom.

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We are so thankful for your partnership and help in working for a more peaceful, just, and connected world.

Peace and Every Good,

Michael Poffenberger
Executive Director
Center for Action and Contemplation

P.S. You can donate securely online at cac.org/dm-appeal or send a check (USD only) to CAC, P.O. Box 12464, Albuquerque, NM 87195. Donations are tax-deductible in the United States. EIN # 85-0354965. We invite donations of any size. Learn more about other ways to give, including gifts of stock, qualified distributions from your IRA or an estate gift at cac.org/support. Contact us if you have any questions or would like further information. Thank you so much.

Stay with the Suffering

Father Richard turns to Saints Francis (1182–1226) and Clare of Assisi (1194–1253) as models of how we can embrace and bear collective suffering:

Because of their deep faith, Francis and Clare had total trust that Jesus’ seemingly negative way of the cross could not, and would not, be wrong. They voluntarily leapt into the very fire from which most of us try to escape. They trusted that Jesus’ way was the way of solidarity and communion with the larger world, which is indeed passing and dying. By God’s grace, they could trust the eventual passing of all things, and where they were passing to. They didn’t wait for liberation later—after death—but grasped it as already present.

When we try to live in solidarity with the world’s pain—and do not spend our lives running from necessary suffering—we will encounter various forms of “crucifixion.” (I do not use that word lightly.) Many say pain is physical discomfort, but suffering comes from our resistance, denial, and sense of injustice or wrongness about that pain. I know that is very true for me. This is the core meaning of suffering on one level or another, and we all learn it the hard way. The cross was Jesus’ voluntary acceptance of undeserved suffering as an act of total solidarity with the pain of the world. Reflecting on this mystery of love can change our lives.

It seems there is an inherent negative energy or resistance from all of us when we are suffering, and it is in those moments that we are invited to a more generous response. It is actually the necessary dying that the soul must walk through to go higher, farther, deeper, or longer. The saints called these dyings “nights,” darkness, or seasons of unknowing and doubt. Our society has almost no spiritual skills to deal with our personal and collective pain, so we resort to pills, addictions, and other distractions to get us through. This does not bode well for the future of humanity.

Only truly inspired souls like Francis and Clare willingly choose to fully jump on board this ship of life and death. They fully rode the resistance to which the rest of us surrender. Our lives can take this same ride—whenever we try to hold any negativity or self-doubt with integrity, and when we “suffer” the full truth of any situation instead of just taking what we think is the one righteous side. Integrity is often a willingness to hold the hard side of things instead of reacting against them, denying them, or projecting our anxiety elsewhere. Frankly, it is just another name for faith. Without the inner discipline of faith, most lives end in negativity, blaming, or deep cynicism—without even knowing it.

Jesus hung in the crucified middle and paid the price for all such reconciliation with reality in its wounded state (Ephesians 2:13–18); then he invited us to do the same. And Francis did so wholeheartedly!

Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of St. Francis of Assisi (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2014), 20–22.

Explore Further. . .

Read Richard on St. Francis’s solidarity with the excluded of his society.
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.

Story from Our Community:

I’ve been reading these scripture insights for over a decade. Though I surge and wane, I realize that the connection has kept me sane through the loss of my husband & two daughters. These daily readings have kept me hopeful and striving to reach that spiritual comfort spot. Thank you for sustaining me on the journey.
—Earline B.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

Sin and Salvation are Collective

The next day John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” —John 1:29

Father Richard Rohr preaches a homily on the collective nature of salvation and sin:

I’m convinced God is saving history. God is saving humanity. God saves the whole, not merely parts. One great misinterpretation of the Bible is thinking that God saves individuals apart from one another. That can’t be the full meaning of salvation. The real collective message is hidden in plain sight throughout the Bible.

Every proclamation of salvation in the Hebrew Scriptures is collective. In the book of Isaiah, God promises to raise up all the tribes of Jacob, and restore all the survivors of Israel, that “my salvation may reach to the very ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6). This is the first outpouring of the notion that God’s message was for the whole—history, society, humanity. All are saved. This usage is so constant throughout the Bible that we stopped noticing it. All came forth from God. Everything then exemplifies the mystery of God, and then everything (despite its worthiness or unworthiness) is taken back into God! We’re saved because we’re connected—not because we’re worthy.

As Jesus’ ministry begins, John calls him the “Lamb of God.” That’s not what history expected. We expected a Lion of God—an almighty, omnipotent God who solved all problems. Instead, the Lamb of God is the one who is vulnerable and powerless, who is taken and absorbed into whatever history unfolds. That’s what is meant by the Lamb of God who forgives the “sin” of the world. Notice, it isn’t “sins,” as in many. It’s singular, “sin.” Just as salvation is one collective reality, so too is evil. It’s always collective. God forgives it by becoming incarnate. If God becomes a human being, then it’s good to be human! Incarnation is already redemption.

Similarly, we are all complicit. We’re all cooperative in the stupidity and evil of human history. No one can stand up and say, “I didn’t do anything wrong.” As Paul says so clearly: “All have sinned” (Romans 3:23), so we all bear the burden of sin. It’s a waste of God’s time—and our own—to try to prove who is more worthy, more holy, more blameless. Stop trying to be better than someone else! Just forget it! All that does is make us egocentric.

I truly think Christianity itself will not be reformed until its basic proclamation to the world is that we bear the “weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17) as a collective. Paul called this collective mystery “the Body of Christ.” We’ve got to carry the whole. That’s why our central sacrament is Communion, a shared meal and a shared table. More important than being correct is being in communion, collected into one. If we don’t feel weight taken off our backs by that message, we’re not really listening.

Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Sin Is Collective and Salvation Is Collective,” homily, January 19, 2020.

Explore Further. . .

Read Richard on a holistic understanding of salvation.
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.

Story from Our Community:

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

Listen to the prayer.

It Can’t Be Carried Alone: Weekly Summary

Christ Suffers with Us

Coming through Crises Stronger

“It Can’t Be Carried Alone”

A special note from Fr. Richard: In Loving Solidarity With All

Stay with the Suffering

Sin and Salvation are Collective

Category Archive

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It Can’t Be Carried Alone: Weekly Summary

Christ Suffers with Us

Coming through Crises Stronger

“It Can’t Be Carried Alone”

A special note from Fr. Richard: In Loving Solidarity With All

Stay with the Suffering

Sin and Salvation are Collective

Category Archive

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