In order to help us manage our events well we ask that all future events be booked through Eventbrite.
This really helps us to prepare for each event to ensure we have sufficient seating and refreshments available for all participants on the day of the event.
Our annual day of contemplation will take place on Saturday, 23 September 2023 with Father Donagh O’Shea. The theme for the day will be Rediscovering a Contemplative Church.
We have changed the format of the day so it will begin at 10 a.m. and conclude at 1:30 p.m. with no lunch provided. There will be refreshment break from 11:30 to 12 noon with tea, coffee and biscuits provided for all. Rather than charge for the event we are asking for a voluntary donation of as much as you can afford, with a recommended donation of €20 which will go towards our running costs of events and activities throughout the year.
If you haven’t booked you can still attend on the day, but please help us by booking in advance
Christian Meditation Ireland is run entirely by volunteers. Each person on our Board accepts responsibility for overseeing one area of our activities, all of which are designed to animate our community and support the practice of meditation in society.
We are currently looking for volunteers to assist with our work. Can you volunteer 2-3 hours a month from September to May each year? Might you be able to help us?
Since we first asked in our June newsletter, one person has volunteered to take on the role of company secretary. We are now seeking a volunteer to help us with our website – full training will be provided.
Perhaps you or someone you know can give a few hours a month to help us keep our meditation community animated and vibrant. Contact mnkeating@gmail.com to find out more or call Noel on 087 2251183
Balally Parish is organising a monastic pilgrimage to Glendalough on Saturday 16 September 2023. Breakfast at 9 a.m. and bus leaves at 10 a.m. Bring your own lunch. Home by 5 p.m. approx. Open to all. If interested, contact Balally Parish Office on 01 295 4296.
Fr Laurence Freeman will give a talk in Balally Parish Church on the morning of Saturday, 02 December 2023 and will lead Mass on Sunday, 03 December 2023..
Further details, including times, will follow but, if interested in attending, put the date in your diary now.
Our next Dublin & Environs Meet-Up will take place on Saturday, 21 October 2023 in Balally Parish Centre (10:30 am-12:30 pm).
It is important that we develop our community by creating opportunities for meditations to meet fellow contemplatives and share their experience. So please do join us! There will be a guest speaker who will engage us in a discussion on the essence of meditation and help us to share contemplative insights with one another.
Awareness Knowing Itself
by Danna Faulds
Settle in the here and now.
Reach down into the centre where the world is not spinning
and drink this holy peace.
Feel relief flood into every
cell. Nothing to do. Nothing
to be but what you are already.
Nothing to receive but what
flows effortlessly from the
mystery into form.
Nothing to run from or run
toward. Just this breath,
awareness knowing itself as
embodiment. Just this breath,
awareness waking up to truth.
Noel Keating Reflects: Thomas Merton describes this truth, that the last line of the poem refers to, our true nature, as follows: At the centre of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.
Laurence Freeman writes that ‘One of the things we begin to feel, as we meditate regularly, is that those times of meditation, morning and evening, open up a new centre of awareness, a new stillness of consciousness, of perception, deep within us, which is not affected by anything we do, however busy we may be, however rushed off our feet we may be, however involved in external activity we may be. If our meditation is regular, we’ll find that there is a stillness in the midst of all our activity; in fact we begin to realise that the activity flows out of this stillness.’
Richard Rohr describes the process of awareness waking up to truth as follows ‘Contemplation is a panoramic, receptive awareness whereby we take in all that the situation, moment, or person offers without judging, eliminating, or labelling anything. It is pure and positive gazing that abandons all negative pushback so it can recognize inherent dignity. That takes much practice and a lot of unlearning of habitual responses. We have to work at it and develop practices whereby we recognize our compulsive and repetitive patterns.
Meditation is just such a practice. Through meditation we allow ourselves to be freed from the desire to take control of any situation, as if we ever really could anyway and we are able to respond as the situation calls for. John Main writes that ‘Stillness is the way to rootedness and it focuses the challenge that faces all of us, to be rooted in our true self …. What you will discover in your meditation is the reciprocal harmony that we have with God.’
New Book on Meditation
Donagh O’Shea, who will lead our gathering on Sat 23 September in Balally, has published his latest book A Hundred Roads to Herewhich he describes as as a book for struggling meditators. That includes most, if not all of us – and probably includes Donagh himself! The wish to meditate may be strong and persistent, but there are many impediments. Every meditator knows them. They present themselves in random ways, and – in like fashion – Donagh’s book is for dipping into at random. Though they are numbered, the sections are in no particular order. They are not points to ponder during meditation, because meditation is inner silence. They were written in response to requests from individuals and groups for brief inputs at the beginning of their meditation sessions; they are meant to lead to silence, and to the meditative state which is never more than a breath away. Click on the book cover to purchase.
