Readings for the Week beginning January 1, 2012
Laurence Freeman OSB, WCCM International Newsletter, December 2000.
Dearest Friends
The holiness of minute particulars, as Blake called it, is the sacredness of all incarnation: when words take flesh, faith becomes active in love and promises made are kept. Stillness, which is the condition of paying attention, reveals the infinite depths of the small. It is more direct; because it is more humble, to enter the realm of the infinite through the depths in small things than by always imagining something bigger and bigger. Attention is the essence of contemplation. We are all aware - or should be- how weak and unfaithful our attention span can be. This is why we need a daily practice of meditation, embodied in the routines of our private lives. It is not by thinking about it or even by willing it that we grow inattentiveness but through practice. John Main's emphasis on the importance of a simple daily discipline of meditation for modern people has never seemed wiser or more necessary. Attention purifies our hearts and changes the world. We can see this because our own personal afflictions are blessedly relieved if someone genuinely gives us their attention when we need it most. Compassion is the first fruit of attention. It is the life that flows from the death of selfishness. In his hidden years in Nazareth, under the loving attention of his parents, Jesus "grew big and strong" - the only physical description the gospels give of him. If we too are to grow in the spirit it will be by the strengthening our capacity for attention. The mantra itself embodies this practice as an act of fidelity and love performed at the deepest centre of our being where we are capable of attention - the deepest place, that is, from which we can pray.
There is no peace to be found in this life except by continuously deepening this point of awareness. Attention is prayer. It expresses itself both in the hidden levels of unknowing where the seed of the kingdom germinates "without our knowing how", but also in the decisions and problem-solving of daily life. Then silence, stillness and simplicity become real elements of how we live each day enlivened in hope and compassion by the life of Christ.
Like all life and evolution of life, incarnation is about balance. The spirit is the cutting edge of life. It is the blade that cuts through the knots of ignorance and fear and that is sharpened by the honing work of attention. Listening to the mantra with attention gradually reduces the frequency and volume of our disruptive thoughts and impulses. It re-sharpens what the ego blunts. We come to say the mantra, to sound it and to listen to it with finer, more subtle and more whole-hearted attention. It aligns us on that frequency of the Holy Spirit that runs through every instant of time and every cell of life. In its silence and stillness is our strength.

After Meditation: From Bro. Roger. “Peace of Heart in all things” Were it possible to fathom a human heart, the surprising thing would be to discover there the silent longing for a presence. In John’s Gospel, there appears a response to this longing: “Someone you do
not know is among you.”1 Is he not always in our midst, this Christ with whom we may be almost unacquainted?
Essential Teachings on Christian Meditation: What is Prayer?
A very old definition of prayer described it as "the raising of the heart and mind to God." What is the "mind"; what is the "heart"? The mind is what thinks - it questions, plans, worries, fantasizes. The heart is what knows - it loves. The mind is the organ of knowledge, the heart, the organ of love. Mental consciousness must eventually give way and open up to the fuller way of knowing which is heart consciousness. Love is complete knowledge. Most of our training in prayer, however, is limited to the mind. We were taught as children to say our
prayers, to ask God for what others or we need. But this is only half of the mystery of prayer.
The other half is the prayer of the heart where we are not thinking of God or talking to him or asking for anything. We are simply being with God who is in us in the Holy Spirit whom Jesus has given us. The Holy Spirit is the love, the relationship of love that flows between Father and Son. It is this Spirit Jesus has breathed into every human heart. Meditation, then, is the prayer of the heart uniting us with the human consciousness of Jesus in the Spirit. "We do not even know how to pray but the Spirit himself prays within us." Romans 8:26 The Holy Spirit in the modern Church, especially since the Vatican Council in the early 1960's, has been teaching us to recover this other dimension of our prayer. The Council documents on the Church and the liturgy both emphasized the need to develop "a contemplative orientation" in the spiritual life of Christians today. All are called to the fullness of the experience of Christ, whatever their
way of life. This means that we must move beyond the level of mental prayer: talking to God, thinking about God, asking God for our needs. We must go to the depths, to where the spirit of Jesus himself is praying in our hearts, in the deep silence of his union with our Father in the Holy Spirit. Contemplative prayer is not the privilege of monks and nuns or special mystical types. It is a dimension of prayer to which we are all called. It is not about extraordinary experiences or altered states of consciousness. It is what Thomas Aquinas called the "simple enjoyment of the truth." William Blake spoke of the need to "cleanse the doors of perception" so that we can see everything as it truly is: infinite.
This is all about the contemplative consciousness as lived in ordinary life. Meditation leads us to this
and it is part of the whole mystery of prayer in the life of any person who is seeking fullness of being After Meditation: from Christian Prayer: The Liturgy of the Hours

“Christmas Prayer,”
Almighty God and Father of light,
a child is born for us and a child is given to us.
your eternal Word leaped down from heaven
in the silent watches of the night,
and now your Church is filled with wonder
at the nearness of her God.
Open our hearts to receive his life
and increase our vision with the rising of dawn,
that our lives may be filled with God’s glory and peace,
who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

. Laurence Freeman OSB:      Advent Reflections 2011. 
Week 3
John the Baptist was a wild man. He felt drawn to the wilderness. He was himself there. “I am a voice crying in the wilderness.’ It was where he felt at home, with his locusts and wild honey, rather than in the best restaurants and hotels. Yet the people flocked to him and he exerted a phenomenal influence over the people of power. Free of attachments and undisturbed by the temptations of security that most people succumb to, he had a passion for the truth and for telling it as it is. In the end, falling foul of the king, he paid the ultimate price that many prophets have had to pay, his own life.
Advent is not only about waiting for something to happen. It is about waiting in hope and living in the truth of the moment, with every breath breathing the truth. It is about being uncompromising about the small compromises and the politically motivated exceptions with the truth that chip away at our integrity.
Meditation is a kind of wilderness, where only the truth can exist. Our practice teaches us to live there happily, to make it our home with all its simplicity and no necessary furniture. Then it blooms with the love that truth serves and we find we are solitary but not alone, ourselves but not merely isolated egos trying to survive and defend. We flourish with the brave freedom of the Baptist who knew he was in service of something greater than himself. If we know that, then no price is too great to pay.

Fr. Laurence Freeman's- Advent Message

Advent Week 2
In the course of his preaching he said, ‘Someone is following me, someone who is more powerful than I am, and I am not fit to kneel down and undo the strap of his sandals. I have baptised you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.’ (Mk 1:8)
To live in hope. This sounds rather deflating to us today who are used to instant gratification. It seems to mean either being reconciled to a continuous lack of fulfillment or to live in a kind of quiet desperation – just getting through to the end. This isn’t what the ‘virtue’ – the strength - of hope that meditation nurtures is about at all.
Hope blooms as hopes die. Hopes are veiled desires or fantasies which we use as substitutes for reality or as defences against disappojntments and sufferings. Often we have to tremble on the brink of despair and the evacuation of desire before discovering the meaning of hope. Before we get to that brink we start clutching at false hopes. The John the Baptists of our lives – those who alone give authentic consolation – are not harbingers of doom but preachers of reality.
But at the graced moment of emptiness we are visited by hope that enlightens us about the meaning of the process we are passing through. Even if we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel yet we know – with a kind of night-vision – that we are on the way and even the feeling of failure or of being forgotten are part of the process that will flower in the light of love.
For those who live in hope (this is what Advent is about learning) there is no final closure or shutdown.  As the old rabbi said God does not expect us to succeed but we are not allowed to give up. This is not only human wisdom about the need to endure. It is a disclosure about the infinite simplicity of God.
Laurence Freeman OSB

Dear Meditators,

Similar to our monthly meetings, here meditators attend "Community Days". There is a nominal charge and each one brings a packed lunch. It is not a day of silence. If we can manage it, we may attend one such programme next Saturday. Here there is quite a strong ecumenical presence among the meditators, coming as they do from major Christian traditions besides the Catholic Tradition. The 'theological' differences that have caused divisions are accepted but there is  a characteristic focus on what we share in common through access to the presence of the Lord within us. Differences need not lead to division. In John Main's words: Meditation brings about Community. The Catholic Church here, is in the forefront of this movement to fulfil Jesus' prayer - "That they all may be one".

Peace and joy to each of you,

Christopher.

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We have received permission to hold our next meeting on 12th June, 2010 from 9.00am to 12.00 noon, at the Clergy Home, Bandstand, Bandra .

There will be no meeting in the month of May . May providence open up a way for us at this venue, as some of the retired / sick priests will have the opportunity to encounter the practice first hand.