3 Takeaways from CONSPIRE 2021
One of the most consistent rhythms of the past six years for me has been attending (virtually or in-person) the Center for Action and Contemplation’s annual CONSPIRE Conference. In these conferences, I have found resonance and connection with the themes and messages shared from great teachers like Rev. angel Kyodo williams, James Allison, Christena Cleveland, and of course Richard Rohr.
In many ways, the CONSPIRE Conference was the first communal gathering I participated in that showed me I wasn’t alone - that there was a community, however scattered, of people seeking a spirituality that goes deeper than the one presented to us in churches. On my first visit to the conference in Albuquerque, I remember sitting at a table and talking with a young Buddhist nun about the discouragement she was feeling within her tradition; this discouragement was much the same as what I was feeling at the time in my own tradition. As we spoke, I looked up and realized there was a collection of about forty young people all around us having very similar conversations; we were a group of different people from different traditions all with stories telling of disillusionment, fear, and letting go.
3 Key Takeaways from This Year’s CONSPIRE
This year, I once again had the honor of facilitating a group viewing of CONSPIRE, this time around the theme of Me/Us/the World. The teachers included Brian McLaren, Barbara Holmes, Mirabai Starr, Jim Finley, Jacqui Lewis, and Rohr (many of whom are my Living School teachers, so it felt very familiar for me).
As we gathered in a local church basement, a homey place for some of us and a place of great conflict for others (myself included), we watched some of the great contemplative teachers of our time share their wisdom. Here were my three key takeaways from the event:
The Divine comes to us in the thin places. Barbara Holmes, Jim Finley, and Mirabai Starr all hit on this theme, that the Sacred/Divine is with us in our sufferings, our trauma, and our crises. In the midst of all the harm and injustice of the day, including an environment that we are actively destroying, this is a message that speaks to my core. How can we lean into these thin places and keep our ears open for what Howard Thurman calls the “sound of the genuine?”
Fierce love requires us to take a long, loving look at the real. In Jacqui Lewis’ teaching, she shared a framework for understanding love in the world, beginning with self love and expanding outward. This connected intimately with the love Jim talked about in his sharing, the love that allows for deep inner healing from a therapeutic standpoint and communal healing from a social standpoint. I recently heard Rev. angel Kyodo williams share that liberation is the process of creating practices that make us unavailable to oppression. In order to create these practices, as families and communities, it feels like nothing less than a fierce love, an unrelenting respect of and desire for the real inherent dignity within all people and things, must be centered and emboldened.
Throughout the event, the CAC was reminding the audience that the contemplative movement (and the CAC itself) is bigger than Richard Rohr. He himself shared that during a conversation with the Executive Director of the CAC. And as I watched him, speaking more slowly and moving more gingerly than when I was with him in March 2020, it was abundantly clear why this was such a focus: at some point, possibly soon and possibly not, Richard is no longer going to be with us in physical form. From this, I find comfort in two things:
Richard seems to be finding peace in that reality. He shared with the Living School students and then with the full conference that he is taking more time to gaze, rather than reading or writing: just sitting and watching the world be. What an amazingly grace-filled model for us to follow.
Emerging from our current moment are an absolute abundance of people and groups that are furthering the contemplative movement in beautiful ways, decentering the dominance of White voices in contemplative spaces, creating new expressions of communal contemplation, and challenging people to embody more fully a mystical sense of the Divine.
I’m deeply thankful to the CAC for hosting this event every year (and for offering me a discount as a Living School student). They are just one part of the contemplative movement, but they are doing fantastic work in amplifying the teachings of our modern mystics.
