Contemplative Revolution

This is the second talk Sarah Bachelard gave on the Silent Retreat at the University of Waikato in 2017. She expands on the relationship between contemplative practice and active life: how contemplation changes the agent and shifts his/her vision to see the nature of reality, and the context in which he/she is acting. Experiencing God is not about having a particular experience, it is about having the ground or the context for all our experiences. God is that in which everything else is contained. To experience God (to experience Love) is to experience the ultimate reality for us as gift and grace. It is to experience ourselves at home. The christian faith offers a particular vision of God and human possibilities in relation to God, when this sense of things is alive for us, it transforms how we act. It leads to those full of faith to trust in abundance, it leads them to generosity and courage and to trust that there is a direction in our lives that is given. God is present and active. The power of reconciliation is at work in the world. It invites us to live and act in hope, even in situations that seem hopeless. Meditation leads us to this experience of reality, to this possibility of faith. This talk was part of a Silent a Silent Retreat led by the Rev. Dr. Sarah Bachelard in the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand January 2017. Sarah Bachelard is an internationally respected theologian, retreat leader and priest. She is the founder and leader of Benedictus Contemplative Church in Canberra, Australia and an honorary fellow at the Australian Catholic University. Sarah was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University where she studied theology with former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. She is the author of two books, Experiencing God in a Time of Crisis and Resurrection and Moral Imagination.

This Talk on New Ways of Wisdom was part of the John Main Seminar 2018: A Contemplative Response ​to the Crisis of Change 20-23 Sep, Bruges, Belgium. Charles Taylor is a Canadian philosopher known for his examination of the modern self. Taylor’s first major work, Hegel (1975), was a large study of the 19th-century German philosopher that emphasized the ways in which Hegel’s philosophy continues to be relevant to contemporary political and social theory. In 1989 Taylor published Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, which explored the multiplicity of the self, or the human subject, in the modern Western world. Music Credits: Aourourou by Blue Dot Sessions

This Talk was part of a John Main Seminar in Hamilton, New Zeland. David Tacey is Emeritus Professor of Humanities at La Trobe University, Melbourne, and Research Professor at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, Canberra. He is an interdisciplinary scholar and public intellectual who has written extensively on spirituality, religion, youth experience and mental health. He is the author of fourteen books, including The Spirituality Revolution.

This Talk was part of the John Main Seminar 2018: A Contemplative Response ​to the Crisis of Change 20-23 Sep, Bruges, Belgium. The concept of Contemplative Medicine which places meditation at the centre of its insights is being developed by Dr Barry White, a consultant haematologist at St James’s Hospital, Dublin and member of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. SLIDE PRESENTATION - Download here: adobe.ly/2OlCJKc Music Credits: Aourourou by Blue Dot Sessions

This talk was held at Saint James Episcopal Church, in Lancaster, PA, USA. In 2018 Laurence Freeman is a Benedictine monk of the Congregation of Monte Oliveto and Director of The World Community for Christian Meditation. He has conducted dialogues and peace initiatives such as the historic Way of Peace with the Dalai Lama and is active in inter-religious dialogue with other faiths as well as in encouraging the teaching of Christian meditation to children and students and in the re-appropriation of the contemplative wisdom tradition in the Church and society at large. He lives at the international centre of the WCCM, at Bonnevaux in France. Music Credits: Aourourou by Blue Dot Sessions