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Love and Justice: Weekly Summary

Sunday
When we find ourselves wounded and marginalized, and we allow that suffering to teach us, when we experience the faithfulness, the mercy, the forgiveness of God, then we can become prophets. —Richard Rohr

Monday
God’s power for justice is precisely God’s power to restore people when they are broken or hurt. God uses their mistakes to liberate them, to soften them, to enlighten them, to transform them, and to heal them. —Richard Rohr

Tuesday
Contemplation, you see, is a very dangerous activity. It not only brings us face to face with God, it brings us as well face to face with the world, and then it brings us face to face with the self; and then, of course, something must be done. —Joan Chittister

Wednesday
In order to love, we had to counter the narrative that we were nobody with the sense that we were somebody, and that that meant self-love. And I think many communities who stood on the outside of the gates of power have had to come up with a way of finding themselves worthy and beloved. —Ruby Sales

Thursday
We must not separate ourselves from the suffering of the world. When we’re close to those in pain, their need evokes love in us. Very few of us have the largess, the magnanimity to just decide to be loving. Someone has to ask it of us. —Richard Rohr

Friday
Deepening your connection to God, in you and around you, do not be afraid to feel the love, the joy, and also the pain that are present. Don’t be afraid to have a heart and to risk breaking your heart. Feel into it all. —Adam Bucko

The Doorway of Shared Inheritance

Mindfulness teacher Rhonda V. Magee shares that the most effective and long-lasting approach to racial justice work is the fruit of individuals who do their own inner healing work as well. She offers this guided meditation in her book The Inner Work of Racial Justice:

We live in a culture in which we have lost touch with the unfathomable richness of our true human inheritance and with the imperative that we honor it, share it, and pass it on.

Take a few moments to reflect on what you view as some of the many positive aspects of our shared human inheritance. Consider anything from language, to the capacity to cultivate and share the foods we eat, to music, and to the various ways we have learned to thrive.

What are some of the things that the broad family of human beings have passed down through the ages that you value most?

What have you been given as a result?

What more are you willing to give back?

Now allow this inquiry to dissolve, and as you do so, let your awareness expand. Drop into the silence and let go, as best you can, of the sense of yourself, of your efforts and needs as apart from others. Allow your sense of self to soften. As you breathe in and out, imagine your human life story as a river, flowing into the ocean of humanity, all a part of the more than human world. Rest in the ocean of awareness, and all of its powerful possibilities from here.

Now allow yourself to return to the feeling of yourself in this body, in this place, in this very moment. Gather and center the sense of yourself as a body and being with lived experience that matters, in a world of others. Allow yourself to feel strong in your being and gifts, even as you interconnect with the experiences and heritages of others. Separate individuality and common humanity may come together in your awareness now. Gently allow yourself to feel the “both/and” of your own deep identity.

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

Reference:

Rhonda V. Magee, The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities through Mindfulness (New York: TarcherPerigee, 2019), 54.

Explore Further. . .

Image credit: Nathan Garcia, Untitled (detail), 2019, photograph, Albuquerque. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge image.

Image inspiration: Imagine our world illumined by love and justice.

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.

 

Justice is Love in Action

Contemplative activist and Episcopal priest Adam Bucko believes that contemplation is a universal call that prepares us to seek and do justice:

Intimacy with God does not belong to a special group of religious professionals but is and should be available to all. It is our birthright. It is why we were born. It is why we are here, to open ourselves “to the inner mystery of the heart of reality which is the heart of each one of us.” [1] To open ourselves to that love, to see the world through its eyes, and to live from it with courage and commitment. . . .

All of this has to start with each of us. It has to start with my commitment to a practice of prayer. All of this has to start with my adopting a way of life that can help me grow and nourish my spiritual life, including building community, so that I may become God’s hands and feet and microphone for healing and justice.

Bucko shares several steps for those beginning a path of contemplative action:

  • First commit to engaging with the world from a place of prayer, and not ideology; this gives you a felt sense of interconnectedness of all life in God and prevents othering.
  • Second, commit to doing the work of coming to terms with your social location and how it relates to systemic racism, poverty, militarism, ecological devastation, and some of the distorted moral narratives that are so prevalent. Are there privileges you need to acknowledge or let go of? Are there commitments you need to reevaluate?
  • Third, remember that talking about justice is not the same as doing justice, so simplify your life and commit to ethical living by buying all your necessities in socially responsible, ecologically minded, and human-scale companies. . . .
  • Practice works of mercy, making sure that your hands are touching the hands of someone who is suffering, [and] include Mother Earth in that as well.
  • Join a social movement, because changing your spending habits or serving others is only part of what is needed. Our lives and relationships do not happen in a vacuum but rather within institutions and systems that have their own crooked logic and are in need of massive changes. . . .

As you move toward a life of personal and political holiness, may your journey be blessed and may your life and presence remind those around you of God’s presence. Deepening your connection to God, in you and around you, do not be afraid to feel the love, the joy, and also the pain that are present. Don’t be afraid to have a heart and to risk breaking your heart. Feel into it all and know that every time you are touching the pain, you are touching the sacred wound of God. God who is always accompanying us and guiding us. God who is suffering with us. . . . God whose life-giving love and justice will one day be “all in all” [1 Corinthians 15:28].

References:

[1] Bede Griffiths, “Homily on the Feast of St. Benedict,” July 11, 1992.

Adam Bucko, Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide: Lessons in Engaged Contemplation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2022), 125, 128, 131–132.

Explore Further. . .

Image credit: Nathan Garcia, Untitled (detail), 2019, photograph, Albuquerque. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge image.

Image inspiration: Imagine our world illumined by love and justice.

Story from Our Community:

I am a queer Asian female. These Daily Meditations resonate within my soul – as if its seed were something I had always known – but reading confirms it, lodges it more deeply. The work of CAC is profound indeed for the world, with eternal implications. Shukran, Wassalam! —Anne L.

Share your own story with us.

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.

 

Hospitality of the Heart

Father Richard understands justice as loving solidarity with those who suffer:

We must not separate ourselves from the suffering of the world. When we’re close to those in pain, their need evokes love in us. Very few of us have the largess, the magnanimity to just decide to be loving. Someone has to ask it of us. We have to place ourselves in situations with people who are not like us, outside our systems of success and security, so we can read life from another perspective. The needs we witness will pull us toward love, toward generosity and compassion.

I think the icon of the cross does this on a spiritual level. The bleeding body pulls us into itself and into bleeding humanity, too. I experience this pull when watching the news, witnessing the suffering of people all over the world. I realize much of the broadcast is superficial and even biased, but it takes me out of the protective bubble of my little hermitage where I can live far too peacefully and comfortably. It makes me more aware that right now there is a woman in Syria or Ukraine carrying her baby and running for her life. I must take that in and be in solidarity with her in whatever ways I can, witnessing what she is going through: the anxiety, the pain, the fear. That’s what teaches us how to love. That is the pain we must allow to transform us and inspire us to act somehow.

All of us are called to the work of justice, which will look different for many people. My primary work is to send prayer and love toward those who are hurting. I do believe consciousness is the deepest level of reality. I also use my voice, through my teaching and writing, to awaken others to the reality of suffering and injustice in the world. I hope to encourage them to allow God’s love to flow through them, transforming and healing pain. I also hope that our Living School and other programs are helping to train and equip people to meet the suffering in the world. [1]

For theologians Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill, we restore justice when we practice “hospitality of heart” inspired by Jesus:

Jesus embodied the justice of God in his love, hospitality, truth, and grace. Jesus had a just mission. Revealing the justice of God, Jesus welcomed the stranger, rejected social discrimination, confronted economic injustice, spoke against institutional power, and repudiated war and violence. . . .

Carol Dempsey says that the spirit of justice is “hospitality of heart.” [2] When we open our hearts to hospitality, we feel compelled to seek justice. When we embrace creation, the poor, our enemies, strangers, foreigners, outcasts, and others, we desire justice for them. We welcome without judging. We love our neighbors as ourselves. We reflect the justice, love, and hospitality of God. This hospitality leads us to desire and work for the flourishing, well-being, and good of others. [3]

References:

[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love, selected by Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018), 238–239.

[2] Carol J. Dempsey and Elayne J. Shapiro, Reading the Bible, Transforming Conflict (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), 6.

[3] Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Graham Hill, Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2018), 93–94.

Explore Further. . .

Image credit: Nathan Garcia, Untitled (detail), 2019, photograph, Albuquerque. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge image.

Image inspiration: Imagine our world illumined by love and justice.

Story from Our Community:

I am a queer Asian female. These Daily Meditations resonate within my soul – as if its seed were something I had always known – but reading confirms it, lodges it more deeply. The work of CAC is profound indeed for the world, with eternal implications. Shukran, Wassalam! —Anne L.

Share your own story with us.

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.

 

A Theology of Somebodiness

On the CAC podcast Love Period., Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis interviews Civil Rights leader and longtime activist Ruby Sales. Here Sales considers how embracing our God-given identity provides healing amid society’s injustices and empowers us to love others. 

Ruby Sales: One of the things that I discovered is that when we think about love, we think about how is it that we love other people? But the first question is how is it that we love ourselves so that we extend [to] other people the love that we feel for ourselves? . . .

It’s hard to love yourself when you follow people who degrade your humanity and teach you to hate other people. It’s hard to love yourself when you’re being used by powerful people to carry out an agenda that buttresses their power but disempowers you. And so I think that the critical question that white people must deal with, and all of us must deal with in the 21st century, is how is it that [we] can love ourselves so that we might extend that love to others? Because I think that we have been taught to hate and despise ourselves. . . .

I think that in many ways, the society that I grew up in, in the South . . . if we had learned to hate ourselves the way the official requirements required us to do, then we would’ve never survived, and so I think that out of the Black community in the South, you have a kind of agape [the Greek word for unconditional love] growing up. I loved everybody, and in order to love . . . we had to counter the narrative that we were nobody with the sense that we were somebody, and that meant self-love. And I think many communities who stood on the outside of the gates of power have had to come up with a way of finding themselves worthy and beloved.

Jacqui Lewis: I love hearing the stories of your childhood community, Ruby. How did your folks, your elders, your village, how did they raise Ruby Nell Sales and your contemporaries to love yourselves? . . .

Ruby Sales: The theology and pedagogy of somebodiness—that I might be enslaved, I might be small within the state, but I’m somebody, not only with God, but with each other, and about myself. And so the pedagogy and theology of somebodiness. I’m a child of God, and being a child of God, I’m essential, and no one has the right to limit, or the power to limit, my ability to be somebody. So I grew up in a society where that theology was so powerful. . . . The white view of Black children as being inferior never penetrated my being because I was surrounded with the possibility that I could live into my highest capacity and to love myself.

Reference:

Adapted from Jacqui Lewis, “Ruby Sales,” February 15, 2022, in Love Period., season 2 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2022), podcast, MP3 audio.

Explore Further. . .

Image credit: Nathan Garcia, Untitled (detail), 2019, photograph, Albuquerque. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge image.

Image inspiration: Imagine our world illumined by love and justice.

Story from Our Community:

Reading the Daily Meditations has inspired me to cultivate a spirit of non-violence and illuminated a deep knowing in my own heart. My brother-in-law challenges me. We don’t agree on much—especially on issues of politics, and I found that spending any amount of time with him caused me great anxiety. I began to pray that his heart be transformed—but what actually happened was that my own heart cracked open. I now see my brother-in-law as someone who yearns for love and acceptance. More than that, I sense an emerging love within myself that is pure and unconditional, just like God’s love for each of us. —Melissa S.

Share your own story with us.

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.

 

Aligning Ourselves with God’s Heart

The real contemplative takes the whole world in and shelters it, reveres it, and protects it with a body made of the steely substance of a justice that springs from love. —Joan Chittister, Illuminated Life

Like Father Richard, Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister connects contemplation with the pursuit of justice:

The contemplative responds to the divine in everyone. God wills the care of the poor as well as the reward of the rich; so, therefore, must the true contemplative. God wills the end of oppressors who stand with the heel in the neck of the weak; so, therefore, does the true contemplative. God wills the liberation of all human beings; so, therefore, must the true contemplative. God desires the dignity and full development of all human beings. Thus, God takes the side of the defenseless. And, thus, therefore, must the true contemplative; otherwise, that contemplation is not real, cannot be real, will never be real, because to contemplate the God of justice is to be committed to justice. The true contemplative, the truly spiritual person, then, must do justice, must speak justice, must insist on justice, and they do, and they always have, and they are.

Thomas Merton spoke out from a cloister in Kentucky against the Vietnam War. Catherine of Siena walked the streets of the city when women were not permitted to walk the streets of the city feeding the poor. Hildegard of Bingen preached the word of justice to emperors and to popes. . . . A spiritual path that does not lead to a living commitment to the coming will of God, to the present Reign of God, to the Kingdom of God within and around us everywhere for everyone, is no path at all. . . .

From contemplation comes not only the consciousness of the universal connectedness of life, but the courage to model it as well. Those who have no flame in their hearts for justice, no consciousness of personal responsibility for the Reign of God, no raging commitment to human community may, indeed, be seeking God, but make no mistake, God is still at best only an idea to them, not a living reality.

Indeed, contemplation, you see, is a very dangerous activity. It not only brings us face to face with God, it brings us, as well, face to face with the world, and then it brings us face to face with the self; and then, of course, something must be done . . . because nothing stays the same once we have found the God within. We become new people, and in the doing, see everything around us newly too. We become connected to everything, to everyone. We carry the whole world in our hearts, the oppression of all peoples, the suffering of our friends, the burdens of our enemies, the raping of the earth, the hunger of the starving, the joyous expectation every laughing child has a right to. Then, the zeal for justice consumes us. Then, action and prayer are one.

Reference:

Adapted from Joan Chittister and Richard Rohr, Prophets Then, Prophets Now (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2006). Available as MP3 download.

Explore Further. . .

Image credit: Nathan Garcia, Untitled (detail), 2019, photograph, Albuquerque. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge image.

Image inspiration: Imagine our world illumined by love and justice.

Story from Our Community:

Reading the Daily Meditations has inspired me to cultivate a spirit of non-violence and illuminated a deep knowing in my own heart. My brother-in-law challenges me. We don’t agree on much—especially on issues of politics, and I found that spending any amount of time with him caused me great anxiety. I began to pray that his heart be transformed—but what actually happened was that my own heart cracked open. I now see my brother-in-law as someone who yearns for love and acceptance. More than that, I sense an emerging love within myself that is pure and unconditional, just like God’s love for each of us. —Melissa S.

Share your own story with us.

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.

 

God’s Loving Justice

Richard Rohr writes that justice is an essential part of God’s nature. It does not manifest as vengeance or “getting even” but as a method of restoration and healing:

God’s justice begins to be revealed in the Torah. If you are God, you don’t have any criteria outside yourself that you can conform to and make yourself just. God is simply faithful to who God is. God can only be true to God’s own criteria. For God to be just, therefore, is for God to be faithful to God’s own character and words. This is very different from any vengeful and retaliatory understanding of justice, which is the later juridical understanding.

God’s power for justice is precisely God’s power to restore people when they are broken or hurt. God uses their mistakes to liberate them, to soften them, to enlighten them, to transform them, and to heal them. No text in the Hebrew Scriptures equates God’s justice with vengeance on the sinner. It might look like that on the surface, but if we read the whole passage and understand the context, chastisement is always meant to bring us back to love and union. God’s justice is always saving justice, always healing justice. What is experienced as punishment is always for the sake of restoration, not for vengeance. Therefore, justice for the people is to participate in this wholeness and spaciousness of God, to be brought into God’s freedom.

Richard describes the freedom of contemplatives who have discovered the “prophetic position”:

True contemplatives have changed sides from inside—from the power position to the position of vulnerability and solidarity, which gradually changes everything. Once we are freed from our paranoia, from the narcissism that thinks we are the center of the world, or from our belief that our rights and dignity have to be defended before those of others, we can finally live and act with justice and truth. Once these blockages are removed—and that is what contemplative prayer does—then we just have to offer a few guiding statements of social analysis to name what is really going on beneath the surface of a system, and people get it for themselves. They start being drawn by God and by love instead of being driven by anger and retaliation.

True contemplation is the most subversive of activities because it undercuts the one thing that normally refuses to give way—our natural individualism and narcissism. We all move toward the ego. We even solidify the ego as we get older if something doesn’t expose it for the lie that it is—not because it is bad, but because it thinks it is the whole and only thing! We don’t really change by ourselves; God changes us, if we expose ourselves to God at a deep level. This is why Christian meditation will never fill stadiums; not so many people want their narcissism and separateness to be exposed as the silliness that they are.

Reference:

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer (New York: Paulist Press, 2014), 38–40, 87–88.

Explore Further. . .

Image credit: Nathan Garcia, Untitled (detail), 2019, photograph, Albuquerque. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge image.

Image inspiration: Imagine our world illumined by love and justice.

Story from Our Community:

I am an immigrant, gay parent, scientist and ex-religious brother. For me, the Daily Meditations keep percolating, challenging, and filling the gaps between my early beliefs about God, church, community, and universe, and my new views which are starting to emerge. The CAC’s teachings are resonating with our communities’ cries for justice, equality—and above all Love! —Armando P.

Share your own story with us.

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.

 

The Example of the Prophets

For Father Richard Rohr, the work of justice is rooted in the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures. He says:

Christianity has given little energy to prophecy, which Paul identifies as the second most important charism for building the church (1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11). Too often, when Christians talk about prophecy, we think prophets make predictions about the future. In fact, prophets say exactly the opposite! They insist the future is highly contingent on the now. They always announce to the people of Israel that they have to make a decision now. You can go this way and the outcome of events will undo you or you can return to God, to love, and to the covenant. That’s not predicting the future as much as it’s naming the now, the way reality works. The prophet opens up human freedom by daring to tell the people of Israel that they can change history by changing themselves. That’s extraordinary, and it’s just as true for us today.

The prophets ultimately reveal a God who is “the God of the Sufferers” in the words of Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965). [1] I’d like to put it this way: it is not that we go out preaching hard and difficult messages, and then people mistreat and marginalize us for being such prophets (although that might happen). Rather, when we go to the stories of the prophets and of Jesus himself, we discover the biblical pattern is just the opposite! When we find ourselves wounded and marginalized, and we allow that suffering to teach us, we can become prophets. When we repeatedly experience the faithfulness, the mercy, and the forgiveness of God, then our prophetic voice emerges. That’s the training school. That’s where we learn how to speak the truth.

The prophets were always these wonderful people who went to wounded places. They went to where the suffering was, to the people who were excluded from the system. They saw through the idolatries at the center of the system because those who are excluded from the system always reveal the operating beliefs of that system. Speaking the truth for the sake of healing and wholeness is then prophetic because the “powers that be” that benefit from the system cannot tolerate certain revelations. They cannot tolerate the truths that the marginalized—the broken, the wounded, and the homeless—always reveal.

Are we willing to take the risk and become prophets ourselves? It’s not that we get to preach or speak hard words and then feel justified and righteous when we are excluded. It’s that we experience some level of exclusion or heartbreak, and then we have the inner authority to preach what may sound like hard words. Sadly, they will sound like very harsh and even unfair words to people who have never been on the edge, or the bottom, or who have never suffered. The prophets always bring the sufferers to the center.

References:

[1] Martin Buber, The Prophetic Faith, trans. Carlyle Witton-Davies(New York: Macmillan, 1949), chapter 8.

Adapted from Joan Chittister and Richard Rohr, Prophets Then, Prophets Now (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2006). Available as MP3 download.

Explore Further. . .

Image credit: Nathan Garcia, Untitled (detail), 2019, photograph, Albuquerque. Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge image.

Image inspiration: Imagine our world illumined by love and justice.

Story from Our Community:

I am an immigrant, gay parent, scientist and ex-religious brother. For me, the Daily Meditations keep percolating, challenging, and filling the gaps between my early beliefs about God, church, community, and universe, and my new views which are starting to emerge. The CAC’s teachings are resonating with our communities’ cries for justice, equality—and above all Love! —Armando P.

Share your own story with us.

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.

 

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In a world of fault lines and fractures, how do we expand our sense of self to include love, healing, and forgiveness—not just for ourselves or those like us, but for all? This monthly email features wisdom and stories from the emerging Christian contemplative movement. Join spiritual seekers from around the world and discover your place in the Great Story Line connecting us all in the One Great Life. Conspirare. Breathe with us.