REFLECTIONS

Each month Hearth Gatherings offers in-person Reflections sessions at various venues. Materials are provided to support reflection, and you can also attend sessions via Zoom.

Recordings are available for those who cannot attend the session.

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"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