Hello, everybody, and welcome to day 12. So this is the third day of exploring what we might call the social or communal, side or component of contemplation. And I want to focus today in particular upon two virtues or commitments love and justice, that tend to emerge as the commitment side. On the other side of the contemplative silence. I've included here at the beginning this picture of Dr. Martin Luther King, most of you will recognize on the right and on the left is Father Ted Hesburgh, and he was the president of the University of Notre Dame for 35 years. And in this picture is sort of the perfect picture of what I think of as the expression of solidarity, where they are standing here side by side, at a rally in 1968 in Chicago was part of the civil rights movement.

So that's kind of the commitment side that I want to explore today of contemplation. And I want to start with a story. It's the story of Howard Thurman, who was born in 1899 in Daytona, Florida, and raised by his grandmother who had herself, Ben enslaved. And he passed away in 1981. And I've really come to see Thurman as one of the most under appreciated, but extremely important public intellectuals, spiritual leaders, pastors in American history. So I would guess that most of you listening have heard of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

But I'm guessing that some of you fewer of you would be familiar with Thurmond. And this is despite the fact that he was extremely influential in the civil rights movement and grounded his activism in a very contemplative or mystical understanding. have his own Christian faith. Thurman was an ordained minister of the Baptist Church, and throughout his career held several prominent academic positions as a theologian. At one point in his early life, he met and studied with Rufus Jones, who was a Quaker mystic and proponent of non violence. A seminal moment in Thurman's life came in 1935 and 36 when he led a delegation of black leaders to India, and while they were there, they met with Mahatma Gandhi and studied some of his tactics of non violence.

Gandhi challenged Thurman and his colleagues to consider how the gospel and the message that message of Jesus might help them to overcome oppression and racism that they encountered in the United States. Gandhi encouraged Thurman and his friends to see in particular that the spiritual struggle to overcome the Internal effects of violence and oppression have to occur simultaneously and alongside with the social and political struggle to overcome the external effects of racist policies and violence. This theme, in fact weaves throughout his writings which seamlessly integrate a contemplative understanding of Jesus and the gospel, and its liberating power with the struggle for justice in the world. You can see this a little bit. In his book, Jesus in the disinherited, he writes, it cannot be denied. The too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong and the powerful, and against the weak and the oppressed.

This despite the gospel, Thurman's book Jesus in the disinherited from which this quote is taken, first published in 1949, in fact provided a theological and spiritual framework for Dr. King and others in the civil rights movement with whom Thurman was very close and worked alongside of throughout the entire movement. We can also see the prophetic element of the contemplative tradition of Christianity in Thurmond. And another one of his writings, he says, the movement of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men often cause them to act against the spirit of their times, or causes them to anticipate the spirit which is yet in the making. In a moment of dedication, they are given wisdom and courage to dare adid the challenges and to kindle a hope that inspires. So this is the prophetic and hope for a possible but not yet realized, future that many contemplatives start to find in their own voice.

And Thurman certainly cultivated another person who has articulated very well and quite strongly, this prophetic dimension of content His sister, Constance Fitzgerald, she's written about the contemplative purification and transformation that occurs during what St. JOHN of the cross wrote in the 16th century and called the dark night of the soul. The dark night of the soul might be sort of the most difficult and challenging part of that middle portion of purification that we talked about in the three stages of the contemplative journey. So after a period of illumination, many people experience the struggle of purification, which eventually gives way to Union. So, this dark knight can include some of the most difficult aspects of the contemplative journey. And it's helpful to know that this is a normal part of the process, even that God is leading us into that, in order to affect a deeper purification.

We know that we're approaching this dark night when we experience What Fitzgeralds calls an impasse or maybe multiple impasses. Here's how she describes impasse. She says I'm by impasse, I mean that there is no way out of no way around no rational escape from what imprisons one, no possibilities in the situation. In a true impasse, every normal manner of acting is brought to a standstill. And ironically, impasse is experienced not only in the problem itself, but also in any solution rationally attempted. So an impasse we literally are stuck, we've hit a wall.

Many people can think that they're losing their faith or they've been can feel like you've been abandoned by God. But Gianna the cross and sister Constance and others, remind us that this is actually an invitation to a deeper and a new faith. So here's how she describes this in some other language, particularly around the social media. component of impasse. She says we see only signs of death. And by this she means in the world around us and war in ecological destruction, all the things that we can get down about.

Because we do not know how to read these signs these kinds of signs in our own inner lives and interpersonal relationships. We do not understand them in our societal or national life either. So she adds that if we're able to stick with these impasses, to stay with our practice and allow ourselves to be transformed. She writes, quote, this Dark Passage does have an arrival point prophecy, obsession with the past gives way to a new undefinable sense of relatedness or intimacy and experience of ultimate assurance. And this conversion releases creativity and most importantly, freedom for the limitless possibilities of God for hope So the struggle gives way to hope. But there's no way around that struggle, we can only go through it.

The contemplative path is a way of staying true to that path and allowing God to guide us through it. If we turn to what might be somewhat more traditional language, I've mentioned that we're focusing on love and justice as two of the fruits or virtues that are the fruit of contemplation. So the classic text here for love in the sense comes from First Corinthians 13, where Paul writes, now I know only in part, then I will know fully even as I have been fully known, and now faith, hope and love abide these three, and the greatest of these is love. So in Christian ethics, which is my academic training, faith, hope and love are considered the theological virtues. shoes that are given to us as a gift by God. The word here that we translate as love in the Scripture, in Greek is a god pay.

Or in Latin, it's translated into Caritas, which is the root of our word for charity. But charity here or a gabay does not mean simply giving alms to the poor, or something like that. giving money to a good cause. There's nothing wrong with those things. But a god pay or charity here refers to the highest form of Divine Self giving love. So love or charity or a god pay as a virtue is considered the highest virtue of human life.

It is given or infused by the grace of God. It's not something that we earn. We don't make ourselves good enough, but rather it is given as a freely offered gift. And once it is accepted, in our consent and the contemplative path Charity then or a cafe or love, directs and orders all of our desires, our intentions and our actions towards love of God, love of self and others. And we see this order of loving God above all else and loving one's neighbor as oneself in the famous greatest commandment from Matthew 22. Elsewhere in the first letter to john in the letters of the New Testament, states at this way, those who say I love God and hate their brothers and sisters are liars.

For those who do not love a brother or a sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. So love is really the ultimate purpose and point of the contemplative journey of transformation. Justice essential to this as well. The theologian Cornel West has a very memorable line where he says Quote, never forget that justice is what love looks like and public. Justice is what love looks like in public. So justice here as a virtue or a disposition, or commitment, like charity orders our actions and intentions towards the good of others and towards the common good of the society that we live and work in.

And biblical notions of justice are particularly focused on and concerned for the well being of the most poor and the most vulnerable. In the Hebrew Bible, this was captured by the widow, the orphan and the stranger, the most vulnerable persons in ancient Israelite society. So both of these virtues emerge as part of the transformation and the way in which we are committed to loving others, even all of creation. So I want to come up for air Hear in pause for a second. And you might even share some of your thoughts about this on the discussion board for today. As you are continuing to engage in and go deeper into your practice, I would invite you to really pay attention to how you are tuning in to others, especially to their sufferings, how others around you are doing.

People that you know and people that you don't know. And as you do this in your practice, and going throughout your day, as you are transformed, does this compassionate awareness? Can you feel that expanding your capacity for love in any way is a calling you to any particular kinds of commitments to the good of others or to social engagement. And I put up this image here again of that tree with deep roots recalling that our action on behalf of the common good or for the good of others. Really bears fruit flourishes when our roots are deep and sunk into our practice. Because God is working those inner transformations through grace, we are consenting.

And then we become more free to engage in acts of love and justice and commitment to the good of others and the common good. So one of the neat things that starts to emerge when you read some of the great contemplative thinkers in the Christian and really in any tradition is that universal truths kind of bubble up in different times and places. And you start to notice that these truths emerge in slightly different ways in different times and contexts. So here's one that I want to leave us with today. Here's a quote from St. Catherine of sienna. st from Italy in the 16th century, she writes, be who you were meant to be, and set the world on fire.

So you might think of that inner transformation and purification, as then freeness to be who God really created us to be to love and exercise justice in the world. Now Thurman has a very a quote, that sounds remarkably similar from a very different social context. He says, Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself, what makes you come alive, and go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. and elsewhere, he writes, do not be silent, there is no limit to the power that may be released through you.

So as we sit in the contemplative silence in the impasse and the dark night, especially, and we allow ourselves to be transformed, remember that what God is doing is loosening those chains that keep us back, that keep us bound, so that we can be free to really exercise the love of God in the world, for ourselves, for our own healing and for the healing of those whom we love. And ultimately, For the healing of the whole world. And when this happens, we are truly living what Paul wrote in Galatians. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Thanks again for being here and tune in tomorrow where we will talk about inter spirituality or inter religious dialogue as part of the contemplative journey.