http://linktr.ee/schoolofcontemplativelifeuk, https://schoolofcontemplativelife.com/teachings-from-contemplative-christi

The School of Contemplative Life, Cheltenham (2026)

05/08/2026

Have you ever pondered the meaning of the word ‘religion’?

While the origins of the word are not entirely clear, it appears to come from combining the Latin re, meaning ‘again’ or ‘back’, and ligio, meaning ‘to connect’ or ‘tie’ or ‘bind together’.

Far from being something to be used to divide people, ‘religion’ means ‘a way of getting back in touch’, something that ‘reconnects’ and ‘binds together’.

With this deeper meaning in mind, we might also say that to be unaware of or to reject the contemplative dimension of religion, is to be unaware of or to reject the purpose of religion.

Contemplation – the gift of seeing clearly, which the practice of meditation helps open us to receive – is all about getting back in touch, reconnecting with that which binds us together.

The contemplative dimension is the heart of every religion, helping us come to awareness of our essential oneness with each other and all creation in the oneness of God.

The great wisdom teachings of the Old and New Testaments, as well as the wisdom teachings of the Koran, of the Vedas and Upanishads, of the Buddhist Sutras and the great ancestral religions of Australia and the Americas (to name but a few), all bear witness to the truth of oneness, and our need to manifest (incarnate) this truth in our relationships, through our care of each other, through our care of the whole of creation. The two are not separate.

Speaking as a Christian, I like to imagine the extraordinary difference that Christians might make in bringing about greater peace in the world if they were to embrace the contemplative dimension of the Gospel.

The heartbreaking conflicts in our world make us painfully aware of the need for peace in the world, of the need to do what we can (however modest) to help create a better future for all.

~~

📕 Read more in The Missing Peace – available from Amazon and all good bookshops. https://amzn.eu/d/08CUNl9V

🙏 Click the link in our bio for more information on all we offer including our free online meditation practice community which meets twice a week.

30/07/2026

What if meditation is less about escaping the world and more about learning to see it with new eyes?

✨ St Gregory of Nyssa, writing in the fourth century, says that the partially developed mind believes that the beautiful things it encounters are beautiful in their own nature, but that ‘someone who has purified the eyes of their mind, and is trained to see beautiful things … makes use of the visible as a springboard to rise to contemplation of the spiritual.’

🌱 St Ephrem the Syrian, also writing in the fourth century, sings of how all things (and each of us) are symbols, expressions of the indwelling presence of the Divine. ‘Lord, your symbols are everywhere … yet You are. hidden from everywhere. Blessed is the Hidden One shining out!’

~~

📕 Read more in The Missing Peace – available from Amazon and all good bookshops. https://amzn.eu/d/08CUNl9V

🙏 Would you like to explore the practice of Christian meditation? We meet online every Saturday and Wednesday for teaching, silence and community. It’s free to participate, over 370 people join us each week, and all are welcome.

Click the link in our bio for more information on all we offer.

24/07/2026

What a joy to spend this week with a group of forty wonderful people who ventured ‘Into the Silent Land’ with us, at Launde Abbey in Leicestershire.

🕊️ A very special time exploring meditation, the opening of awareness, and the peace at the centre of our being, which is God. This video was taken at dusk in the beautiful abbey grounds and the words are from ‘Into the Silent Land’ by Martin Laird OSA.

🌱 From a previous participant: “This retreat changed my life forever. I went with my son, who said, ‘This has been the best week of my life so far!’ The unity and peace we experienced was beyond words.”

🙏 If you’d like to explore the Christian contemplative tradition, you’re invited to attend our ‘Resting in God’ weekend retreat from Friday 6 to Sunday 8 November at Launde Abbey. Whether you’re completely new to meditation or have been practising for many years, you’re warmly welcome to join us. The weekend is suitable for people of all faiths and none.

🔗 Click the ‘Events and Retreats’ link in our bio for more information or head to the Launde Abbey website.

🤍 A big thank for to every member of the wonderful Launde Abbey team for your hospitality this week.

23/07/2026

Thich Nhat Hanh: “Before I met Christianity, my only spiritual ancestor was the Buddha. But when I met beautiful men and women who are Christians, I came to know Jesus as a great teacher. Since that day, Jesus Christ has become one of my spiritual ancestors... I do not feel any conflict in me. Instead, I feel stronger because I have more than one root.”

🕊️ How can Buddhism and Christianity enrich one another — and how might shared silence deepen friendship between traditions?

🪷 Sister Chân Đức (Sister Annabel Laity), Senior Dharma Teacher at Plum Village, and the first Western European woman ordained as a nun by Thich Nhat Hanh, joins Christian contemplative teacher Chris Whittington for a special online gathering. You are warmly welcome to join this.

🌱 What to expect?

*Sister Chân Đức will reflect on how Christianity has enriched her understanding and practice of Buddhism.
*Chris will reflect on how Buddhism has enriched his understanding and practice of Christianity.
*Their reflections will be followed by 25 minutes of silent meditation and a blessing from each tradition.

🌱 Event details:

*Saturday 22 August, 08:30–09:30 (UK time)
*Online and free to participate
*Open to people of all faiths and none
*No previous experience of meditation is necessary

🔗 Click here to register for free: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/theschoolofcontemplativelife/2322531

~~~

This special gathering comes ahead of Sister Chân Đức and Chris leading ‘Towards a Global Spirituality: Buddhist-Christian Wisdom for Inner Peace in a Troubled World’ together at the Being Peace Practice Centre (Plum Village UK) this September.

22/07/2026

What might you discover when words fall away?

A few years ago, I was asked to speak about meditation at a weekend camp for young Christians. Most of the activities were held in a large barn, a stone’s throw from the massed tents. I wasn’t surprised when I was allocated a late afternoon slot in a small medieval church a few hundred metres from the main site. I knew that the ancient way of silent prayer I’d be speaking about would be unknown to almost everyone there. I would have been pleased with ten people coming along.

Shortly before the session was due to start, about 200 people appeared, squeezed onto the pews and sat cross-legged on the floor. The little church was packed. I struck a prayer bell and the clear, bright sound called everyone to silence.

After resting in the silence together for a few minutes, I asked if anyone knew anything about intimate relationships. More than a few people smiled. And the silence in the tiny, crowded church deepened. Then I asked if anyone had experienced the heady excitement of meeting someone you think is absolutely wonderful. You want to know them. You want them to know you. You can’t get them out of your head. You want to see them as much as possible and to talk and talk and talk. ‘What’s your favourite book?’ ‘What’s the best place you’ve travelled to?’ The silence deepened further.

Then I asked if anyone had experienced a relationship that had gone beyond this delightful early phase and come to the point where the depth and synergy and intimacy were now perhaps best known and expressed in moments of silence – those blessed moments when words fall away and you just look at your beloved and adore them and receive their adoring gaze.

Finally I asked: why, if we know this is true of our relationships with each other, would we ever imagine that prayer, that our relationship with God, would be any different?

~~

📕 Read more in The Missing Peace – available from Amazon and all good bookshops. https://amzn.eu/d/08CUNl9V

🙏 Would you like to explore the practice of Christian meditation? We meet online twice a week. Click the link in our bio.

15/07/2026

Are we searching for God in the wrong place?

There has perhaps never been a more urgent need to discover afresh the contemplative heart within each of us, to establish peace in ourselves that we may be places of peace in the world.

As we learn to be still, to be silent, as we learn to let go of our search for what was never missing, we come home to the boundless love which has held us in its embrace from all eternity.

~~

📕 Read more in The Missing Peace – available from Amazon and all good bookshops. https://amzn.eu/d/08CUNl9V

🙏 Would you like to explore the practice of Christian meditation? We meet online every Saturday and Wednesday for teaching, silence and community. It’s free to participate, more than 370 people join us each week, and all are welcome.

Click the link below for more information on all we offer: https://linktr.ee/schoolofcontemplativelifeuk

07/07/2026

What if every creature is an invitation to see God more clearly?

Since the earliest centuries, Christians have spoken of the visible, material world as pointing to an invisible, immaterial source and harmony in God.

St Gregory of Nyssa, writing in the fourth century, says that the partially developed mind believes that the beautiful things it encounters are beautiful in their own nature, but that ‘someone who has purified the eyes of their mind, and is trained to see beautiful things … makes use of the visible as a springboard to rise to contemplation of the spiritual.’

It’s not surprising that people find it so difficult to see creation (and themselves) as the radiance of the Divine. Our culture encourages us to strongly affirm what presents itself to us through our senses, the content of experience, what appears to us as material reality. We are, in a sense, trained to overlook the infinite reality which is ceaselessly disclosing itself to us in and through the material, the immaterial source in which ‘all things were created’ (Col. 1.16), ‘in which we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17.28). Unable to see creation as divine radiance, it’s all too easy for us to value things in and of themselves, and to conceive of creation as separate from God and from ourselves. The great and all too evident danger of the illusion of separateness is that this false conceptual distance can quickly become an emotional distance, and then a moral distance. Meditation helps us come to see created reality for what it truly is, something we are inextricably part of and bound up with, rather than something wholly external to us, which we might simply use or dominate.

~~

📕 Read more in The Missing Peace – available from Amazon and all good bookshops. https://amzn.eu/d/08CUNl9V

🙏 Would you like to explore the practice of Christian meditation? We meet online every Saturday and Wednesday for teaching, silence and community. It’s free to participate, more than 370 people join us each week, and all are welcome.

Click the link in our bio for more information on all we offer.

01/07/2026

What if trust doesn’t remove fear, but changes our relationship to it?

An ancient story tells of someone taking a journey across a remote desert, and how, a few days into the journey, the traveller noticed someone behind them in the far distance.

At first, the traveller gave no thought to this. But then they noticed that the person behind them was getting closer each day. They told themselves it must be a fellow traveller. Perhaps they were travelling to visit relatives? Or to sell something at a market?

But as each day passed and the person got closer and closer, the traveller’s thoughts became more and more frightening. Perhaps they were dangerous? Perhaps they wanted to rob him? Perhaps they might attack them, kill them?

The day came when the person following them was only a short distance behind and the traveller couldn’t bear it any more. They decided that the only way to end the awful feeling of fear was to turn around and head straight towards the stranger.

And that was when something very strange began to happen. As they got closer to the stranger, the stranger seemed to get smaller and smaller, until they were small enough to fit into the palm of a hand.

The traveller knelt down and asked the tiny figure, ‘What sort of creature are you?’ They replied, ‘I am your fear.’

~~~

🙏 Meditation involves two interrelated aspects: stilling & seeing. Focussing our attention on saying our prayer word in tandem with the breath (or on simply following our breath), gently stills the chattering, worrying mind, and allows awareness to open.

🕊️’Whatever it is in us that grasps and craves is soothed and calmed and begins to loosen its grip,’ writes Martin Laird. Quietly acknowledging our fear with less struggle, with less resistance, allows our relationship with fear to be transformed.

👣 The path of meditation doesn’t take us away from our life, but allows us to form a new relationship with it, characterised by greater awareness, and greater peace. We discover freedom. Not freedom from fear, from fear, from distress – but a freedom in the midst of all we encounter.

✨ Would you like to explore the practice of Christian meditation? Click the link in our bio.

29/06/2026

Think of meditation as being a little like faithfully polishing a beautiful window. The point is not to change the window. It’s fine as it is.

✨ We polish the window to let the Light pour through, into our life and through our life, to touch the lives of those around us.

🕊️ Not our light, but the Light that is always shining, that cannot be comprehended, but can be known in even the smallest act of kindness, compassion, friendship. As our attention becomes less entangled in ourselves, we become more available for our life, for those around us, for God.

🕯️ Holy people, writes Rowan Williams, however much they may enjoy being themselves, are not obsessively interested in themselves. They allow you to see not them, but the world around them. They allow you to see not them, but God. You come away from them feeling not, ‘Oh, what a wonderful person,’ but, ‘What a wonderful world,’ ‘What a wonderful God,’ or even, with surprise, ‘What a wonderful person I am too.’

~~

📕 Read more in The Missing Peace – available from Amazon and all good bookshops. https://amzn.eu/d/08CUNl9V

🙏 Would you like to explore the practice of Christian meditation? We meet online every Saturday and Wednesday for teaching, silence and community. It’s free to participate, more than 370 people join us each week, and all are welcome.

Click the link in our bio for more information on all we offer.

26/06/2026

What if our deepest understanding of God doesn’t come through thinking more, but through becoming still, becoming open?

🌲 Many years ago, when I was walking in the grounds of Prinknash Abbey Benedictine Monastery, I shared with the Abbot that I imagined people of different faiths and none, speaking different languages, wearing different clothes, coming together to practise meditation, and how, in the depths of their shared silence, they might touch the silent ground of peace in God beyond all distinctions.

🙏 That afterwards, returning to where words have beginnings and endings again, they would still be speaking their different languages, wearing their different clothes, but something would have changed.

🕊️ That to someone looking on, not a great deal may seem to have happened. But they might notice how comfortable people are with each other, content to speak or simply enjoy a cup of tea and each other’s company in silence. That they would almost certainly notice the deep atmosphere of peace. Abbot Aldhelm looked into my eyes and said, ‘I think so too.’

~~

📕 Read more in The Missing Peace – available from Amazon and all good bookshops.

https://amzn.eu/d/08CUNl9V

The School of Contemplative Life

05/08/2026

30/07/2026

24/07/2026

23/07/2026

22/07/2026

15/07/2026

07/07/2026

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