What is a Contemplative Spirituality?
When I was a child, I would often seek places of quiet escape. The strain of my immigrant parents’ financial pressures and my father’s struggle with alcoholism filled our home with a constant tension. Whenever explosive arguments erupted in the house, I would sneak into my grandmother’s room, crawl into her bed, and wrap her arms around me. Halmoni would awaken at my cold hands cupping her face and hold me closely. Singing softly, she would begin to hum my fears away: “Ja-jang, ja-jang, woori agga ya, ja-jang ja-jang…” (rest now, little one, rest now…). Placing my ear next to her chest, I could drown the outside chaos and drift into the cadence of her heartbeat. In the safety and warmth of her love, I was in the presence of the Divine. As we rocked back and forth in the quiet together, I disappeared into my interior landscape.
For me, this recollection of safety in my halmoni’s arms is one of my foremost experiences of contemplation. I am one of many BIWOC, queer, trans, gender expansive spiritual directors of color who isare recovering our own sacred memories and experiences of the Divine.
We are reclaiming a spirituality that is rooted in the wisdom of our elders, queer ancestors, movement leaders, organizers, mothers, aunties, and grandmothers who modeled an inner life rooted in communal care, indigenous wisdom, activism, and healing. They embodied a contemplative spirituality that dignified their tears, made room for rage, honored ritual, practiced mutual aid, and modeled accountability. They sustained their work by incorporating cultural traditions and medicines, gathering around the table with chosen kin, nourishing each other with laughter and food, listening for the sacred, and seeking peace with the land. They found inner refuge within themselves and harbors of belonging within their communities to resist a world bent on denying their truths and discarding their humanity. Our elders accessed a contemplative spirituality that allowed our communities to survive, heal, and cultivate joy.
CA contemplative spirituality invites us to come home to the oasis that exists in each one of us… to touch the “living waters'' that overflow sacred dignity to our inner agency, consent, hope, and power. We listen for the Divine to sing over us, “Ja-jang, ja-jang, woori agga ya, ja-jang ja-jang…” and we are embraced just as we are– beloved, sacred, and whole.
Each time we tend to our interior world, we touch the living lineages of our ancestors – all of humanity and earth kin as one. Together, we access a spacious place – one filled with rest, generative creativity, radical imagination, and a Divine expanse toward love. Here, we hold ourselves and our communities with compassion. Here, we cultivate possibility, resilience, and hopefulness in creating a future we dream for ourselves. It is in this sacred place that we find the courage to “transform ourselves to transform the world.” We are a movement of activists, artists, and healers who are healing ourselves to heal the world.
