Should Contemplatives Be Political?

11/17/20

Dear friend,

I remember sitting at my front-room table in June 2009 as I read article after article about the green revolution taking place in Iran at that very moment. I viewed images, read updates, and followed hashtags for what became known as the "Twitter revolution" that summer, and one afternoon I found myself propelled into my darkened bedroom, where I curled up into a ball, clutched the blankets tight over my head, and bawled into the sheets about what was unfolding there.

What was this visceral reaction happening in me, in response to something happening on the other side of the world to people I didn't know and whose reality wasn't mine?

The one thing I couldn't deny was that something was happening, and it was asking for my attention.

This, in my experience, was evidence of an invitation, and so I knew I needed to explore it.

Lens #1: Invitation

I have four ways I want to look at the question I'm posing for us this week about whether contemplatives ought to involve themselves in politics or be political, and after I share these four lenses with you, I would be quite glad to hear your thoughts on this too (because I certainly don't proclaim myself to be an expert on this subject!).

The first lens is that of invitation.

The contemplative path is one that honors and makes room for the invitations that emerge in each of our lives. What is being invited of us in a given moment or exchange? What about in the broader season of our life? How are we being invited to grow right now? What response is being invited of us here? What is ours to do?

These are questions of invitation, and they are fluid and can change as we respond to them and engage with the world from moment to moment and from season to season.

Invitations can take all shapes and sizes, and they can last a long or a short while. They are as particular as we are, and they are ours to discern and respond to. As contemplatives, we do this. We pay attention, we notice, we discern, and we respond.

So when it comes to our political action or inaction, the question is: What is being invited of you or me when it comes to this? This is a personal question, and each person's answer is their own.

(And in case you're curious to hear the end of the story I shared above from 2009, my invitation at that time was one of embarking on a course of self-study in the teachings of nonviolence and peacemaking, which continued for several years.)

Lens #2: Values

In the Light House community for contemplative women that I facilitate, we gather as a community on Wednesdays for various conversations and activities.

When it came time to plan our gatherings for November, I noticed the first Wednesday of the month fell the day after the general election in the United States.

Talk about an invitation!

I began to ask myself: What kind of gathering did this want to be? What might it look like for us to gather as a community of contemplative women on that particular day? What did it mean to be a community of contemplative women within the context of a major national election?

One of the things that came to mind as I held these questions was another aspect of the contemplative way, which is to live in union with God, with self, with others, and with creation. I realized what would help us do that with one another would be to connect at the human level.

And so the questions became: What are the values undergirding our lives? When it comes to casting our votes in one direction or another, what are we ultimately saying about the things we hold most dear in this life? Rather than naming persons or parties or groups or labels or issues to each other, what if we named our values?

So that's what we did.

One of the great gifts of that gathering was noticing we shared so many of the same values in common, such as the dignity of every human person, welcoming the stranger, caring for those on the margins, ensuring safety for all, and acting in love.

Lens #3: Context

One of the more eye-opening moments I've had in the last two weeks as I've carried this question about whether contemplatives should be political happened in a conversation I shared with one of my closest soul friends.

It was a moment of realizing that so much of the angst I was carrying around this question had to do with the specific context in which I live, which happens to be in the United States, a country that is situated around a (primarily) two-party political system that is highly charged and immensely polarized.

But what if I lived in Australia? What if I lived in China? What if I lived in a Central European country? What if I lived in France?

That's not to say those places don't contend with challenges or polarities of their own, but rather that my questions and decisions in those contexts would be different.

Something about this noticing created an opening for me.

It helped me realize something obvious, which is that the question of whether a contemplative should be political is not a question of political party and whether one ought to speak up on behalf of that party or not.

It is, again, about the values that undergird our lives wherever we live, no matter the system or form of government we live within.

What is our context? What's happening there? What are the challenges of that place? How are those challenges affecting those living there? What are the potential ways forward? And, again and always, what is our particular invitation within that context and space and season?

Lens #4: Policy

I would be remiss if I did not include a consideration of policy in this conversation, and that is because the policies of our countries dictate the acceptable or unacceptable practices that impact how the people in our countries live.

What is put into law as right or wrong? How does that align with our understanding of goodness, love, justice, and truth? How does it help us neighbor one another? What helps us better live together on this shared plot of land that's been given to us to steward together?

There are so many views for how we get there. We can operate from different roadmaps and within varying constraints.

It is my prayer, though, that underneath it all, we come together with our shared values. Perhaps with that in common, plus our contemplative practices and postures to guide our ways of relating, we can find productive ways to help our world move forward in love and justice.

*****

Now, I said I'd love to hear from you, and I meant it. These are just four lenses I've been sitting with when it's come to this lately. What lenses do you hold? What thoughts do you have on this? I'd be so glad to hear your reply.

Yours in ongoing learning and listening,
Christianne