Nov 13

What is Contemplative Spirituality?

The previous excerpt described carrying a contemplative-open-awareness into everyday life. The next excerpt will begin to describe the deep and radical trust involved in contemplative living. Afterward, I will reflect briefly and offer a few more guiding questions for your own reflection.

Contemplative Spirituality: A Shalem Senior Staff Monograph

Written by Carole Crumley, Bill Dietrich, Ann Kline, and Gerald May

March 2004

“Implicit in contemplative living is a deep and radical trust in God’s presence and mercy. Theologically, the trust involves living into the following assumptions:

  1. The spiritual life is completely about love. God is love, and we are created in and for love. Every person has at their core a desire to grow in love with God and others. This desire may become severely distorted, as in in ordinate attachments to power and violence, but it is never absent. As St. Paul proclaimed to the Athenians, ‘God created us to seek (feel for) God’ (Acts 17:26-27). This is the purpose of our being. Contemplatives of all generations have echoed St. Augustine’s famous prayer, ‘Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.’
  • Though we may not feel it, God is indeed present everywhere and at all times. There is nowhere that God is not present (Ps 139). Not only do we ‘live and move and have our being in God,’ (Acts 17:28), but also God resides within each of us, and in all of creation, closer than our breath, closer to us than we are to ourselves. The contemplative life then, may not be a journey in which one actually gets closer to God, but rather a gradual realization of the incomprehensible union that has always existed.
  • This divine presence in and with us is not static or inactive. Instead, it is dynamic, continually moving flow that continually seeks goodness, truth, beauty, peace and justice. God is willing for and desiring of our co-participation in this movement, and stands ready at all times to guide us, to lead us into the dance of life. This co-participation is an endless invitation. These is no time or occasion, ever, where God leaves us to act on our own.
  • God’s true being and movement are essentially incomprehensible to our human faculties. Thus much of the contemplative life is girded with mystery. Although one naturally makes every attempt to be open and responsive to God’s guidance, we usually do not completely comprehend where God is leading us or what God is guiding us to do at any particular time. In the absence of such certainty, we humbly honor the Divine Mystery and pray that what we are doing is indeed in harmony with God’s desire. 

One of the things I enjoy about the United Church of Christ is the way it views different spiritualities and their practitioners as important and serious companions on the spiritual journey. This is how we and engage and work with our ecumenical partners in the wider Body of Christ as well as our interfaith partners. Instead of competitors, we view them as partners. You can learn more about our denomination’s work with our ecumenical and interfaith partners here: Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations – United Church of Christ 

As a spiritual seeker, my heart has been (and continues to be) restless. One thing I can rest in (and stand on in trying situations) is that Sacred Love is at the core of other spiritual and religious traditions. While understood differently according to tradition and life experience, Sacred Love is the root of them all. If we take seriously the wisdom within the Christian Contemplative Tradition, this is because Love is central to the human experience. As the above excerpt described, there is within everyone a force pushing them toward goodness, truth, beauty, peace, and justice. This is quite amazing if you think about it!

Keeping in mind that my worldview has been shaped by a particular Christian tradition, resting here allows me to see a unity amid the diversity, to listen deeper to the soul yearnings of those around me. It helps me to work with others instead of compete or fight with them. Love nurtures this mixture of trust and humility that makes ecumenical and interfaith partnering possible. Love is an active partner in creating these partnerships through everyday folks like you and me. This also is very cool. Emmanuel – God is with us!   

What about you?

What surprising places have you found Love?

What effect has Love had on you and your life?

How does it motivate you?

How has it pushed you/ your community/ creation toward goodness, truth, beauty, peace, and justice?

How do you/we sometimes limit it? Why? What effect does this have?

Peace,

Pastor Karsten

Nov 05

What is Contemplative Spirituality?

The previous excerpt described a contemplative attitude as an “open awareness to what is going on.” This open awareness helps us to be more loving and to more connected to our desire for God’s movements, leadings, and invitations. This next excerpt will describe carrying this contemplative-open-awareness into everyday life – or contemplative living. Afterward, I will reflect briefly and offer a few more guiding questions for your own reflection.

Contemplative Spirituality: A Shalem Senior Staff Monograph

Written by Carole Crumley, Bill Dietrich, Ann Kline, and Gerald May

March 2004

“Contemplation is an experience that is given to us from time to time. It is usually short-lived, but it can have profound effects on us. Among other things, such experiences of contemplation encourage us to develop a contemplative attitude in the rest of life. Also called contemplative living, this attitude attempts to integrate the incomprehensible wisdom of momentary experiences of contemplation into life as a whole.

For example, contemplative living involves an acknowledgement that the deepest currents of our lives are “God’s business,” not ours. This implies a willingness to let God do the leading in our choices and decisions. Further, contemplative living honors the mystery of God’s actions; we hope for God’s guidance, but recognize that we may not understand it or have any particular knowledge of what that guidance will be.”

I have experienced profound moments of contemplation in my life which have shaped my sense of vocation and my call to ministry. Ecstatic moments of connection during worship, experiences that have deepened and stretched my soul, and openings in my personal prayer time.

One experience continues to shape my understanding of ministry and primary guiding theology. As one of my prayer practices, I will meditate with my guitar, playing and singing whatever comes to mind. Years ago, one afternoon when I was doing this, I experienced an opening vision of the interconnection of life. I can’t explain how this happened, just that suddenly I was aware of the pulsating connective lines between all things. It only lasted a couple of seconds, but it was a vision that has informed my worldview, ministry, and sense of self since it happened.

For example, this experience is why I gravitate toward the teaching of interdependence in Zen Buddhism and prioritize collaboration in ministry as the Body of Christ. For me, living from an awareness of our interdependence is sacramental, an outward manifestation of a deeper sacred reality.  

What about you? What experiences have deepened and stretched your soul?

What momentary contemplative experiences continue to shape your worldview and sense of self?

What you come to learn about God (Love) and your desire for God’s (Love’s) guidance?

Peace,

Pastor Karsten

Oct 29

What is Contemplative Spirituality?

The previous excerpt looked at definitions of “contemplation,” including Brother Lawrence’s practice of “a loving gaze that finds God everywhere” and the notion that, contrary to common belief, contemplation may be very noisy at times. This next excerpt will continue to give some context and grounding to what contemplation is. Afterward, I will reflect briefly and offer a few more guiding questions for your own reflection.

Contemplative Spirituality: A Shalem Senior Staff Monograph

Written by Carole Crumley, Bill Dietrich, Ann Kline, and Gerald May

March 2004

“In this sense, contemplation is an all-embracing quality of presence, including not only our own inner experience but also directly perceiving and responding to the situation and needs of the world around us. Rather than trying to balance contemplation and action, it is more accurate to see contemplation in action, undergirding and embracing everything. In this way, all our thoughts and actions can be joined together in prayerful openness and loving responsiveness.

It is contemplation – or at last a contemplative attitude – that grounds our presence in the real world. For example, in the three paths mentioned above (knowing, acting, and feeling), the direct seeing-and-responding of contemplation keeps each centered in direct responsiveness to real situations. Without this grounding in things-as-they-are, they way of knowing can lose itself in intellectual abstraction, the way of acting can succumb to blind missionary zeal or burnout, and the way of feeling can give way to self-absorbed sentimentality.

Psychologically, contemplation is traditional seen as immediate, grounded in the here-and-now. Plans for the future and memories of the past can happen in contemplation, but they don’t take one’s attention away from one’s desire for God or the needs of the situation at hand. Plans and memories, like thoughts, feelings and sense perceptions, are simply parts of what is happening in the moment.

In contemplation, awareness is open, not focused on one thing to the exclusion of others. Most of us have been taught to concentrate (focus attention) on one thing at a time. The contemplative experience however, shows that we function more lovingly – and can be more in touch with our desire for God’s guidance – when we’re more widely open to what is going on. Thus many contemplatively oriented practices involve an “unlearning” of one’s habits of focusing attention. In their place, one hopes to nurture a simple willingness to be open to God’s movements, leadings, and invitations – a contemplative attitude.”

I love the phrase contemplation in action for how it describes what it is like to carry a Brother Lawrence’s “loving gaze that finds God everywhere” into the realness of the world around me. It is a difference quality of being. It helps me see the potential for grace everywhere and in everyone. It helps me to see limitations and brokenness as a spaces for Love to become real and present. It helps me be more forgiving and generous in my relationships with others and myself.

In writing this, I don’t want to give you the impression that my life is easy as pie in the sky. I live with the same stresses and conflicts as everyone else. A contemplative attitude, though, helps me to stay open to possibilities I would normally be closed off to. It helps me to be aware of the ways in which God’s Spirit of Love is present and churning around me – the Lowes’ cashier who took an extra moment to help me find a grocery store, the McDonald’s employee who told me she liked my dog as I have been nervous about his transition, our congregation who listens deeply and acts compassionately as they serve others in an attitude of good-natured fun.

What about you?

When have you experienced this contemplative of openness to what is?

How has this helped you notice and respond to what is happening around you?

If you connect more strongly to one of the three paths mentioned (knowing, acting, and feeling), how does the corrective offered by a contemplative attitude resonate with you? Have you experienced getting lost in abstraction, burnout/blind missionary zeal, and self-absorbed sentimentality? How would an openness to the needs of the world and people around you help temper these extremes?

Peace,

Pastor Karsten

Oct 22

What is Contemplative Spirituality?

So far, we have looked deeply into descriptions of the word spirituality and models of the spiritual life. Part four of this series seeks to describe what contemplation is. After the excerpt, I will reflect briefly and offer a few more guiding questions for your own reflection.

Contemplative Spirituality: A Shalem Senior Staff Monograph

Written by Carole Crumley, Bill Dietrich, Ann Kline, and Gerald May

March 2004

“Although the spiritual life may take many forms, it is always and foremost about love. Perhaps the most profound and pure experience of this love occurs in what the traditions refer to as contemplation. In popular usage, to contemplate something is to think about it, considering it from a variety of angles. This is not at all the understanding of the classical authors of spirituality. Classically, contemplation is a particular kind of experience, usually occurring in the context of prayer. It is a sheer experience of loving presence, and it comes as pure gift, given when and as God chooses.

The Latin roots of the word, cum (“with”) and templum (“temple”) connote the sacredness of the experience. In its original meaning, contemplation is always a gift, and cannot be achieved by any method or practice. It is thus held in contrast to meditation, which includes all the practices and disciplines we may intentionally undertake in the course of our spiritual lives. Put simply, we can do meditation, but we cannot do contemplation because it only happens as a gift.

A simple definition of contemplation is “loving presence to what is.” In a Christian context, because we “live and move and have our being” in God (Acts 17:28), being present to things as they are involves encountering the Christ who “fills the whole creation” (Eph. 1:23). In other words, Christian contemplation means finding God in all things and all things in God. Brother Lawrence, the 17th century Carmelite friar, called it “the loving gaze that finds God everywhere.”

Because people us “contemplation” to describe especially profound qualities of prayer, we often associate it with silence and stillness – perhaps even withdrawal from the world. Classically, however, it means immediate open presence in the world, directly perceiving and lovingly responding to things as they really are. Thus contemplation is not necessarily quiet and still. It may just as well be very active and noisy.”

I find Brother Lawrence’s definition of contemplation as “a loving gaze that finds God everywhere” both inspiring and practical. Brother Lawrence was a cook at the monastery, and, even though he did not like the work, he was able to find God in the pots and pans.

While contemplative prayer may seem otherworldly and mystical it is a practical way to approach life. Just take a moment and reflect on how practicing a loving gaze that finds God everywhere would change the way you live and respond to situations and people.

Brother Lawrence wrote about this in a book called Practice of the Presence. It is a short book and worth taking time read.

What do you think of contemplation being quiet and noisy?

Have you ever experienced the gift of a sheer experience of loving presence?

Where do you find God? Where haven’t you looked yet?

Peace,

Pastor Karsten

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Sunday, November 29th 2026 we will
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for the start of the Christmas Season.

Please make a note of that change.
This change is ONLY for the 11/29/2026 date.