and prayer becomes life. — “The most beautiful and the greatest learning” says St. Clement, “is to know oneself; for whoever knows their self knows God; and if they know God, they will become like Him.”[1] The doctrine of being created in the image of God, means that our deepest “me” — the very ground…

overcoming the illusion of separateness. — The year before I went to live at the Benedictine monastery of Prinknash Abbey when I was 19, I had a conversation with the then Abbot, Aldhelm Cameron-Brown, which (though it took some years to realise) profoundly influenced the direction of my life. The Abbot said very little, but he…

the fruit of self-forgetfulness. — “Gardening can be understood as a form of space-time medicine,” says Dr. Sue Stuart-Smith, author of the highly acclaimed book The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature. In a recent interview for a New York Times article, Why Gardening Offers a ‘Psychological Lifeline’ in Times of Crisis,[1] Stuart-Smith, a…

accepting the invitation to peace. — A little while ago, during the lunch break of a retreat I was giving, someone asked if they could discuss something I’d said in a talk that morning which had made them very cross. I’d said that prayer is not primarily something we do, but what God does, within us…

through the mundane. — When I went to live at a Prinknash Abbey at the age of 19, I was a very driven, very idealistic young person. I wanted to find enlightenment, to discover what the kingdom of heaven was. With great gentleness and skill, the monks encouraged me to stop looking for enlightenment…

with the light of compassion. — Someone emailed me recently asking if I could say something about meditation and coping with deep, heartfelt emotions, which can sometimes feel like physical or mental pain. As I read the email, I remembered the many times when I’ve been caught up in a storm of difficult, painful emotions and…

the power of simple awareness — “In childhood,” writes the contemporary poet Jane Hirshfield, “great happiness and profound grief run close to the surface. Adult life tamps these flarings of feeling down, so that practical tasks might be done. My poems in recent years have sought increasingly to notice joy, not least because, as the world…

to self-forgetful release — Immediately before teaching us the Lord’s Prayer[1], Jesus introduces us to a way of prayer which resonates deeply with his practice of communing with God in solitude and silence. When we pray like this, we should not do so in a way which draws attention to what we are doing…

a gateway to peace. — Meditation, silent prayer, is not a path that leads us somewhere else. It is a way of stillness to stop us in our tracks and bring us to silence, so we can discover the fullness of the truth of who we are. There is a wonderful teaching on the way…