 |
| Ron Dicks, Fr. Stewart Murray, John Miller |
On March 10, John Miller and Fr Stewart Murray welcomed 15 people to an Introductory talk at St. Barnabas Anglican Church in downtown Ottawa, the forerunner to establishing a weekly meditation group meeting at the church. Guest speaker, Ron Dicks, gave a talk on Christian Meditation and contemplative prayer, sharing with the group how his own journey of meditation began and expanding on the precepts of meditation in the Christian tradition.
Ron told the group about his experience of fasting from the media on Shrove Tuesday nine years ago and how on that same day was led to read John Main’s book The Present Christ. There he found out how to meditate, began, and has not looked back.
He referred to his desire to go deeper in his spiritual life and made reference to St. Augustine who searched for God but did not find him until “I found you within.” Ron pointed out that we also share this belief with other spiritual guides, such as Rumi, the Turkish poet, who wrote:
Deafened by the voice of desireRon explained to the group how the use of a mantra has been part of the Christian Church’s treasure from the very beginning, although it got lost. John Main is credited with helping to restore it to our life within the church today. The purpose of the mantra, as Marcus Borg points out in The Heart of Christianity, is to help us “descend to the deepest level of the self, of the heart, where we open out into the sea of being that is God.”
Ron then stressed that the purpose of contemplative prayer/Christian meditation is the transformation of persons from their false self to their true self, as God intends us to be. Meditation, he said, is hard work requiring perseverance and discipline but the Spirit effects the change within each person as we are willing, like St. Paul, to “die every day”.
Finally, Ron referred to John Main’s teaching in Word Into Silence, that the goal of meditation is to bring about an internal unity within each person and thus also in the community. This happens because love at work in our hearts resolves our alienations and unites our thinking and feeling powers. This is done through prayer.
The group meditated for 20 minutes then there was time for questions. Everyone enjoyed watching the film “Coming Home” which introduces meditation in the Christian tradition of John Main and the community he inspired. Fr Murray thanked everyone present and closed the meeting with a prayer.
Under the leadership of John Miller, a new group was formed which now meets every Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. in the parish library.
John Miller