December 17, 2025
Throughout this season of preparation and anticipation, we invite you to join us in a series of blogs that focus on gratitude, awe and adoration, intercession and compassion, contemplation, and presence. Like any practice, the more we do it, the more it becomes a part of us. These helpful habits form us and enable us to be the people who we want to be, for the world that we want to see. At All We Can, we’re committed to putting our words into action, where we not only challenge what harms but also nurture what heals.
This season, as we get ready for encounters with hardworking shepherds, dazzling angels, expectant mothers and hopeful fathers. We’re reminded that each encounter has the possibility to leave its mark on us. As we encounter the stories of old as well as people who are new, may we do so aware of God’s Spirit within us and be led into prayer and compassion.
In each blog, we share a little context of the practice and a story from our partners and then give an idea for you to use in your own practice.
This week’s blog is on the practice of contemplation and presence.
While you Wait – Contemplation and Presence
Throughout this season of preparation and anticipation, we invite you to practice with us through a series of blogs focussing on gratitude, awe, compassion and presence. Like any practice, the act of doing the ‘thing’ is crucial to the transformation it incites. All We Can’s journey to decolonise aid, challenging what harms in the world while nurturing what heals — so that communities thrive — has reinforce that who we are and how we behave is essential. So, we join with the angels and innkeepers, parents and shepherds and allow the hush of awe to descend, in the presence of a new life, as we practice who we want to be for the world we want to see.
“When we do change to people they experience it as violence; when people do change for themselves they experience it as liberation.” ― Rosabeth Moss-Kanter
Preparation.
For our practice this week, we’ll use the whole time to train our brain in practice. So, please find a position you’ll be comfortable in for about ten minutes. If you find it easier to listen, you’ll find the audio on our YouTube channel here. Following the reflection, we’ll go immediately into a contemplative practice.
I had a baby at 28 weeks (2lbs). At that point, nearly everything was ready* – the nursery was set up, second hand clothes collected, reusable bamboo nappies bought, car seat in place…the only thing not ready was me. I thought I had time, another 3 months to go of anticipation and preparation for the extraordinary change a new person in my life was going to bring. I’d considered all the things I needed to do but I hadn’t considered all the ways I needed to be.
The two months in special care turned out to be a blessing. Every day, we were surrounded by wonderful women who’d made it their life’s work to care for babies and parents. They coached and supported us, so that, when we were finally able to take our baby home, we could do so more confident in our ability to parent. It wasn’t just physical care, it was about being intentionally present with him. To honour his dignity as the tiniest of human beings, talking to him about what we were doing before he could understand our words, reminding ourselves all the time of his value, his autonomy, even in his dependence on us. Who and how we were with him mattered as much as keeping him properly nourished and free from harm and it was shaped by being present with him.
*it occurs to me now that I may not have prepared early for anything since.
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Nabirye Fatuma is a 32-year-old fishmonger, and mother of 8 children, living in in Bubugo village, Butagaya, Uganda. Two years ago, she helped found the Bubugo self-help group, a community owned and run savings group. With savings, Fatuma has set up a business selling fish in Bubugo Trading Centre. FABIO, All We Can’s partner, initially supported Fatuma with training and a bicycle, helping her travel the distance needed to expand what she was able to sell. It was her determination and initiative that grew her business into what it is today, enabling her to now use a motorbike to go even further, to send her children to school and to make plans for her future.
“As I speak,’ she says ‘I learnt how to work and where FABIO found me is not where I am now. The trainings that FABIO has equipped us with, the knowledge of saving, I am not the same as I was […] I feel I am happy because I came from a pit. I came out of my sleep. I was really low, but I no longer fear, I’m no longer timid, I work.”
How FABIO turns up in a community is essential. To liberate Fatuma from the pit she felt she was in was not to create a dependency. It was to nurture her autonomy, preserve her dignity, to encourage her to see her own potential and equip her with skills and tools to fulfil it.
In this final week of Advent, the celebration of God with us, now so close, are we ready? Ready to practice presence in such a way that it transforms the world around us? Ready to make space for everyone to flourish and grow? Ready to resist the patterns of the world that create dependency and disregards dignity? Are prepared for a reality shaped by justice, peace and love?
Bringing home a newborn baby changed everything. It changed my whole reality. My hope is that that willingness to change, to adapt, to make space, is not limited to a single person simply because I birthed them – but a posture, shaped by practices like compassion, gratitude and awe, which tumbles abundantly into every connection I make, every action I take, in an ongoing becoming of who I need to be for the world I long to see.
Our final practice for advent, which has naturally featured in the other three, is contemplation and presence – the practice of being open to greater awareness and alignment with God, ourselves and the other. So that we over-ride our instinct to rush in, to help in a way that limits rather than liberates. Checking our own ego and priorities, allows us to align with the God of love who yearns for justice. It also allows to experience that love reflected back, reminding us that we are a precious, beloved gift to the world we live.
“Just this moment, just this breath, just this sitting here, just this being human. Just this. Just this.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
Let’s Practice
Our practice today will be simple. It’s not the only way to practice contemplation, as we’ve seen in the other practices through this series. Together, we’ll allow all the thoughts and plans we have in place to take a back seat, just for a few moments, as we intentionally open ourselves up to God within us and around us, with no agenda beyond that.
Let’s prepare to do that. Adjust your position if you need to, to be as comfortable as you can be. To help our thoughts and feelings to take that back seat, we’re going to give our attention to something to hang on to first. As you breathe, without changing or forcing it, draw your focus into your breath. Be curious about how much you can notice about it. How it feels as it enters your body, on your lips or nostrils. How it changes as it leaves, noticing the change of temperature or speed. Notice how it moves your body, lifting your chest, or stomach, if you’re lying down.
When you do notice any thoughts and feelings trying to grab your attention, acknowledge that they’re there and then re-focus back onto your breath, without judgment or shame. Feelings and thoughts, though often pressing, are just fleeting pieces of information that can afford to float off again until they’re needed later. The breath is simply an anchor to help bring your attention inwards. Take your time practicing that focus and letting go, allowing your brain to settle into the practice. Again, try not to judge yourself if you find it difficult or catch yourself distracted from the focus on your breath. This is, after all, practice not perfection. Some people find themselves falling asleep and that’s ok but the goal here is to fall awake, awake and aware of the presence of the Divine.
We’re going to allow ourselves to imagine sinking into that presence. Moving away from the transient, shifting, thoughts and feelings, deep into the warm, welcoming, ever-present reality of God. It might help to picture that as sinking beneath water or into a deep, soft surface, whatever feels most comfortable and safe as an image for you. Sinking into God, towards God, paying attention to what that feels like in your body, bringing your whole self into this place – what you could be aware of when surrounded by God? And we’re going to rest here. Safe. Loved. Wanted. Accepted. Welcome… consenting to God’s presence being known and felt, giving permission to God to meet us in this place, to know us and hold us.
We stay here, for as long as you need. Each practice can lengthen, if it’s helpful, until you can rest here for 20 plus minutes. Again, if you find your thoughts drifting but still want to persevere, kindly use your breath as an anchor for your attention, bring it back into the constant flow of air around and within you and then refocus back into God’s presence, equally as present as the air you breathe, curious about what that feels like and who you become when willingly connected.
To close, a quote from Saint Claire of Assisi,
‘Place your mind before the mirror of eternity! Place your soul in the brilliance of glory! Place your heart in the figure of the divine substance! And transform your whole being into the image of the Godhead Itself through contemplation!’
Gently allow your attention to open to the sounds and thoughts around you.
A blessing from Father Thomas Keating,
‘Let us enjoy the presence of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and allow ourselves to be loved unconditionally and so be inspired to meet the real needs of everyone in the human family, past, present and to come. Amen.’
