Barnes in Common

the magazine of Churches Together in Barnes
January/February 2008

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Meditation John Main's way

by Rosie Findlater

The idea of meditation has always appealed to me, but somehow I have never felt completely comfortable with it. That is until I started going to the John Main meditation group at St. Osmund's on a Wednesday evening. It is a time of quietness, listening to some music, hearing some teaching on the practice of meditation, simply being.

John Main was a Benedictine monk after serving in the Far East with the British Colonial Service and lecturing in International Law at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1977 he left Ealing Abbey to found the Benedictine Priory of Montreal, a community of monks and lay people which attempted to bring the depth of Benedictine monastic life to a modern urban centre which became also the centre for the worldwide fellowship of prayer and meditation. (WCCM - the Worldwide Community of Christian Meditation) This year is the 25th anniversary of his death and to mark this a new group following his tradition has begun to meet every Wednesday evening at 7pm. Born in 1926, he died in 1982.

Reading Rowan Williams' book Tokens of Trust and his emphasis on the importance of community struck a chord here. John Main believed that contemplative experience creates community. His genius was to recover and to re-present a way into this experience for ordinary people from within the Christian contemplative tradition. In the teaching of the desert monks on pure prayer, he found the practice of the mantra. Realising that this way of prayer could further the search of many modern people for a deeper spiritual life, he recommended two regular daily periods of meditation to integrate with the usual practices of Christian life.

It has become more and more evident in recent years that meditation, as a way towards tolerance and compassion, can build a bridge of the spirit between peoples of different faiths, between rich and poor, and between all those suffering conflict or division. The great social and psychological distresses of modern society call for a deep contemplative response. John Main believed that each human being, whatever their lifestyle, is called to this contemplative depth within himself.

According to the John Main way of thinking, learning to meditate is the most practical thing in the world. You require only one quality when you begin; seriously to want to learn to meditate. The process is absolute simplicity. One of the questions all meditators have to face is, why do we meditate? We come to meditation because an unerring instinct tells us that if we can't find any ultimate satisfaction in consuming or producing neither can we find ultimate meaning outside ourselves. We have to begin with ourselves.

The central message of the New Testament is that there is really only one prayer and that this prayer is the prayer of Christ. It is a prayer that continues in our heart day and night. John Main describes this prayer as the stream of love that flows constantly between Jesus and his Father. This stream of love is the Holy Spirit.

John Main's conviction is that the most important task for any fully human life is that we should become as open as possible to this stream of love. In order for us to do this we must learn a way that is a way of silence - of stillness - and this by a discipline that is most demanding.

Meditation is a pilgrimage of "other-centredness" aided by using a mantra. Reciting the mantra brings us to stillness and peace. For us, who lead such busy lives, this can be seriously difficult. Sitting in complete silence for 25 minutes is hard but in one of my first sessions at St. Osmund's, we re-visited the story of the Prodigal Son who was welcomed with open arms by his father when he came home, almost broken after his good living and having blown his fortune. When our thoughts go astray during meditation, we just come back to the mantra and God is always lovingly waiting to welcome us back; there is no need to berate ourselves, just quietly return to saying the mantra.

Reciting the mantra brings us to stillness and to peace. Through meditation we come to our own centre, our own heart and if we are at one with our own centre, it means we are at one with every centre. As Jesus said, "The Kingdom of heaven is within you". At the centre we can discover energy and power and in silence and stillness we can discover the peace which is beyond all understanding, learn to be present in every moment, and move into our heart where God waits for us and leave self behind.

If you would like any further information, please ring Teresa on 0208 563 0607 or Stefan on 07930 679 905 otherwise just come along to St. Osmund's at 7pm on a Wednesday There is also a Christian Mediation meeting in Barnes Village on Wednesdays at 4pm. Please ring Sylvia on 0208 748 3722.

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