| The World Community for Christian Meditation |
| Christian Meditation with Children |
|
| TEACH YOUR CHILDREN TO BE IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD |
- EASTER 2007
Dear Friends,
Someone asked me recently what uniquely did Jesus bring to the world? I found myself replying with
the word ‘touch’. He did not bring a new philosophy or morality so much as a new capacity to
experience God in the fullness of our human being, mind and sense. Touch reminds us of our
wholeness. No part of us can be rejected or diminished without the divine beauty of creation being
dishonoured. One reason that meditation opens up a new way of ‘verifying the truths of our faith’, as
Fr John taught us, is simply that when we meditate we can only do so as a whole person. And
wholeness is the accumulating effect of the daily practice. Wholeness is an expanding sense of
reality and of integration with others. These aspects of spiritual growth make sense of salvation not
as a legal reprieve but as full health, vitality and the liberation of overwhelming natural goodness.
This is why we dedicate special time to pondering the meaning of Easter in the light of the experience
of meditation. It is also why we do lectio and why we share our insights with one another.
Understanding of this type arises in us from the heart centre rather than from the intellect alone.
However ‘spiritual’ we are we do need ritual, sacred symbolism, the communal repetition of the
founding story to sensitise ourselves to the many more subtle ways in which this spiritual knowledge
can unfold.
What grounds the immensity of the Easter mysteries throughout the sacred Triduum is this
comprehensive, faithful sense of touch. Tomorrow we see the bodiliness of the Eucharist and its
connection with mutual service in the ‘lost sacrament’ of the feet-washing. On Good Friday we see
shockingly how touch can also be abused to cause deliberate pain and how, in doing so, it diminishes
the one responsible by locking them into their own dark ignorance. But we also see that the deep
inner touch of love - that never ceased to be the supreme reality of Jesus’ consciousness - need not
be dispelled by suffering. With the nails in his hands and feet he asked the Father to forgive.
Forgiveness is a way of touching the one who pushes us away and so of restoring the vital human
connection with what has been lost.
Only on Holy Saturday does the gift of touch abandon us. We feel the strange limbo of being un-
touched. It’s a necessary transition, but not one we want to linger in longer than necessary even
though it feels as if many today are stuck precisely in that no man’s land of personal isolation. A
disturbing feeling of unreality follows death but by the purifying process grief – the gift of tears - it is
also transformed into a way of breaking into higher reality. It is like climbing a mountain and passing
through levels of thick mist. Then comes the unobservable sunrise of Resurrection. At what moment
exactly - any day - can we say that the rays of the sun touch our eyes and skin? The sun breaks over
the horizon differently for everyone because the horizon itself is only an idea, one that is relative to
our own subjective position. The Resurrection touches us – as it gradually did the first disciples - into
the awareness that the horizon, all that limits our humanity, has been surpassed.
To be touched by Christ is to be reminded of all we had forgotten, to be restored to ourselves and to
the actual world with a momentous new ordinariness. It is, as the New Testament says, like a new
creation because everything within and outside is charged with fresh energy and meaning. The worst
has happened and cannot happen again. What is lost is found and cannot be lost again. The power of
illusion evaporates like the night and we begin an endless journey into everlasting day.
Meditation is itself like a Triduum as it takes us through different levels and on different time-scales
through this process of the paschal mystery: the ascent of consciousness beyond the limited
tangibility of the ego into the universality of the spirit where everything is touching everything.
I hope that during these days you have the opportunity to take the time to enter into the mysteries we
are about to celebrate as a community in harmony with the universal church that is the new body of
Christ. I hope you have the time to sit some quiet moments with the great texts that carry this
meaning through the centuries. And I hope you can find a little extra time to meditate so as to allow
these experiences to come together and lead you deeper into the wondrousness of everyday.
I will be celebrating Easter at the monastery at Cockfosters with the monastic and parish community
here and with a group of meditators who will be making a Triduum retreat. Time and inspiration
permitting I will try to share some of the retreat talks each day with you and the wider community
through the WCCM website. I have recently heard from our co-ordinator in the Solomon Islands which
has been hard struck by the recent natural disaster. It is a remote and often overlooked part of the
world – but one where meditation is being taught and has formed a strong community. So let us
specially hold the Islanders in our hearts and pray that in the midst of their troubles they may also feel
like us the same touch of the Risen Christ.
With much love,
Laurence