It is important to find a place where you can meet regularly each week. It should be as quiet as possible and be a suitable size. Moving from place to place each week can be disruptive. Having a choir practicing or a TV playing next door can be excellent tests of discipline now and then, but if it’s every week, it’s far less fun. Use your negotiating skills to ensure stability of place. It would be ideal if you can get a room or space allocated permanently for contemplative use alone, but that is rarely possible and not necessary. What you can do is create a space each week that is special. All that is required to transform an ordinary place into a sacred one is, in most cases, a single candle, a little music, and the group leader arriving just a few minutes early to prepare the room. I meditated once in a crypt of a church in the business district of a big city. A steady core group of people working nearby met once a week during their lunch break. The leader of the group arrived before the others to put out the chairs in a circle around a simple candle. He also brought a small portable tape player. People arrived quietly as music played softly. They started punctually, listened to a brief taped teaching, meditated, shared a few words and went back to work. The candle was blown out, chairs were put away and in a moment there was no sign – except the energy of peace – that there had just been a group of meditators sitting together in stillness and silence. Groups now meet in homes, apartments, schools, churches, rectories, religious communities, community centers, Christian Meditation Centres, chapels, universities, prisons, government office buildings, a department store, senior citizens’ homes and factories. |
| THE WORLD COMMUNITY FOR CHRISTIAN MEDITATION |
