Over the past few years I\u2019ve found Richard Rohr to be such a helpful guide in my quest to grow up and actually be a follower of Jesus. As a Protestant, it\u2019s been important for me to find people from the Catholic faith to teach me the things that God has preserved for his people through their tradition. The practice of contemplation \u2013 largely preserved and practiced by the monastics \u2013 is challenging me. Contemplation is really a way to step back from our \u2018ego\u2019 and the immediacy of life so that we can take a hard look at ourselves. Rohr\u2019s quote below comes from a DVD called The Gospel Call to Compassionate Action<\/em>. The words about judging, critiquing, and computing are especially convicting for me as a Christian. How much of my life is dedicated to those wasteful actions and thought patterns? Rohr says:<\/p>\n \u201cContemplation is meeting reality in its most simple and immediate form. The only way you can do this is by getting rid of your usual mental grid\u2014your practiced ways of judging, critiquing, and computing everything. That\u2019s why the mind has to be placed to the side. It just operates in its habitual neural grooves, and nothing really new can get in. God, who is always new and mysterious, has very little chance of breaking through.<\/p>\n