This month’s learning includes:

• An 8-minute video reflection - Watch part of a conversation between Brother James Dowd and Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe on the importance of this movement.
• A simple contemplative practice (four minutes of intentional silence)
• Reflection questions for individual or shared use

This month’s learning may be engaged individually, in small groups, or within leadership settings. If you’re looking for a way to practice contemplation with others, this learning also connects directly to our ongoing live sits.

Explore the Month 5 course materials here. Use them as part of your personal faith study or with community groups, vestries, or Sunday school classes.

Come as you are. Begin simply. And, you are always welcome to join our Centering Prayer sits. View the schedule.

View the transcript of this video below, lightly edited for clarity and flow for reading:

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe

I think of people like Richard Rohr — people who have been what I would call popularizers of contemplative practice. He’s not the only one, but he is one. He essentially says nothing new. He almost has not a single original thought.

But what he does is take ideas like the cosmic Christ — which is obviously not new — and package them in such a way, talk about them in such a way, that it’s compelling. The tone in which that is spoken resonates with a lot of people. Not everybody. But he’s found the way of speaking into that.

I think we could do that at our local level. We could find the ways to talk about contemplative practice — ideas like the cosmic Christ — that are compelling in our own cultural context. Instead of preaching sermons written on the back of a napkin on Thursday evening.

Most of us have had some life experience. We’ve lived a while. We’ve been in ministry a while. We’re in positions now where we can bring that to bear and talk in some way about a compelling vision of God, of the church, of spirituality. That could be our role.

It doesn’t need to be overwhelming or huge. It needs to be reflective and purposeful, and in touch with the people who are part of our community. I think that’s what the popularizers of this age have been able to do — including the ones I think are completely off. The really woo-woo spiritual people. They’re hitting a note. And I think we could do that. We have the tradition that would support it.

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe

Part of my goal as Presiding Bishop is to get out into these other places. I really have a heart for small congregations. I was in Booneville, Missouri on Sunday — we did the consecration of the new bishop. There were 18 people there. And I think in those places, it’s interesting what can emerge.

I think using social media, being able to send our media teams out to find these places, to help identify and amplify — I would rather be amplifying life-giving work on social media platforms than sharing our outrage or bragging about something we’re doing. Just being able to lift up that way.

If you’re in a small place that isn’t well resourced, but you know of things — we’ve got to know. There’s often this sense that I know everything that exists in the church. We don’t. It’s like you always tell your parishioners — I can’t read your mind. You have to tell me. I’d like to identify those places and get there. That’s what I imagine using the church’s institutional platform for — this kind of work that’s life-giving and life-changing.

Br. James Dowd, OSB

I sometimes use this analogy. If you’re given a hammer, you can head over to Habitat for Humanity and help build a house, or you can knock somebody over the head. It’s just a tool. There is nothing moral or ethical about it in and of itself. The same is true about social media. If you let it be all about anger and outrage and hatred and vitriol — that’s like hitting people over the head with the hammer. If you let it build up the body of Christ — that’s like building the Habitat for Humanity house.

I remember looking at Washington National Cathedral’s content — what they started putting out during the pandemic, and it’s only gotten better since then. It’s incredibly produced. I’ve done this stuff — I know what it takes. I thought, oh wow, they’re doing this great service for the church. And in fact they are. And then I started thinking about Contemplative Underground — what my vision for that is, which is those live sits and the interaction, but also material that people can read and look at and listen to that helps them in their own contemplative journey. I thought, well, I don’t have any resources like the National Cathedral. It’s never going to look that way. And oh dear God, they’ve ruined it for the rest of us.

But here’s the bottom line: I’m a decent preacher. I’m not Martin Luther King. And you can bring your authenticity, you can bring your love, you can bring your wisdom — all of which comes in part out of your story, and in part out of the way the Holy Spirit wants to work through you. That can be in person or it can be on social media. Ultimately, we’re not trying to be the National Cathedral. That’s a big establishment that represents us in some ways — but is it real for the whole rest of the world?

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe

I think it’s primarily that this church — this Episcopal Church that we love and have inherited — will be positioned to speak in a compelling and winsome way to the world around us. To be an effective witness of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our time. That we will have done the work we have to do to get positioned to do that — done it with discipline, with call and purpose.

We will be positioned to speak to this culture like no one else can — in the voice of the one who has risen and who is love in the world. Just imagine the kind of change we could bring about if we could just get out of our own way. And I believe that God is calling us to that now. I just want to be part of that. It’s going to be all of us together.