As we approach the end of a turbulent and divisive year and enter the sacred season of the calendar, many of us feel a deep longing for peace. We carry a quiet weariness as we try to make sense of the big shifts happening too fast to fully take in, both on the global stage and even within our own families and communities.

In the Advent season leading up to Christmas, the second candle of the Advent wreath represents the yearning for peace (shalom in Hebrew) and the perennial quest of the human spirit to seek and find wholeness within the tumult of our hearts, relationships, and world. This year, that longing feels especially close. It has invited us as a foundation to reflect on what it means to truly be a good neighbor and how we can continue to “meet this moment” as a faith-rooted foundation supporting faith-inspired leaders who are doing so much good around the world.

Last March, we shared this commitment as we grappled with how to meet the moment as the rug was pulled out from under the global relief and development sector’s work: “In a time when faith and religion are often politicized and distorted, we seek to draw from the deeper, humbler wells of faith that we believe are still needed and valuable for our world.”

As we close out this year, this commitment continues to guide us. Again and again, we’ve been inspired by the ways our partners show up as bridge builders and use Faith to find the deeper current that connects us all and restore wholeness in our fractured world.

In what follows, I want to share how this reflection has led us more deeply into the contemplative heart of our work at Imago Dei Fund. I’ll reflect on why the inner work of faith matters so much in times like these, how the Contemplative Fund grew out of that conviction, and how watching for the light can help us stay grounded, hopeful, and open-hearted as we move into a new year. 

The word “contemplative” can sound inaccessible and evoke associations of monks retreating from the everyday world we live in. Yet, all of our world’s faith traditions have a contemplative thread reaching back to their early roots. This thread often runs quietly beneath the surface of mainstream religious life, but it remains steady and alive.

Many today, myself included, are on a journey to rediscover this more hidden, inner path of faith that lies beneath the inherited religious certitudes, dogmas, and orthodoxies and is as accessible and close as each breath. For some, this rediscovery can feel like an exciting quest of homecoming, reclaiming something essential deep within one’s humanity and within one’s own religious tradition. For others, it can be disorienting as this domain is more felt than known, beyond words and constructs. And yet, for those who follow the inner promptings, the contemplative path can be expansive and deeply real. It fosters an existential trust within the twists and turns, unknowns, and paradoxes of this life.

Nature offers countless images and metaphors for this hidden, inner life: roots growing deep within the soil that allow a tree to extend its branches outward, seeds cracking open under the soil to become a beautiful flower… If we keep our eyes open, there are signs everywhere pointing to what the Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton called a “hidden wholeness” that permeates the circle of life we share. St. Catherine of Siena, uses the simple imagery of a fish in the water to evoke and point to how, regardless of one’s beliefs or religious identity, we all partake in the Divine:

At the Imago Dei Fund, we use the word “contemplative” both in the context of faith settings and as a universal human capacity that connects us with our deepest selves and motivations to better the world. From the beginning of our philanthropic journey, contemplative “seeds” have been part of our DNA. While much of our work over the past sixteen years has been focused on the visible, outward work of humanitarian and global development, the fingerprints of these seeds can be found across our work.

What started as the desire to support the inner lives of change agents in the Boston area seeking a deeper spirituality has evolved over the years. Our Contemplative Fund is one expression of our commitment to the inner work of change. These partners provide resources for spiritual growth and reconciliation work across diverse faith and social contexts. Threads of that work are woven across our portfolio, for example, in the “Keep the Spark Alive” grants we offer to our smaller partners for their leadership and staff to tend to the inner soil from which their work grows. Even our name Imago Dei springs from a deep commitment to our shared humanity—and the stamp of the divine that gives us all an innate dignity—working together across lines of difference to co-create the better, more just and peaceful world we all seek.

This past year, we have doubled down on this founding commitment to support the inner work of change and fund supportive gatherings for partners to connect, pause, and draw more deeply from the inner well of peace. In the moments when the walls around us feel immovable, the contemplative path offers a different posture. It invites us to pause, to listen more deeply, and to draw from the inner well of peace from which all outer peace flows. Co-creating a more just, free, and sustainable world is hard work. In getting to know the incredible people behind our partner organizations, it is clear that the motivation to build bridges of peace and repair the world where our human fabric is torn by poverty and injustice flows from a deep, interior place within each of us. This inner well of peace needs to be cultivated so that we, as individuals and communities, can dig a little bit deeper into our own humanity and find some pathway to peace to live and love our neighbors in these polarizing times. 

For people of faith, this can be a particularly humbling moment of reflection. Many of us are asking what it means to love our neighbors well, and how our faith traditions can be a source of healing rather than division. To truly be a good neighbor in this moment invites an honest reckoning with the ways our own traditions, sacred texts, and histories have sometimes failed to honor the dignity of the stranger and those we perceive as different from ourselves. This kind of reflection does not weaken faith; it deepens it, calling us back to love, humility, and the sacred worth we share.

I recently had the opportunity to meet with some of our Contemplative Fund partners to get an update on their work and also just talk. I shared with them the deep existential angst I am carrying in this moment. Our Contemplative Fund partners are well poised to meet this moment as they have been and continue to provide resources for spiritual growth and reconciliation work across diverse faith and social contexts. In the New Year, we plan to share a few reflections from our contemplative fund partners on how reclaiming the contemplative path within our faith traditions can help promote true love of neighbor and peace across polarizing walls of difference.

As we head into the holiday season, we, like so many, are seeking the Light in the midst of what feels like heavy darkness, needless human suffering, and the suppression of freedom as we’ve seen authoritarian leaders rise in so many places. Yet, on the micro level of our lives, the river of life keeps flowing, and we find joy and hope in the many good gifts that bring light to our lives—the expectancy of a mother waiting for a baby to be born, the simple goodness of being understood by a friend during an uncertain life passage, the abundance of family gathering together the holidays, moments in nature where our souls come alive, the heaviness of grief being kissed by peace and acceptance, so so many simple gifts including the simple gift of each breath. 

We all need these gifts of Light as we seek to hold the dissonance of the darkness and the light of our world and our own hearts and walk with love and awareness through what is of our world. Regardless of your own faith background, we hope that there are nuggets of inspiration as you read that will resonate with something within your soul that will give some light on your path as you approach the end of the year and chart your path through a new year.

Within whatever heaviness you are bearing this holiday season, may you seek and find glimmers of light on your path to help you navigate a path of peace that is deeper and more true than whatever walls you encounter.

Love & Peace to you & yours from all of us at the Imago Dei Fund