Action + Contemplation - ALTER podcast episode 45
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My friends,
We’re invited to the revolution.
The great turning and unlearning underway right now.
I’m committed to the art of both/and.
That’s what this podcast explores.
Hustle and flow.
Loss and grace.
as i’ve been thinking about it these last few weeks:
Action and contemplation.
This episode is going to focus a bit more on contemplation. Next episode will focus more on action.
There’s a really special place in the high desert outside Albuquerque, New Mexico called The Center for Action and Contemplation. I’m gonna say that again because it’s maybe the best name of an organization I’ve ever heard:
The Center for Action and Contemplation
Can you imagine if some of our political or policing centers were renamed: ‘a center for action and contemplation’?
It was founded by Father Richard Rohr, one of most important spiritual elders of our age.
I can’t recommend his work highly enough, especially his books Everything Belongs, and The Universal Christ.
He's in his 70’s now, and doing the best work of his life, as this funky mashup of orthodoxy and unorthodoxy. He’s a Franciscan friar—a priest since his early 20’s—in the tradition of St. Francis. Do you know about St. Francis? His legacy is a powerful beacon for us right now, as we face the possibility of rebuilding America, and perhaps the world economy, on a foundation of justice. Let’s explore his story for a minute. St. Francis was a boy from a wealthy Italian family in Assisi, Italy in the 12th-century.
He was a major figure in shaping the Italian Renaissance—a word that means rebirth—which stretched across art, and politics, and religion. It was essentially a flowering of the imagination, which sparked reinvention of systems—we might think about that as a model and a possibility for where we are now. Writers and artists like Dante, Giotto, Michaelangelo, Donatello, and Leonardo da Vinci all emerged from this revolution, this rebirth, centered around the city of Florence. Anyway, Francis was out riding his horse one day and he encountered a leper walking along the road (also an intriguing encounter given this pandemic we’re in the midst of). He started to turn away to avoid contact, but something inside of him sparked, and he turned toward the man, dismounted his horse, and hugged and kissed him. A while later, he came upon an old, run-down chapel in the countryside of San Damiano and went inside and began to pray, and the crucifix somehow spoke to him and said:
Francis, repair my house, which is falling into ruin.
So he went back to his family’s luxe home, gave up everything he was entitled to, including is clothes, and walked out naked.
He ended up serving the lepers, rebuilding the chapel, celebrating the natural world, and democratizing what spiritual leadership could look like. There’s more to the story and it’s worth reading, but I want to highlight a couple things:
Of his time with the lepers, he wrote in his journal:
‘When I had once become acquainted with them,
what had previously nauseated me
became a source of physical consolation for me.’
When I had once become acquainted with them
hear it -
When I had once become acquainted with them
We are in the midst of facing our demons. On a personal, national, and global level. The uprisings toward racial justice are happening within the matrix—let’s remember that word means womb—of the coronavirus pandemic. The teaching of this pandemic—costly as it has been—is that we are all one. My health is bound up in your health and your health is bound up in my health. We are one organism. And our systems of inequality and injustice are being exposed as the systems that cause African Americans, in particular, to suffer the effects of this pandemic disproportionately from the rest of the American population. It’s within that matrix—that womb—of teaching that we are ONE organism, and our systems oppose that truth, that this uprising toward justice is unfolding. We are confronting our oneness and the pain and injustice of our division. We are confronting our collective complicity in these structures. And we are seeing, hopefully participating, in revolution we could not have imagined months ago. Statues toppling down—icons of oppression and racism, and patriarchy. Oppressive leaders toppling down. A system of violent policing being slowly dismantled. When I say ‘we’, I’m very much aware that I’m speaking as a white woman who has experienced many cultural privileges associated with that. But from the deepest part of me, I want to speak, and live, and collectively create as a WE. I want to create personal offerings, and community, and communal experiences that are radically hospitable — at their core, hospitable, built upon a foundation of hospitality. That go beyond inviting all, celebrating all. A community that amplifies marginalized voices and follows leadership of those who have been disempowered. That spreads a welcome mat of mutual vulnerability for the stories we are re-writing and the dreams we are creating. The rebel pastor or as she fabulously refers to herself pastrix, Nadia Bolz Weber, who founded what I think of as a modern day Franciscan community called The House for all Sinners and Saints (read her great book about) uses an image I love: Have you ever flown over farm country and seen crop circles—those circular patterns of cultivation in fields? Well, they’re created by the design of irrigation systems: one long rotation sprinkler system that spins in a circle (maybe you’ve seen one?). What’s left out are the corners. They don’t grow to capacity because they’re not irrigated. That’s the way so many of our organizations function. The outliers, the minorities, the misfits aren’t irrigated, cultivated, heard, mentored, spotlit. I want to honor the corners.
The phrase that’s been circulating through my heart lately is:
‘with reverence for all’
Building, creating, collaborating
‘with reverence for all’
I love the way Brené Brown signs off her phenomenal new podcast with
'Let's continue to be awkward, brave, and kind.'
Revolution and evolution is awkward because it is unprecedented. But bravery, humility, and kindness can pave a way forward.
My own growth, our collective growth, and certainly racial justice and reconciliation is going to be an awkward process, in that we’ll say and maybe do the wrong things on the way toward coming into deeper understanding and solidarity. But let’s give ourselves permission to be awkward along with brave, and kind. While acknowledging the urgency of this moment, the urgency of demands for justice and true equality throughout systems of neighborhood, business, political community.
I’ve been going for runs every day over and back on the Williamsburg Bridge, over the East River between Brooklyn and Manhattan, which has these steep arcs of ascents and descent and a dramatic panoramic of the city from the top. it’s one of the main arteries into the city, and over the traffic lane someone hung a huge canvas pained with these words:
You are angry.
You are healing.
BOTH/And.
Neither one without the other.
It’s a version of those two values: action and contemplation.
I was really struck by Rob Bell’s podcast episode last week called ‘Swords and Plows and the Great Unmasking’ as a panoramic perspective on the revolution underway, and the importance of protest. He said
‘Injustice must be fully named,
Unmasked,
before it can be dismantled.’
The system must be fully exposed. The grief fully named.
I’m reading Toko-pa’s beautiful book ‘Belonging’ right now, and diving into her work on contemplation and integration. She writes:
‘Sometimes, an efficient inner force wants to step in and make something useful of it all, turn it into “fuel for transformation.” But another, quieter voice urges us to stop. Don’t commodify this loss. Don’t be so hasty to make the events of heartbreak meaningful. Not before the magnitude of what’s been destroyed can be witnessed in its entirety.’
These are such important words for a moment of urgency. Urgency doesn’t have to mean just action. We can urgently direct our attention. And that’s how I’m practicing responding to the layered crises of
the coronavirus
the uprising toward racial equality
the economic melt-down and lifestyle re-set
We need to integrate it, before we act on it. We need to name it all, to express and grieve what needs to be grieved. To name the new world that emerging, so we can begin to envision new priorities, new responses to it, new ways of creating in collaboration with it.
First, we need to integrate it.
We need to practice deep listening.
I love the great actor Alen Alda’s rule:
‘The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.”
Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.
Deep listening. Listening with the core of who we are, our indent and beliefs, to someone else. Integrating someone else’s experience into the core of our own identity and beliefs.
I’ve put together a blog post of some of the voices that have helped me understand and continue to grow in my understanding of racial injustice and colonialism as it has been expressed around the world throughout history at nicolemeline.com/journal/antiracist, and I’ll link to it in the show notes. I am grateful for the voices of these brilliant black leaders, post-colonial theorists, and activists. As an eternal student, I sit at their feet and follow their lead, and welcome your input on how to build, as the U.S. Constitution puts it, a more perfect union. In the comments below the blog, please share resources that would enrich the conversation. I welcome your input on the inclusivity of experiences I—we—create.
As I’ve been listening to all that’s unfolding in our world, I’ve been pouring my heart into creating new Alter movement practices—both indoor cycling workouts and Alter mat practices—that are sweat ceremonies. Workouts that are also a work-in. Because yes, we need to train our bodies for strength and cultivate a peaceful inner state. But also because we carry every emotion we feel physically, in our bodies. Our responses of frustration, anger, maybe rage, confusion, overwhelm, grief are stored in the body. That tension in your neck and lower back. That digestive trouble. That sleeplessness. Anybody know what I’m taking about? The body keeps the score. So we need a daily practice of spiritual, emotional, and physical integration. A sweat ceremony, with the added benefit of strength training and cardio stamina.
Soulful action that trains us for activism.
I would love to share these workouts/work-in’s with you. I’m adding a new Warrior ride and Alter practice every week to this growing library of sweat ceremonies. This month, proceeds from memberships will be donated in your honor to Color of Change, a beautiful organization working to end systemic racism.
And if this podcast is inspiring you, please share it, and rate and leave a review on Apple podcasts. It helps this conversation to be found by friends we haven’t met yet.
My friends, what a moment we’re in. What a moment that’s our honor and challenge to co-create. To rise to. As we alter, this world, our hearts, together.
Big love. Onward. Heartward.
