It never ceases to amaze me how so often my contemplative life and my reading life intertwine.

For example, yesterday as I was conceptualizing this blog having felt the need (if only for myself) as I was reading, wrestling, and contemplating over the peaceful morning flickering candlelight that I realized just how angry I constantly was while joining protests during 2020.

Not to say I don’t believe in or support the efforts and demand to eradicate systemic injustice and brutality. I absolutely do.

What I mean to say, is that when I was engaging in this way at that time, I was constantly exhausted and defensive and mentally preparing arguments for the next attack from a very small, very dark place. I tied my morality, my identity, and my worth to my opinions and my actions, and that was neither healthy nor sustainable.

Perhaps there is a way for me to engage more productively in protests in the future, and perhaps my pen is my protest and that is the action to which I must commit.

I’m not yet sure.

What I do know is that I made a lot of mistakes as I sought to find myself and my place in a confusing world and that today as I was reading, Richard Rohr encapsulated my thinking on both these points so succinctly and poignantly.

I’ve met so many wonderful social activists. I often agree with their conclusions and with their politics, but, to be honest. . . they [often] seem to be as alienated, angry, and negative as are the people not the other side of the argument. (p. 87)

Dancing Standing Still

This is how I find myself to have been–in hindsight. Not to say this is true of everyone, but I most definitely fell into this very suffocating, for me, trap. I agree with what I was trying to do just not how I did it, and I don’t want to engage in the same small, angry way I did then with the injustices I see today.

I am just as passionate and troubled and upset over many of the things I see happening in our world today, and I feel I must try a different tact.

As Rohr wrote just two pages earlier,

But as we come to know our soul gift more clearly, we almost always have to let go of some other ‘gifts’ so we can do our one or two things with integrity, instead of always being driven by what has been called ‘the tyranny of the urgent.’ Soon urgency is a way of life, and things are not done contemplatively or peacefully from within. Do one or two things wholeheartedly in your life: that is all God expects and all you can probably do well. Too much good work becomes a violence to yourself, and finally, to those around you. (p.85)

This is where I find myself today. Attempting to live slowly, thoughtfully, purposefully, and with integrity. I’m trying to scale back, so that what I do, I can do well and with fewer mistakes and damaged relationships along the way.

By no means am I there, but hold me accountable, and please have grace when I blunder, as this is what I aim to pursue.