#contemplative activist

There is nothing more tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action to which men are driven by their own Faustian misunderstandings and misapprehensions. We have more power at our disposal today than we have ever been. The result of this is evident. We are living through the greatest crisis in the history of man; and this crisis is centered precisely in the country that has made a fetish out of action and has lost [or perhaps never had] the sense of contemplation. Far from being irrelevant, prayer, meditation, and contemplation are of the utmost importance in America today.

Even the good side of activism has tended toward an overemphasis on will, on action, on conquest, on 'getting things done,' and this in turn has resulted in a sort of religious restlessness, pragmatism, and the worship of visible results. There is another essential aspect of Christianity: the interior, the silent, the contemplative, in which hidden wisdom is more important than practical organizational science, and in which love replaces the will to get visible results. The New Man must not be a one-sided and aggressive activist: he must also have depth, he must be able to be silent, to listen to the secret voice of the Spirit. He must renounce his own will to dominate and let the Spirit act secretly in and through him.