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Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Twenty-eight

Contemplative Activists

Peace and Advocacy for the Poor
Monday, July 13, 2020

Dorothy Day (1897-1980) gives us a clear example of a contemplative activist. In her case, she began with activism, converted to Catholicism around age 30, and eventually lived out her two callings in a powerful and effective way. My friend John Dear, himself a contemplative activist, writes this about Dorothy Day:

An activist and journalist living in New York City’s Greenwich Village, [Dorothy Day] fought for labor rights, women’s rights, and an end to World War I. In 1927, after her daughter Tamar was born, she was filled with gratitude and received the gift of faith. She decided that the two of them should be baptized in the [Catholic] Church. In response, her partner promptly left her.

It was 1932, and Dorothy didn’t know what to do or how to be a radical Catholic Christian. While attending a march against hunger in Washington, D.C., she prayed that God would open up a way for her to practice her radical politics as a devout Catholic. Her prayer was answered in the person of Peter Maurin, a French peasant intellectual who was waiting for her back in New York. Within a few months, they founded the Catholic Worker Movement [on May 1, 1933]. [1]

The Catholic Worker Movement is alive and well today, with over 200 active communities. Catholic Workers commit to voluntary poverty, prayer, nonviolence, and hospitality to those in need. They also protest and take action against systems of injustice, war, racism, and all forms of violence. [2] Robert Ellsberg, who worked with Dorothy Day in New York, continues:

[Dorothy Day’s] spirituality and her social witness were equally rooted in the radical implications of the Incarnation. In Christ God assumed our humanity. And we could not worship God without honoring God’s image in our fellow human beings. We should feed them when they were hungry; shelter them when they were homeless. We should not torture them; we should not kill them.

In the 1950s Day and the Catholic Worker took on a more activist profile. She was repeatedly jailed for refusing to take shelter during compulsory civil defense drills in New York City. In the 1960s her activities reflected the turbulence of the times—protesting the Vietnam War, fasting in Rome during the Second Vatican Council to advance the cause of peace. She was last arrested while picketing with the United Farm Workers in 1973 at the age of seventy-five.

By this time she was widely honored as the radical conscience of the American Catholic church. But her life was not primarily occupied by activism or protest. She was a woman of prayer, beginning each day with meditation on scripture, attending daily Mass, and reciting the breviary [daily psalms, scripture readings, and prayers]. By and large, her life was spent in very ordinary ways, her sanctity expressed not just in heroic deeds but in the mundane duties of everyday life. Her “spirituality” was rooted in a constant effort to be more charitable toward those closest at hand. [3]

Gateway to Action & Contemplation:
What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do?

Prayer for Our Community:
O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen.

Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer.

Story from Our Community:
Who am I when there is no more rushing around? Troubling emotions arise to the surface even in my dreams. In contemplation I find a spacious place where I can bring the messiness of my inner world to a peaceful center. From there flows service to those in my immediate circles, particularly my elderly parents. In little things I take delight: conversations over coffee with my wife, a morning jog, the sighting of a goldfinch. —Tom A.

Share your own story with us.

[1] John Dear, “You Will Be My Witnesses”: Saints, Prophets, and Martyrs, icons by William Hart McNichols (Orbis Books: 2006), 125.

[2] https://www.catholicworker.org

[3] Modern Spiritual Masters: Writings on Contemplation and Compassion, ed. Robert Ellsberg (Orbis Books: 2008), 163.

Image credit: Fannie Lou Hamer (detail), courtesy of artist Robert Shetterly and Americans Who Tell the Truth, c. 2007. The portrait is not for sale and travels with the collection. It is currently on exhibition in Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia. Used with permission of the artist.

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News from the CAC

Breathing Under Water

Join others seeking freedom from the ego and unhealthy attachments, while also deepening your connection to the Divine. Based on Richard Rohr's best-selling book, Breathing Under Water is an online course where you can deepen your awareness of unhealthy habits like codependency and dualistic thinking. Apply for financial assistance by Aug. 12. Registrations ends Aug. 19 or when full.

Free Essay: Contemplating Anger by Barbara Holmes

In these times of suffering and disorder, we look for a path to solidarity with those held down by dehumanizing systems of oppression. We invite you to read Contemplating Anger, a 2018 ONEING essay by faculty member Dr. Barbara Holmes, in hopes that her words will help us step across the boundaries of our comfortable certainties and embrace a communal contemplative movement of racial solidarity.

Action & Contemplation

2020 Daily Meditations Theme

What does God ask of us? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. —Micah 6:8

Franciscan Richard Rohr founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987 because he saw a deep need for the integration of both action and contemplation. If we pray but don’t act justly, our faith won’t bear fruit. And without contemplation, activists burn out and even well-intended actions can cause more harm than good. In today’s religious, environmental, and political climate our compassionate engagement is urgent and vital.

In this year’s Daily Meditations, Father Richard helps us learn the dance of action and contemplation. Each week builds on previous topics, but you can join at any time! Click the video to learn more about the theme and to find reflections you may have missed.

Click here to learn about contemplative prayer and other forms of meditation. For frequently asked questions—such as what versions of the Bible Father Richard recommends or how to ensure you receive every meditation—please see our email FAQ. Visit cac.org to explore other ways to connect with the Center for Action and Contemplation.

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Inspiration for this week's banner image: Fannie Lou Hamer faced daunting odds, as she was not dealing with an abusive individual but instead the power of federal, state, and local governments and cultural traditions that deemed her to be a nonperson. —Barbara Holmes