Journey to the Heart

“The commitment this journey calls from us . . .requires faith, perhaps a certain recklessness to begin. But once we have begun, it is the nature of God, the nature of love to sweep us along, teaching us by experience that our commitment is to reality, that our discipline is the springboard to freedom. The fear that the journey is “away from” rather than “towards” is only disproved by experience. This is a journey where ultimately only experience counts. The words or writings of others can add only a little light to the wholly actual, wholly present and wholly personal reality that lives in your heart and in my heart. Miraculously we can enter this experience together and discover communion just where communication seemed to break down…..And the journey to our own heart is a journey into every heart.” From John Main OSB, “Preparing for Birth,” THE PRESENT CHRIST.

The Language of the Spirit

“To learn to meditate, you have to learn to be silent, and not to be afraid of silence. [. . . .] [W]e don’t have to create silence. The silence is there, within you. What we have to do is to enter into it, to become silent, to become the silence. The challenge of meditation is to allow ourselves to become silent enough to allow this interior silence to emerge. Silence is the language of the spirit. The language of the spirit is love. And the purpose of meditation is to be in the presence of love, the love that, as Jesus tells us, casts out all fear.” From John Main OSB, “The Way of Silence” in The hunger for depth and meaning: Learning to meditate with John Main (Singapore: Medio Media, 2007)

The Work of Love

“In many ancient labyrinths it was a monster that was found at the center, a thing of fear and a threat to life. The Christian labyrinths positioned Christ at the center of all the twists and turns of life. In Christ we find not fear but the dissolving of fear in the final and primal certainty of love. Meditation is the work of love and it is by love, not by thought, that God ultimately is known: the knowledge that saves is the knowledge of love. This is why John Main describes our human experience of love as the best way to understand why we meditate and how meditation takes us into reality.” From Laurence Freeman OSB, “Letter One,” WEB OF SILENCE (London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1996).

Universal Christianity

One of the dilemmas for Christianity today is how to communicate the gospel in a non-competitive way in the context of other faiths. . . .For the exclusivist Christian, of course, this is nonsensical. But perhaps. . . .the Spirit is trying to teach us something. Perhaps Christianity is learning that if it is truly universal it must recognize itself in all forms of human spiritual experience [. . . .] We are today in need of a new way of religious dialogue, of tolerance, mutual reverence, and way of learning from each other that those before us could never have imagined.

Yet the rightness of such a way is attested by the fact that it is so compatible with the personality and example of Jesus. He rejected no-one, tolerated all and saw the mystery of God in all people and in nature. He ate with those he should have despised. He spoke with those he should have avoided. He was as open to others as he was to God.

In Jesus, time and eternity intersect. . . and the intersection happens in human poverty of spirit. . . Poverty is not only the absence of things, but the awareness of our need for others, for God. Human neediness is universal. The richest and the most powerful, like the poorest and most marginalized, are all equally in need. Need is simply the strong feeling that arises in response to the fact of our interdependence. We are not separate from each other or from God. Wisdom is the recognition of that fact, and compassion is the practice of it.

In meditation, we dive to a level of reality deeper than that of our surface, ego-driven minds where so often we are caught in the net of illusion. Untangling from that net is the daily work of meditation and it is the new pattern of the practice of the presence of God: in ordinary life, in all nature and in all people.

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman, “Dearest Friends,” WCCM International Newsletter, Winter, 1996.

After the Election

The immediate post-election comments by the President, the President-elect and the defeated candidate were more gracious and civilised than anything during the campaign over the past eighteen months. This campaign reflected such an obscene breakdown of civility that it was hard to believe it was happening. It seemed surreal – worse and more frightening than the hypocrisy and evasiveness we have sadly come to associate with much of the political class. It has done lasting damage to a civilised approach to politics anywhere, even in a world where we see ethnic cleansing, the bombing of hospitals, the uncontested invasion of sovereign states, the callous closing of borders to refugees.

The US election highlighted what is happening politically in many other places: the polarising of global and national identities. Nationalism is a mounting force that rejects the challenges of the newborn sense of global citizenship. As history shows, nationalism begins with the euphoria of false hope and ends in mutual destruction.

Is there a contemplative response to this? There is. But it is not sectarian or ideological. The contemplative response is conscious of the common ground. It builds communities of faith in this ground among people of widely different beliefs.

This collective vision of the human community can only happen politically in the most civilised societies.  But it happens between friends and groups of friends who quietly restore an uncivilised society to humane values. Their experience of the truthfulness of silence helps them trust each other with their differences. Those differences can be respected without violence or divisiveness.

Societies lacking the root system of such contemplative networks, nourished by silence, must face an erosion of civilised values because contemplation is the foundation of civilisation.

I recently spent time in Venezuela, a society in severe distress. But I was inspired to see that our community there is even more deeply and compassionately committed to the practice and teaching of meditation, particularly to the young. It is also creating civilised forums for open dialogue. They prove that a contemplative response to crisis does really exist. The World Community is privileged to have such members.

I feel sure that the WCCM USA will respond in the same way to their post-election situation where such deep divisions and turbulence have been exposed. You will be an example to others of the real American dream, which is the greatness you show in resolving difference.

I am not preaching to you but reminding you of what, as contemplatives in the world, you know already. As a fellow-meditator I know you do not see meditation merely as a refuge. We see it rather as a way of facing the painful facts of our world with faith, hope and love, thereby making the world more civilised - simply by the way you live and tell the truth. We are never more truthful than in the silence of meditation which affects all our ways of communication and action.

This involves curbing our feelings of triumph or defeat with the emotional perspective that meditation brings. It involves trying to see reality through the eyes of others even when their view seems to contradict ours, the essence of redemptive dialogue. It brings hope where there is fear. Good, not cruel, humour where there is hatred.  Truth where there is dissimulation.

It involves loving our enemies even when we feel like humiliating or deleting them, patronising them, giving them false signs of peace, taking revenge for their past deeds or punishing them. We turn the other cheek at first interiorly, not as an excuse not to fight for truth but to ensure that, when we do fight for it, we do so without violence or hatred.

To love means to pay attention. If our meditation only makes us mindful but doesn’t enable us to pay other-centred, loving attention to those we would prefer to ignore, what does meditation mean? It is wondrous how naturally our actions towards others are regulated simply by paying attention to them. Such attention begins as pure prayer, which dismantles the thick filters of prejudice and caricature that obscure the real identity of others.

What can contemplatives, who are defined firstly by their commitment to being, actually do? They can meditate and be more than ever faithful to balancing each day on the twin pillars of silence, stillness and radical simplicity. They can meditate together in weekly groups and begin new groups especially where the wounds of division are most open.

You can also plan to come next August to the John Main Seminar in Houston where a world authority on the Christian mystical tradition will be leading us into a deeper relationship with one of our most precious sources of wisdom in a chaotic world. We need to know in what a powerful tradition we meditate.

This is our contemplative approach. Although it is not a political force, it does help to dissolve the violence of political polemics at root. I can also assure you – and it is reassuring I think to know this when we so often despair of our leaders - that in our community, and beyond, there are eminent leaders who build their lives on daily meditation. They are not power-hungry individuals but genuinely driven to use their influence and talents to make a more humane  and civilised world.

Leaders or led, in a contemplative community all are equal because all see each other in the greater oneness. We all need each other and we need to share our needs. This is the meaning of the new global consciousness. We all give support to each other especially to those who are least supported. We all walk on the common ground that, to the eyes of faith, is the consciousness where I see you in myself and myself in you.

Never before in America or elsewhere, have we needed this contemplative mind more urgently. It is not in the end about politics and elections. But it  will define the kind of politics that shape the world we make for ourselves and leave to our children.

Laurence Freeman OSB

Christ at the Center

We will never find peace in the midst of our worries and problems by thinking our way through them. Thought is a false labyrinth that always returns us to the same confused starting point. Prayer is the true labyrinth that takes us deeper than thought and leads us to the peace that “passes all understanding.” Letting go of our anxieties is our greatest difficulty, which testifies to the negative resilience of the ego. Yet it is so simple. We have only to grasp the true nature of meditation: not that we are trying to think of nothing, but that we are not thinking. [. . . .]

In many ancient labyrinths it was a monster that was found at the center, a thing of fear and a threat to life. The Christian labyrinths positioned Christ at the center of all the twists and turns of life. In Christ we find not fear but the dissolving of fear in the final and primal certainty of love. Meditation is the work of love and it is by love, not by thought, that God ultimately is known: the knowledge that saves is the knowledge of love. This is why John Main describes our human experience of love as the best way to understand why we meditate and how meditation takes us into reality.

As in any relationship we pass through stages. At each stage of growth there will always be a crisis, another leap of faith. We all pass through cycles: enthusiasm, struggle with discipline, dryness, despair, temporary enlightenments. But as fellow pilgrims, we can always remind each other from within the labyrinth that the center is our true home. And we remember that the flashes of joy, the temporary awakenings are emanations of the love that is the nature of reality. . .

Laurence Freeman OSB, “Letter One,” WEB OF SILENCE (London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1996).

In the face of tragedy...

Meditation sharpens our sense of how many unnatural forces are at work today. The alienation from our own spiritual—boundless and compassionate—nature can only be corrected by learning again what our true nature is. [. . . .] [B]y finding our true nature, with our consciousness mirroring and partaking of the divine consciousness, we experience both peace and liberty. The peace arises from the certain knowledge that our very nature is rooted in God and is as real as God. It is the all-empowering peace of belonging to what we know will never reject or disown us, the self-confidence of love. Liberty springs from . . . knowing that what we belong to belongs to us. Rootedness allows expansion, just as St Benedict’s vow of stability permits continuous transformation.

In the face of our contemporary crises we need to ask why we meditate. We ask it not to undermine our commitment but to refine and deepen it. We are not in pursuit of interesting experiences. Meditation is not information technology. It is about knowledge that redeems, pure consciousness. . . .This redemptive and recreative knowledge is the wisdom our age lacks. We can recognize it and discriminate between it and its counterfeits because it neither claims nor parades any possessive pronoun. No one claims it as their own. . . .It is the consciousness of the Holy Spirit and therefore it is the womb of all truly loving action.

In the face of the most disheartening tragedy it is as close to us as we are to our true selves.


From Laurence Freeman OSB, “Letter Four” in THE WEB OF SILENCE (London: DLT, 1996), pp. 42-43.

Reality as it is...

When the force of faith is set free in the human person it impels us to experience reality beyond words, images, and ideas. We then discover that the filters of metaphor, however useful and necessary they may be at one level, can also (and need to) be deactivated if faith is to grow. Like all human universals we grow in faith or faith wilts and dies. Faith contains the eternal yearning we all have to see reality just as it is. [. . . .]

To see reality as it is, or at least to free oneself progressively of some of the filters, is a major act of faith. It expresses the trusting face of faith because our attachment to the beliefs and rituals of our tradition (rather than the beliefs and rituals in themselves) become a false and falsifying security. And so, many deeply religious people feel an aversion or antipathy to meditation because it seems to (and indeed does) undermine the secure boundaries that protect our world view and our sense of being superiorly different from others.

A way of faith, however, is not a dogged adherence to one point of view and to the belief systems and ritual traditions that express it. That would make it just ideology or sectarianism, not faith. Faith is a transformational journey that demands that we move in, through and beyond our frameworks of belief and external observances—not betraying or rejecting them but not being entrapped by their forms of expression either. St Paul spoke of the Way of salvation as beginning and ending in faith. Faith is thus an open-endedness, from the very beginning of the human journey. Naturally, we need a framework, a system and tradition. [But] if we are stably centered in these, the process of change unfolds and our perspective of truth is continuously enlarged.

Wholesome Harmony

“…This condition of openness as the blend of stillness, silence and simplicity is the condition of prayer: our nature and being in wholesome harmony with the being and nature of God. Meditation is our way to being fully human, fully alive.” John Main OSB, “Letter Four,” Letters from the Heart.

Eyes of Faith

“It would be easier, we think, to turn away from introspection if we knew exactly what we were turning towards. If only we had a fixed object to look at. If only God could be represented by an image. But the true God can never be an image.  Images of God are gods. To make an image of God is merely to end up looking at a refurbished image of ourselves. To be truly interior, to open the eye of the heart, means to be living within the imageless vision that is faith, and that is the vision that permits us to ‘see God.’” Laurence Freeman OSB, “The Power of Attention,” The Selfless Self. Information: 732-681-6238 | GJRyan@wccm.org | www.WCCM.org | WCCM-CentralNJ.blogspot.com

The Prsent Christ

“Christ is light. Christ is the light that gives range and depth and unity to our vision. Without Christ’s light our vision would be tied to the partial and our spirit could not move beyond itself into the infinite liberty. . . . Our consciousness would, however wonderful, remain an observer on the periphery. . . . Instead, thanks to the power of this light, our center of consciousness moves beyond the limits of self-preoccupation and we discover that our true center is in God.” John Main, OSB (The Present Christ). Information: 732-681-6238 | GJRyan@wccm.org | www.WCCM.org

Join Us

Weekly Christian Meditation Group - Mondays, 7:00-7:45 pm. Begun more than 30 years ago in St. Rose Parish, this small ecumenical group meets each week to meditate together and to support its members in their twice-daily practice of Christian meditation. Over time, this ancient way of contemplative prayer, marked by silence, stillness and simplicity, transforms our entire life — body, mind and spirit. First, we listen to a talk by Benedictine monk, John Main (1926-1982), on the tradition and practice of Christian meditation, and then we meditate together in silence. Many people find that this ancient way of prayer helps them to develop from their own experience a deeper understanding of the truths of our Faith, as well as to learn how better to face the personal challenges of living in today’s society. You would be most welcome. Information: GJRyan@wccm.org | www.WCCM.org

Meditation and Reality

“Meditation and the constant return to it, every day of your life, is like cutting a pathway through to reality. . . And it is no small thing to enter reality, to become real, to become who we are, because in that experience we are freed from all the images that so constantly plague us. We do not have to be anyone's image of ourselves, but simply the real person we are.” — John Main OSB, THE HEART OF CREATION

Love & Happiness

“Meditation is purification of the heart and the death of desire. As there is a birth for every death, there is also the regeneration of desire as desire for God. This can never be desire for an object of ego-satisfaction. But it is of course a desire for our own happiness: we can never desire to be unhappy. Desire for God. . .is desire for our happiness by obedience to the law of . . .love. [This law] states that the only kind of desire that will make us truly and permanently happy is the desire for the happiness of others.” — Laurence Freeman OSB, “WCCM Newsletter, Winter 2000.”

A Simple Concept

Meditation is a very simple concept. There is nothing complicated about it, nothing esoteric. . . . In essence, meditation is simply being still at the centre of your being. Being still. The only problem connected with it is that we live in a world of almost frenetic movement, and so stillness and rootedness seem quite foreign to most of us. But in nature all growth is from the centre outwards. The centre is where we begin and again that is what meditation is about. It is making contact with the original centre of your own being. It is a return to the ground of your being, to your origin, to God. . . .St. John of the Cross, in his reflections on the nature of meditation, wrote that "God is the centre of my soul." [. . . .]

Meditation is a wonderful opportunity for all of us. . .because in returning to our origin, to the ground of our being, we return to our innocence. The call to meditation, for the early Fathers of the Church, was a call to purity of heart and that is what innocence is---purity of heart. A vision unclouded by egoisim or by desire or by images, a heart simply moved by love. Meditation leads us to pure clarity--clarity of vision, clarity of understanding and clarity of love--a clarity that comes from simplicity. And to being to meditate requires nothing more than the simple determination to begin and then to continue. . . .

[Meditation] is the way of attention. [W]e must go beyond thought, beyond desire and beyond imagination and in that beyond we begin to know what we are here and now in God, "in whom we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). The way of simplicity is the way of the one word, the recitation of the one word. It is the recitation, and the faithfulness to that recitation every morning and every evening, that leads us beyond all the din of words, beyond all the labyrinth of ideas, to oneness. . . .[M]editation is a way into full communion, oneness of being. In meditation, and in the life enriched by meditation, we just are fully ourselves, whoever we are. -- John Main OSB, "God is the Centre of my Soul," THE WAY OF UNKNOWING

"Meditation Creates Community"

View this video of National Coordinators around the world celebrating the community that meditation creates.

"Breathe Christ"

“Turning attention away from ourselves toward the greater reality ‘outside us’ that contains us is the great act of contemplation. It is the same act of contemplation, however we manage to do it—in relationships, in art, in service, and in prayer. Certainly, learning to meditate—a lifelong art to learn—is a fundamental way to do it. But it is not limited to the actual work of meditation. To meditate is to learn how to live contemplatively in everything we do, [to], as St Antony of the desert once called his disciples to do: ‘always breathe Christ.’” — Laurence Freeman OSB, Common Ground.

Our True Self

The more conscious of the true self we are, the more we see our attitude to others change in the way we live out our relationship with them. Fear diminishes, generous love grows; reactive anger yields to the wisdom of forgiveness; judgement is absorbed by patience. In the place of the control and manipulation which, in the ego’s eyes, makes the world go round, an amazing freedom is glimpsed as a real possibility in human affairs: the freedom that arises when people let each other be who they are. [. . . ]

But what a risk. The great risk we take in meditation is first of all to be ourselves. This is the first step. But if we do not take the corresponding next step, we would never move from where we are; we would be hopping on one leg all our life. The next step is to take the risk of letting others be themselves. Perceiving their reality as distinct from our own is the way to do this. [. . . .]

Turning attention away from ourselves toward the greater reality “outside us” that contains us is the great act of contemplation. It is the same act of contemplation, however we manage to do it—in relationships, in art, in service, and in prayer. Certainly, learning to meditate—a lifelong art to learn—is a fundamental way to do it. But it is not limited to the actual work of meditation. To meditate is to learn how to live contemplatively in everything we do, [to], as St Antony of the desert once called his disciples to do: “always breathe Christ.” -- Laurence Freeman OSB, “Letter Nine,” COMMON GROUND.

Presence

"Meditation is a discipline of presence. By stillness of body and spirit we learn to be wholly present to ourselves, to our situation, to our place. It is not running away. By staying rooted in our own being we become present to its source. We become rooted in being itself. Through all the changing circumstances of life nothing can shake us.

"The process is gradual. It requires patience. And faithfulness. And humility.

"The humility of meditation is to put aside all self-important questioning. To put aside self-importance means to experience ourselves poor, divested of ego, as we learn how to be. To be present to the presence. We learn, not out of our own cleverness, but from the sources of wisdom itself, the Spirit of God." - John Main from Door To Silence.

Conversion of Heart

“One of the most difficult things for Westerners to understand is that meditation is not about trying to make anything happen. But all of us are so tied into the mentality of techniques and production that we inevitably first think that we are trying to engineer an event, a happening. . . The first thing to understand, however, is that meditation has nothing to do with making anything happen. The basic aim of meditation is indeed quite the contrary, simply to learn to become fully aware of what is,  . . to learn directly from the reality that sustains us. [. . . .] So often we live our life at five percent of our full potential. But of course there is no measure to our potential. The Christian tradition tells us it is infinite. If only we will turn from self to other, our expansion of spirit becomes boundless. It is all-turning; what the New Testament calls conversion. We are invited to unlock the shackles, to be freed from being prisoners within our self-limiting egos.” — JOHN MAIN: ESSENTIAL WRITINGS

The Human Spirit

“Every great spiritual tradition has known that in profound stillness the human spirit begins to be aware of its own Source. In the Hindu tradition, for example, the Upanishads speak of the spirit of the one who created the universe as dwelling in our hearts. The same spirit is described as the one who in silence is loving to all. In our own Christian tradition Jesus tells us of the Spirit who dwells in our heart and of the Spirit as the Spirit of love. This interior contact with the Life Source is vital for us, because without it we can hardly begin to grasp the potential that our life has for us. The potential is that we should grow, that we should mature, that we should come to fullness of life, fullness of love, fullness of wisdom. The knowledge of that potential is of supreme importance for each of us. In other words, what each of us is invited to do is begin to understand the mystery of our own being as the mystery of life itself. [. . . .]” — Moment of Christ, John Main OSB

The Spirit of Love

"Every great spiritual tradition has known that in profound stillness the human spirit begins to be aware of its own Source. In the Hindu tradition, for example, the Upanishads speak of the spirit of the one who created the universe as dwelling in our hearts. The same spirit is described as the one who in silence is loving to all. In our own Christian tradition Jesus tells us of the Spirit who dwells in our heart and of the Spirit as the Spirit of love. This interior contact with the Life Source is vital for us, because without it we can hardly begin to grasp the potential that our life has for us. The potential is that we should grow, that we should mature, that we should come to fullness of life, fullness of love, fullness of wisdom. The knowledge of that potential is of supreme importance for each of us. In other words, what each of us is invited to do is begin to understand the mystery of our own being as the mystery of life itself. [. . . .]" - John Main, OSB

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The Light of Consciousness

The gift of vision is the wonder of creation. We are empowered to see the reality within which we live and move and have our being. It is not a gift we can ever possess because it is one we are continuously receiving. In returning it, in letting go, we receive it again even more fully. That is why, the longer we have been meditating the more we do so without demands or expectations. Knowing that God has created us to share in being takes possession of us without our knowing it. Yet the light of consciousness we expand into is complete in ways that the ego’s dim self-consciousness never can be. [. . . .] -- John Main OSB

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Feel free to join us on Monday. -- Yes, we will be there on Memorial Day.

John Main on "Reality"

“What is the difference between reality and unreality? I think one way we can understand it is to see unreality as the product of desire. One thing we learn in meditation is to abandon desire, and we learn it because we know that our invitation is to live wholly in the present moment. Reality demands stillness and silence and presence. And that is the commitment that we make in meditating.” —John Main OSB

We hope you will be able to join us Mondays (7:00-7:45 p.m.).

Introductions were made...

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Last night, a couple of dozen people gathered at the St. Rose parish center for "An Introduction to Christian Meditation." Regular weekly group members were in attendance as well.

Greg Ryan led the evening which included a brief discussion of how the group began more than 30 years ago. A DVD titled "The Pilgrimage" narrated by Father Laurence Freeman, Director of The World Community for Christian Meditation presented the basics of John Main's life and teaching on the ancient practice of Christian meditation as passed down through the ages. The DVD included interviews with meditators from around the world who have made meditation the foundation of their daily lives. After some Q&A, refreshments were served. Books, Newsletters (pictured at the left) and hand-outs were made available to help reinforce the teaching.

Of course, as with every meditation meeting, the focus was on the actual meditation period together.

Greg mentioned that if there is enough interest, a Saturday morning meditation group could be started at St. Rose, in addition to the usual Monday evening group hosted by The First Presbyterian Church of Belmar. Contact Greg for more information.

Join us on May 18!

“An Introduction to Christian Meditation”
May 18, 2016
7:00-8:30 p.m.
St. Rose Parish Center
603 Seventh Avenue (Rear entrance)
Belmar, NJ 07719

Contact: Greg Ryan
Tel: 732-681-6238
Email: GJRyan@WCCM.org

Members of the public are cordially invited to “An Introduction to Christian Meditation” offered on Wednesday, May 18 (7:00-8:30 p.m.) at the St. Rose Parish Center; 603 Seventh Avenue; Belmar, NJ. Presenter and weekly meditation group leader, Greg Ryan (a Benedictine oblate), will recount the tradition and practice of this ancient way of silent, contemplative prayer. Today’s world presents challenges to every aspect of our relationships: family, work, and community. Meditation offers a way to finding balance and peace in the face of these challenges and a path to personal growth and well-being. The session will appeal to people from all walks of life and from all spiritual and religious backgrounds. The evening will include a period of meditation, Q&A and refreshments. All are welcome. Information: 732-681-6238 or GJRyan@WCCM.org.

History & Background (www.WCCM.org)

A Brief History of the Group:
The St. Rose weekly meditation group has been meeting Monday nights since 1981, following an introductory presentation on the ancient tradition and practice of Christian meditation given at our parish by Benedictine Father Laurence Freeman, Spiritual Director of The World Community for Christian Meditation. A few years later, since St. Rose had no meeting space at the time, the Belmar Council of Churches offered to host our ecumenical contemplative prayer group, and so our group has enjoyed the hospitality of the First Presbyterian Church of Belmar for more than 30 years now.

Group Leader:
Gregory Ryan, husband and father of two grown daughters and grandfather of two precious little angels, has been a meditator and a Benedictine Oblate member of The World Community for Christian Meditation (www.WCCM.org) for 35 years. Until recently, he was the general editor of the Christian Meditation International NEWSLETTER and Webmaster of www.WCCM.org. He is the editor of OUR HEARTS BURNED WITHIN US: Reading the New Testament with John Main (Medio Media), author of MY HAPPY HEART: Prayer of the Heart for Children, and composer of the companion CD, MY HAPPY HEART SINGS (Medio Media). Greg has published articles on Thomas Merton, John Main and “the new monasticism” in Praying, The Merton Seasonal, The Merton Annual, Sisters Today, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, and Monastic Studies. Most recently, with his wife Liz, he has co-authored a children’s book on Thomas Merton which will be published by Paraclete Press in the spring of 2017.