Belonging Without Othering: Contemplative Resilience in a Divided World

A Personal Reflection on how to live out love in a difficult time.

We live in a time of profound fracture. The fabric of society, in so many places, seems to be unraveling. What once passed for consensus or shared values now gives way to outrage, suspicion, and division. Local politics has become the stage for increasingly toxic culture wars. Misinformation and ideological manipulation pit neighbour against neighbour. The working poor, the sick, and the vulnerable are pushed to the margins, while an ever smaller group of elites consolidate wealth and power, shielded by the mechanisms of global market society. The result is a deep erosion of dignity and belonging.

In my current home City of Hamilton in Ontario in Canada, this has resulted in those who are just surviving to have more than one job living with deep job insecurity, and a new pandemic of homelessness, mental illness and addiction, with a new underclass with ever deeper problems, and the withdrawal from the State of having any responsibility or real assistance to escape. Many live on zero rate work contracts with no paid leave and no health benefits. The system then creates economic slavery for many which creates a culture of brutalism.

This collapse is spiritual as well as material. It breeds fear and isolation. It cultivates resentment and a desperation to belong—anywhere, even if that means belonging to a group that defines itself by who it excludes. The logic of late capitalism intensifies this. It strips away our sense of rootedness. We are reduced to consumers and competitors, rather than persons made in the image of God. We are constantly measured against others, constantly told to do more, have more, and be more. In such a world, the natural response is to retreat into echo chambers of sameness, or to lash out at the perceived "other." And this is where the danger lies—the slow corrosion of compassion, the normalisation of hatred and exclusion, the spiritual distortion that says we can only belong if someone else does not.

We inhabit a cultural moment that many philosophers and theologians describe as metamodern—a time that lives in the space between irony and sincerity, between skepticism and hope, between disenchantment and renewed longing. We are postmodern, but also postsecular. That is, while many have left institutional religion behind, the hunger for transcendence has not disappeared. Instead, it has migrated into social justice movements, wellness culture, ecological activism, artistic expression, and myriad spiritualities. We live in a time when faith is both contested and desperately needed—when many are suspicious of doctrine, but still yearning for mystery, meaning, and a deeper way to live.

At the same time, we are seeing the slow unravelling of social cohesion. The machinery of global capitalism, especially in its neoliberal form, has drained meaning from the common good, converting relationships into transactions and communities into markets. In many parts of the world, and certainly in the West, we are witnessing the collapse of public infrastructure—education systems overwhelmed, healthcare underfunded, housing unaffordable, and working people crushed by rising costs and stagnant wages. All this while an elite few accumulate obscene wealth, largely untethered from national or moral obligation. This is not just a political problem. It is a spiritual one. It shapes what we value, what we fear, and who we trust.

As economic insecurity rises, so does anxiety. And as anxiety rises, the temptation is to find scapegoats—to locate our pain in an "other." This is the logic of polarization, and it is alive in nearly every part of the cultural landscape. It infects politics, media, religion, and even friendship. We are taught, subtly or overtly, that to belong to a group we must define ourselves against someone else. We find comfort not in communion but in rivalry. And this tribalism produces the cultural wars of our day: misogyny, racism, xenophobia, transphobia, classism, and sectarianism in both its religious and secular forms.

This context raises an urgent question: how can we live resiliently—and even joyfully—without falling into either despair or hatred? How can we resist becoming reactive, self-righteous, or numb? What does it mean to follow Jesus in such a world?

This, of course, is not new. Scripture is filled with stories of exclusion and tribalism, of communities forgetting the radical hospitality of God. Yet it also bears witness to a deeper truth—that God's love transcends borders, identities, and divisions. The prophets cried out against injustice and reminded God’s people that worship without mercy is meaningless. Jesus, in word and deed, dismantled the boundaries between clean and unclean, righteous and unrighteous, insider and outsider. He shared tables with the rejected, welcomed the unworthy, and challenged the very idea that holiness is about separation. In him, God revealed a new kind of belonging—one that does not depend on conformity or correctness, but on love.

In today’s divided world, this way of being is both deeply needed and profoundly countercultural. It asks us not just to tolerate those who are different, but to love them. Not to win arguments, but to be peacemakers. Not to draw lines between “us” and “them,” but to live as if there is only “we.” This is the spiritual work of our time.

But how do we do this when the world around us encourages fear, contempt, and cynicism? How do we live with compassion when we are tired, anxious, and angry? How do we resist the pull toward othering when so many of our wounds and frustrations are being inflamed?

The contemplative tradition within Christianity offers a radical and necessary path. It offers not an escape from the world, but a way of being in the world that is not dictated by fear, rivalry, or illusion.

Contemplation, in its classical Christian sense, is not simply mindfulness or meditation. It is a form of loving attention to the presence of God within and around us. It is the posture of the heart that waits, that listens, that surrenders to grace. It trains us to see not just with the eyes of critique, but with the eyes of compassion. It is, as the 20th-century mystic Simone Weil wrote, “a looking which is not looking for anything.”

Contemplation changes our inner landscape. As we begin to release our compulsive need to prove, to perform, or to possess, we find ourselves anchored in something deeper: the divine presence which is love itself. This grounding is not sentimental. It enables us to engage the world with clarity and courage, because we are no longer driven by the need to win or dominate.

The Gospels themselves are deeply contemplative texts. Jesus withdraws to the mountains to pray. He speaks of abiding in the Father as the source of his words and actions. He sees people others overlook—children, beggars, women, foreigners, the unclean. His way of seeing is relational, not functional. It is full of mercy. He embodies what Thomas Merton would later describe as the true self—the self that is rooted in God and therefore free from the compulsions of the false self, which lives by comparison, fear, and exclusion.

Merton wrote:

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
—Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island (1955), p. 168

This is a devastating insight, because it reveals how easily our belonging becomes conditional. When we belong only to those who reflect our values, or validate our pain, we have not yet touched the radical belonging Jesus offers—the kind that includes even the enemy.

Jesus said, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you... for God makes the sun rise on the evil and the good” (Matthew 5:44–45, NRSV). This is not a command to be passive in the face of injustice. It is a call to participate in the divine pattern of love that refuses to reduce anyone to their worst moment or most harmful ideology.

And mercy is not weakness. It is strength that comes from knowing who we are in God. When we ground ourselves in prayer and silence, we remember that our worth is not determined by social status, productivity, or ideology. We learn to see ourselves—and others—through the eyes of grace. This rootedness allows us to face the world’s chaos without being consumed by it. It gives us the courage to speak truth without hatred and to serve justice without pride.

In a culture that thrives on outrage, consumerism, and polarization, to live this way is a radical act. It is to step off the treadmill of comparison and control. It is to say no to systems that divide and dehumanize. It is to cultivate a life of compassion, prayer, and solidarity. It is to live as if we truly believe that every person bears the image of God.

To belong without othering is to follow Jesus—to walk the road of humility, mercy, and courageous love. It does not mean silence in the face of injustice. But it does mean speaking and acting from a place of deep prayer, refusing to let bitterness or self-righteousness take root. It means making space for others, even when it is inconvenient. It means choosing love, again and again, in a world that tells us to choose sides.

We will not get it right all the time. We will stumble, we will grow weary, and we will be tempted to withdraw. But this is the journey we are called to—a journey into the heart of God, where all belong and none are cast out.

To live this way requires inner work. It requires silence, prayer, lament, and discipline. It requires us to examine the stories we tell about ourselves and others. Contemplation is the school in which we learn that the root of othering lies not in the other, but in our fear.

St. John of the Cross, writing from the depth of mystical experience, taught that the soul must pass through a dark night—not as punishment, but as purification. He writes:

“In order to arrive at the knowledge you have not, you must go by a way in which you know not.”
—St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 1, Ch. 13

This is the path of unknowing. It is the journey out of control and into trust, away from judgment and into mercy.

Julian of Norwich, who lived through the trauma of plague, war, and religious upheaval, nevertheless received visions of divine love so tender that they have nourished generations. She wrote:

“God is nearer to us than our own soul, for He is the foundation in whom our soul standeth.”
—Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 56

And in one of her most radical insights, she saw that:

“Sin is behovely (necessary), but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
—Julian of Norwich, Revelations, Chapter 27

This is not a denial of suffering or injustice. It is the contemplative confidence that nothing is beyond the reach of redemption. It is the conviction that divine love is deeper than even our deepest estrangement.

In the end, the Christian hope is not in dominance or victory, but in reconciliation. Not in the defeat of our enemies, but in their transformation—and ours. The contemplative path keeps this hope alive. It reminds us that in Christ, there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for we are all one (Galatians 3:28). And it is only when we live from this oneness that the healing of the world can begin.

Such a vision calls us into a new kind of community—what Jesus called the kingdom or as I prefer the kin-dom of God. This is not a national or tribal entity. It is the communion of those who live by grace, who see Christ in every face, who practice radical hospitality.

In today’s language, we might say: no longer immigrant or citizen, elite or working-class, queer or straight, left or right. Not because these identities do not matter, but because they are not ultimate. In Christ, all are reconciled—not by erasing difference, but by transfiguring it in love.

To live contemplatively in a divided world is to resist every form of othering—not by withdrawing, but by seeing more deeply. It means we do not give our hearts to ideologies that demand enemies. It means we do not allow our wounds to become weapons. It means we hold grief without becoming bitter, and anger without becoming cruel.

This is not easy. It is, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “the cost of discipleship.” But it is also the joy of participating in God’s reconciling mission.

As Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

“God… has given us the ministry of reconciliation… So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.”
—2 Corinthians 5:18–20 (NRSV)

Contemplative life is not a private spirituality. It is a public witness. When we practice stillness, when we see through the eyes of mercy, when we refuse to mock or vilify even those with whom we profoundly disagree—we offer the world a different way of being human.

Belonging without othering is not a utopian fantasy. It is the fruit of the Spirit. It is possible wherever people are willing to be humbled, to be healed, to be held by grace. It begins in prayer. It grows in community. It bears fruit in justice, gentleness, and joy.

In the end, the contemplative path is not about achieving a perfect society. It is about becoming people who live as if God’s love is real, limitless, and for everyone.

And that changes everything.

A Simple Contemplative Practice: Dwelling in Love

This practice can be done in 5–10 minutes. You may wish to light a candle as a sign of God’s presence.

1. Find Stillness
Sit in a comfortable position. Place your feet on the ground and allow your hands to rest in your lap. Close your eyes if you feel safe to do so. Gently become aware of your breath—no need to change it, just notice it. With each exhale, let go of any tension you may be carrying.

2. Consent to God’s Presence
Quietly, within your heart, say:
“Here I am, Lord.”
Or simply:
“Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)

Repeat this phrase a few times slowly, letting it settle into your being. If thoughts or distractions arise, gently return to your breath and the sacred phrase.

3. Let Love Arise
Now bring to mind someone you struggle to accept—a person or group you find difficult, or who represents an “other” in your life. Don’t dwell on their wrongs. Simply hold them before God in silence. Without forcing anything, allow your heart to soften, even just a little. If you can, say inwardly:

“They, too, are beloved of God.”

Hold them in the light of Christ’s love, asking for the grace to see with compassion rather than fear or judgment.

4. Return to the Centre
Now gently return your attention to your breath, resting again in God’s presence. Sit for a final minute in stillness, knowing you are held in Love.

5. Close with Gratitude
End by saying:
“Thank you, God, for being with me, and in me, and beyond me. Help me to live today as one who belongs to you—and to all your children.”

Take a deep breath and open your eyes.

Photo taken by author of a graffiti art in Southwark Central London 2020.