During Mental Health Week at Mountjoy Prison, Niall Charleton and Noel Keating led an introductory workshop on the practice of meditation. Starting soon, Niall Charleton and Colm Wells will lead weekly sessions at the prisons each Thursday. We are thrilled to have started this new initiative and we wish every success to Niall and Colm.
We are very grateful to prison Chaplain David Dennis for the invitation. David observes that ‘Their presence brought a quiet depth to the space, one that invited stillness, attention, and a different kind of engagement with the inner life. In a prison environment, where noise, pressure, and constant movement are part of the daily rhythm, the introduction of contemplative practice offers something both simple and profound. It creates a structured opportunity to pause, to breathe, and to begin to encounter oneself in a more grounded way.
This kind of work sits firmly within the broader Care & Rehabilitation framework. Practices such as meditation can support emotional regulation, reduce reactivity, and contribute to the development of personal responsibility and inner stability, key components in any meaningful rehabilitative journey.
What was most striking today was not only the teaching itself, but the atmosphere it created. There was a tangible shift in the room, a settling, a focus, and a willingness to engage. My sincere thanks to Niall and Noel for bringing their experience, generosity, and presence into the prison today.’
The image, which was taken in the chapel, under the Harry Clarke Studio stained glass window, shows Niall Charleton (L), David Dennis (C) and Noel Keating (R).
Noel Keating will lead a retreat on Christian Meditation: A Pathway to Your True-Self from Tuesday 14 July (starting at 2;15 pm) to Thursday 16 July (ending at 3:45 pm). The venue will be the at the Spiritan Retreat and Spirituality Centre in Ardbraccan, Navan, C15 XD6H.
Noel, who was National Coordinator for Christian Meditation Ireland for ten years, will use a combination of contemporary contemplative poetry and scripture readings as a way into silence and receptivity. We will discover how the contemplative journey- from the head to the heart – restores harmony between the egoic-self and the true-self, as we discover who we are in the depths of our being.
The retreat will balance teaching, meditation together, time for quiet and opportunities for sharing. While suitable for beginners, this event will enable experienced meditators to deepen their experience of the practice. It will also include an introduction to the practice of lectio divina.
We will learn, as John Main taught, that ‘the all-important aim in Christian meditation is to allow God’s mysterious and silent presence within us to become more and more not only A reality, but THE reality in our lives; to let it become that reality which gives meaning, shape and purpose to everything we do, to everything we are.’ Booking is essential by calling 046 9078973 or emailing jackie@antobar.ie
Balally parish in South Dublin continues its program on the Rule of St Benedict. The program runs once each month, on Saturday mornings from 3 pm to 7 pm – on the last Saturday of each month, with the exception of November (Sat 21 Nov) and December (Sat 12 Dec).
The program explores how ordinary men and women can strive to live the Benedictine Rule in the course of their everyday lives in the modern, busy world. For further information email cinzia.angius@balallyparish.ie
APRIL 20-26: Wisdom from Bonnevaux
Fr Peter Murphy, a priest from New Zealand, and coordinator of the Bonnevaux Community, will give a series of talks over these five days in April. Further details will follow.
On Sunday, 17 May 2026, RTE Live Broadcast of a Contemplative Eucharist from Balally Parish Church. Fr Jim Caffrey will preside at the Mass and Fr Laurence Freman will deliver the sermon.
JULY 07-09: Celtic Pilgrimage to Clonmacnoise and other Celtic monastic sites in Offaly , Galway and Clare , with times for prayer and meditation at each day. Led by Rev Philip McKinley (Church of Ireland pilgrimage director for Kildare and Clonmacnoise)
Saturday, 20 September 2026 ( 10am-5pm) Retreat Day led by Judith Valente. Judith is an award winning journalist who lives in Chicago. She is a Benedictine Oblate of the Monastery of Mount St Scholastica in Kansas. She has written many books on Benedictine spirituality, most notably the classic ‘How to Live: What the Rule of St Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning and Community’. She is also an expert on the work of Thomas Merton. More details to follow in due course.
The Annual General Meeting of Christian Meditation Ireland will take place online on Monday, 18th May 2026 at 8 pm to facilitate the attendance of as many people as possible from the Irish community of meditators.
The meeting will take place over Zoom and you will be able to join in the event by clicking here. The directors will report on their work over the past year and the accounts will be presented for adoption. While only those designated as ‘members’ – effectively the shareholders of Christian Meditation Ireland clg, will v have a vote, the AGM is an opportunity for all to learn about the work of the community nationwide.
The Shift by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer She wanted a little room for thinking.
With no room available,
she settled for a chair.
She sat there.
To anyone else, it might have looked
as if nothing was happening.
Inside her, whole foundations
were crumbling. Maps were
unmapping. Paths
were unpathing. A tornado
of doubt did its perfect work.
Somewhere there was light.
No one else could see the rubble
rising all around her.
Also in that wreckage,
her belief in fixing.
God, she was raw.
Now, now
there was room.
Reflection by Noel Keating: To an outside observer witnessing a person sitting in meditation, the practice may appear to be static. But while we sit in stillness and silence, the practice is not static but dynamic, not stagnant but spirit-flow. Trommer’s poem describes the silent dismantling of layer after layer of conditioning through the simple practice of silence and stillness.
The Buddha was once asked to say what he got from meditation to which he responded ‘I got nothing but I lost a great deal’. This poem illustrates that the path to internal freedom isn’t found by building a better, more productive life, but by allowing the false foundations underpinning it to collapse.
The first lines of the poem play on the meaning of the word ‘room’ which can refer to a physical space but which also can mean a psychological space wherein we can process experience. So, what begins as a simple quest for ‘room’ becomes a deconstruction of the false-self, of the self-narrative and self-identity the ego tries so hard to build. The poem opens with what seems like a compromise: With no room / available, / she settled for a / chair. As experienced meditators, we recognise this as the first steps in our daily practice of meditation. Our conditioning would have us believe that we need to create the perfect setting before we begin to meditate – a quiet space and a quiet mind – but experience teaches us that we can meditate anywhere. We just need to stop moving – hence, a chair. By settling for a chair, we cease trying to negotiate with our environment. Indeed, we might even see our mantra as the ‘chair’ because it is that which brings us to stillness.
Our poem goes on to describe the work that is done to us as we meditate. By choosing to let go of all movement, including the incessant movement of thought, our attachment to our conditioning begins to dissolve. We don’t have to do anything – the simple act of letting go allows our attachments to loosen and fall away as we discover that we are not our thoughts, we are not our doing. And as these false foundations begin to crumble, as our false maps lose their hold on us, we re-discover who we are in the depths of our being. Our ego functions by mapping – by creating labels and expectations that we come to see as our ‘identity’ but when we sit in silence we move beyond this false-self to our true-self; we discover who we are in God and who God is in us.
Trommer tells us too that the silence also unravels her belief in fixing so that she is able to allow reality to be just as it is –to let go of the ego’s desire for perfection and to accept what is, acknowledging that trying to ‘fix’ everything can actually be part of the problem. That includes trying to ‘fix’ the wandering mind, to cease fighting and trying to bury intrusive thoughts and simply let them arise without engaging with them. Letting them arise and move on like clouds in the sky without debating and analysing them. The outcome is a dawning sense of enlightenment – that somewhere there is light beneath a cloud of unknowing and undoing.
While no one else could see the rubble rising all around her, it can also take the meditator a long time to fully realise the dissolution that is taking place within their psyche as their true-self is slowly revealed in the spaciousness of being that exists beneath our conditioned minds. We come to appreciate that we are not the maps, the paths, or even the rubble – we too are the light that sees it all.
