Links

Sarah contributes articles and talks from time to time in other contexts. She also writes a blog which emerges from her regular Wednesday retreat days.

Integral Ecology

Through contemplative practice we become more aware of how our way of seeing and being in the world affects the life around us; we know our interconnectedness with the whole. This awareness is particularly significant at this time of global ecological crisis.

A key dimension of life affected by this awareness is our patterns of consumption. More and more, we recognise that our consumer choices matter for the lives of our fellow human beings and the life of the earth. We inhabit, as Pope Francis has said, an ‘integral ecology’. And though concern for our personal choices does not replace the need for broader systemic and legislative change, it is one aspect of our responsibility for the world’s healing and well-being. The following links have been shared by individual members of our community as resources for educating and enabling us to live more integrally.

Ethical Shopping Guides

Shop Ethical app

Baptist World Aid 

Ethical Consumption

Flora and Fauna: Vegan & Eco-friendly products

Upparel Textile recycling and upcycling (circular fashion – recycling your unwanted textiles)

Blessed Earth (organic cotton and wool textile products)

Booktopia (Australian owned online bookstore)

Ecosia (search engine that plants trees)

Disclaimer: These are suggestions offered by individual members for information and exploration. Benedictus does not accept any responsibility or liability arising from the use of this information.

Contemplation

Benedictus is part of the movement of contemplative renewal in the Christian church today. We draw particularly on the teaching of meditation offered by the World Community for Christian Meditation, but welcome those who practice silent meditation according to other strands of the tradition. A sense of our unfolding journey is conveyed in Sarah’s Pastoral Letters.

Living Water (www.thelivingwater.com.au) is a new blog, edited by Roland Ashby, which aims to promote contemplative wisdom, contemplative consciousness, Christian meditation and the Christian contemplative tradition, and to explore the contribution of this tradition to the needs and challenges of our time. Roland Ashby was formerly editor of The Melbourne Anglican Newspaper and is the author of A Faith to Live By. He is a member of the World Community for Christian Meditation and a Benedictine Oblate.

The link to the World Community for Christian Meditation allows further exploration of the teaching of John Main and Laurence Freeman, and gives access to the resources offered by that community. The link to Contemplative Outreach allows exploration of the teaching offered by William Meninger, Basil Pennington and Thomas Keating, often known as ‘Centering Prayer’, which is the other major expression of the Christian contemplative tradition to have arisen in the 20th century.

A compelling statement of the centrality of contemplation for Christian life and worship was given by then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in an Address to the Synod of Bishops at Rome in October 2012.

New Contemplative Leaders Exchange

In August 2017, Sarah participated in a gathering of twenty contemplative scholars and practitioners from seven countries, meeting at St Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. This was an extraordinary meeting in an extraordinary landscape, as evident from the photograph above, taken on the final day by Czech priest and WCCM participant Vladimir Volráb.

We gathered at the invitation of the four founders of the contemporary Christian contemplative renewal:

The intent of the meeting was that it be an exchange among ‘young contemplative thought and practice leaders’ with the hope that ‘their mutual stimulus can bring fresh, Spirit-inspired imagination to the ways contemplation can be understood, practiced and spread in our time, in ecclesial, educational and other institutional and communal contexts’.

A video about the gathering is available here, and Sarah’s reflection on the gathering is available on her Wednesday retreat blog.

Some of the contemplative communities and activities represented by participants included:

As the founders expressed it prior to our New Contemplatives Exchange, our common vision is for:

Awakening a larger embrace and expansion of Christian contemplative understanding and practice as the vital grounding of Christian life, with openness to collaboration with all streams of contemplative wisdom, in response to the urgent social and spiritual needs of our time.

It is an exciting privilege for Benedictus to participate in this movement of contemplative awakening, as we continue to discover and live out our own vocation in community.