Hello. My name is Sarah Bachelard and I’m coming to you from Canberra in Australia at the beginning of our summer.Â
I am the leader of Benedictus Contemplative Church here in Canberra and a longtime member of the World Community for Christian Meditation. And I’m very much looking forward to being part of the 2025 Academy intake. The new cohort will be beginning in March 2025 and I’ll be teaching from October on the theme of ‘contemplative Christianity‘ and by that notion of ‘contemplative Christianity’, I’m interested for us to explore what difference it makes to our understanding of the Christian tradition to take a contemplative approach.Â
And I’m also interested in exploring some connections with indigenous spirituality and particularly in the Australian context, First Nations spirituality.Â
I had the privilege of being part of the pilot for the Academy a couple of years ago. It’s always an incredibly rich conversation because of the range and the depth of the people who come, and it will be a pleasure and a joy to be part of it again this coming year.
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About Academy
The Academy offers a programme of inter-disciplinary study in the context of contemplative practice. It is grounded in the Christian contemplative tradition, particularly as passed on through John Main and Laurence Freeman and the worldwide body of teachers of the WCCM. It is inspired by meditation as a universal and unifying source of wisdom and it believes this wisdom can be enacted and applied across all of human life-experience and society.Â
The second cohort beginning March 2025  is more suitable for those from the Australia and Asia time zones, when classes will be in the evening / late afternoon. If you are from Europe or Africa you must expect classes to start in the morning or around noon.Classes are recorded and may be viewed later but we expect active participation in online meetings.
