| The World Community for Christian Meditation |
| Christian Meditation with Children |
|
| TEACH YOUR CHILDREN TO BE IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD |
- WEDNESDAY, HOLY WEEK
Dearest Friends,
As Holy Week unfolds I am writing from our retreat for young meditators on Bere Island. At
this moment there is not a cloud in the sky and the clear light is calling out every hidden
colour, shade and texture of the sea, trees and mountains. Nature makes it easy to believe
that we are on the human journey into the light of Christ, the Sun of the Resurrection that
never sets. The weather forecast however is warning us of some cold snaps and showers
(this is Ireland) just as we know that our lives cannot be free from suffering.
In our conversations during the retreat we are looking at the tensions we have to hold in day
by day living. How to manage the balance between family commitments and meditation or
retreat times? How to deal with the challenges to faith that the Church in its culturally
conditioned forms can present us with and still remain within it? How to read the essential
revelations of Christian doctrine in the light of modern language and experience?
Sacred time, such as we have entered upon this week gives us the wiggle room for these
tensions, the inner space necessary to accept what seems unacceptable and balance what
seems unsupportable. During these next few days we are empowered and sensitised to
respond to that whole spectrum of being human that Easter illustrates. Tomorrow in our
presence at the Lord’s Supper we experience the joy and the tensions of being in community,
washing each others’ feet and learning what faithful relationship means. Do we prefer to opt
for the no-growth security of the modern atomised individual? On Friday we face the deepest
repression of our psyche, the fact and fear of mortality, the terror of absolute loss and
abandonment. We learn that in facing it we can touch a meaning that opens a door through
which we must pass but which is still a passage into the unknown. On Saturday we rest on the
horizon of that meaning, balanced between loss and finding. We are uncertain, even
unconvinced, yet we have not closed ourselves to the possibility – the possibility that rises in
the early morning from the nowhere of the tomb into the flooding reality of new life.
Let us stay in the communion of our meditation these holy days and feel the presence of
community even over the physical distance and different time zones that separate but cannot
divide us.
We will post some further reflections from the retreat on the website www.wccm.org
Much love,
- Laurence
| Father Laurence´s Special Messages 2008 |