Meditation and lifestyle retreat for young adults

Image: WCCM

Unified Consciousness: One Mind One Heart is the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) theme for 2022. This retreat (online and in-person: 27 July - 03 August 2022) will bring younger people together from around the world to reflect on the meaning of the oneness for themselves and for the planet. It will help us to emerge from the isolation and fear of Covid into a new engagement with reality and potential.

The experience of unity among the participants enjoying their diversity will be an important part of the week's experience. Just as peace needs to be found within us before we can live peacefully in our personal lives and bring it to the world, so the spring of inner joy needs to be unblocked and set to flow.

Meditation is a universal wisdom and practice which Bonnevaux teaches from the Christian tradition. Participants will share regular times of meditation within the rhythm of the life of the Bonnevaux community. People new to the practice as well as regular meditators will all find something to help them learn and grow more.

There will be opportunity to learn or re-learn the art of reading wisdom texts from various traditions. This can then become a valuable resource in later life as inter-religious dialogue becomes something we experience interiorly.

A good relationship with the body and sexuality is essential to human harmony. With yoga, bodywork, help with posture and getting your hands dirty in the garden, the retreat will show how to balance the physical with the spiritual and the intellectual and emotional aspects of experience.

Sharing comfortably in an atmosphere of trust and without pressure is also conducive to oneness. We can share as we feel comfortable about such things as life-work balance, making choices, overcoming addictive behaviour finding a partner, taking risks, healing from trauma and discovering how to be a friend.

In this retreat, we will reflect experientially on the theme of unified consciousness from a personal and global perspective. We will explore an important question for our world at this moment: Does meditation make a difference? How does personal transformation lead to global change? Climate change, Covid and now the tragedy of Ukraine show us - painfully - that we are one family, interdependent and reliant on each other in mind, body and heart. How can meditate make this experience of unity joyful and hopeful?

The WCCM Young Adults retreat is intended to grow a new generation of contemplatives, living in and working for a better world, making fulfilling relationships, finding how solitude and community go together in a healthy life.

Bonnevaux is the international home for the WCCM. It has a thousand year history as a beautiful and healing place of contemplation. A core community has been living here in the spirit of St Benedict's Rule for Life since 2019. We are now opening up to retreats and guests. The community life of meditation, worship, work and study integrates bodywork, wisdom teaching, music, creative expression and spiritual direction. On this retreat you will taste something of this rhythm of life which we hope you will take back to your daily life and work.

The retreat will be guided by a team of the community led by Fr Laurence Freeman and Giovanni Felicioni. If you have any questions about the retreat or need financial help to come, please contact Geert Geert@wccm.org

To help prepare for the retreat we recommend you visit the WCCM site: www.wccm.org and browse the introduction and teaching on meditation and the global aspects of the community.

To view details and to book see: https://bonnevauxwccm.org/all-programmes/one-in-mind-one-in-heart/