Teaching Christian Meditation

How to Meditate

1. Ring the Singing Bowl or bell and call students to meditation.

2. Invite students to be conscious of their breathing and inner stillness.

Invite students to sit for a few moments in silence to be in God’s presence or to pray for someone or something in particular. Students can repeat the phrase, ‘Maranatha’ or another phrase, during meditation

3. Ring the Singing Bowl or bell to conclude the time of meditation.

 Stillness & Silence. Busyness and noise have become so much a part of our lives that many are uncomfortable with periods of stillness. Eliminating activities and noise is an essential way to remove the clutter and hush the rush so we can focus, rest and relax. Then we'll be prepared, from within our inner selves, to sense the divine presence.

Jesus got away from activities and noise to enjoy some stillness and silence with God. Didn't he suggest the same to his followers, "Come a part lest you come apart."

("Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest// {Mark 6:31)).

Meditation is a universal spiritual practice and a way of prayer. It is a way of finding stillness underneath the mental noise. It calls us to enter within, to move to  a realm of silence, to  let  go  of thinking and imagining and to experience true peace at the core of our very being.

Meditation is the work we do to enter into contemplation.

Meditation is not relaxation. We use relaxation exercises e.g. reflective music, breathing to enter into the work of meditation.It is simplicity itself. We hold ourselves alert and attentive during the entire time of prayer. As a fourth century desert father John Cassian put it, 'we centre ourselves, and focus on the God whom we do not see, whom we do not hear, but whose active presence we totally accept', we simply surrender ourselves and rest in God. This is where faith enters into our prayer. Meditation teaches us that being is more important that doing; we move from the head to the heart and it challenges us to overcome our self-centredness.

The great treasure of Christian meditation is being received afresh in our modern world, in many different ways. One particular way is to observe how Christian meditation so easily flourishes in a school setting with young children and how simple it really is to present to children this ancient yet new way of allowing the Holy Spirit to come to us, and we to God.