Just a couple of weeks ago we had our second Fellows retreat in NoVA on the contemplative life,  “To Be With God”.  God came to us.  Like we’ve done since the beginning of our Fellows program in 2017, we opened with a favorite insight from Thomas Merton that speaks deeply and invites us:

“”How does an apple ripen? It just sits in the sun. A small green apple cannot ripen in one night by tightening all its muscles, squinting its eyes and tightening its jaw in order to find itself the next morning miraculously large, red, ripe and juicy beside its small green counterparts…We must wait for God, we must be awake; we must trust in God’s hidden action within us.”

Contemplation is “being present to the loving presence of God”.  The contemplative life is adopting that posture of “Being present to the Presence” in more and more elements of our daily lives, so that over time it becomes how we are in the world, transcending what we do.

The contemplative life is arranging our lives and cultivating a mindset so that we have more spaces when we are present to the God who is always present with us and is always loving us, until our very way of being is altered and we can be aware and quietly confident in God’s loving presence with us all the time.  This is what it means to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5.17).

From here:  Contemplation takes practice, and over time as we learn what contemplation is and practice it more, the practice forms us and even changes who we are.  Action becomes character.  Doing becomes being.  Practice becomes lifestyle.  Understanding becomes orientation.  What had been choices become instinct.  Doing contemplation turns into becoming and then recognizing that one has become a contemplative (even if imperfectly, which it will always be, and God will keep loving us).

With a nod to Merton, together let’s just sit in the Sun, trusting God’s hidden action within us.