This is a conversation with Pastor Tia Norman. Along with Bishop Mariann Budde, Ray Dalio & Fr Laurence Freeman, she will join Tim Shriver, the keynote speaker, at the John Main Seminar 2026, taking place in Washington, DC, from 17–20 September, to reflect on the theme Healing the Breach: Finding Faith, Meaning and Dignity in a Season of Contempt.
You can read the transcripts of this interview below the video.
This year's John Main Seminar will explore the power of faith and spiritual experience to transform hearts and open minds. What's your initial thought on the theme of this year’s conference?
Thank you, I’m truly grateful and honored to participate in this way and looking forward to being with everyone. Initially upon receiving the title of this year’s conference, my response was one of curiosity. What does the that mean ‘healing the breach’?
And so my curiosity led me to discover that this year’s theme is anchored in a passage from Isaiah. So, I decided to spend some time with it and revisit what it means to heal the breach. What I found is that although this Scripture is ancient, there is a lot of relevancy for today.
What it is exploring is the idea of what a community defines as fasting and the words are ‘you do as you please and you exploit your workers, your fasting ends in quarreling and strife’, so there’s this really direct calling out by the Prophet of redefining and reminding the community what fasting means. In that reorientation, there is this directive that this is a fasting that has to do with doing away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing of fingers and malicious talk. And if you spend yourself on behalf of the hungry and and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness. So as I sit with those words today, I see a lot of connection and relevancy to our global community today, and all that is causing the breach, the division that exists. What I am most excited about is having conversations that can reorient us and help us reimagine what it is like to be that light that Isaiah is referring to.
From your experience, how can contemplative practices help humanity to 'heal the breach' as the title of the conference infers?
That’s such a good question, contemplative practices have profoundly transformed my life. I do see a definite connection between contemplative practices and healing the breach. There are many ways that I could respond to this question, so it’s hard to narrow down, but I think it comes down to at least three I’s that contemplation helps to nurture. And the first would be identity.
And so that would be the first I: that contemplative practices help to ground our identity in something that is beyond what we have control of, what others think and how we perform.
And then the second I is our inner world. So for me, contemplative practice has helped me to become aware of when I am being motivated by those temptations to please others, to try to control a situation, to want to have some sense of deep security, which are all part of our human experience and have helped us grow and evolve, but at some point we’re invited to mature beyond those motivations and to be motivated by something that is more expansive and beyond those categories. And for me, that inner world awareness has given me a perspective of the outer world that helps me have empathy and compassion, it makes me aware of how I will steward my energies, what is mine to do or not do in specific situations. And so that connection between inner awareness, identity, inner transformation, and how the practice – for whatever practice it may be, however long you may engage in it – what I seem to be learning over and over again is that that time is to equip us to be centered throughout all of the other moments outside of the practice.
So, that’s the second I. And then the third I is the one I get most excited about because I think that this becomes a well for imagination, and I think contemplative practices become a well for creativity. So when we are seeing the division, the breach in the world and we are longing for change, that’s calling for new ways of being with each other.
And I think in that widening of views and perspective, what we also come to realize is that we often reside in a place of choice and we’re not aware of it. And so just having that spaciousness to pause and become aware of: ‘I have a choice here, you know and what might those choices kind of look like from a a broader perspective and can I respond from a place of wholeness to whatever the situation may be rather than react from a place of fragmentation’ – is the word that I would use.
Pastor Tia Norman will be one of the speakers at the John Main Seminar 2026 in Washington, DC, joining keynote speaker Tim Shriver together with Ray Dalio, Bishop Mariann Budde & Fr Laurence Freeman.
