Thursday 5 September 2019

AWARENESS, COMPASSION, EASE OF BEING

Can Mindfulness be a form of spirituality for the non-religious?


Tim Stead has gone from engineering to being a vicar at what was once C S Lewis' church at Headington Quarry, Oxford, to being a mindfulness teacher on the eight-week Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) course at the famous Oxford Mindfulness Centre.

One of the founders of that Centre and
the man who, some might say, 'wrote the book' on mindfulness (subtitled 'Finding Peace in a Frantic World') was a previous guest speaker of Wychwood Circle, in 2016 at Milton Village Hall: Mark Williams. Professor Williams wrote the Foreword to Tim Stead's book Mindfulness and Christian Spirituality (2016), with the recommendation:
'You can read this book in a day; but take it to heart, and it will last a lifetime.'
Since then Tim has left the employment of the Church of England and set up as a freelance teacher and spiritual guide. His more recent book is called See, Love, Be and has the subtitle quoted in the heading above. You can read all about it on Tim's website. As he says there, his main interest is:
'... what might be called Mindful Living, i.e. actually living it all out.  How do we live a life marked by awareness (SEE), compassion (LOVE) and ease of being (BE) in this modern (in my case urban) world? 
Practising some form of meditation will be part of it but we are not here to become good meditators but good humans.  And there are many facets to being a good human with all its shades of light and dark all of which are equally valued parts of the picture. 
Mindful Living will be about how we spend our time, what food we eat and how we travel as well as our engagement with the rest of humanity and the rest of nature.  I am interested in it all.'
We look forward to his exploration of the topic agreed for his visit to the Wychwoods, namely how mindfulness might fall into that gap between conventional religion and modern spirituality.  His talk will include some opportunities to practise and to discuss as well as an open forum for questions and answers.  


Join us on Sunday, September 8th, at the Village Hall (Shipton Road, Milton under Wychwood) for a 7pm start - refreshments served from 6.40pm.  Retiring collection. 



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