Welcome to our March 2023 Newsletter. This month we have added a range of very useful video countdown timers to our website. These are in addition to the times we have always offered for schools beginning meditation with children.
Each of the new timers displays a flickering candle with the word ‘Maranatha’ shown beneath and a countdown timer to the right-hand side. We hope you find them helpful for children who have been meditating for some time and who no longer an explanatory introduction.
These new timers also mean that the length of the meditation session matches exactly the time chosen for the meditation.
Our weekly half-hour Zoom sessions for teachers have started very well and we are now opening the group up to anyone who is interested in meeting with other teachers of meditation to children. Why not try it out?
Each half-hour session, on Tuesdays from 8 – 8:30 pm, opens with a short poem of presence and concludes with a short meditation. Those who attend are free to reflect, if they wish, on the poem or on their experience of meditating with children but doing so is purely voluntary.
To check it out click on the image to the left any Tuesday evening from 7:50 onwards. If you enjoy it, come back whenever you are free to do so. If you would like an emailed reminder each Tuesday lunchtime, email me at
In 2022-23 we adapted our model for promoting the practice of meditation with children in schools. This school year we have worked exclusively in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin – ten new schools have joined our project.
We hope to undertake a pilot project in the diocese of Cork & Ross in the next school year. If you know of another diocese who may wish to avail of our services for free ask them to contact us: meditationandchildren@gmail.com
Staying in the Canyon by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
I imagine the trees saying
it is not such a bad thing
to show up day after day
in the same place with the same
walls and the same light
and the same soil.
All that moving around
is one way to live.
Staying rooted is another.
I notice I want to argue.
I notice I want to relent.
I notice they have no sense
of lack. Their days are full.
Their heartwood strong.
I imagine them saying,
so much can travel inside you
when you never move at all.
For me, this is a poem about staying grounded. As human beings in the modern world we have been conditioned to expect constant stimulation and we become bored very quickly in its absence. We tend to fill our lives with frivolity, with a host of ultimately meaningless activities. We turn so readily to social media when we have any free time or we habitually plonk ourselves in front the television to be entertained most evenings. Children, from a very young age, long before they have a device of their own, are becoming conditioned to spend inordinate amounts of time on phones and tablets.
Can you think of someone who has been a grounding influence in your life; a special friend or a mentor. Like trees grounded in their habitat, when we encounter such exemplars of good living we recognise that ‘they have no sense of lack. Their days are full. Their heartwood strong.’ They taught us the importance of being grounded in the heart, of making our own heart-wood strong.
Isn’t that why we meditate and why we teach children to meditate regularly: to make our, and their, heart-wood strong. When we give children the time to meditate they too discover that ‘so much can travel inside you when you never move at all.’ They discover who they are at the deepest level of their being. They discover the goodness deep inside and they learn that this is who they really are. Thank you for giving the gift of meditation to the children in your classroom.
May their meditation make their heart-wood strong and help them to bloom where they are planted. May it ground them so they will come to appreciate that they too can be exemplars of good living for others
If you live in or near Dublin you may be interested in a short and very accessible contemplative retreat over four days of Easter, for about an hour a day. Her first talk will on Sunday, 02 April 2023 (4 – 5:30 p.m.) This will be followed by three further sessions from 7-8 p.m. on Monday 03, Tuesday 04 and Wednesday 05 April. The venue is Balally Parish Centre. Click here for directions.
The theme of the retreat will be ‘Looking Forward in Joy to Easter‘. Each session will include a talk and a period of silent meditation. Sarah is an Anglican priest and theologian based in Canberra, Australia.
Noel Keating gave a talk recently exploring how meditation is a heart-felt and not a mental experience. Click here to view it.
Teachers often ask about the experience of meditation – what is it like to adopt meditation as a regular daily practice? Click here to read more.
Up to seventy meditators meet each Wed and Thursday evening to meditate together. You are welcome anytime.
Copyright © 2022 Christian Meditation Ireland clg (Charity No.: 20083489 Company No.: 530525, All rights reserved.
