Other Viewpoints
We are also learning from other cultures that we do not “know” or contemplate
only by quiet sitting and disciplined posture, which we might have
“overlearned” from our Buddhist and monastic friends. After all, Jesus never
talks about posture once! In her book Joy Unspeakable, Barbara Holmes shows
us how the Black and slave experience led to a very different understanding of
the contemplative mind.*2 She calls it “crisis contemplation.” Enlightenment or
knowledge of God cannot possibly depend upon people who are willing to sit
erect on a mat for extended periods—or 99 percent of humanity would never
know God. Barbara teaches how the Black experience of moaning together,
singing spirituals that lead to intense inner awareness, participating in de facto
liturgies of lamentation, and engaging in nonviolent resistance produced a
qualitatively different—but profound—contemplative mind that we saw
in people like Fannie Lou Hamer, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr.,
Howard Thurman, and Sojourner Truth.
Then there are the walking meditators, like the Russian Pilgrim, who walked
all his life reciting the Jesus Prayer, the American Peace Pilgrim, who walked
across the United States from 1953 till her death in 1981, and now their modern
successors, like Jonathon Stalls and Andrew Forsthoefel, who teach the deep
wisdom of goalless walking or “living life at three miles an hour.” My own Jesuit
spiritual director when I was a young man told me that Type A personalities
like myself would do much better with walking than with sitting meditation.
Many others come to the contemplative mind through activities like music,
dancing, and running. It is largely a matter of your inner goal and intention, and
whatever quiets you in body, mind, and heart. As the old joke put it: It is
forbidden to smoke while you are praying! But it is wonderful and meritorious
to pray while you are smoking!
Contemplation allows us to see things in their wholeness, and thus with
respect (remember, re-spect means to see a second time). Until Richard
recognizes and somehow compensates for his prejudicial way of seeing the
moment, all Richard will tend to see is his own emotional life and agenda in
every new situation. This is the essential lesson of Contemplation 101, but it
does not feel much like “prayer” to the average person, which is probably why