From “Queering Contemplation: Finding Queerness in the Roots and Future of Contemplative Spirituality” by Cassidy Hall
Contemplation is less about what happens to me or around me and more about how I choose to participate in it, or how I pause before I engage. I’d learn that contemplative life is an inner stance, a way of navigating my interior world and the relationships around me. Contemplation can show up as the pause when I gaze at the maple tree billowing in the breeze, my arrival at the state house to protest the latest anti-trans bills and rhetoric, the walk in the woods when I find my body metabolizing memories, the note written to the beloved in silence, the strange bug I see with my nephew on a walk by the ocean, the morning’s silent coffee with my companion, the weeping prayer I experience when I sense my interconnectedness to all living beings. Contemplation is the centering of myself in order to know and remember who I am and what I am to speak – or show up to. Contemplative life is a continual deep engagement with the roots and truth of life that bind me to all the lives around me.