JOHN MAIN SEMINAR 2024 : Widen Your Tent
Pre - Seminar Worksheet for Con versations in the Spirit : An Approach to Commun al D iscernment
Three Round
s:
From “I” and “You” to “We”
Preparation
• Presentation of “the Matter for Discernment” and Personal Prayer
Meditation
• Opening Ourselves to the Word/Spirit
Round 1
• Personal Sharing: Attentive Listening/ Intentional Speaking
Round 2
• Sharing and Discernment of Interior Movement
Round 3
“I” “You” “We”
• Sharing and Discernment of Communal Movement
A Wide Tent Community : How can we be more fully a sign and instrument of u nion with God and the u nity of all h umanity?
In a Wide Tent Community, all people: young and old, rich and poor, disadvantaged and advantaged, people of powerlessness and power, are all recognized as necessary. All are to be recipients of the gift of contemplation we share, all have Good News to share with us. “Those who have much, did not have too much and those that had little did not have too little” (2 Corinthians 8:15).
A Wide Tent Community prays and acts on behalf of our common home and invites others into shared action. The solution to many problems calls for commitment of the whole human family. Working together with people of all ethnicities, genders, ages, and religions on behalf of our common world home provides a context for encounter and collaboration.
A Wide Tent Community can offer a contemplative prophetic witness to a fragmented, anxious and polarized world, especially as we commit to working together for the upbuilding of the common good. As a Community, we stand alongside the marginalized denouncing situations of injustice and avoiding complicity with its perpetrators. To such a world, we can be agents of reconciliation and artisans of peace.
Let us pray for the Spirit to fill and guide our listening process. We may prepare to listen in the Spirit by considering these reflection questions :
1) How has your participation in contemplative practice and community awakened, cultivated or strengthened your awareness, of the needs of the world?
2) As meditators, what perspective and action might we offer in the face of crises such as climate change and authoritarianism?
3) What inequalities do you see in your local neighborhood, community, or city? How might a contemplative prophetic witness be of assistance?
4) In your local contemplative community, is there a way that you have Widened Your Tent to include the participation of the most marginalized? How might you consider doing that? What can you imagine you might learn from them?
5) Scripture is replete with calls to welcome the stranger. Does your contemplative community or meditation group have members from diverse faith traditions, gender identities, the LGBTQ+ community, and ethnic groups? From multiple economic realities? How might you envision such inclusions?
6) What hope does contemplative Christianity offer to those struggling with mental health: addiction, emotional and psychological challenges, trauma, fear, self-rejection, and isolation, etc.
7) What hope does contemplative Christianity offer to those suffering with illness and/or facing end-of-life?
8) What pressures and challenges face leaders who address the crises of our time? How might contemplative practice sustain and support them?
9) What vision of hope does meditation with children offer?
10) What gifts does the WCCM have to offer people today?
11) What hope does contemplative Christianity offer the world today?
Central Question for Discernment
How might the outreach of Christian contemplative practice be widened to bring a greater diversity of people into contemplative community?