A Generous Space for Listening
A Review of
Contemplative Witnessing: BIPOC-Centered Spiritual Direction
by Cindy S. Lee
Paperback: Fortress Press, 2025
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Reviewed by Maria Henderson
In my early days as a spiritual director in training, a young Black woman came to explore her spiritual life. I could tell that there were things she told me that were not matching up to my own experience, and I knew I wasn’t listening well. One of my trainers picked up on my sense that I was failing her, and encouraged me to educate myself. I took that as a directive to go learn more about the lived experience of Black people in America. That was certainly helpful, and made me a better director to her and to others, but I wish I had had access to Cindy Lee’s Contemplative Witnessing back then to expand my appreciation of what it means to bear witness to the movements of the Spirit in another person’s life.
Lee writes out of her experience as an Asian-American woman, as a spiritual director to people of color, and as a trainer of BIPOC spiritual directors, but her wisdom and gentle invitations to an inclusive and expansive way of offering spiritual companionship should find a much wider audience. She begins by introducing the desire that led her to spiritual direction in the first place, “I saw in spiritual direction an intentional practice to cultivate a listening, nonanxious, and restful presence in myself, especially in the context of community” (1). I don’t know of a spiritual community – or any community for that matter – that wouldn’t benefit from a few more people who bring that kind of presence into their relationships and communal spaces.
She defines spiritual direction as “a communal practice of contemplative witnessing. … Contemplative witnessing, then, is a practice that facilitates this sacred seeing in community” (2-3). The contemplative stance where “we gaze at the divine and then receive the divine gaze on us” (2) will be familiar to many, though Lee steers clear of typical Western and Christian ways of discussing contemplation in favor of opening up the possibilities to be found in other cultures, especially the Daoist thought and practices where she has found her own sources of strength and healing. It is the communal and collective part of contemplative witnessing that offers the biggest challenge and corrective to the way spiritual direction is often taught and practiced. Specifically, she addresses “how we take care of our collective spirit as we live in racist and oppressive contexts” (8). While her focus remains firmly on the experience of people of color and other marginalized groups, her invitation to deep, holistic listening and accompaniment is an invitation for all. In the context of the dehumanizing forces in our society, Lee argues that “spaces of care must be qualitatively different from the day-to-day oppressive spaces we navigate through” (13). In her exploration of various sacred movements, she points out where the approaches to spiritual direction many of us have been taught perpetuate those oppressive spaces. Even the neutrality many spiritual directors are trained to exhibit can communicate complicity when we are asked to bear witness to someone’s experience of injustice. Silence itself can be harmful to those who have been silenced. In every case “BIPOC communities especially need witnesses who believe our everyday experience of injustice” (19).
The main part of the book centers on a number of sacred movements, which represents Lee’s attempt to capture “the ways we express and experience our sacred self through each season of life” (24). These movements are unique to each person and culture. The fruit of this openness to other sources of wisdom comes in empowering others “to access their own listening. … If a contemplative witness does not claim our own knowing over others, then we release our needs to problem solve, fix or give advice” (44). The book is full of this sort of gentle but pointed challenge to the very Western need to bring resolution to issues, rather than patiently cultivating space and allowing questions to remain unanswered. Her section on decolonizing spirituality points to embodied practices aimed at unforming the harms of internalized criticism and the binaries that “naturally create othering” (65).
In the final chapter of the book, Lee delves into the communal dimension of witnessing. “Spirituality without justice is empty.” Confronting “systems of oppression and violence require not just tactical activism, but also the slow inner work of addressing our callousness, fears, divisiveness, and hatred” (73). She invites us to the difficult work of listening to the pain of those who are grieving or suffering, resisting the urge to relieve the discomfort or offer a forced hope. As she does throughout the book, Lee points the reader to a deeper question: “Instead of asking ourselves ‘how do I help?,’ we might ask ourselves ‘how might I offer a healing and restful presence?’” (76). I found myself noting these questions and resolving to bring them into my practice. Anyone doing pastoral care of any sort would find much to enrich their work in this little book. Anyone seeking to bring a more generous spirit to relationships across cultural differences would benefit as well.
Maria Henderson
Maria L. Henderson is a writer and spiritual director based in Santa Barbara, California. She is trained to lead others through the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and is currently working on a D.Min. focusing on the spiritual formation of White Christians for the work of pursuing racial justice. She writes at mariahenderson.substack.com
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