Healing the Breach

In this centenary of John Main’s birth, we would do well to read his letter written fifty years ago from Thomas Merton’s hermitage at the time of an American Presidential election. He appealed for a new language of politics in tune with authentic moral values secured by the awakening of the contemplative dimension of religion. Today Tim Shriver also understands how ‘in meditation we learn to live committed to the rule of prayer and to make it the spiritual foundation underlying all our activity.’

Leading this year’s John Main Seminar, he asks how a personal practice like meditation directly affects others and helps build a secular society aligned with the peace and justice of the reign of God. He will explore what John Main means by saying that ‘meditation creates community’?

Tim has long been committed to the work of re-building society: by speaking truth to power and caring for the neglected and marginalised. In the talks and dialogues of the Seminar, he will apply his personal conviction of the power of faith and spiritual experience – in the deepest and broadest sense – to transform hearts and open minds. In the global pandemonium of politics today how can we build schools of dignity? How can we find the self-control necessary for mutual respect.

Even more, how can we ‘stir into flame’ the gift of the spiritual power of love to move definitively from division and violence to dignity and joy? ‘I don’t have all the answers’, he says. But having heard him speak from mind and heart, one feels the way forward has become much clearer – and more hopeful.