The World Community for Christian Meditation

The International Centre
The World Community
for Christian Meditation
St. Mark's, Myddelton Square
London EC1R 1XX
England, UK
International Office:
+44 20 7278 2070
Email: welcome@wccm.org

Weekly Meditation Groups

For information about meditation groups in your area, please start with the contacts found on the map on our Homepage.

You may visit a special WCCM Web site dedicated to starting groups and maintaining groups here.

Read "Profiles of Meditators" around the world by Paul Harris: Jack Murta, Joanne Alves, Sara Lee Stadelman.

More "Profiles of Meditators" around the world by Paul Harris: Henri Tardy, Zofia Zawidzka, Peter Broadhurst.

Read the "Profile of Fr. Tom Fehily (R.I.P.)" by Paul Harris here [PDF].

Meditation & Meditation Groups...

Many people believe that John Main's greatest legacy was his rediscovery of the practice of pure prayer, or Christian meditation, as the birthright of all believers, not just for those in monasteries and convents. In 1975, John Main began the first weekly meditation groups at his monastery in London and then in Montreal. Now, countless meditators and hundreds of weekly meditation groups around the world carry on the tradition and spread the teaching in various ways. To request information about groups meeting in your area, go to the map on our Home page and click on where you live.

"A New Look at the Vital Role of the Christian Meditation Group" by Paul Harris.
Excerpt: "For more than 30 years, Christian meditation groups worldwide have demonstrated that they are the primary means of sharing the teaching. Perhaps it is time now to re-evaluate, re-emphasize, and reinterpret their role. The personal observations and suggestions that follow on the current status and future of the Christian meditation group have come from my 20 years of experience in starting and leading meditation groups and from discussions with leaders in the community about ways to assist the weekly meditation groups.

"John Main: The Monk, The Teacher and the Teaching" by Paul Harris.
Excerpt: "In closing and in summing up John Main's life I would like to offer an opinion: I do believe that 100 years from now John Main will be regarded as one of the great spiritual teachers of the 20th Century, in much the same way as Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross are regarded as the spiritual teachers of the 16th Century.

"Why? Because John Main has done something neither Teresa of Avila, nor John of the Cross seemed able to do, namely tell us in easy-to-understand language "how" to enter into contemplative prayer. You can read all of Teresa and John and, while they write beautifully about prayer, you will never come from their reading understanding "how" to pray in a contemplative way."

"Two Articles on the Format and the Importance of the Weekly Meditation Group" by Paul Harris:
I. WHAT HAPPENS AT THE WEEKLY GROUP MEETING? [PDF] version here.
II. HOW WOULD ONE START A GROUP? WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE GROUP LEADER?

Read about weekly meditation groups meeting around the world here. We invite meditation group leaders to visit the page and submit their own reflections on the importance of the meditation group.

New! Group Leaders' E-mail List....

The "Group Leaders E-mail List" goes out to more than 898 group leaders from over 60 countries around the world. More will join the List in the coming months as there are another 800 groups who have yet to add their email addresses to the Group Leaders data base .Also included in the List are 234 lone meditators in 30 other countries who want to receive these very special mailings and be informed of happenings in the Community.

If you are a weekly meditation group leader and would like to be subscribed to this vitally important E-mail list, please submit your request here.

Read more about John Main here..

Besides the information found on these pages, you may read more about starting and leading a weekly group in Laurence Freeman's book, The Pearl of Great Price, available from www.MedioMedia.org.

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