Education

Christian Meditation with Children

November 21, 2017 by James Bishop Leave a Comment

by Paul Tratnyek

It will come as no surprise to educators that a Canadian study commissioned by Microsoft in May 2015¹ found the attention span of consumers has been decreasing in the digital age. The study reported the average human attention span in 2000 was 12 seconds. In 2013, this dropped to 8 seconds. Meanwhile, the average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds!

Seeking an antidote for this digital age phenomenon has led to the recent surge in mindfulness practices. The MindUP² curriculum is spreading throughout North America. Current research on mindfulness practices shows an increase in attention span for students along with a number of other benefits. The big question for Catholic educators today is, “What are we paying attention to?” In response to this, I would like to introduce an ancient form of prayer many Catholic schools are rediscovering called Christian meditation.

History

Christian meditation dates back to the 3^rd and 4^th centuries with the early Desert Fathers and Mothers.³ In the deserts of Egypt, Syria, Palestine and other Middle East areas, they sought a simpler way of focusing their attention on God’s presence in all that surrounded them. St. John Cassian of the 4th century stressed repeating a formula or mantra during meditation and insisted this practice led to the silence of “pure prayer.” That is, praying without words and images.

Fr. John Main OSB was a Benedictine monk who rediscovered John Cassian’s writings. In 1977, the Archbishop of Montreal invited him to teach lay people Christian meditation. His former student, Fr. Laurence Freeman OSB,⁴ first taught Christian meditation to children in Montreal.

Why and How to Meditate

Fr. Freeman tells us “… the mind races from one thought to another. We meditate to calm the mind and to bring the mind into the heart. The real stillness is the stillness within.”⁵

The 3 Ss – Silence, Stillness and Simplicity – best describe Christian meditation as taught by Fr. Main.⁶ It is quite simple as outlined here.

1. Sit still and upright with your back straight.
2. Place both your feet flat on the floor or legs crossed if sitting on the floor.
3. Place your hands on your lap facing either upwards or downwards.
4. Close your eyes lightly.
5. Be aware of your normal breathing pattern for a minute or two as you relax.
6. Silently, interiorly, begin to say your sacred prayer word or mantra “ma-ra-na-tha,” in four equal syllables.
7. Listen to the sound of your sacred word as you say it, slowly, gently and continuously.
8. If thoughts and images come, keep returning to simply saying the word.
9. Maintain this stillness for the entire period of the meditation.⁷

Fr. Main recommended using the word “maranatha” as the sacred prayer word or mantra. It is an Aramaic word Jesus used meaning, “Come Lord,” found in the scriptures.⁸ Because it is in a foreign language, it tends not to conjure up images during meditation as we sit in stillness and silence allowing the Spirit who dwells within⁹ to speak in our hearts.

The Benefits

Meditation deepens the children’s personal relationship with God
Meditation leads to increased self-knowledge and self-acceptance
Meditation increases the desire to build community with others
Meditation reduces stress and increases children’s sense of well-being and harmony

The 2014-15 school year saw an overwhelming interest and participation of Catholic teachers, principals and senior administrators across the province learning about, experiencing and teaching Christian Meditation with Children. The compelling response of students and others is captured in an 11-minute video.¹⁰

Educators report that Christian meditation enables children to be:

Still and silent, and experience God in the silence
More considerate and loving
More caring and thoughtful of others
Kinder to friends
Eager in anticipation of their meditation times
Calmer and more relaxed
Still for longer periods

We should not be surprised by their observations, as many are fruits of the Holy Spirit.¹¹

Brain Research

Dr. Shanida Nataraja in her book, The Blissful Brain: Neuroscience and proof of the power of meditation¹² reveals the scientific evidence that proves meditative practices benefit our health. More research is emerging on the positive impact meditation has on well-being. What we are seeing in the sciences is empirical evidence emerging that parallels what the early Desert Fathers and Mothers knew through intuition and experience.

Christian Meditation and Mindfulness

Meditation can be found in all of the world’s major religions. Below is a table drawing the similarities and differences between mindfulness practice and Christian meditation.

Mindfulness	Christian Meditation
Rooted in Buddhist practice	Rooted in our Christian Tradition
Technique	Surrender – contemplation is not the result of a well-honed technique but of grace
Mind activity	“Pure prayer” of the heart
Attention is on self (time limited)	Attention is coming off yourself (leaving the self behind)
Focus on the present	Focus on the present
Measurable results focus (self-regulation, calming)	Faithfulness and trust focus
Way of preparing for meditation by calming the mind and harmonizing mind and body	Produces mindfulness – makes you more aware, mindful
Benefits include reducing stress, self-regulation, increased self knowledge and acceptance, increases sense of well-being and harmony, increases the desire to build community with others, calmness, enhances learning	Benefits include reducing stress, self-regulation, increased self knowledge and acceptance, increases sense of well-being and harmony, increases the desire to build community with others, calmness, enhances learning. Fruits – “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patient endurance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5: 22)
Transactional	Transformational

As Christian meditation spreads in Catholic schools throughout the province, it is important to remain faithful to the simplicity of it as described here and to maintain a daily practice.

Meditation is not intended to replace the sacraments and other forms of prayer, but rather, can help enhance their experience. Bishop Gerard Bergie of St. Catharine’s Diocese said:

I hope that as the children feel more comfortable with silence, they’ll
also see the role of silence in the liturgy, and how it is being active, it
is participating but in a new and wonderful way.¹³

Let us rediscover the richness of Christian meditation and help our students and staff enter a deeper awareness of Christ’s presence that constantly surrounds us when seeing with the eyes of the heart. Our digital age is in desperate need of this kind of attention.

Paul Tratnyek is a Faith Animator, Brant Haldimand Norfolk CDSB, and School Liaison for The World Community for Christian Meditation – Canada.

References:

1 Microsoft attention spans, Spring 2015 | @msadvertisingca #msftattnspans
2 thehawnfoundation.org/mindup
3 See The Sayings of The Desert Fathers by Benedicta Ward SLG and The Forgotten Desert Mothers by Laura Swan OSB
4 Fr. Laurence is currently Executive Director of The World Community for Christian Meditation – wccm.org
5 Listen to the CD Lord Teach us to Pray: Introduction to Christian Meditation, Laurence Freeman OSB, MedioMedia
6 See The Heart of Creation Meditation: a way of setting God free in the world by John Main, edited by Laurence Freeman, Caterbury Press, 2007
7 Adapted from the Canadian Christian Meditation Community. www.wccm-canada.ca
8 1 Corinthians 16:22 and Revelation 22:20
9 See Matthew 6:6, Luke 17:20-21 and 1 Corinthians 3:16 for scriptural references to the indwelling of the Spirit.
10 The video can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2CK8h3E9f0 with French, Spanish and Polish subtitles.
11 See Galatian 5:22-23 – “…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control.”
12 Dr. Nataraja provides evidence of health benefits for long term meditators including lower stress levels, improved cardiovascular health, cognitive changes, psychological impact, coping strategies.
13 www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2CK8h3E9f0

Note: Article originally published in Principal Connections (Ontario, Canada), Summer 2016, Volume 19, Issue 3

A contemplative approach to improving well-being for students

November 13, 2017 by Leonardo Correa Leave a Comment

By Ernie Christie

Don’t be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity.
Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.

St. John Paul II

St. John Paul’s well known quote could easily be included in the mission statement of a school that took the teaching of contemplation to be its core business. In a continually, ever distracted world, it must be an imperative to teach the youth of today and tomorrow to be attentive through the formation of schools that have at their centre a contemplative heart.

Schools today, anywhere in the world, are busy places. Teaching is often reduced to rushing through a crowded curriculum, being hostage to high stakes testing and responding to the next big issue that the media throw up. Increasingly complex issues such as cyber safety and use of technology or developing a healthy lifestyle can be suddenly thrust into the domain of the school. It is no surprise that educators and students become overloaded and stressed as they deal with so many stimuli bombarding them daily.

There can be another way! Rather than the pursuit of higher, faster and stronger, schools can strive for deeper, slower and wiser. Educators can encourage their students to, ‘put into the deep’ and introduce them to another way of being. To actively teach contemplative practices may seem counter-intuitive or counter-cultural to being able to function effectively in a world that is full of noise and is always speeding up. I hope, however, that you will be convinced that the well-being of your students depends on a radical, reimagined way to approach education, now and into the future.

The world teaches children a set of values. But are these values conducive to the making of a better world? Our Western culture invites excitement, not silence, and activity, not stillness. As a result children of all ages are often stressed, over-stimulated and restless. The culture we live in may suggest the solution to this inner and outer restlessness lies outside of oneself in the pursuit of a bigger and more exciting life. This way of living creates pressures that force our children to compartmentalize their lives too rigidly. As a result, they may lose a sense of their own personal wholeness and a capacity to engage fully with the world as balanced human beings.

For those of us in education working at the coalface of young people’s development and well-being, the issues of overstimulation and constant pressure are particularly evident. More and more children display signs of depression, extreme agitation and lack of ability to focus their attention. In my own corner of the world in Townsville, North Queensland, Australia, we have adopted a contemplative form of prayer, Christian Meditation, which we have decided to teach in our schools to all students from ages four to 18.

Over the past 14 years, we have intentionally, in an experiential way invited and taught our students to journey more deeply within their prayer practice. The results have been startling. The most significant finding has been that children love to meditate. It is something they look forward to daily and even ask their teachers to do it. We want to encourage a new vision for a society that locates the teaching of stillness and silence
at the heart of education. It is vital that education responds to such social challenges by presenting and teaching an alternative way of being. Almost everything that children experience in the world today inhibits that journey inward towards stillness and silence; indeed, it may seem a paradox that children can be still and silent and enjoy it. However, like adults, children also yearn for the experience of an interior world that helps buffer against the hustle and bustle of a hurried life.

On the world stage, in 2012 Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury gave an address to the Synod of Catholic Bishops on The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith. In this address he provided a clear annunciation of the concept of contemplation, which I believe frames the issues very clearly. ‘In this perspective, contemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom – freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from them.’ To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial system, advertising culture, and chaotic and examined emotions encourage us to inhabit. ‘To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truth fully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter!’

My experience after years of teaching educators to teach children to meditate has been truly life giving. I have witnessed personally the transformation of the educator who teaches contemplation and the students who are opened to learn to be still and silent. I cannot tell you for certain that our children are healthier than children anywhere else in the world, but I can categorically say that their well-being is enhanced by regularly practising Christian Meditation as contemplative prayer. The task of teaching meditation to children may seem a daunting one, but I want to share my story in the hope that you will see that the opportunities are far greater than the obstacles. Sister Madeline Simon, in her book Born Contemplative says that ‘children have a natural inclination to be contemplative; they only need the chance to be led there; the space to experience what is natural to them.’

Pope Francis provides a clear way forward. He has made the spiritual development of children and young people a central focus of his papacy, a work that should be the work of the Church and all people of God. For schools and the noble art of teaching, his words provide the catalyst to forge ahead, to put into the deep and do not be afraid of the rich catch we will receive in faith when we have the courage to do something quite radical – teach children to meditate – simply do it!

‘Do not be disheartened in the face of difficulties that the educational challenges present! Educating is not a profession but an attitude, a way of being; in order to educate it is necessary to step out of ourselves and be among young people, to accompany them in the stages of their growth and to set ourselves beside them. Give them hope and optimism for their journey in the world!’
The path of meditation is a path of self-knowledge. To fully know ourselves we must go deeper, beyond the images today’s culture paints for us of the perfect being. We must seek peace in ourselves first. Teaching children to meditate, giving them the safe space to learn and experience this prayer of the heart is deeply transformational. I implore you not to let the speed of the world wash over us and our students. We owe it to the next generation of youth to lead them to the slow path: to the joyous insights of the contemplative pilgrim on the journey of life, to lead them to another way of knowing: another way of being.

Ernie Christie, Director of Catholic Identity, Learning and Teaching, Diocese of Townsville, Queensland, Australia.

Article originally published in Principal Connections (Ontario, Canada), Fall 2017, Volume 21, Issue 1

DVD: Set Pools of Silence in a Thirsty Land

November 13, 2017 by Leonardo Correa Leave a Comment

The DVD “Set Pools of Silence in a Thirsty Land” has been produced by the Catholic Archdiocese of Canberra, Australia. It features Fr Laurence and Archbishop Christopher Prowse discussing a range of topics including The Importance and History of Christian Meditation, Ecumenical Dimensions, How do we Meditate, and Meditation with Children. The Meditation with Children section takes us through meditation in a classroom situation and includes some moving reflections by some very young students. This very important resource can be obtained through this link.

WATCH THE VIDEOS: The Second Way of Peace Fellowship Dialogue

April 27, 2017 by Leonardo Correa Leave a Comment

The Way of Peace grew out of the 1995 John Main Seminar – The Good Heart – in which the Dalai Lama commented on the Gospels and had a dialogue with Laurence Freeman and other Christian teachers. The Way of Peace includes dialogue in spiritual practice, collaboration for the common good of humanity and pilgrimage as well as meetings among scholars.

It has recently inspired the Way of Peace Fellowship which formed among students of Georgetown University and Catholic University of America in Washington DC. The Fellowship held a dialogue at Georgetown University on 18 April with students and three teachers from different traditions: Brahmachari Vrajvihari Sharan (Director of Hindu Life at Georgetown University), Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, (co-founder and Director of the Emory-Tibet Partnership) and Fr. Laurence Freeman OSB (Director of The World Community for Christian Meditation). Sean Hagan (member of the Executive Committee of WCCM) was the moderator.

The three main themes of the panel concerned contemporary spirituality and religion: the role of meditation; dogma, doctrine, and scripture; and education and values.

This was the second Way of Peace Fellowship Dialogue, sponsored by The John Main Center at Georgetown and The Catholic University of America, The World Community for Christian Meditation, and The Meditatio Foundation.

Stewardship: The Next Generation

April 11, 2017 by James Bishop Leave a Comment

by Laurence Freeman OSB
Reprinted with permission from Principal Connections Magazine, April 2017

I once asked an old rabbi friend of mine to a dialogue and suggested we speak to the question : ‘Does God have Favourites?’ In his talk he said that when he was young he believed that, of course, God’s favourites were His Chosen People, the Jews. In middle age, his thought had evolved to the liberal point of view that God has no favourites ( a position held by St Paul). But, in old age, he came to believe that God did have favourites; they were the anawim, the Hebrew word for the poor, all who depend primarily on God alone, the marginalised, the voiceless, the persecuted.

Perhaps, in a comparable way, Christian thinking about our relationship and responsibility towards the natural world needs to evolve in face of the twin cultural and environmental crisis overtaking the whole human race in our divided and tumultuous world. Time was when we blandly said we were ‘stewards’ of the natural world, a hereditary position handed down from Adam. It was incrementally interpreted as a stewardship of domination. This did little harm to the ecological balance of creation until the technology of domination and exploitation became so powerful that it created a new word for the present planetary era, the ‘Anthropocene’ age. This means the period in which of all influences on the natural world, the directly human influence is by far the most powerful.

This claim should be a wake-up call and make us assess our real responsibilities; but not only to the physical environment that we are blindly devastating and whose self-healing mechanisms we are compromising. Stewardship for our habitat extends to the next human generation to whom we are bequeathing the habits and consequences of our short-sighted and self-destructive patterns of behaviour. At a recent Meditatio Seminar on Ageing presented by our community in Sydney, we wanted to emphasise that ageing needs to be understood as a lifelong process, which presents specific challenges and crises at each phase. We invited some young children who have learned to meditate at school to lead the midday meditation. After the silence that they led us into, I asked them what meditation had taught them about how they wanted to live in the world. I was struck by how many of them used the word ‘responsibility’ in their answers. They felt they had a responsibility and, moreover, they wanted it. Above all, they felt responsible for the environment whose crisis troubled them deeply. The greyheads in the audience listened attentively, nodding with surprised and hope-filled approval.

If we seriously expect to save the environment, we must prepare the next generation now. Of course, they need cultural and scientific education and information and technical skills. But, above all, they need to see things differently from the way their parents and grandparents perceived things. Nothing changes our perception more radically than the contemplative experience. Silence and stillness open the eye of the heart, the eye that allows us to see things as a whole and to order priorities , to match out potential with prudent self-control.

Children are born contemplative, but with time the eye of the heart soon clouds over. Christian education needs to recall the injunction of St Augustine, that the ‘whole purpose of the Christian life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.’ Maybe today we need and can do even more than this. Maybe, if we give contemplative practice an integrated place in the school curriculum, the eye of the heart will not continue to grow sick as it has done for the past few centuries. A child’s natural capacity for the ‘simple enjoyment of the truth’ (as Aquinas defined contemplation) will be preserved even while it matures.

The teaching of meditation to children is the most radical spiritual initiative of our time. Its benefits (that we can measure) and the fruits (that we can see but not measure) are undeniable: personal peace of mind and psychological health, wisdom and the ability to read the great symbols of our faith tradition. It is not, in fact, children that we need to teach meditation to, but teachers. Parents often tell teachers of children who meditate in the classroom of the immense changes they notice in their children’s behaviour and well-being. Many families go on to integrate meditation into their home life. Teachers who introduce meditation to their students soon report a beneficial change in mood, relationship and learning acumen. ‘The children are nicer to each other and they pay attention better’ is a common feedback.

Stewardship of our planet, no less than stewardship of our faith, depends upon our sense of responsibility, sharing of talents, leadership, ownership, accountability and responsibility for the young. Children, we should know, can learn to meditate and love to meditate from first grade. In learning this universal wisdom and way of prayer from the beginning of their life-journey, they are receiving a gift that will remain with them, as a direct link to the depth of their own spirit, for the rest of their lives. Older children are adept at teaching it to younger children. No teacher or parent could see this without learning for themselves something that most of us have half-forgotten.

We are walking resolutely towards the precipice in a comatose state. Lao Tsu said that ‘if you do not change direction you may end up where you are heading’. Jesus called this change metanoia. Change of mind. Conversion of consciousness. We are teaching children some bad habits that are sending them in the wrong direction. Is it not time to teach them a way, proven, simple and universal, of how to change direction. The question, today, after seeing how beautifully children respond to it, is not ‘why should we teach children to meditate, but why on earth don’t we?’

Laurence Freeman OSB