Themes for Reflection
If any of these interest you
please contact angela@hearthgatherings.com.au
to discuss how to offer these reflections to your group
"A feather on the breath
of God"
Hildegarde of Bingen composed music and transcribed visions that abound in colourful images of natural elements, and her herbal medicines are still used for healing today.
Poetry: Gateway to
the Divine
Which poet speaks most clearly to you of the nature of the Divine? This is not about the study of poetry, structure and techniques.
It is about the way great poets can reach deep inside us and show us something we know but do not have the words for.
English nature poets:
Wordsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Australian nature poets:
John Shaw Nielsen, Oodgero Noonuccal, Judith Wright, Dorothea Mackellar.
Contemporary poets:
Mary Oliver, David Whyte, Noel Davis, and Chana Bloch.
Thomas Merton: Monk, Mystic, Peace Activist and Bridge Between Faiths
Thomas Merton captured the imagination of young people in the years immediately after the Second World War.
Merton’s prolific writings on prayer and contemplation, justice and compassion, peace and non-violent activism, and the ways that Eastern and Western spiritualities could complement each other, continue to encourage 21st century seekers of a faith that balances contemplation and action.
We explore the way that Zen Buddhism led Merton to the 13th Century Dominican Priest and mystic Meister Eckhart and then into a deeper silence and recognition of the essential interconnection of all beings.
Called by the Cosmos – Ecological Spirituality
What does it mean to commit ourselves to an ecological spirituality that hears and responds to the Cry of the Earth?
This session will seek to deepen your understanding of Christ’s Cosmic Project by exploring the teachings of Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry, Ilia Delio, Denis Edwards, and Pope Francis.You are invited to enter a journey with these ecological and cosmological theologians and mystics.
Their deep connection with God’s creation speaks to us of the preciousness of all that God has made; you, those who you love and care for, all peoples of the world, all creatures of land, air and water, all plants and every mountain, river and plain.
Explore the ways that we can we live out our call to be ‘sharers in the Cosmic Christ Project’ (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) and ‘Co-creators of our Common Home’ (Pope Francis)
Teresa of Avila
Teresa was born in Spain in 1515. She became a Carmelite nun and lived an easy life until a profound near-death experience and an encounter with Christ changed her completely.
She first deepened her own relationship with the Divine and then set about reforming the Carmelites and establishing new monasteries across Spain. Teresa believed that we are all capable of being mystics.
Teresa’s famous prayer, “Christ has no body now but yours” reminds us that we are called to compassionate love and service. We are also invited to enter into a joy-filled relationship with God as Teresa recalled in her writings:
“Just those two words He spoke
Changed my life
“Enjoy Me.”
Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart
Input, reflection and sharing on the mysticism of the thirteenth century. Join the Dominican abbot and theologian, Thomas Aquinas, and his brother Dominican Meister Eckhart as they reveal the profoundly intimate relationship with God that they experienced through prayer.
“God delights. God is always rejoicing and doing so with a single and simple delight. In fact, it is appropriate to say that love and joy are the only human emotions that we can attribute literally to God."
- Thomas Aquinas
“You ask me what the human soul is? No human science can ever fathom what the soul is in its ground, no one knows. But this we do know: The soul is where God works compassion.”
-Meister Eckhart
Walking with the Celtic Saints - Saint Kevin of Glendalough
St. Kevin of Glendalough: Care of Creation St. Kevin of Glendalough was an Irish hermit whose life of prayer was manifest in his care and tenderness for all God’s creatures.
St. Kevin’s life leads us to perceive the divine design of the created order. We are led to see the harmony God has created and ordained. We also find in Kevin’s life stories of intense prayer and chosen hardships, stories of a man whose passion sometimes led him to extreme measures.
Wisdom from the Eastern Mystics
THE SUN NEVER SAYS
Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens
With a love like that –
it lights the whole world.
This poem by Hafiz and the works of the other Eastern Mystics Rabia, Rumi, Kabir and Mirabai represent over 800 years of poetry that celebrate the ways God loves.
Julian of Norwich
Join us for a day of exploration, reflection and sharing on the wisdom this 14th century woman offers for our times. Drawing on Matthew Fox’s 2020 book “Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a time of Pandemic – and Beyond” we will deepen our understanding of Julian’s teachings on facing the darkness and finding goodness, joy, and awe in the realization that ‘nature and God are one.’
Julian expresses for us the divine feminine and the Motherhood of God and encourages us to trust our sensuality, since our bodies are made in God’s likeness and God loves everything that God has made.
I saw that God never began
to love us...
We have always been in God’s foreknowledge, known and loved,
From without beginning… We were made for love….
And furthermore, he wants us to know that this beloved soul was preciously knitted to him in its making, by a knot so subtle and so mighty that it is united in God. In this uniting it is made endlessly holy.
"That tree is as much God as I am. "