As per usual, grasshopper: you share a lovely contemplation on practices we all have need to emulate. Stillness. Silence. Separation from the mundane noise of everyday living. ❤ TYSM
Thank you Eduardo. The more I read about the lives of those named Saints, the clearer it becomes that their holiness is only expressed through their engagement with the world. Their time of stillness, separation, and silence becomes a true expression of God's presence in one's life when we open ourselves to others to bring God's justice, love, and compassion to them. Even Jesus, as you mentioned, goes off to the dessert, and lives in silence, only to bring God's gracious and amazing revelation of Justice; a justice that is the result of a profound and unwavering love for God, and therefore, love for those whom God loves.
There is a temptation to view contemplation as a means to an end. Both on the end of viewing it as a form of psychic relaxation or as a means to achieving certain political ends. Contemplation, much like true justice, is about reuniting the human person, who is alienated from God, to God and thereby making for a realization of our unity with one another. Even the title of my post is misleading. It is not that one can pursue action and contemplation as two distinct categories, but that contemplation is itself also true justice, and justice (properly ordered) is an expression of contemplation.
As a people who have been inundated with a perspective that we always need to be "doing things" (casually dismissing contemplation as simple inaction) we must regain the ancient understanding of contemplation as a return to our most natural and basic state that is a pre-requisite for any "work" that we do in the world. It is why social justice, absent from an understanding of God is doomed to fail because it fails to account for those deeper, more original human longings that cannot be found in the amelioration of certain material deprivations.
As per usual, grasshopper: you share a lovely contemplation on practices we all have need to emulate. Stillness. Silence. Separation from the mundane noise of everyday living. ❤ TYSM
Thank you Eduardo. The more I read about the lives of those named Saints, the clearer it becomes that their holiness is only expressed through their engagement with the world. Their time of stillness, separation, and silence becomes a true expression of God's presence in one's life when we open ourselves to others to bring God's justice, love, and compassion to them. Even Jesus, as you mentioned, goes off to the dessert, and lives in silence, only to bring God's gracious and amazing revelation of Justice; a justice that is the result of a profound and unwavering love for God, and therefore, love for those whom God loves.
There is a temptation to view contemplation as a means to an end. Both on the end of viewing it as a form of psychic relaxation or as a means to achieving certain political ends. Contemplation, much like true justice, is about reuniting the human person, who is alienated from God, to God and thereby making for a realization of our unity with one another. Even the title of my post is misleading. It is not that one can pursue action and contemplation as two distinct categories, but that contemplation is itself also true justice, and justice (properly ordered) is an expression of contemplation.
As a people who have been inundated with a perspective that we always need to be "doing things" (casually dismissing contemplation as simple inaction) we must regain the ancient understanding of contemplation as a return to our most natural and basic state that is a pre-requisite for any "work" that we do in the world. It is why social justice, absent from an understanding of God is doomed to fail because it fails to account for those deeper, more original human longings that cannot be found in the amelioration of certain material deprivations.
Thank you!