1. Christian Meditation The Townsville Story Christian Meditation The Townsville Story

2. Christian Meditation The Townsville Story The Strand and Rockpool City of Townsville

4. “The glory of God is the human person fully alive”! St. Irenaeus

5. Dadirri A special quality, a unique gift of the Aboriginal people, is inner deep listening and quiet still awareness. Dadirri recognises the deep spring that is inside us. It is something like what you call contemplation...

7. Happy the pure of heart: they shall see God. The meaning of life is to see God with absolute clarity. Meditation is the way to that clarity of vision. The skill we have to learn is to see clearly, purely, what is here. God I Am, is here. (John Main - Door into Silence – p.7 )

9. “The age of expressive individualism” – (Charles Taylor)

10. “The globalization of superficiality” – (Pedro Arrupe) “The age of expressive individualism” – (Charles Taylor)

13. “…where it is possible to learn personal prayer in all its dimensions: as silent listening to God as listening that penetrates his word, penetrates his silence, sounds the depths of his action in history and in one’s own person” Pope Benedict XVI address at a meeting of Bishops in Switzerland – 9 November 2006

14. To believe in God who is love (1 John 4:8) to have a heart to know God (Jeremiah 24:7), is to be liberated to respond more spontaneously, more naturally, more personally, more freely, more whole- heartedly, to life.

15. A network like the World Community for Christian Meditation, with its strong Benedictine roots and affiliations, has opened up fresh possibilities here. What is more, this community has worked hard at making this contemplative practice accessible to children and young people, and this needs the strongest possible encouragement. Archbishop of Canterbury - Rowan Williams, Address to Synod of Bishops on The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith - 2012

16. 1.“The struggle with the atheism of our everyday consciousness” 2. “The struggle for interiority and prayer” Ronald Rolheiser – The Ten Major Faith Struggles of our Age

17. Australians are seeking wonderment, inner journeying and simply being more deeply attentive to themselves and others. They are re-enchanting a world disenchanted by secular ideologies of materialism and corporate greed. Their experience and encounter with Christian meditation is providing a new vitality for our spiritual and religious lives.