From a conversation with meditators, Kerry James from Australia
Lessons from Pandemic Times
The world is beginning the second year of the COVID-19 crisis. We are still in pandemic times. Uncertainty about the future is increasing. What has our meditation practice taught us through these challenges? What grace may be present in it all? We invited meditators from our global community to reflect on that. This reflection comes from Kerry James, Australia.
What have I learned by meditating during the pandemic? Interiority and silence reinforced by St Paul’s declaration that nothing: (i.e. no loss through pestilence, illness, or even death), can separate us from the love of God. Many must repair mental health after COVID-19, and rebuild trust, confidence, and hope, as well as household economies damaged through loss of livelihoods. This can involve altering pre-existing thought patterns and accepting risk because COVID-19 is here to stay, albeit in gentler forms, and other plagues will come. Meditation reveals God as pure love, the ultimate creator, which can instil new positive attitudes and action.
Meditation breaks down defensiveness, encourages generosity and helps us become more open to seeing all creation forming one extended household or estate on our planet.
People are already finding better ways of living that entail them being kinder: to each other, to previously alien communities, and to the environment, even amidst their present privations. Meditation breaks down defensiveness, encourages generosity and helps us become more open to seeing all creation forming one extended household or estate on our planet. It can provide greater clarity of thought enabling us to present gentler, more loving, ideas in nonviolent ways to national leaders, who hold the power to advance them. Instead of going backwards and reinstating the old competitive ways in which the strong win always at the expense of the weak, we find a better way.
Quarterly Newsletter
Kerry James’s sharing is part of the April issue of the WCCM Quarterly Newsletter.
Read and download the full issue here.
