These last words under the image on our flyer were chosen as a lead-in to meditation by Jeremy Baines, a member of an online meditation group whose members take it in turn to lead a session. It struck me immediately. Somehow I could feel a resonance with our Gathering weekend and the theme of coming to Wholeness. Further, Jeremy’s second quotation was based on exactly the same section from St John’s gospel chapter 17:21-24 that Don MacGregor quoted in his article on Oneness. Both seemed to echo the theme of the Gathering led by Liz Watson ‘Becoming Whole.’
Finally I felt the connection to Fr Laurence’s theme of the year ‘The Future of Religion.’ It seems that the Spirit is moving among us. The message is: We have no future – unless we become whole, one in ourselves, and one with others. Here is what Laurence says.
“We can’t do without religion any more than we can do without music or art or the other things that make us fully human and give us a sense of transcendence. So, as contemplatives we need to ask contemporary questions. Is religion going to transform, is it going to offer us new perspectives on reality in collaboration with other ways of knowledge, respecting and developing the dignity and depth of the human? And how do the different religions collaborate and interact?
Our own contribution to this is to understand the role of contemplation: that at the heart of every religion there is a contemplative or a mystical dimension. There are three pillars to religion: the institutional, the intellectual and the mystical…
The deep source of authentic religion must always be the mystical. It is the personal and collective experience of God, of ultimate reality, and of the meaning and purpose of all things… It is this contemplative dimension of religion that throws open a way into the common ground of humanity.
That’s why religion is important and inevitable. Because it is an ever-new way of transcending divisions, our addiction to war and violence, dishonesty and deception in public life and restores integrity and truth, indeed love, within the human family.
Just as everything else is changing around us in the 21st century, so religion is also going through a transformation. This is a fascinating and important topic, and this is why we will be reflecting on it throughout the coming year with inspiring and original teachers deeply involved in all the questions of our time”.
Teilhard de Chardin, eminent palaeontologist and Jesuit priest and prophet, foresaw the future evolution of humanity in terms of becoming one in Christ,
Christogenesis. Ilia Delio explains: This is a term that Teilhard de Chardin coined to describe the dynamic presence of God in evolution; the creative entanglement of divine and created life in the movement toward wholeness. This is an enormous encouragement to us: we do not meditate just for ourselves. We have a
contribution to make to the future and well-being of humanity. The stakes are high.
Shelagh Layet – Editor
Booking information for the UK Gathering 2026 is here.
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