Center for Action and Contemplation

At the CAC’s virtual gathering “How Do We Find Hope in Hard Times?,” Grammy Award–winning artist and musician Jon Batiste joined the CAC team in conversation. Dean of Faculty Carmen Acevedo Butcher asked Batiste about joy and celebration as a way to affirm our humanity amid circumstances that dehumanize us: “Where are you seeing that dehumanization right now, and how mi...

CAC faculty emerita Cynthia Bourgeault describes hope as a quality of God’s mercy, fully available to us:

Hope’s home is at the innermost point in us, and in all things. It is a quality of aliveness. It does not come at the end, as the feeling that results from a happy outcome. Rather, it lies at the beginning, as a pulse of truth that sends us forth. Whe...

Hope arises when we embrace a sacred reality.
—Steven Charleston, Ladder to the Light

Father Richard Rohr finds encouragement in his belief that we are created in the image of God, who is love:

The Jesuit priest and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “Love is the physical structure of the universe.” [1] Our theological or sc...

Sunday
From the perspective of occupying Roman powers, the Christian sect was radical because it encouraged alternative behaviors that were both attractive to those at the bottom and threatening to the worldview of empire.
—Richard Rohr

Juneteenth

Father Richard turns to the apostle Paul’s advice to the first churches to envision church renewal today:

Prior to the imperial edicts in the fourth-century that pushed Christians to the top and the center of the Roman Empire, the church was still countercultural and non-imperial—a social movement for the reign of God...