Contemplative Prayer

Each morning I get an email in my inbox from Richard Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation.  I've been thinking so much, of late, about prayer and contemplation, about suffering and compassion. After a week where I managed to get to a yoga class and meditate three times,  but a morning where I held Sophie as she seized, yet remained aware of the sufferings of others (the Sophies in Haiti, for example), I was particularly struck by the lines from today's email:


We should be an illuminated and honest people who have learned how to see reality in depth -- capable of recognizing self-serving “truths” and cultural lies -- what we might call a “wisdom culture” that acts as a leaven in the larger society.


As we will see, the path of honest inner prayer seems to be the only non-reactionary light that can lead us through this darkness.


Without it, most of us will sell out to group pressure and group think, or our responses will indeed be reactionary instead of pure, positive action.


--Father Richard Rohr


I'm going to do my best to try.