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By Robert Owens Scott

There is a scene I love near the end of the movie The Phantom Menace. In the midst of a pitched battle, the heroic Qui Gon Jin and the villainous Darth Maul become separated by the kind of force field that only pops up in Star Wars movies. While his adversary paces and fumes, Qui Gon Jin kneels to meditate silently. The moment feels simultaneously peculiar and exactly right.

It’s peculiar because meditation seems like a distraction in the middle of the intense encounter. And it’s right because human beings retain a dogged intuition that action and reflection are as closely related as breathing out and breath- ing in. Despite our culture’s focus on measurable achievements and hard results – note the U.S.’s three-decade decline in funding for arts in public schools – we know deep down that we need to pause periodically to ask whether what we are doing is actually worthwhile or moving us closer to our aspirations. Our gut tells us that, challenging as it is to make time for it, contemplation is actually the antidote to distraction.

Since 1967, Trinity Institute has provided opportunities for such reflection in the conviction that only a contemplative Church can be a meaningful actor on the world stage. The Institute’s conferences and other activities reflect theologically on emerging issues in our culture. This relationship was underscored by its inaugural event: a Eucharist celebrated in a theater at New York’s Lincoln Center. On that day, the Rev. Dr. Robert Terwilliger raised up the contempla-
tive dimension when he said that, while many conferences focus on “how?” the Institute would ask “what?”

Four decades later we honor that commit- ment, and I would add that the true aim is to experience “how” and “what” as parts of a seamless whole. Even to speak (as I often do) of a dialogue between theology and culture is to suggest a separation that is more apparent than real. There is only one life, and as Christians we believe that life proceeds from God. Theology and culture are lenses, not independent reali- ties. God is to be found in both. “There are no unsacred places;/there are only sacred places/and desecrated places,” writes Wendell Berry in “How to Be a Poet.”

In a 2003 Institute conference entitled Shaping Holy Lives, Joan Chittister, OSB gave a name to what I am describing when she spoke of the Benedictine principle of Holy Leisure. Unlike our (desecrated) sense of leisure as an opportunity to be mindless, leisure is holy when it is mindful. Holy Leisure reminds us that no matter how important our work may be, we must always find time to step back to ask the questions that are often neglected in our rush to productivity. Only then will our work be creative, moral, and life-giving. “When people are sleeping on subway grates, it is Holy Leisure that asks why,” Chittister observes in a simple statement with all the power of a Zen koan.

At the close of the Institute’s 41st National Theological Conference earlier this year, I announced a time of Holy Leisure for the Institute itself in order to ask crucial questions about our work.

Today we are able to reach an audience economically via webcast partner sites around the world. How can we most skillfully engage such a diverse group, honoring both the importance of gathering face to face and the opportunities afforded by technology?

Now the time has come to announce our next major conference, and it feels fitting that it will focus on the very core of our mission. Next November Joan Chittister will return to the Institute for the first time in eight years for a conference titled Radical Christian Life: Equipping Ourselves for Social Change. She will lead us as we explore the connection at the heart of our common work: contemplation and action. We are reaching out to participants to join us in New York and also to partner sites around the U.S. and the world, seeking to energize communities near and far with a renewed sense of inner depth and outward engagement.

Theology matters because it calls us to reflect on our lives, our work, and our theology itself. It sends us back into our activities with purpose and a sense of vocation. It calls us to wholeness.

--Robert Owens Scott is the Director of Faith Formation at Trinity Wall Street.