Activism rules – 13 July 2012

Most people who have learned to meditate, and practice it regularly, are also active people in their own churches. Some are very active indeed. Some are more active than they really intended to be. Also typically, meditators often have considerable commitments in the wider community and in their own homes. There is no danger that a practice of Christian Meditation is going to lead them down the perilous path of idleness and uselessness and wasting time. It is also not the case that most meditators are elderly and really looking for some comfortable place of reassurance and peace. Around the world Christian Meditation is being taken up, learned and practiced by people of all ages – children in schools and at home, students at university, professional people, in prisons and places for rehabilitation. It is very difficult to see what the church of the future will be like, except that it will rapidly become very different from the church of today. In many cases our own sons and daughters, brought up in Christian homes, now have little interest in the local church in its present formats. Of course there are exceptions. There are still insightful and charismatic people doing traditional things. There are still some inspirational leaders, prophets and priests, and amazing things can happen. Into the midst of all this maelstrom of change, God inspired a rebirth, a rediscovery of contemplative life and prayer. It is the mode of being in which we make ourselves available to be fully present to God, without words, without noise, without fuss and humbug, without images, without pretences or dressing up, but rather as we are, trusting entirely in grace and love. We are not bringing our skills or our knowledge or the work we have done. We are simply responding to love by being present and still. And whatever the church of the future is like, it will have rediscovered contemplative life and prayer. Whatever the world of the future is like, the Christians within it will need to be contemplative. Activism on its own won’t do. We will need to know where love and wisdom, mercy and grace, are to be found. As Benedict found in the 5th century, we will need a proper balance of activism with a discipline of stillness and silence in prayer.