Beneath the Shouting: Leading with Contemplative Presence

by Julie Pennington-Russell

   “Look at the fig tree,” Jesus once told his disciples. “When it sprouts leaves, you know summer’s coming.”

   It’s strangely comforting to me that even 2,000 years ago, Jesus was reminding his followers to pay attention. To be mindful. To see what was in front of them. Jesus was incredibly attuned to the things around him. He was actually childlike in that respect—he had a child’s fascination with his surroundings. He looked down at his feet and noticed the flowers there. Or a little dead sparrow. He held a tiny mustard seed in his palm, marveling at how something so small could contain such potential.

   If Jesus needed to call 1st century disciples—living at an agrarian pace—back to the presence, how much more do we need that invitation today, careening through our rapid-response, media-saturated lives?

Pastoring in Polarized Times

   The morning after the 2024 election, I rode the tall escalator out of the Dupont Circle Metro station in D.C. alongside hundreds of other commuters, many of them federal workers. Some faces carried triumph, others grief. Many wore the blank expression of emotional exhaustion. In our sanctuary just blocks away, our congregation would gather soon—Democrats and Republicans, Hill staffers and activists, some carrying the weight of collective grief, others uncertain what to feel. 

   This is the pastoral reality of shepherding a church in the nation’s capital during another fractured period in American life. And yet, this divided moment leaves me wondering: What if our best response to polarization isn’t found primarily in conflict resolution techniques or carefully worded statements—but in something far more ancient and radical—the practice of contemplative presence?

   I live in what may be the least contemplative city on earth. Nobody comes to Washington for its chill atmosphere. Yet whether because of the nature of this city or this tumultuous season in American life, contemplative practices have become essential—not optional—for my survival as a pastor.

What Does It Mean to Be Contemplative?

   Pastors sometimes believe we can think, write or preach our way through polarized situations. “If I just find the right words, the perfect sermon illustration, the most nuanced statement, I can navigate my church through these treacherous waters.” It’s tempting to believe that with enough strategic planning and careful messaging, we can control the outcomes. But the contemplative tradition teaches us something different. 

   What does it mean to be a contemplative pastor? I’m no expert. Most of the time I feel like my friend Mary, a Lutheran pastor who—like me—carries an internal scorecard with her wherever she goes. She says that while she’s meditating in silence, she’s repeating this mantra: “I’m failing contemplative prayer…I’m failing contemplative prayer.”

   Fortunately for flawed contemplatives like Mary and me, for centuries women and men—soul pilgrims—have left behind field notes and trail markers. The 17th-century Jesuit priest, Jean-Pierre de Caussade, was one of them. He wrote that when we are fully present with God, the soul is “light as a feather, liquid as water, simple as a child, and easily moved as a ball by every inspiration of grace.”

   Contemplation. From the Latin contemplari—to gaze, to behold, to observe. Stated simply, a contemplative is someone who’s learning to be fully present in whatever moment she or he happens to be. Someone who’s learning to pay attention to divine presence, to see beneath the surface and listen beneath the noise—as Elijah did outside his cave, straining to hear the still, small voice. As Mary did at the Annunciation, absorbing the angel’s impossible words into the pores of her soul and pondering them in her heart.

   One of the beautiful things about contemplative spirituality is that it’s not about “getting it right.” It’s about being present with God. It’s not about castigating yourself for “getting it wrong,” but about gently bringing yourself back to your center when you realize you’ve wandered away. My favorite mantra is: “Oops…Pause…Breathe…Return.”

Three Practices for Grounded Leadership

   If we want to be someone who lives and leads from a grounded place with God at the center, there are practices that can help. I offer three areas of awareness: 

Notice Your Velocity. 

   First, let yourself notice when the velocity at which you’re moving and thinking exceeds your ability to be fully present.  

   We live in a rocket-speed world, but we carry within us wagon-train souls. 

   If we’re going to be present with the tasks and people in front of us, we need to tap into what the 20th century contemplative Gerald May called “The Power of the Slowing.”  Learning how to downshift, not just with the body but with the mind which is constantly in motion: planning, anticipating, strategizing, compensating. 

   Here’s what surprises me about Washington: The pace of inner-city life feels slower than when we lived in the suburbs or out in the country. And I think it has to do with walking.

   In Waco and Atlanta, I zipped everywhere in my air-conditioned car—windows up, music blaring, racing from meetings to hospital visits. 

   But DC is a walking city. We abandoned our car five years ago. Now, as I walk up Massachusetts Avenue to our church each morning, I try to remember to go slowly. To pay attention to the feel of my feet on the pavement. Every step grounds me in this moment—this breath—this face coming toward me on the sidewalk.

   It’s a gift.

  Recognize Your Ego Self.

   Second, be aware when you find yourself operating primarily from your ego self.  

To be sure, your ego is not the enemy. Our sense of self is a gift from God that helps us function in the world. And yet, when we identify with our ego self as our ultimate identity more than our grounded-in-God identity, we filter everything through that narrow self-centeredness: “How will this affect me? What’s in it for me? What will people think of me if I do this, say this, post this?” 

   One of the many gifts of living and leading from a place deeper than our ego is that we don’t become distracted when someone wants to put us on a pedestal—or when they want to knock us off. 

   I remember two messages I received years ago on the very same day. The first, in the form of an email: “Julie, everything good God is doing in our church right now is all because of you. Any future we have as a church depends on your leadership—you are the best pastor this church has ever had.” 

   Message two: an anonymous, handwritten card slipped under the door of my church study: “Julie, you are, without a doubt and going back 150 years, the worst pastor this church has ever had. I don’t know why the search committee decided to inflict you upon us in the first place, but I pray every day for your hasty departure.” 

   Ouch.

   But it’s not only other people’s vacillating opinions of us. We’re also subject to our own up-and-down opinions of ourselves. If we are living primarily from our ego self, then we’re always vulnerable to that brutal cycle of self-adoration followed by self-loathing.

   But when the work we do—the ideas we offer, the leadership we give, the conversations we have, the prophetic actions we undertake—are grounded in the healing, life-affirming presence of the Beloved rather than our ego, we find freedom from that exhausting cycle. We can see and listen and live from our deepest, truest identity.

Move Beyond Your Analytical Mind. 

   Finally, throughout the day, pay attention when it occurs to you that you’re operating mostly from your analytical mind. 

   As with our ego, the rational, analytical mind is not our enemy. Our mind is a gift from God. And…the mind is relentlessly dualistic. It knows by comparing, opposing, judging, differentiating. (Some of you may be operating that way even now: “I like this article…I don’t like this article. The ideas are great…the ideas are weak.”) And our mind assigns binary labels: good/evil, beautiful/ugly, black/white, smart/dumb, right/wrong.

   As long as we’re aware of this, we can receive and appreciate our rational mind for what it is—helpful in many ways, and yet wholly inadequate for dealing with life’s greater mysteries: God. Love. Pain. Wonder. Forgiveness. 

   If we want to be fully present with God, our dualistic mind can’t get us there. William C. Martin captures this beautifully in his book, The Art of Pastoring. In a wisdom poem called “No Thinking,” he writes:

The Word is easy for a pastor to hear,
and simple to practice in the parish.
Yet if she tries to understand it
with her rational mind,
she will miss it.
If she tries to practice it
from her head
she will fail. 
It is counter to conventional wisdom
and must be known with the heart…

Contemplation as Sustainable Action

   Some may hear “contemplative practice” and assume it means withdrawal from prophetic witness or abandonment of justice work. In my experience, the opposite is true. Contemplation doesn’t pull us away from the world’s suffering—it grounds us more deeply in it, giving us the capacity to stay engaged for the long haul, anchored in something more enduring than outrage or obligation.

   The calling is clear enough: justice, compassion, equity, hospitality, Shalom. These are God’s loving intentions for the world. God’s invitation is to do justice in ways that reflect the heart of the Divine. In other words, to do this work from our spiritual, prayerful heart.   

   Ten years ago, during the demonstrations on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, people from around the world, both religious and non-religious, came to protest the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline (which now runs beneath land considered sacred to tribe, including Lake Oahe, the only source of fresh water for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe).

   Upon arriving, each new group of demonstrators would meet with one of the camp leaders—often an elder of the Tribe, who would say to every group of new arrivals: “I see many of you who are new to camp walking around looking for action. I remind you now that prayer is action.” 

   The activists and supporters were asked to remain in a constant state of prayer. Those who felt the impulse of anger or violence overtaking them were asked to step aside and pray until they could respond from a place of peace and compassion. 

   The contemplative path and prophetic action aren’t separate—they feed each other. In the middle of Moses’ burning bush encounter, Yahweh declares, “I have heard the groaning of my people in Egypt. Go and confront Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go.” A mystical moment becomes an immediate call to social, economic and political liberation.

   And sometimes it works the other way: Engagement with the world’s suffering sends us running to God, seeking relief for our exhausted souls.

Listening Beneath the Noise

   In social justice work, with so much pain and need and injustice, there is encouragement from all kinds of sources to just “plunge in and do something, for heaven’s sake!” And sometimes we do—we answer the moment with our action. 

   But in the larger, sustained work for God’s Shalom in the world over time, as we pray and as we attend to God’s loving presence, we begin to see more deeply.  

   I remember hearing Krista Tippett interview Parker Palmer years ago. During the interview, Palmer talked about activism and he said, “You may be asking: ‘What can I do?’ For me, the answer begins within. I must own up to my fears, confess my ignorance and arrogance, seek forgiveness from those I’ve wronged, practice humility, and learn to listen beneath my own and other people’s political rhetoric. Beneath the shouting there is suffering. Beneath the anger, fear. Beneath the threats, broken hearts.”  

   Prayerful contemplation—a deep awareness of God’s loving presence and an unflinching attention to the world as it is—holds both at once: the holiness of each person and the brokenness of our systems, the image of God in my enemy and the real harm they may cause.

The Gift of the Long View

   One more gift of contemplative practice: the long view. Political polarization feels urgent—and in many ways it is. Lives hang in the balance of policy decisions. Justice delayed is justice denied. The contemplative path holds this tension: We act as if everything depends on us today, while trusting that God’s redemptive work stretches far beyond what we can accomplish or control.

   For five years through the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, I’ve come alongside clergy seeking a Christian contemplative orientation that encourages awareness of divine presence, deep listening to the Spirit, and freedom to embrace a new way of being—personally and pastorally. Again and again, I’ve watched contemplative practice do its work: loosening our grip, opening us to the Spirit’s leading, building our capacity to trust God’s unfolding even when we can’t see the path ahead.

   Harry Emerson Fosdick once said that the highest use of a shaken time is to discover the unshakable. This is the Church’s task in these tumultuous days. As the political, social and religious structures roll and quake beneath our feet, we return again and again to that which cannot be shaken.

   In our congregation, we are learning that lasting change doesn’t come through dramatic pronouncements or forceful positioning. It comes through showing up—day after day—to pray and serve and love across lines of difference.

   One of our members, a career federal employee, told me recently: “I don’t come to church to escape politics. I come to church to remember who I am beneath my politics.” That’s the gift contemplative practice offers in polarized times—not escape, but grounding. Not answers, but presence. Not certainty, but trust.

An Invitation to Begin

   For pastors and church leaders navigating ministry in this fractured moment, the work begins within: Notice your own velocity. Pay attention to when you’re operating from ego or analytical mind. Find a spiritual director, join a contemplative prayer group, develop a friendship with silence.

   This isn’t optional work for a few mystically-inclined clergy. This is essential formation for anyone answering the call to shepherd God’s people in an age of polarization. 

   When we lead from this grounded place—when we pastor from contemplative presence rather than anxious striving—we become instruments of God’s peace in a polarized world.

   And that, I believe, is what our world most desperately needs from pastoral leaders: not more certainty, but more presence; not louder voices, but deeper listening; not stronger arguments, but wider welcome; not winners and losers, but beloveds all—grounded in the God whose name is Love.

   Some days, that feels like everything.

Julie Pennington-Russell is now in her 40th year of pastoral ministry, having served congregations in San Francisco, Waco, and Atlanta before coming to First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, DC, in 2016. A trained spiritual director, she co-led the Clergy Spiritual Life and Leadership program for the Shalem Institute from 2020-2025 and currently serves as co-leader of Shalem’s pilgrimage to Iona.

References

1. Jean-Pierre De Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence (New York: Cosimo, 2007), 57.​
   https://www.cosimobooks.com

2. Gerald G. May, The Wisdom of Wilderness: Experiencing the Healing Power of Nature (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006).​
   https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-wisdom-of-wilderness-gerald-g-may

3. William C. Martin, The Art of Pastoring: Contemplative Reflections (Pittsburgh: Vital Faith Resources, 1994), 70.​

4. “Prayer Is Action: Contemplative Practice and Social Justice at Standing Rock, ND,” Mind & Life Institute, December 14, 2016.​
   https://www.mindandlife.org/prayer-action-contemplative-practice-social-justice-standing-rock-nd/

5. Parker J. Palmer, interview by Krista Tippett, “The Politics of the Brokenhearted,” On Being, November 10, 2016.​
   https://onbeing.org/programs/parker-palmer-the-politics-of-the-brokenhearted/

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us