Social justice within the contemplative life

I found myself a map of the area and managed to go for a walk without getting too lost. The first part of the walk was in a wood of silver birch planted in ram-rod straight lines. I find it a bit depressing when forestry imposes uniformity and straight lines on nature, for ease of management or no. I can feel the trees bursting to escape their confines. I had some challenges later on, where a path that looked on the map like a well-defined track turned out to be a newly-harrowed and fenced field. Was this legal? It was in any case in the way of my route back home, so I walked across and hopped over the fence.

On Friday afternoons the community do corporate lectio divina, sharing our insights about Sunday's gospel reading. Today we had the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, and their respective destinations in heaven and hell. For me the passage spoke of how the developed world is doing nothing (pretty much) for the developing world, as I was bearing in mind Rowan Williams' and Christian Aid's urging for progress on the Millennium Development Goals. Even though we had just had a bread and cheese lunch, there are many in the world who would have been grateful for just that. I didn't get any further in practical terms, but one of the others also shared thoughts about working for social justice within the contemplative life. What is the value of prayer? It can't be measured, and perhaps there is some value in that in this world of metrics and performance tables. A worthwhile discussion, which I hope will be ongoing.