James Baldwin

I was listening to a radio broadcast yesterday in which contemplative was used to mean quiet.  Really it has nothing to do with quiet but with opening our hearts to the fulness of God.  Here is a quote from a famous writer of the Civil Rights Movement.  It is really at the heart of the contemplative way.  I invite you to pray it!

“To hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first . . . acceptance totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are [;] . . . the second . . . that one must never, in one’s life, accept . . . injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one’s strength.”

James Baldwin, quoted by Alix Kates Shulman, Drinking The Rain, p. 240.