Next hypothesis: Through contemplative practice, I need to integrate and care for all parts of myself.
One of the table’s defining features is wholeness. At the table, we don’t have to split into pieces. At 42 years old, I’m so over splitting: ignoring my emotions or being run by them; divorcing my spending from my deepest values; constantly numbing out and zoning out.
As I’ve studied the lives of people I respect and admire, who seem integrated and honest and able to engage in social-change work without being eaten alive, I’ve noticed a surprising theme: contemplation.
Contemplation? Not, like, hydration or protein or a law degree?! This wigs me out, because nothing seems further from fiery reform than…meditation. Interiority. Calm attention.
But it’s everywhere, y’all. One example: Dr. King’s spiritual advisor and the “godfather of the Civil Rights Movement” was Howard Thurman, a full-on mystic who studied with Gandhi. (Last week’s comment section indicates that a few of us are already on the Thurman train. If you haven’t added your favorite leaders to our list, please do!) Dr. King took long contemplative retreats. Mother Teresa required scripture memorization and meditative singing. When not writing, getting arrested, and leading entire social movements, the badass Dorothy Day reread her favorite texts with minute attention, sometimes spending an hour per page. One Black Lives Matter march I attended began with a full hour of breathing, peaceful centering, and group yoga. (My teenage son was like, um, this is activism?! But an hour later he got to chant the F-word, so: balance!)
It turns out that all the healthiest change agents know: liberation and wholeness are inextricably tied with contemplation. Below: what I've picked up so far.
OK, what is “contemplation”?
Author Cole Arthur Riley defines contemplation as “a certain commitment to paying attention to the Divine in all things.” The Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) describes it as “entering a deeper silence and letting go of our habitual thoughts, sensations, and feelings in order to connect to a truth greater than ourselves.”
The University of Colorado’s Contemplative Resource Center nicely summarizes contemplation’s essential characteristics:
- cultivation of self-awareness
- specific physical posture(s) or sequence of movement
- focused, non-evaluative attention
- a holistic approach to well-being
- development of mental and physical steadiness and balance
- fostering greater attunement, compassion, and creativity.
My role models devote between 10 and 30 minutes a day to their contemplative practice. One friend says he sets aside a 30-minute “container” every morning, and within that container he switches it up: he might pray, do lectio divina, listen to a guided meditation, journal, do yoga, take a slow walk in nature, paint, or practice mindfulness meditation.
What is not contemplation?
Inductive Bible study. Reading something quickly or once. Running with earbuds in. Anything done via multitasking, for achievement, or with divided focus.
What does contemplative practice do? What does it have to do with integration?
So: all day, every day, we take in information about this grand old world, about our neighbors, about problems and potential solutions. We do this with all of our parts, all of our ways of being. Our minds collect more data—headlines, statistics—than we can possibly assimilate. Our physical experiences provide information about existence on this planet. Our relationships give us clues about human life outside our own brains. Our emotions feed us internal weather updates. Even our finances operate as data about what we value. (More on that one next week, eek.)
We take in floods of information, constantly. And while it would be really nice if that information auto-organized itself into new structures and reprioritized our lives in ways both rational and values-driven, it…doesn’t.
It turns out that we need quiet time and solitary space for all of that silt to settle and our neural pathways to remake themselves, to integrate new ideas and ways. To integrate all of our physical and emotional intel.
Integrate, integral, integrity: contemplation helps us find integrity. Not integrity as in perfect coherence or a complete lack of hypocrisy, which are states of being simply not available to humans; integrity in its original sense—wholeness, intactness, robustness.
Integrity—wholeness—feels good. It’s carrying around all of my parts in one parcel rather than juggling them like I do my keys + coffee + water + smoothie + two bags + six library books, inevitably dropping something (everything).
It’s recognizing that my intermittent depression and my citizenship don’t cancel each other out; they inform and build on each other. It’s realizing that my weird nausea about a big purchase is worth attending to. It’s being connected with all parts of myself, and letting that whole self connect with others.
As for how contemplation connects with table-living, author and therapist Resmaa Menakem observes:
Our bodies guide and follow other bodies; a settled nervous system encourages other nervous systems to settle. This is why a calm, settled presence can create room for a multitude of possibilities, and become the foundation for changing the world. (1)
This is some woo-woo shit.
Yep! I definitely feel wary about this, and not just because little Michelle was warned that anything meditation-adjacent was Satanic. I’m also aware that, like lots of other things, contemplative practice has often been commodified and influencer-ized, churned into the big business of white-girl self-help. But my contemplative role models eschew that nonsense. To them, contemplation’s not a product, it’s a discipline and a gift. And it may be woo-woo, but it works. For them! My own practice is...patchy!
So, I think that, together, we need to explore together modes of contemplative practice, throw a few at the wall until we find one that works for each of us, a way to let silence and solitude help all of the silt settle, help all of the pieces and input integrate, knit together, become whole.
What do you think? Is contemplative practice a part of your daily routine? What works for you: Barbara Brown Taylor’s walking meditation? Cole Arthur Riley’s breath prayers? My friend Shirley’s go-to when she can’t quiet her mind—staring point-blank at a single leaf for ten minutes? Something else? What does it do for you? Community resources! Add below!
(1) Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies 186
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