I have been under the weather, so for this week’s entry I thought you might want to read this meditation taken from Richard Rohr’ Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC). If you are not familiar with CAC, each weekday a blog is published and then a summary of the week is formulated and published on Saturday. (https://cac.org/daily-meditations)
The summary published 10/25/2025 for this past week is titled: Christianity: A Living Tradition: Weekly Summary is authored by Alison McCrary. I thought the ten contemplative spiritual practices were interesting. Enjoy reading the blog below!
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This week our meditations feature excerpts from the CAC’s latest journal issue ONEING: A Living Tradition. Social justice movement lawyer Alison McCrary offers ten practices to create a contemplative foundation that supports the work for justice:
As we work for this [more just] future as people on a spiritual journey, engaging in action for liberation in accordance with our Christian tradition, we are called to cultivate a contemplative life. “Contemplative activism” can be embodied through these ten practices:
1. Ground ourselves in spiritual practices. Know our practices. Cultivate an inner life.
2. Decolonize our lives and the systems that perpetuate colonized behaviors and mentalities.
3. Listen deeply to others, especially those on the margins of the margins.
4. Have a willingness to challenge power and build collective power.
5. Follow the leadership of those closest to the pain or the problem.
6. Build genuine relationships with those you are working with and advocating for.
7. Cultivate community and care.
8. Maintain an ever-evolving and deepening political analysis, values, and language.
9. Take risks.
10. Hold onto radical hope.
Each of the above practices also calls us to cultivate a practice of presence: to the divine, within our bodies, with our feelings (grief, joy, despair, hope), to and with another person, in the face of a person or institution causing harm, with nature, and to what is wanting to be revealed and created….
Being present, living into the ten practices of a contemplative activist, and staying grounded in our contemplative practices can awaken us to a new awareness of the divine dwelling within and among us as we work for good and move Martin Luther King Jr.’s “arc of justice” toward liberation.
As we do so, our own being and the divine being become more and more mysteriously interwoven. Contemplative activism is for everyone, not just a select few. We are called to reflect on the suffering of the world, our role in it, and what we are called to do in light of it. Contemplation invites us into the direct experience of God, and we can respond and act from a grounded and rooted space.
Reference:
Alison McCrary, “Modern Mystics in the Movements: Incarnating Holy Resistance, Radical Hope, and Contemplative Activism,” ONEING 13, no. 2, A Living Tradition (2025): 123–124. Available in print and PDF download.
Picture obtained on CAC website for the assigned daily blog, 10/25/2025.
Blessings,
Rev. Anne