Annual Forum of Christian Meditation Ireland
At the request of Fr Laurence Freeman, our Annual Forum this year will take place online on the evening of Thursday, 29 May 2025 starting at 8:30 pm Irish time. A brief, formal AGM will take place beforehand. Click here or on the image to participate in the Annual Forum over Zoom.
It is hoped that Fr Laurence Freeman will be able to address the Annual Forum on Thursday night from Bonnevaux to reflect on the challenges and opportunities facing the Irish Christian Meditation community and to speak about his hopes for the John Main Seminar 2025 which will be held in Balally Parish, Dublin from 04-09 November 2025.
The John Main Seminar, which takes place in a different country every year, will be a unique opportunity for Irish meditators to experience the benefits of being part of the family that is the World Community for Christian Meditation and to meet with like-minded seekers from all over the world. Please do tune in on Thursday evening next from 8:30 p.m. to find out more.
There Is a Fire by Michael Lavers
We try. We water plants so we can watch
God bloom, we look at rivers till our sadness
feels beautiful. Tumult and peace
and tumult again, and we have no idea
of what decides what rises and what falls.
My daughter combs her hair,
watching the snow come slantly down.
There is a world, through her, seeing itself.
We talk about objects because we cannot
talk about the hidden radiance. We talk
about how Arshile Gorky swam
into the Charles to end his life,
but then remembered painting,
and swam joyously back. Of pines,
of wind. Of how there is a mutual
wounding that’s required for love,
and although no one’s asking, I can answer
that I write about my children to obtain
for them life after death. Why else!
There is a fire at the heart of things
that can’t go out, and we are here,
and we remember it. We try.
A purple comb. Slant snow.
My children are, which I don’t
understand, but no disaster’s possible.
I’m certain what they truly are was
never born. That though the sun
shall not endure, they shall endure.
from Rattle #87, Spring 2025
Reflection by Noel Keating:
The French painter and sculptor Georges Braque said: ‘In art there is only one thing that matters: that which cannot be explained.’ Writing about this poem, our poet, Michael Lavers, wrote that ‘I don’t know what poetry is, where it comes from, why exactly I love it so much, or how it gets written. Nor, luckily, do I have to know. What a relief!’
This is a deeply contemplative contemporary poem in which that which cannot be explained is referred to simply as ‘a fire at the heart of things that can’t go out’. As Christians who meditate we have many other ways of describing the true-self, the spirit who dwells in the heart of every living thing, indeed in all of creation. Writing about the danger of using religious jargon, poet Luci Shaw writes that ‘Because we are residents in the house of faith, we are accountable to the community and its resident director [Christ] and must shape our gift responsibly to perceive and penetrate to the heart of the matters we address, and to reveal their true shape and significance to the human community as well. As Christians, as artists, our work is radical, in the deepest sense of the word.’
But, she continues ‘ The road is rocky. One of its perils is that we may avoid giving voice to our most profound beliefs about Creator or creation for fear of disqualifying ourselves by appearing to preach or be overly pious, perhaps raising red flags in the minds of those who yet need to be convinced.’
And so, as our poet, says ‘We talk about objects because we cannot talk about the hidden radiance. We talk about how Arshile Gorky swam into the Charles to end his life, but then remembered painting, and swam joyously back. Of pines, of wind.’ And when he does wish to point to an essential truth about our true nature he uses phrases such as ‘There is a fire at the heart of things that can’t go out, and we are here, and we remember it.’ As Luci Shaw writes elsewhere ‘It is in the complex fabric of natural and human life that God shines more clearly than in any abstract or dogmatic theological statement about him.’
Speaking about the discipline of meditation, John Main likens it to a fire that purifies us: ‘The purification that leads to purity of heart – to seeing our true selves, to discovering the Presence within us – is a consuming fire; and meditation is entering that fire, the fire that burns away everything that is not real, that burns away everything that is not true, that burns away everything that is not loving. And we must not be afraid of the fire. We must have absolute confidence in the fire, for the fire is the fire of love. The fire is even more. This is the great mystery of our faith. It is the fire who is love.’
