Tag Archives: humility

Let’s Move Forward with Humility – CAC

Participating Today

Friday, January 10, 2025

Transformed people working together for a more just and connected world.
—CAC Vision Statement

At the recent Students of Life conference, Brian McLaren encouraged the CAC community to practice “engaged contemplation” as a way to participate in a movement for healing, justice, and peace in the world:

We know that what we do flows from who we are. Our work in the healing work in the world flows from the ongoing healing we experience within ourselves. Just like hurt people hurt people, healing people heal people. But it’s not like we get healed and then we go “fix” everybody else. We’ve met people who think that’s the case, but their sense of having it all together actually makes it harder for them to help others.

At the CAC, we often refer to Henry Nouwen’s image of being “wounded healers.” Our own process of healing, with all its pain and difficulty, helps us participate humbly, gently, and sensitively in the ongoing healing of others and the world. I think that’s why so many of us are attracted to the work of engaged contemplation. We know that what we do flows from our being and becoming. In contemplation, we’re attending to the curation of our own inner being and becoming. What we do in the world around us flows from this inner lifelong process of healing and growth.…

None of us know what the near or long-term future holds, but we can gain clarity within ourselves about how we want to show up. I want to show up as a person of peace, but not alone. I want to be in partnership with others to create a circle of peace—not a circle that puts up a wall to keep others out, but one that welcomes others in no matter what happens. We’re not the first ones who have tried to do this. We’ve got to look around, recognize, and be grateful for how many people are doing their part—what they are uniquely called and gifted to do….

We are so blessed in the Christian tradition to have so many amazing leaders and teachers who have been creating circles of healing and peace for generations. It is truly inspiring to learn from their examples. But our job is not only to learn from them, but more: to join them in this ongoing work in the world. Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and climate activist Katharine K. Wilkinson write, “Let’s move forward with love, not conquest; humility, not righteousness; generous curiosity, not hardened assumptions. It is a magnificent thing to be alive in a moment that matters so much. Let’s proceed with broken-open hearts, seeking truth, summoning courage, and focused on solutions.” [1]

Can we accept this magnificent opportunity? To be alive in a moment that matters so much? Dare we believe that this contemplative work and exploration and study that we’re engaged with is not to just make us happier people, but rather to help us be partners together in loving action?

References:
[1] Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson, “Onward.” in All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis (One World, 2020), 374.

Adapted from Brian McLaren, “Partnering Together in Loving Action,” Students of Life: The Webcast, Center for Action and Contemplation, November 3, 2024. Access unavailable.

Helpful Reminders from Lynn J Kelly

Hitting Rock Bottom Can Develop Patience and Humility

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My lifetime mantra was adopted from Yogi Bear. I just wanted to be “smarter than the average bear.” (See http://www.unfinishedman.com/smarter-than-the-average-bear/)

I’ve recently learned the hard way that my ignorance and greed are a powerful combination to bring me “back to earth” and, better yet, all the way to “rock bottom.”

Below is a recent post from the Center for Action and Contemplation which informs us that patience and humility are possible when we face our addictions and acknowledge our failings and what must change in our lives to overcome them.

May Richard Rohr’s words below bring some comfort and inspiration today.

Richard Rohr has learned from alcoholics and the Twelve Steps that it’s when we hit rock bottom that we realize how our suffering and God’s suffering are connected:

Only those who have tried to breathe under water know how important breathing really is—and will never take it for granted again. They are the ones who do not take shipwreck or drowning lightly, the ones who can name “healing” correctly, the ones who know what they have been saved from, and the only ones who develop the patience and humility to ask the right questions of God and of themselves.

It seems only the survivors know the full terror of the passage, the arms that held them through it all, and the power of the obstacles that were overcome. All they can do is thank God they made it through! For the rest of us, it is mere speculation, salvation theories, and “theology.”

Those who have passed over to healing and sobriety eventually find a much bigger world of endurance, meaning, hope, self-esteem, deeper and true desire, and, most especially, a bottomless pool of love, both within and without. The Eastern fathers of the church called this transformation theosis, or the process of the divinization of the human person. This deep transformation is not achieved by magic, miracles, or priestcraft, but by a “vital spiritual experience” that is available to all human beings. It leads to an emotional sobriety, an immense freedom, a natural compassion, and a sense of divine union that is the deepest and most universal meaning of that much-used word salvation. Only those who have passed over know the real meaning of that word—and that it is not just a word at all.

It is at precisely this point that the suffering God and a suffering soul can meet. It is at this point that human suffering makes spiritual sense, not to the rational mind, the logical mind, or even the “just and fair” mind, but to the logic of the soul, which I would state in this way: 

Suffering people can love and trust a suffering God. 
Only a suffering God can “save” suffering people.  

Reference: 
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2011, 2021), 116–119. 

An Integrated Life

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Doctor (and Sister) Joan Chittister shares her weekly Vision and Viewpoint newsletter today with her comments below on the importance of “living an integrated life.” You can learn more about her and the Benedictine religious community in Erie, Pennsylvania at this website: joanchittister.org/~joanchit/

“Do not lie, even to yourself

Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Gandhi could have been a Benedictine. Humility is about living an integrated life, a life in which each part is in harmony with every other dimension.

The person who lives a lie, for instance, no matter how effective otherwise, is in tension every moment of the day.

The truth is that we are meant to be transparent.

Be what you say you are. Do not lie, even to yourself. Don’t live two lives

At the end, three things measure both our integrity and the harmony of our own lives: self-control, respect, and freedom from self-deception.

a process of slow and self-emptying transformation

enjoy the rest of the adventure called life, learning, becoming, growing as we go.

—from Radical Spirit (Random House), by Joan Chittister

joanchittister.org/books-page/radical-spirit-12-ways-live-free-and-authentic-life

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