Take time to contemplate

Today we live in a world that can’t stop talking. Everywhere, every single day, we are bombarded by advertisements, invitations, messages and attractions of all kinds.

With our lives so busy, we need to stop and contemplate ourselves and our world. (Photo: Tom Lorsung/CNS)

In the privacy of our homes we have radios and televisions with channels of entertainment, sport and information 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It never stops.  In our rooms, studies and offices we have computers and access to the internet with amounts of information that we, in our entire lifetime, would never ever be able to absorb. It never stops. Open your Facebook page and besides posting your own status for the day, you will be able to see whose birthdays it is, what your friends have been up to, where to find a partners for over fifties, groups you can join, invitations to events, music videos you can listen to, recipes you can try, and it goes on and on.

While on the one hand information is important, the rate with which it comes at us today is distracting and it forces us to engage with it at the expense of the benefits of being quiet within ourselves. At the expense of being able to contemplate. At the expense of being able to “be still and know that I am God”.

We have to be still to be able to ground ourselves. The increasing complexity, speed, and demands of our lives have become too much. It seems ever-more important to slow down, step back and open ourselves to see and hear from a more centred space.

We are also living in a time of conflicting understandings and interpretations of what the gospel demands of us in response to the signs of the times. How do we know what we have to do? There are differences of worldview, of values, and doctrinal understandings. There is for all of us, a clear call to integrity, authenticity, and conversion of mind and heart. The way ahead is not clear, and it is not possible to engage the demands of this time from a “business as usual stance”.

We have to take another stance — what Sr Catherine Bertrand SSND in her reflection calls a contemplative stance. When we, in our church groups and organisations, engage with others from a contemplative stance, we centre all that we are, and all we desire to be, on the movement of God and God’s spirit. It enables the group conversation to become a spiritual experience rather than just a business meeting. Being still engages our minds and hearts in movement towards a new consciousness—a new way of seeing, a new way of being. It opens us individually and collectively to ongoing conversion of mind and heart and enables us to move from “I” to “we”. Being still in a group suspends debate and mere problem solving, allowing for creative possibilities, emerging options, and peaceful resolution.

Being still in a group supports a “flexible shaping” and integration of prayer, reflection, and conversation in addressing any variety of topics, concerns, or questions, from finance, HR and operations to production and implementation of programmes and activities.

As leaders we are called to ground our leadership ministry in a contemplative stance. This is not just a fad or a thing of the moment, something we do “for a while,” the latest technique of effective leadership. Rather, it is a way of seeing, being, doing in the world, a way of opening ourselves individually and collectively to the action of God in our lives. It is a way of being true to our deepest vocation, a way of allowing Holy Mystery to use us, individually and collectively, to bless the world, in order for us to “be still and know that I am God”.