Meditations by Ian White Maher: Praise | Gratitude | Joy | Transformation

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker’s Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find...

Explore the promise and price needed for moral introspection and to grasp the true costs of our commitments.

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker’s Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: join.theseekerstable.com at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click...

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker’s Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find...

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker’s Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find...

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker’s Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find...

The older white man sitting next to me leaned in as the talk came to a close to ask if I was okay. “Am I okay,” I thought? No, no, I am not. I am broken. And I live in a world of brokenness. And I feel trapped by all of this brokenness. And I go through my day shutting the brokenness out, perhaps allowing myself to look at it in little doses like I might look through the crack in the door, worried that if I looked at it any more directly I would be washed away in all the brokenness.

I appreciated the question coming from my neighbor, but I was struck by it at the same time. Had we not just listened to the same talk? What kind of response did he really want to hear from me? Was he ready to be responsible for the tears that covered my face and turned it red? Was I ready to share my brokenness with this stranger? And why was he not crying? How could he have listened to these stories and ask me if I was okay? I wanted to ask him if he was okay, but that seemed flip. How can any of us claim to be okay?

If we want to become seekers of liberation we must dive into the practices that bring us back into communion. In addition to our personal disciplines of meditation and prayer we would be wise to explore spiritual companioning—the path of walking with others—as essential to our liberation. What would our houses of worship look like if, instead of treating them like sanctuaries where we hide out from the world, we used them to see ourselves as companions for other people seeking collective liberation where my salvation is dependent on your salvation? Conflict does not become death but a path into greater life, because in it we learn how to hold the wholeness of creation.

As my friend and I forgave each other, as we hugged one another, as we said the words “I love you,” we came back into communion. We did more than just leave our suffering behind. We committed ourselves to a practice of living the path out of isolation, out of separateness and into the salvation. How different would our world be if, instead of individual salvation, our churches and temples promised salvation through the hard and messy work of intimacy. Living in community is complex. I also believe it is one of the greatest acts of resistance we can do in a world full of alienation.

A day later I remembered the famous verse from the Bhagavad Gita.

We only have a right to our work

We do not have a right to the fruits

The fruits should not be the motivation for your actions

And do not shirk your work

(Chapter 2 Verse 47)

This gave me comfort.

I do not have a right to any particular outcome. All I can do is offer my work to the best of my ability. It is the work that is valuable, not the special feelings or the dramatic spiritual encounters I desired so much.

No ancestor spoke to me. No epiphany occurred. There are no great stories to share with you about my trip to Stone Mountain. Nothing sexy. But neither do I have regrets. My life is my work and I am blessed by that simple truth. Next year, I will return to pray for the ancestors, not for any prize but because that is what I am called to do. Maybe some of you will come with me. We may never see the end of white supremacy in our lifetimes, but we do our work anyway. For the work gives the world hope, and in the hope lies the holy.

The transition from Michelle and Barack to Donald and Melania has been more than just a change of individuals. I miss the affection they modeled for us so well. As lovers they inspired me. For eight years we lived with a couple who loved each other, completed each other, desired each other, and now we have something very different, something very ugly. And we often understand God through the process of mimesis , through mimicry, through symbol. The First Family models for us a way of being in relationship with each other and also, perhaps, with something more transcendent, with God. We have shifted from an affectionate, playful model to a coercive, commodity model. We have watched Eros die. And we are angry about it.