Monday 20th December, 2021
Laurence Freeman, Light Within: Meditation as Pure Prayer (Canterbury Press, 2008), 7.
Image: Gabriel, Chile, instagram.com/shriveling
This quote is from Laurence Freeman's book, Light Within: Meditation as Pure Prayer (Canterbury Press, 2008), 7. Fr Laurence is the Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM), whose website is here. WCCM teaches and supports a spiritual discipline of silence-based prayer known as 'Christian Meditation'. This is one of the two most prominent such practises in the Western Church, the other being 'Centering Prayer', supported by Contemplative Outreach, whose website is here. WCCM's practice of silent meditation traces its origins back to the writings of John Cassian, one of the fourth century Desert Fathers. It teaches the repetition of a 'mantra' - a single word used as a focus for one's attention during a period of 20 minutes of silence. There is more information about this practice, navigating from here, on the WCCM website. There are also many other wonderful resources to explore and access to support your own journey with meditative silence on the WCCM website. Laurence Freeman has written numerous books that support and extend teaching around meditative practises, which are really helpful reads, irrespective of whether or not your own discipline of silence is that taught by WCCM. You can find all these on WCCM's shop site, here. It also includes many of Fr Laurence's audio recordings, videos and DVDs.