How can Humpty Dumpty, David Brooks, David Gibson, and Pope Francis strengthen our on-going commitment to contemplative practice, alone and with others?

We all know the Humpty Dumpty verse with its ominous last line: “All the kings horses and all the kings men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” My parents told me that when I was a very young child they had to alter the last line to read, “All the kings horses and all the kings men put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” otherwise I would cry brokenheartedly. This memory resurrected itself in my grief for our country as I read David Brooks column of 3/14: “It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation is Shot.” Brooks, like my parents however, did offer a ray of hope in his last line.

David Gibson, the director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, in his article, “The Age of Trump Has its Prophet: Pope Francis,” writes of the yearning of many Americans—perhaps so many of us–who long for a leader who “Puts the needs and interests of others, including the least powerful ahead of his own,” and who “Desperately seek a light inside the darkness of Donald Trump.” He recounts Francis’ many words and deeds which have done just that. Gibson then directs us to a recent message of the still hospitalized Pope to the participants of the General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life.   In it Francis recalls the work of Teilhard de Chardin  who “Focused on the category of relationship and interdependence between all things…interpreting the world and its evolution, with unprecedented forms of relatedness….” How,” I ask myself, “Can the citizens of our world and our leaders internalize such relatedness with both people and planet in a manner constructive of world peace?”

Enter, contemplative practice. Who among its practitioners will deny the delicate web of relatedness so deeply woven in our hearts by a God we name Triune as we sit in stillness? Let us hold our broken heartedness, our yearning for a genuine global unity as we continue in these perilous times to enter the Mystery for the sake of all.  Keep sitting.

Margaret and Nancy