We Will Need Contemplative Courage
A call for mercy, non-violent resistance, and finding a way forward through *gestures at everything*
“Nothing less than a great daring in the face of overwhelming odds can achieve the inner security in which fear cannot possibly survive… To the degree to which a man knows this, he is unconquerable from within and without.” — Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
I almost didn’t watch it. I’m trying to stay off the doomscroll treadmill, and January 2025 was a month for retreating and renegotiating, once again, how to be an American and global citizen in these turbulent times — informed but not anxious, sad but not despairing, angry but not consumed with rage.
This balance feels almost impossible in this exhausting era of algorithms and opinions and distortions.
So I almost didn’t watch the video. But I did and I’m glad I did, because in the end, it cut through the noise with something deeper than political chaos.
Perhaps you’ve seen the clip of the National Cathedral prayer service on the day after the US Inauguration. The Episcopal bishop of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde, gave a homily heard ‘round the nation. Soft-spoken yet direct, she concluded her message by entreating one of the most powerful men in the world to have mercy for the vulnerable:
“Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now... Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land."
Over and over, we’ve been told that no, actually for real this time, it’s the Most Important Election of Our Lives. For real this time, democracy is on the line. But she didn’t use the anti-Trump talking points, and she didn’t speak like someone without hope.
Two weeks later, the part I can’t stop thinking about is how humanizing it all was. For the scared folks on the margins, yes, and for power players on the front row. It felt like the spell lifted a little and a whole nation could bear witness as one person with a platform attempted to speak to the Imago Dei in them.1
Of course, one sermon didn’t put a stop to a storm of executive orders and the angry rhetoric of the past two weeks. But this was a moment of contemplative courage and a calm, non-violent stand. Maybe that’s what we’re all gonna need for the days ahead.
The Pursuit of Non-Violence
It was impossible to ignore the strange synchronicity of a polarizing inauguration on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a holiday to honor the Civil Rights leader. Watching Bishop Budde’s message brought to mind Dr. King’s own example of contemplative courage, particularly his insistence on non-violent resistance.
His final speech is known as “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” for its stirring closing words and uncanny timing as a speech given the day before he was killed.2 In the midst of this speech he lays out a clear case for how non-violence actually works:
“It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today…
“We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. I've seen them so often… Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth, and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, ‘Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around.’
“Bull Connor next would say, ‘Turn the fire hoses on.’ And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out.”
This too is contemplative courage. It comes from something deeper, more grounded and more ancient than our tendency to rule with violence and dehumanization. It doesn’t mean that the violence you meet will unravel and everyone will hold hands and sing songs. Dr. King, after all, was hated in his time, viewed as a radical and an agitator, and his life was cut short by violence.
But where does such courage and the fire come from? I’m drawn even further back to the words of one of Dr. King’s mentors and a spiritual leader of the Civil Rights movement, Howard Thurman. In his 1949 book Jesus and the Disinherited, Thurman, a mystic, theologian and pacifist, spoke of the deeper well that makes non-violence possible:
“Nothing less than a great daring in the face of overwhelming odds can achieve the inner security in which fear cannot possibly survive. It is true that a man cannot be serene unless he possesses something about which to be serene. Here we reach the high-water mark of prophetic religion, and it is of the essence of the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. Of course God cares for the grass of the field, which lives a day and is no more, or the sparrow that falls unnoticed by the wayside. He also holds the stars in their appointed places, leaves his mark in every living thing. And he cares for me! To be assured of this becomes the answer to the threat of violence—yea, to violence itself. To the degree to which a man knows this, he is unconquerable from within and without.”
A Certain Kind of Fire
So then, how do we find this unconquerable, deep courage in the days ahead?
The outrage machine does not serve us. We are exhausted, lonely, fragmented, disconnected. This is nothing new. I’ve felt this unraveling for my whole adult life — between the anti-war protestors and screaming preachers on my college campus, in post-9/11 anxiety and the 2008 recession, through the rise of social media and the profiteering of cable news, in the grief of realizing how I vote can affect my belonging.
Sometimes I have been anxious and angry and despairing, and sometimes I have stuck my head in the sand. Perhaps you have too.
But what if contemplative courage — a non-violent, non-anxious posture — could set us free to be unconquerable forces for goodness and love in the days ahead? To borrow some more famous words from Thurman, “What the world needs is people who have come alive.”
This kind of courage is not reactive. It is not desperate keyboard warring after a doom scrolling session or picking fights with friends and relatives. It’s also not weak willed retreat, a half-hearted shrug followed up with either “everything is meaningless” or “God is in control.”
Contemplative Courage is a certain kind of fire.
Hopeful Persistence
I don’t know what the future holds. If I’m not careful, my algorithms can lead me to some pretty dark places, and I’m still working out the right balance of thoughtful news intake, meaningful and sustainable action, and joyful resistance. For me, some helpful practices are silent breath prayers, morning pages, walking my dog in nature even when it’s stupid cold, yoga in embodied community, helping lay groundwork for a local creative community, and reading books on paper. For you, it could look different.
I don’t know what the future holds, but whatever happens we will need grounded, non-anxious presence. To see the image of God in the people we love and the people we don’t, in the foreigner and stranger, in the ones we don’t understand. We will need to root ourselves in deep soil, plant ourselves among tall trees. Know our limits and humbly ask as often as necessary, “What is mine to do?” Have grace for ourselves and each other when it all becomes too much.
Then maybe, when our moment comes, we won’t be afraid. We will have everything we need.
Sadly and way too predictably, Trump quickly took to Truth Social not to confess a changing heart, but to denounce her as “a Radical Left hard line Trump hater” who was “nasty in tone… boring… uninspiring.” Equally predictably, the usual pundits and theobros took to their platforms to attack everything from the content of her message to her haircut (?) to “see see this is why women can’t be ordained.” Sighs and all the eye rolling.
Sharon McMahon (one of my favorite voices in these times) wrote a fantastic piece about the story of this speech. Check it out and consider subscribing to The Preamble for a non-partisan voice of hope and sanity.
So so good Jen.
I really like the thought of 'contemplative courage.' This helps me.