Our Annual Forum and AGM will take place on Saturday, 11 May 2024 in Balally (D16 E032) from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Jane Mellet will give a talk entitled ‘The Antidote to the Ecological Crisis is Contemplation‘.
Jane is Church Outreach Manager at Trócaire. She was their ‘Laudato Si’ Officer for many years and worked with the ‘Laudato Si’ Movement. Her specific interest is in the areas of climate justice and ecological spirituality. Jane has participated in online initiatives with WCCM through Bonnevaux.
Tea and Coffee will be available from 10:30 onwards, so come a little early!
This is our annual opportunity for those interested in meditation across Ireland to get together, to explore how we can spread the good news about the benefits and fruits of meditation and engage with others in our community. Your attendance will help make this a lively and rewarding event where we can continue to animate and renew our community. We hope that representatives from all of our regions will attend in person.
Participants will make their own arrangements for lunch after the meeting. If you wish, bring a packed lunch and tea and coffee will be provided.
In April we held an online gathering of our Regional Coordinators. Niall Kennedy, from Tipperary town, who became an Oblate of WCCM in December last, spoke to us about his contemplative journey, describing key points and influences along the way. We thank him for sharing his personal story which resonated profoundly with all who attended.
We had a really enjoyable Dublin & Environs Meet-Up on Saturday, 23 March 2024 at Balally in Dublin. Many thanks to all who came and shared their experience of meditation. Noel Keating gave a talk entitled ‘Sensing What We Already Are‘ which led to a generous sharing by those present. Noel’s talk can be viewed by clicking here.
There will be a wonderful event in Balally on Saturday 28 September and Sunday 29 September 2024 that you will not wish to miss! Trust us on this! Further details will follow in later Newsletters, but put those dates in your diary NOW!
There is a Contemplative Mass celebrated every Tuesday evening at 7 p.m. in the Lane Room in Balally, as part of Desert Tuesday each week. And a Contemplative Mass online every Sunday from Bonnevaux at 11 a.m. Irish time.
Millennium Blessing by Stephen Levine
There is a grace approaching
that we shun as much as death,
it is the completion of our birth.
It does not come in time,
but in timelessness
when the mind sinks into the heart
and we remember.
It is an insistent grace that draws us
to the edge and beckons us to surrender
safe territory and enter our enormity.
We know we must pass
beyond knowing
and fear the shedding.
But we are pulled upward
none-the-less
through forgotten ghosts
and unexpected angels,
luminous.
And there is nothing left to say
but we are That.
And that is what we sing about.
from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World. (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology.)
Reflection by Noel Keating: Our faith tells us that Christ destroyed death, not just for himself but for all of humanity; that life is not ended, merely changed. That life and death are not opposites but that birth and death are events on a continuum that continues after we leave this realm.
The Franciscan theologian Ilia Delio writes that ‘Christianity can help us realize that death and resurrection are part of the evolutionary path toward wholeness; letting go of isolated existence for the sake of deeper union. Something dies but something new is born—which is why the chaos of our times is, in a strange way, a sign of hope; something new is being born within. Out of chaos, a star is born. Breakdown can be break through if we recognize a new pattern of life struggling to emerge.’
As the poet writes, There is a grace approaching … which is the completion of our birth. It begins while we are still alive as we slowly awaken to the truth of who we truly are. Meditation awakens us to this simple truth yet most of us spend our entire lives trapped on the outer circumference of the inner richness of our lives, avoiding the inner journey.
The awakening does not come in time, but in timelessness, when the mind sinks into the heart and we remember. It comes to us through the stillness and silence of meditation when we adopt a stance of receptiveness, letting go of our old certainties and our limited sense of who we are. Meditation reveals to us who we are at the depths of our being. We can be sure that our meditation practice is an insistent grace that draws us to the edge and beckons us to surrender safe territory and enter our enormity. It requires courage and surrender; to allow our true self to unfold within us; that unfolding wants to occur within us but we must assent to it. The only effort required of us is to let go of our endless strategies to halt the process, to accept the invitation to grace; to cease allowing the hyperactivity of thought to frame our perception of the world, to limit our capacity for seeing Reality. When we learn not to be captivated by thought, when the mind sinks into the heart, we discover timelessness.
As John Main often said, meditation moves the centre of gravity of our consciousness form the head to the heart. When the mind sinks into the heart … we remember. We re-member. We see beyond the illusion of separateness and discover that we are already one, that, as Thich Nhat Hanh expressed it, we inter-are. To re-member is to recover a vision of Wholeness, to see Reality as it is. Richard Rohr observes that ‘Christianity—as well as Buddhism, other religions, and nature-based systems—suggests that the pattern of transformation, the pattern that connects, the life that Reality offers us is not death avoided, but always death transformed. And when we truly apprehend this there is nothing left to say but we are That. And that is what we sing about. That is why we meditate.
