Laurence Freeman | |
|---|---|
 Laurence Freeman in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2009 | |
| Born | 17 July 1951  |
Laurence Freeman OSB (born 17 July 1951) is an English Benedictine monk and Catholic priest. He belongs to the Monastery of Sta Maria di Pilastrello, in Italy, of the Congregation of Monte Oliveto Maggiore. He is the Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM), Prior of its Benedictine Oblate community and also Director of Bonnevaux, the International centre of the WCCM in France.
Born in England in 1951, he was educated by the Benedictines and studied English literature at New College, Oxford. Before entering monastic life he worked in the fields of banking and journalism and at the United Nations.
His spiritual teacher, whom he succeeded, was the Irish Benedictine monk John Main OSB. In 1975, Freeman joined John Main at his monastery in London, Ealing Abbey, in starting the first Christian Meditation Centre. This led to an invitation from the Archdiocese of Montreal, Quebec, Canada to start a new kind of Benedictine community of monks and lay members dedicated to the practice and teaching of meditation in the Christian tradition. Meditation was integrated into the Office and Eucharist as it is still done in the WCCM and at Bonnevaux.
Freeman and Main started the Benedictine priory of Montréal in 1977. From this emerged over the following years the global spiritual family of WCCM.
Freeman studied theology at the Université de Montréal and at McGill University. He made his solemn monastic profession of religious vows in 1979 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1980 by Bishop Leonard Crowley in Montreal. [1]
After John Main’s death in 1982, Freeman continued the work of teaching meditation that soon began to develop into a global community. He began to teach widely around the world through talks, retreats and writings. He participated in the 1990-91 John Main Seminar led by Fr Bede Griffiths OSB Cam at which the WCCM was formally established.
In 1991 he returned to live in England to establish the international center of the newly formed World Community for Christian Meditation that is now present in over 100 countries.
Strongly committed to inter-religious dialogue and international peace initiatives, between 1998 and 2000 Freeman took part in the historic "Way of Peace" programme – a series of Christian-Buddhist dialogues with the Dalai Lama in India, Italy and Belfast. The programme continued in 2013 with further dialogues in Sarnath, India. In 2006 he co-hosted a meeting at York University exploring the common ground between Christianity and Islam. He was a keynote speaker at the World Parliament of Religions in Melbourne, Australia, in 2009. In 1995, he led the John Main Seminar ‘On Jesus’ which was the seed of his book ‘Jesus: The Teacher Within’
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 Laurence Freeman in conversation with former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, Youtube video |
Freeman was awarded the Order of Canada in 2010 in recognition of his work of interfaith dialogue and the promotion of world peace. [2]
Freeman’s work also involves encouraging the teaching of meditation to children and university students. In 2005 he founded the John Main Centre for Meditation and Inter-Religious Dialogue at Georgetown University in the United States and sees the contemplative dimension of knowledge as an essential characteristic of all true education. In 2010 he launched the Meditatio outreach programme of WCCM to mark the celebration of its twentieth anniversary. Its seminars, forums and workshops engage in dialogue with the secular world and produces publications and resources on the themes of education, mental health, business, addiction and recovery, interfaith, environment and social justice.
In 2014 he began the MBA course ‘Meditation and Leadership’ at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University which led to many initiatives in the business world and other fields emphasising the connection between personal and organisation transformation.
In 2018 Freeman became Director of Bonnevaux, near Poitiers France which is the International Centre of the WCCM where he resides with a community living the Rule of St Benedict in a contemplative and contemporary way.
Freeman is the author of many books, including Light Within, Jesus: The Teacher Within and Good Work: Meditation for Personal and Organisational Transformation. His retreats and talks and ‘video lectios’ are widely viewed on the internet and the WCCM website: wccm.org. He is the principal editor of John Main’s works.
The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict, are a mainly contemplative monastic order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. Initiated in 529 they are the oldest of all the religious orders in the Latin Church. The male religious are also sometimes called the Black Monks, especially in English speaking countries, after the colour of their habits. Not all Benedictines wear black, however, with some like the Olivetans wearing white. They were founded by Benedict of Nursia, a 6th-century Italian monk who laid the foundations of Benedictine monasticism through the formulation of his Rule. Benedict's sister, Scholastica, possibly his twin, also became a religious from an early age, but chose to live as a hermit. They retained a close relationship until her death.
Bede Griffiths OSB Cam, born Alan Richard Griffiths and also known by the end of his life as Swami Dayananda, was a British-born Catholic priest and Benedictine monk who lived in ashrams in South India and became a noted missionary. Griffiths was a part of the Christian Ashram Movement.
In Christianity, an oblate is a person who is specifically dedicated to God and to God's service.
Christian meditation is a form of prayer in which a structured attempt is made to become aware of and reflect upon the revelations of God. The word meditation comes from the Latin word meditārī, which has a range of meanings including to reflect on, to study, and to practice. Christian meditation is the process of deliberately focusing on specific thoughts and reflecting on their meaning in the context of the love of God.
Christopher Butler, born Basil Butler, was a convert from the Church of England to the Roman Catholic Church, a Bishop, a scholar, and a Benedictine Monk.
In Western Christianity, Lectio Divina is a traditional monastic practice of scriptural reading, meditation and prayer intended to promote communion with God and to increase the knowledge of God's word. In the view of one commentator, it does not treat Scripture as texts to be studied, but as the living word.
John Douglas Main OSB was a Roman Catholic priest and Benedictine monk who presented a way of Christian meditation which used a prayer-phrase or mantra. In 1975, Main began Christian meditation groups which met at Ealing Abbey, his monastery in West London, England, and, later, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. These were the origins of the ecumenical network of Christian meditation groups which have become the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM).
The Abbey of Ealing is a Roman Catholic Benedictine monastery located on Castlebar Hill in Ealing, England. It is part of the English Benedictine Congregation.
Centering prayer is a form of Christian contemplative prayer, to center awareness on the presence of God. This modern movement in Christianity was initiated by three Trappist monks of St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts in the 1970s, Fr. William Meninger, Fr. M. Basil Pennington and Abbot Thomas Keating, in response to the growing popularity of Asian meditation methods.
There were links between Buddhism and the pre-Christian Mediterranean world, with Buddhist missionaries sent by Emperor Ashoka of India to Syria, Egypt and Greece from 250 BC. Significant differences between the two religions include monotheism in Christianity and Buddhism's orientation towards nontheism which runs counter to teachings about God in Christianity, and grace in Christianity against the rejection of interference with karma in Theravada Buddhism on.
Anglican religious orders are communities of men or women in the Anglican Communion who live under a common rule of life. The members of religious orders take vows which often include the traditional monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, or the ancient vow of stability, or sometimes a modern interpretation of some or all of these vows. Members may be laity or clergy, but most commonly include a mixture of both. They lead a common life of work and prayer, sometimes on a single site, sometimes spread over multiple locations. Though many Anglicans are members of religious orders recognized by the Anglican Communion, others may be members of ecumenical Protestant or Old Catholic religious orders while maintaining their Anglican identity and parochial membership in Anglican churches.
The World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) is a registered charity founded in 1991 that promotes a form of Christian meditation developed by Benedictine monk and priest John Main, OSB.
New Monasticism is a diverse movement, not limited to a specific religious denomination or church and including varying expressions of contemplative life. These include evangelical Christian communities such as "Simple Way Community" and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's "Rutba House," European new monastic communities, such as that formed by Bernadette Flanagan, spiritual communities such as the "Community of the New Monastic Way" founded by feminist contemplative theologian Beverly Lanzetta, and "interspiritual" new monasticism, such as that developed by Rory McEntee and Adam Bucko. These communities expand upon traditional monastic wisdom, translating it into forms that can be lived out in contemporary lives "in the world."
Wayne Robert Teasdale was a Catholic monk, author and teacher from Connecticut, best known as an energetic proponent of mutual understanding between the world's religions, for an interfaith dialogue which he termed "interspirituality". He was also an active campaigner on issues of social justice.
Cyprian Consiglio, O.S.B. Cam., is an American composer, musician, Camaldolese monk and Catholic priest. He is noted for his musical work to support the practice of meditation. He is the author of four books.
David Steindl-Rast OSB is an American Catholic Benedictine monk, author, and lecturer. He is committed to interfaith dialogue and has dealt with the interaction between spirituality and science.
John Makransky is an American professor of Buddhism and comparative theology at Boston College, and a meditation teacher within the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Canadian Christian Meditation Community (CCMC) is part of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM), which was founded in 1991 to foster the teachings of Benedictine monk and priest, Fr. John Main, O.S.B. (1926–1982). Fr. Main taught a way of Christian meditation which he based on parallels he saw between the spiritual practice taught by Desert Father John Cassian and the meditative practice he had been taught by the Swami Satyanandain in Kuala Lumpur. In 1977, Fr. John started a small Benedictine community in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, thus bringing this form of contemplative prayer to Canada. The Canadian Community's national office is located in Montreal.
Monastic silence is a spiritual practice recommended in a variety of religious traditions for purposes including becoming closer to God and achieving elevated states of spiritual purity. It may be in accordance with a monk's formal vow of silence, but can also engage laity who have not taken vows, or novices who are preparing to take vows.
DIMMID, Dialogue Interreligieux Monastique - Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (DIM·MID), is a movement within the Benedictine and Cistercian order aimed to promote interfaith dialogue between monastic communities of different religions. Created in 1977, the movement approaches this aim through a mutual understanding and experience of each other's spirituality.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |