Meditation Reflections
Each week the Dean offers a reflection or a poem that speaks to the experience of learning how to attend; to be mindful.
“Meditation is a universal spiritual wisdom and a practice found at the core of all the great religious traditions. It leads the practitioner from mind to heart and to the integration of these two centres of human being. It is not an exoteric complicated or essentially difficult practice. It is a learning process most of which it is in fact unlearning of condition and imaginary responses to reality.” – World Community for Christian Meditation
The Cathedral Meditation Group meets each Tuesday at 6.45pm.
The Dean welcomes you feedback and insights.
The reflection is sent out each week by email. Please email the Dean to join the list.
Click here to Email the Dean
Sunday 19th March, 2023
The Reflection
Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence…
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In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in hope to
Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness
Between stars. His are the echoes
We follow, the footprints he has just
Left. We put our hands in
His side hoping to find
It warm. We look at people
And places as though he had looked
At them, too; but miss the reflection.
R S Thomas, Via Negativa
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
The meditation time will be followed by our Lenten Study, 7.30am to 8.30am. You are welcome to join for just one of the two sessions if you prefer.
To join the Meditation group and/or the study via Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 12th March, 2023
The Fruit of Prayer
The fruit of silence is prayer…
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The fruit of prayer is faith.
The fruit of faith is love.
The fruit of love is service.
The fruit of service is peace.
St Teresa of Avila
We meet in the Cathedral tonight, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
The meditation time will be followed by our Lenten Study, 7.30am to 8.30am. You are welcome to join for just one of the two sessions if you prefer.
To join the Meditation group and/or the study via Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 5th March, 2023
Sedate-phobia
In a culture addicted to noise…
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silence is startling and uncomfortable.
Perhaps this is especially true for me
because I fall into the millennial generation.
Certainly people my age and in my stage of life
now expect continual noise and stimulation…
The season of Lent works at a different speed-
the speed of silence and stillness that brings renewal…
Andy Scott, Lent and the Lessons of Silence
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
The meditation time will be followed by our Lenten Study, 7.30am to 8.30am. You are welcome to join for just one of the two sessions if you prefer.
To join the Meditation group and/or the study via Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 22nd January, 2023
At the Rising of the Sun
In the depths of my being you are my God,…
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at the rising of the sun I seek your face.
My heart thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you,
in a barren and dry land where no water is.
I search for you in unexpected places,
at the edges of the known, in the language of dreams,
in the wilderness of the city streets,
in the grim towers where the desperate dwell.
There may I look long and lovingly,
there may I listen for the word beyond words,
there may I wait for a glimpse of your glory,
there may I utter strange songs of your praise.
From An Unfolding of Psalm 63 by Jim Cotter
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 15th January, 2023
A Life-giving Habit
For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner…
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It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house… It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being. The music is never the same for me, never. Each day it is something new, fantastic and unbelievable.
From Joys and Sorrows, Pablo Casals
Following is a reflection on the transforming power of a life-giving habit. Some find mediation has the same effect.
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 8th January, 2023
Wounded by Beauty
The encounter with the beautiful
can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart…
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and in this way opens our eyes,
so that later, from this experience,
we take the criteria for judgment and can correctly evaluate the arguments.
For me an unforgettable experience was the Bach concert
that Leonard Bernstein conducted in Munich
after the sudden death of Karl Richter.
I was sitting next to the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann.
When the last note of one of the great Thomas-Kantor-Cantatas triumphantly faded away, we looked at each other spontaneously and right then we said:
“Anyone who has heard this, knows that the faith is true.”
Pope Benedict VI
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our first meditation group meeting of 2023, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 18th December, 2022
Nativity
The thin distraction of a spider’s web…
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Collects the clear cold drops of night.
Seeds falling on the water spread
A rippling target for the light.
The rumour in the ear now murmurs less,
The snail draws in its tender horn,
The heart becomes a bare attentiveness,
And in that bareness light is born.
James McAuley, Nativity.
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
After this week there will be a two week recess.
The next meeting of the group will be Tuesday 10th January.
Christmass and New Year Blessing to you all.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 11th December, 2022
Listening to Stones
i don’t expect…
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any of us
to know
what it’s like
to be free
of worry
all i ask
is that when
a tree or stone
or cloud
mentions the possibility
we stop
what we’re doing
turn our heads
listen
Leath Tonino, “The Possibility”
From Poems of Walking and Sitting
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 4th December, 2022
In the Dark there is a Gift
In the dark
there is a gift…
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I might have missed
in the bright of day.
It is the slowing of time,
the sense of air
soft filling each space,
touching my face,
of self with no mask
or pretence,
no agenda,
no inner or outer pressure,
just silence so loud
I can hear it.
It is so empty, it is full.
I can feel all that is there,
all that is always there,
although I am not.
I can honour it
by doing nothing.
Jane Upchurch, The Dark
We will meet in the Darnell Room on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom.
Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry to the meal.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 27th November, 2022
A Feather on the Breath of God
Listen; there was once a king sitting on his throne…
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Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory,
bearing the banners of the king with great honour.
Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground and he commanded it to fly.
The feather flew, not because of anything in itself,
but because the air bore it along.
Thus am I ‘a feather on the breath of God’
Hildegard of Bingen
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 20th November, 2022
A Noisy World
The Word of God cannot be heard in the noisy world of today…
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And even if it were blazoned forth with all the panoply of noise
so that it could be heard in the midst of all the other noise,
then it would no longer be the Word of God.
Therefore create silence.
Attributed to Søren Kierkegaard
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 13th November, 2022
A Day of Silence
A day of Silence
Can be a pilgrimage in itself…
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A day of Silence
Can help you listen
To the Soul play
Its marvellous lute and drum.
Is not most talking
A crazed defence of a crumbling fort?
I thought we came here
To surrender in Silence,
To yield to Light and Happiness,
To Dance within,
In celebration of Love’s Victory
Hafez, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark. Please note that this week we are meeting in The Lady Chapel, a little deeper into the Cathedral than the usual space in the North Aisle.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 6th November, 2022
The Quarry is Here
Not towards the stars, O beautiful naked runner…
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not on the hills of the moon after a wild white deer,
seek not to discover afar the unspeakable wisdom,-
the quarry is here.
Beauty holds court within,-
a slim young virgin in a dim shadowy place.
Music is only the echo of her voice,
and earth is only a mirror for her face.
Not in the quiet arms, O sorrowful lover;
O fugitive, not in the dark on a pillow of breast;
hunt not under the lighted leaves for God,-
here is the sacred Guest.
There is a Tenant here.
Come home, roamer of earth, to this room and find
a timeless Heart under your own heart beating,
a Bird of beauty singing under your mind.
Jessica Powers, The Kingdom of God
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 28th August, 2022
The Crumbling Fort
A day of Silence
Can be a pilgrimage in itself…
Click for more
A day of Silence
Can help you listen
To the Soul play
Its marvelous lute and drum.
Is not most talking
A crazed defense of a crumbling fort?
I thought we came here
To surrender in Silence,
To yield to Light and Happiness,
To Dance within,
In celebration of Love’s Victory
Hafez
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 21st August, 2022
Prayer as Distraction
We have to face the fact, as religious people…
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that many of the forms of prayer or expressions of prayer that we exercise can be forms of distraction. Can be. Meditation, as we know, does not replace any other form of prayer that you find helpful or through which you can grow in your love of God. But if we don’t have this centrality of contemplation in our practice of prayer, then the danger is, and I am not being dismissive here, but the danger here is that our religiosity, our other forms of prayer, however busy we are with them, can become distractions. And that primary, all important quality of pure attention, which is pure prayer is lost or is not exercised and begins to waste away. At the end, if that process were to continue without interruption, it will just lead to a religious fanaticism or compulsiveness. You know, the kind of religious person who is hyper religious, but really does not pay attention to anybody else or anything else, just to their religiosity. We have to face that fact, as religious people.
Laurence Freeman OSB
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 14th August, 2022
The Wood
They tell me how they bought…
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An hour of silence
From a juke-box in New York
Or San Francisco once,
That now they intend
To go back to their home place
For a bit of peace,
A house overlooking a lake
And a wood for kindling.
‘But you can’t fell trees
That had stood for as long
As anyone remembers?’
‘The wood we have in mind will stand
While it has lost its timber.’
Paul Muldoon, The Wood
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 7th August, 2022
Fruit doesn’t exhaust the root
Now I become myself. It’s taken…
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Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before—“
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted so by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I love
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
May Sarton, Now I Become Myself
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 31st July, 2022
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house…
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Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
Because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Rumi
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 24th July, 2022
Mindful Eating
To wake when all is possible
before the agitations of the day….
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have gripped you
To come to the kitchen
and peel a little basketball
for breakfast
To tear the husk
like cotton padding a cloud of oil
misting out of its pinprick pores
clean and sharp as pepper
To ease
each pale pink section out of its case
so carefully without breaking
a single pearly cell
To slide each piece
into a cold blue china bowl
the juice pooling until the whole
fruit is divided from its skin
and only then to eat
so sweet
a discipline
precisely pointless a devout
involvement of the hands and senses
a pause a little emptiness
each year harder to live within
each year harder to live without
Craig Arnold, Meditation on a Grapefruit
Source: Poetry (October 2009)
The practice of meditation can lead to a more mindful relationship with our food.
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 17th July, 2022
The Same Mirror
[Poetry and Religion are]
the same mirror:
Click for more
mobile, glancing, we call it poetry,
fixed centrally, we call it a
religion,
and God is the poetry caught in
any religion,
caught, not imprisoned. Caught
as in a mirror
that he attracted, being in the
world as poetry
is in the poem, a law against its
closure.
There’ll always be religion around
while there is poetry
or a lack of it. Both are given, and
intermittent,
as the action of those birds –
crested pigeon, rosella parrot –
who fly with wings shut, then
beating, and again shut.
Les Murray, Poetry and Religion
Please note that this week we meet in the Darnell Room in St Martin’s House, tonight at 6.45pm, as there is a function in the Cathedral. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
It is still possible to join the group using Zoom.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 10th July, 2022
‘Hearing’ as a Deaf Person
This week’s reflection is an excerpt from an interview with the poet, Josephine Dickinson, who has been deaf since the age of six:
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“I work in the rich hinterland between language and sound, sound and sign, sign and sema, and on the edge of what is often described as ‘wilderness’ in the high Pennines of Cumbria,” says Josephine Dickinson in this conversation with Poetry International. “As a Deaf artist I have made this my eco-niche. Recent works challenge narratives of meaning, boundaries between senses and place.” For Josephine Dickinson, “the sense of hearing, like all the senses, is a deeply mysterious thing.” When asked how as a Deaf person she can hear voices, music, poetry, Josephine Dickinson responds: “How can a hearing person hear?”
https://www.poetryinternationalonline.com/deaf-poetics-a-conversation-with-josephine-dickinson/
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 3rd July, 2022
Sacred Silence II
……If we can see silence as the ground of all words and the birth of all words, then when we speak, our words will be calmer and well-chosen.
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Our thoughts will be non-judgmental. Our actions will have greater integrity and impact.
When we recognize something as beautiful, that knowledge partly emerges from the silence around it. It may be why we are quiet in art galleries and symphony halls. If something is not surrounded by the vastness of silence and space, it is hard to appreciate it as singular and beautiful. If it is all mixed in with everything else, then its particularity does not stand out.
As one author [Max Picard] I read years ago said, silence is the net below the tightrope walker. We are walking, trying to find the right words to explain our experience and the right actions to match our values. Silence is that safety net that allows us to fall; it admits, as poets often do, that no words or deeds will ever be perfectly right or sufficient. So the poet keeps trying, for which we are grateful! The great spaciousness and safety net beneath a tightrope walker is silence; it offers freedom from self-preoccupation and the fear of making a mistake. A regular practice of contemplation helps us trust that silence will uphold us, receive our mistakes, and give us the courage to learn and grow.
Sacred Silence (Part 2), Richard Rohr
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/sacred-silence-2020-01-09/
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 26th June, 2022
Sacred Silence I
Most of us who live in a capitalist culture, where everything is about competing and comparing, will find contemplation extremely counterintuitive….
Click for more
How do we grasp something as empty, as harmless, as seemingly fruitless as the practice of silence? Only when we know that it also offers a “peace beyond understanding” (Philippians 4:7) and a “joy that no one can take from you” (John 16:22).
Silence needs to be understood in a larger way than simply a lack of audible noise. Whenever emptiness—what seems like empty space or absence of sound—becomes its own kind of fullness with its own kind of sweet voice, we have just experienced sacred silence.
When religious folks limit their focus in prayer to external technique and formula, the soul remains largely untouched and unchanged. Too much emphasis on what I call “social prayer” or wordy prayer feeds our egos and gives us far too much to argue about. That is surely why Jesus emphasized quiet prayer in one’s own “inner room” and warned us not to “babble on as the pagans do” (Matthew 6:5-7). Oh, the years we Catholics and others have wasted arguing about liturgy in a juridical way! For me, law and liturgy are two different realms. How can we truly pray when we are preoccupied with formula and perfection of technique?
Sacred Silence (Part 1), Richard Rohr
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/sacred-silence-2020-01-09/
TBC next week
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 19th June, 2022
Loving the world
My work is loving the world….
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Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird –
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
And these body-clothes,
A mouth with which to give shouts of joy
To the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
Telling them all, over and over, how it is that
we live forever.
Mary Oliver, Messenger
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 12th June, 2022
The Shouting Voices
One day you finally knew…
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what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.
From The Journey, Mary Oliver
Meditation helps us hear the still small voice, which is easily shouted down by some of the voices of culture and economy which keep ‘shouting their bad advice’ .
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 5th June, 2022
What is time?
Time present and time past….
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Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
From Burnt Norton (The Four Quartets), T S Eliot
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 29th May, 2022
Breathe
It only takes a reminder to breathe…
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a moment to be still and just like that,
something in me settles, softens,
makes space for imperfection. The harsh
voice of judgment drops to a whisper
and I remember again that life isn’t a relay race;
that we will all cross the finish line;
that waking up to life is what we were born for.
As many times as I forget, catch myself charging forward
without even knowing where I am going,
that many times I can make the choice
to stop, to breathe, to be and walk
slowly into the mystery.
Danna Faulds, Go In and In – Poems from the Heart of Yoga
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 22nd May, 2022
Needing Company
Many believe that they need company at any cost….
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and certainly if a thing is desired at any cost,
it will be obtained at all costs.
We need to remember and to teach our children
that solitude can be a much-to-be-desired condition.
Not only is it acceptable to be alone,
at times it is positively to be wished for.
It is in the interludes between being in company
that we talk to ourselves.
In the silence we listen to ourselves.
Then we ask questions of ourselves.
We describe ourselves,
and in the quietude we may even hear the voice of God.
Maya Angelou, Even the Stars Look Lonesome
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 15th May, 2022
The Other Side of the Wall
Well, who in his own backyard…
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Has not opened his heart to the smiling
Secret he cannot quote?
Which goes to show that the Bard
Was sober when he wrote
That this world of fact we love
Is unsubstantial stuff;
All the rest is silence
On the other side of the wall;
And the silence ripeness,
And the ripeness all.
W H Auden, From The Sea and The Mirror
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 8th May, 2022
Unknowing
To be free from the desires of the mind….
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step out into the night,
outside of space and time.
Wear the darkness, clothed like a dress.
In your unknowing,
you’re truly blessed.
What you seek lies farther than eyes can see –
step after step
faith must lead.
Like a flower, like a seed,
in the darkness
is where roots feed.
We need not act but only be open to receive
gifts that are imparted
but which the mind is unable to perceive.
Justin Farley, The Cloud of Unknowing, From A Voice in the Wilderness – A Chapbook of Poems about God”
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 1st May, 2022
Prayer as Poetry
God bless this city…
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and move our hearts with pity
lest we grow hard . . .
God bless this house
with silence, solitude, simplicity
that we may pray . . .
God bless these days
of rough and narrow ways
lest we despair . . .
God bless the night
and calm the people’s fright
that we may love . . .
God bless this land
and guide us with your hand
lest we be unjust . . .
God bless this earth
through pangs of death and birth
and make us whole . . .
Jim Cotter, Prayer at Night’s Approaching
Jim Cotter taught me that prayer could be, and perhaps should be, poetic.
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 24th April, 2022
Quick and Bitter
And as we stray further from love…
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we multiply the words,
words and sentences so long and orderly.
Had we remained together
we could have become a silence.
From Quick and Bitter, Yehuda Amichai
It was unfortunate that we had to cancel last week’s in person meeting due to an outbreak of Covid in the cathedral ministry team. We are slowly coming out of isolation and are also recovering from our encounter with the virus.
The plan is that we will be able to meet in the Cathedral tomorrow night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 10th April, 2022
The Last Hour
Without moving…
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hardly breathing,
he could call
out of the long darkness
walls around him,
a house whose each room
he knew, its hoard
of silences, solitudes,
doors opening
onto the wide fields
through which he moved….
The Last Hour, Christian Wiman
Our group will be in recess this week due to the Diocesan Eucharist of the Oils on Tuesday evening.
We will resume our meal and meetings next week.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 3rd April, 2022
The Privilege to Choose
The fear to speak is pervasive among Black women….
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We have become comfortable with our fears
and have befriended silence.
Breeana Nykole
Breeana Nykole reminds us that it is a privilege to be able to choose to sit in silence. So many in our world have silence imposed upon them. For them sitting in silence is not a gift.
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
The Lenten study will continue after the meditation session this week.
To join the Meditation group and/or the study by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 27th March, 2022
Stanzas of the Soul
One dark night…
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fired with love’s urgent longings
— ah, the sheer grace! —
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
— ah, the sheer grace! —
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.
On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.
This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
— him I knew so well —
there in a place where no one appeared.
O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.
John of the Cross, From Dark Night of the Soul
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
The Lenten study will continue after the meditation session this week.
To join the Meditation group and/or the study by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 20th March, 2022
Drink Deep of Quietness
Drink deep, drink deep of quietness…..
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And on the margins of the sea
Remember not thine old distress
Nor all the miseries to be.
Calmer than mists, and cold
As they, that fold on fold
Up the dim valley are rolled,
Learn thou to be.
The Past—it was a feverish dream,
A drunken slumber full of tears.
The Future—O what wild wings gleam,
Wheeled in the van of desperate years!
Thou lovedst the evening: dawn
Glimmers; the night is gone:—
What dangers lure thee on,
What dreams more fierce?
But meanwhile, now the east is gray,
The hour is pale, the cocks yet dumb,
Be glad before the birth of day,
Take thy brief rest ere morning come:
Here in the beautiful woods
All night the sea-mist floods,—
Thy last of solitudes,
Thy yearlong home.
Robinson Jeffers, Song of Quietness
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
The Lenten study will continue after the meditation session this week.
To join the Meditation group and/or the study by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 13th March, 2022
Silence bears the Spirit within it
Blessed is that which comes in the name of the spirit…
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that which bears
the spirit within it.
The name of the spirit is written
in woodgrain, windripple, crystal,
in crystals of snow, in petal, leaf,
moss and moon, fossil and feather,
blood, bone, song, silence,
very word of
very word,
flesh and
vision….
From Benedictus in Mass for the Day of St Thomas Didymus, Denise Levertov
Note that in the poem Levertov proclaims silences to be one of the things that
comes in the name of the spirit,
that which bears
the spirit within it.
We will return to in-person meetings this week. The Zoom option will also be on offer.
The shared meal from 5.30pm also returns this week.
The Lenten study will continue after the meditation session this week.
To join the Meditation group and/or the study by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 6th March, 2022
Loneliness Clarifies
Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands…
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Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.
From Here, Philip Larkin
Thank you for the responses that came in answer to last week’s question to do with a return to in-person meetings.
We were hoping to return to in-person meetings this week. However we will be hosting a huge service in the Cathedral on Tuesday so we have decided to delay the return by one week. This week the Meditation group will meet on Zoom.
On Tuesday March 15 the shared meal will return as well as the in-person gathering for meditation.
The Lenten study will commence after the meditation session this week.
To join the Meditation group and/or the study by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 27th February, 2022
Two Lovers in an Inner Room
Two lovers in an inner room withdrawn,…
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and speaking much of love, as one to one;
and yet their speech so ardent in its truth,
not sound but rather silence seems to reign.
These silent lovers are the soul and God;
their silence, prayer, which brought them, joins them, here;
they talk of all that lovers ever speak,
and plight their troth as lovers ever swear:
‘Yet nought I have to give you, but myself;
and that I give, and beg of you to take;
and nought I ask of you, but that yourself
you give to me in truth for my soul’s sake…’
No lovers’ pledge more common, nor more true;
no love more constant; nor more holy vow.
Mechthild of Magdeburg
As you would be aware, due to the current state of the pandemic, the Meditation group has been meeting on Zoom. That will be the case this week as well. The Covid-safe meal has also been suspended. We are considering reintroducing the meal and the opportunity to gather in the Cathedral. The Lenten study will commence after the meditation session next week and could provide the opportunity to switch back to in person gathering. We would value you thoughts, please
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
We hope that you have not been too significantly affected by the rain and flooding. Do let us know if we can assist in any way. Stay safe, but stay connected.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 20th February, 2022
Blind Desire for God
For I tell you this:
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one loving, blind desire for God alone is more valuable in itself,
more pleasing to God and to the saints,
more beneficial to your own growth,
and more helpful to your friends,
both living and dead,
than anything else you could do.
The Cloud of Unknowing
Due to the current state of the pandemic, the Meditation group will meet by Zoom on Tuesday, 6.45pm to 7.30pm.
The Covid-safe meal has been suspended for the time being.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
We hope that these changes will only be in force for a short time In the meantime, stay safe, but stay connected.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 13th February, 2022
Stopping by a Snowy Wood
Whose woods these are I think I know….
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His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Due to the current state of the pandemic, the Meditation group will meet by Zoom on Tuesday, 6.45pm to 7.30pm.
The Covid-safe meal has been suspended for the time being.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
We hope that these changes will only be in force for a short time In the meantime, stay safe, but stay connected.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 6th February, 2022
A House overlooking the lake
They tell me how they bought…
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An hour of silence
From a juke-box in New York
Or San Francisco once,
That now they intend
To go back to their home place
For a bit of peace,
A house overlooking a lake
And a wood for kindling.
‘But you can’t fell trees
That had stood for as long
As anyone remembers?’
‘The wood we have in mind will stand
While it has lost its timber.’
The Wood, Paul Muldoon
Due to the current state of the pandemic, the Meditation group will meet by Zoom only on Tuesday, 6.45pm to 7.30pm.
The Covid-safe meal has been suspended for the time being.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
We hope that these changes will only be in force for a short time In the meantime, stay safe, but stay connected.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 30th January, 2022
Silent presence
The important aim in Christian meditation…
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..is to allow God’s mysterious and silent presence within us
to become more and more not only a reality
but the reality which gives meaning,
shape and purpose to everything we do,
everything we are.
John Main
Due to the current state of the pandemic, the Meditation group will meet by Zoom only on Tuesday night, 6.45pm to 7.30pm.
The Covid-safe meal has been suspended for the time being.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
We hope that these changes will only be in force for a short time In the meantime, stay safe, but stay connected.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 23rd January, 2022
Feeling words
The words the happy say…
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Are paltry melody
But those the silent feel
Are beautiful –
Emily Dickinson, Poem 1750
Due to the current state of the pandemic, the Meditation group will once again meet by Zoom only on Tuesday night, 6.45pm to 7.30pm.
The Covid-safe meal has been suspended for the time being.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
We hope that these changes will only be in force for a short time In the meantime, stay safe, but stay connected.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 16th January, 2022
Let us Attend
We are silent whenever we pay attention….
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We pay attention when there is no ‘I’ thought, no self-reflective consciousness, no thought that we are the observer. This attention is the essence of prayer. Whenever we are in this state we are in prayer whether we are in church or supermarket, bedroom or boardroom, making love or making money. The dimension of our being that is addressed by the question of Jesus is perpetually in this state. When we pray, we return to prayer. When we listen, we return to silence.
From Jesus: The Teacher Within, Laurence Freeman
As announced last week, due to the burgeoning number of Covid cases, the Meditation group will meet by Zoom only for the next period. Please join us by Zoom on Tuesday night, 6.45pm to 7.30pm.
The Covid-safe meal has been suspended for the time being.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
We hope that these changes will only be in force for a short time In the meantime, stay safe, but stay connected.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 9th January, 2022
Sitting in Silence
A QUIET silent person may possess..
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All that is great or high in Blessedness.
The inward work is the supreme: for all
The other were occasioned by the fall.
A man that seemeth idle to the view
Of others, may the greatest business do.
Those acts which Adam in his innocence
Performed, carry all the excellence.
Those outward busy acts he knew not, were
But meaner matters of a lower sphere…
The first and only work he had to do,
Was in himself to feel his bliss, to view
His sacred treasures, to admire, rejoice,
Sing praises with a sweet and heavenly voice,
See, prize, give hourly thanks within, and love,
Which is the high and only work above
Them all…
From Silence by Thomas Traherne
Due to the burgeoning number of Covid cases, the Meditation group will meet by Zoom only for the next period on Tuesday night, 6.45pm to 7.30pm.
The Covid-safe meal has been suspended as well for the time being.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
We hope that these changes will only be in force for a short time In the meantime, stay safe, but stay connected.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 2nd January, 2021
The Way of Ignorance and Dispossession
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,…
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To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: East Coker
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group and or the Study session by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 26th December, 2021
Taking time to talk
When a friend calls to me from the road…
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And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, “What is it?”
No, not as there is time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
A Time to Talk, Robert Frost
When we learn to attend we can develop a better sense of when we do and don’t need to talk.
The Cathedral meditation group is in recess this week.
We will resume both the meal and Mediation gathering from January 4.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 19th December, 2021
The Garden of Silence
They all have tired mouths…
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And luminous, illimitable souls;
And a longing (as if for sin)
Trembles at times through their dreams.
They all resemble one another.
In God’s garden they are silent
Like many, many intervals
In His mighty melody.
But when they spread their wings
They awaken the winds
That stir as though God
With His far-reaching master hands
Turned the pages of the dark book of Beginning.
The Angels, Rainer Maria Rilke
I was drawn towards this poem because it is a great angel poem and this week our Advent journey features Luke’s story about Mary. That story contains the annunciation, the angel calling Mary to be the bearer of Jesus.
In the end, I included the poem in this meditation reflection, not because of the angel theme, but the words:
In God’s garden they are silent
Like many, many intervals
In His mighty melody.
I love the idea that in silence we encounter intervals in God’s melody; that silence is part of the music of the Divine.
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
The Advent Study concluded last week. We will offer another study in the new year.
After this week, the group will have a one week recess, so there will be no gathering on Tuesday 28th December.
To join the Meditation group this week by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 12th December, 2021
Not Knowing
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not…
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You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: East Coker
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
The Cathedral is also hosting its annual Blue Christmass Service on Tuesday at 6pm. In that service we reflect on how the Christmass story speaks to all of our living, including our grief sadness and loneliness. The service will conclude in plenty of time for you to join the meditation group should you wish to do both.
The meditation session will be followed by the last session of our Advent Study, which will go from 7.30pm to 8.30pm.
To join the Meditation group and or the Study session by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 28th November, 2021
The Paradox of Advent
The Infinite a sudden Guest..
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Has been assumed to be —
But how can that stupendous come
Which never went away?
Emily Dickinson, Poem #1309
(On the Paradox of Advent)
I find the space that opens in meditation to be the space in which such paradoxes feel resolved.
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 7th November, 2021
The Spendthrift Lover
Where will you find one more liberal than God?…
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He buys the worthless rubbish which is your wealth,
He pays you the Light that illumines your heart.
He accepts these frozen and lifeless bodies of yours,
And gives you a Kingdom beyond what you dream of,
He takes a few drops of your tears,
And gives you the Divine Fount sweeter than sugar.
He takes your sighs fraught with grief and sadness,
And for each sigh gives rank in heaven as interest.
In return for the sigh-wind that raised tear-clouds,
God gave Abraham the title of “Father of the Faithful”
Jalal ad-Din Rumi, from The Masnavi
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Currently we are not offering a study on Tuesday nights.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 31st October, 2021
Do it for Love
Don’t meditate to fix yourself, to improve yourself, to redeem yourself;…
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rather, do it as an act of love, of deep warm friendship to yourself.
In this way there is no longer any need for the subtle aggression of self-improvement,
for the endless guilt of not doing enough.
It offers the possibility of an end to the ceaseless round of trying so hard that wraps so many people’s lives in a knot.
Instead there is now meditation as an act of love.
How endlessly delightful and encouraging.
Bob Sharples, From Meditation: Calming the Mind
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Currently we are not offering a study on Tuesday nights.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 24th October, 2021
Hunger becomes Silence
Cast from afar before the stones were born…
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And rain had rinsed the darkness for colour,
The words have waited for the hunger in her
To become the silence where they could form.
The day’s last light frames her by the window,
A young woman with distance in her gaze,
She could never imagine the surprise
That is hovering over her life now.
The sentence awakens like a raven,
Fluttering and dark, opening her heart
To nest the voice that first whispered the earth
From dream into wind, stone, sky and ocean.
She offers to mother the shadow’s child;
Her untouched life becoming wild inside.
John O’Donohue, The Annunciation.
Some of the imagery O’Donohue has managed to pack into this poem has really gripped me. I based Sunday’s homily on one image:
The words have waited for the hunger in her
To become the silence where they could form.
I find it truly captivating to reflect on the idea that Mary, in answering God’s call, was discovering that a deep hunger within her was being satisfied. The fact that the hunger could only be recognised for what it truly was after it had become a silence, is particularly illuminating.
Perhaps this is one of the things we seek through meditation, for our hungers to become silences. Silences into which the God who calls us speaks.
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Currently we are not offering a study on Tuesday nights.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 17th October, 2021
The Still Point
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Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
From Burnt Norton, T S Eliot
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Currently we are not offering a study on Tuesday nights.
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 10th October, 2021
A Tree rustling over a gravesite
I love the dark hours of my being….
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My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.
Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that’s wide and timeless.
So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:
a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
The last session of Ken Keith’s exploration of the theme of Reconciliation as it applies to various parts of our life will occur after the meditation session. To find out more visit: www.stjphnscathedral.com.au/whats-on . We thank Ken for putting this study together.
To join the Meditation and/or study group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 3rd October, 2021
Clown in the Moon
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Sunday 26th September, 2021
Building using the Stumbling Stones
So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends and build altars…
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Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies.
Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears.
Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug.
Let’s lick the earth from our fingers.
Let us look up and out and around.
The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked,
And our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning. Oremus.
Let us pray.
A Prayer, Pádraig Ó Tuama
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm in St Martin’s House. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
Our latest study through which Ken Keith is assisting us to explore the theme of Reconciliation as it applies to various parts of our life will continue after the meditation session. To find out more visit: www.stjphnscathedral.com.au/whats-on
To join the Meditation and/or study group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 19th September, 2021
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me…
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and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For the time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry
The Peace Lecture will be taking place in the Cathedral on Tuesday night.
This means that we will meet in the Darnell Room on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm. This will be offered in the Darnell Room in St Martin’s House to allow us to comply with the requirements of current health directive.
Our latest study through which Ken Keith is assisting us to explore the theme of Reconciliation as it applies to various parts of our life will continue after the meditation session. To find out more visit: www.stjphnscathedral.com.au/whats-on
To join the Meditation and/or study group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 12th September, 2021
At Home in the Now
Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last,
In things best known to you finding the best or as good as the best,
In folks nearest to you finding also the sweetest and strongest and lovingest…
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Happiness not in another place, but this place . . not for another hour, but this hour,
Man in the first you see or touch . . . . always in your friend or brother or nighest
neighbor . . . . Woman in your mother or lover or wife,
And all else thus far known giving place to men and women.
When the psalm sings instead of the singer,
When the script preaches instead of the preacher,
When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved the supporting desk,
When the sacred vessels or the bits of the eucharist, or the lath and plast, procreate
as effectually as the young silversmiths or bakers, or the masons in their overalls,
When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child convince,
When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the nightwatchman’s daughter,
When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendly companions,
I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and women.
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm. This will be offered in the Darnell Room in St Martin’s House to allow us to comply with the requirements of current health directive. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
Our latest study through which Ken Keith is assisting us to explore the theme of Reconciliation as it applies to various parts of our life will continue after the meditation session. To find out more visit: www.stjphnscathedral.com.au/whats-on
To join the Meditation and/or study group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 5th September, 2021
Prayers made of Grass
Every day
….I see or hear
……..something
…………that more or less
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kills me
….with delight,
……..that leaves me
…………like a needle
in the haystack
….of light.
……..It was what I was born for –
…………to look, to listen,
to lose myself
….inside this soft world –
……..to instruct myself
…………over and over
in joy,
….and acclamation.
……..Nor am I talking
…………about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
….the very extravagant –
……..but of the ordinary,
…………the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
….Oh, good scholar,
……..I say to myself,
…………how can you help
but grow wise
….with such teachings
……..as these –
…………the untrimmable light
of the world,
….the ocean’s shine,
……..the prayers that are made
…………out of grass?
Mary Oliver
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm. This will be offered in the Darnell Room in St Martin’s House to allow us to comply with the requirements of current health directive. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
Our new study commences tomorrow night. Ken Keith will help us explore the theme of Reconciliation as it applies to various parts of our life. To find out more visit: www.stjphnscathedral.com.au/whats-on
To join the Meditation and/or study group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 29th August, 2021
Stillness
We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us to see their own images and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even a fiercer life because of our silence.
Y B Yeats
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How long will you find satisfaction in self love?
Though just a tiny butterfly, I am yet free,
To dance on a flower head while you remain shackled.
Khalilullah Khalili (Modern Afghani poet)
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm. This will be offered in the Darnell Room in St Martin’s House to allow us to comply with the requirements of current health directive. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 22nd August, 2021
Self-Absorption
Oh’ Great Mountain, reaching far into the sky!…
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How long will you find satisfaction in self love?
Though just a tiny butterfly, I am yet free,
To dance on a flower head while you remain shackled.
Khalilullah Khalili (Modern Afghani poet)
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm. This will be offered in the Darnell Room in St Martin’s House to allow us to comply with the requirements of current health directive. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 15th August, 2021
Lost
Stand still.
The trees ahead and bushes beside you…
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Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
Lost, David Wagoner
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm. This will be offered in the Darnell Room in St Martin’s House to allow us to comply with the requirements of current health directive. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 8th August, 2021
Silence has its own power, and silence can be a way of avoiding…
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I suppose the hope within any kind of practice of prayer of any tradition, is that any silence that we are holding is also being beheld. There’s something or someone or some way of that mystery we call God, that beholds us in the silence that we might be beholding for ourselves. — Pádraig Ó Tuama
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm. This will be offered in the Darnell Room in St Martin’s House to allow us to comply with the requirements of current health directive. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 1st August, 2021
I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day…..
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Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.
The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.
And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.
Robert Frost, The Minor Bird
I often find that the silence of meditation allows me to stop silencing my deepest self.
Due to the current lockdown we have decided that it would be best if we meet using Zoom this week.
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 25th July, 2021
Souls without prayer are like people whose bodies or limbs are paralysed…
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they possess feet and hands but they cannot control them. Mental prayer is, as I see it, simply a friendly intercourse and frequent solitary conversation with Him who, as we know, loves us. It is of great importance, when we begin to practise prayer, not to let ourselves be frightened by our own thoughts. For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.”
The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself
Image: Light Being Right After the Starry Night, Encaustic on Wood by Neranza Noel Blount
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm. This will be offered in the Darnell Room in St Martin’s House to allow us to comply with the requirements of current health directive. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 18th July, 2021
How does meditation do this healing?
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It does it in a very simple, radical way. We do it by cutting through, in a nonviolent way, the images. Because if we let go of the images, it breaks the cycle of desire. If we break through the cycle of desire, we break that pattern, if we can break it at least temporarily and if we continue to break it often enough, it will eventually dissolve. It will be broken and we will be free to restart, eventually, if we do the work, if we stay with it, if we persevere.
Grace at Work, Laurence Freeman OSB
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm. This will be offered in the Darnell Room in St Martin’s House to allow us to comply with the requirements of current health directive. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+
Sunday 11th July, 2021
Green slated gables clasp the stem of the hill
In the lemony autumn sun; an acid wind……
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Dissolves the leaf stalks of back garden trees,
And chimneys with their fires unlit
Seem yet to puff a yellow smoke of poplars.
Freestone is brown as bark, and the model bakery
That once was a Primitive Methodist Chapel
Lifts its cornice against the sky.
And now, like a flight of racing pigeons
Slipped from their basket in the station yard,
A box kite rides the air, a square of calico,
Crimson as the cornets of the Royal Temperance Band
When they brass up the wind in marching. The kite
Strains and struggles on its leash, and unseen boys,
In chicken run or allotment or by the side
Of the old quarry full to the gullet with water,
Pay out on their string a rag of dream,
High as the Jubilee flagpole.
I turn from the window
(Letting the bobbins of autumn wind up the swallows)
And lie on my bed. The ceiling
Slopes over like a tent, and white walls
Wrap themselves round me, leaving only
A flap for the light to blow through. Thighs and spine
Are clamped to the mattress and looping springs
Twine round my chest and hold me. I feel the air
Move on my face like spiders, see the light
Slide across the plaster; but wind and sun
Are mine no longer, nor have I kite to claim them,
Or string to fish the clouds. But there on a shelf
In the warm corner of my dormer window
A pot geranium flies its bright balloon,
Nor can the festering hot-house of the tropics
Breed a tenser crimson; for this crock of soil,
Six inch deep by four across,
Contains the pattern, the prod and pulse of life,
Complete as the Nile or the Niger.
And what need therefore
To stretch for the straining kite? – for kite and flower
Bloom in my room for ever; the light that lifts them
Shines in my own eyes, and my body’s warmth
Hatches their red in my veins. It is the Gulf Stream
That rains down the chimney, making the soot spit; it is the Trade Wind
That blows in the draught under the bedroom door.
My ways are circumscribed, confined as a limpet
To one small radius of rock; yet
I eat the equator, breathe the sky, and carry
The great white sun in the dirt of my finger nails.
Norman Nicholson, The Pot Geranium from Norman Nicholson Selected Poems 1940-1982.
When he was a teenager, Norman Nicholson was diagnosed with Tuberculous and so was confined to a single room for an extended period. The experience taught him to pay attention to place. The poem, The Pot Geranium, captures the journey noticing detail helped him take. He notices the detail of the things he can see through his window and of the potted geranium in his room. His noticing expands until he becomes aware of the inert connectedness of all things and recognises his place in the planetary system.
We meet in the Cathedral on Tuesday night for our meditation group, 6.45pm to 7.30pm. It is still possible to join the group using Zoom. Please enter via the (North West) door – the door with ramp access that enters the Cathedral from the northern (larger) carpark.
A Covid-safe meal of soup and bread will also be available from 5.30pm. This will be offered in the Darnell Room in St Martin’s House to allow us to comply with the requirements of current health directive. Please enter St Martin’s House via the door off the courtyard. There is a buzzer labelled ‘Corridor’ you can use to gain entry
To join the Meditation group by Zoom click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/278417931?pwd=UHMxT1dVL2ZTUTB2MHc3UWJvMGlrUT09
To join by phone ring (07) 3185 3730 and enter these details:
Meeting ID: 278 417 931#
Passcode: 042853#
Participant:#
Peace,
Peter+