In this episode Sarah Bachelard speaks about the possibility of faith springing out of a contemplative practice in which we experience the ultimate reality as a ground for action.
This is the second talk Sarah Bachelard gave on the Silent Retreat at the University of Waikato in 2017. She expands on the relationship between contemplative practice and active life: how contemplation changes the agent and shifts his/her vision to see the nature of reality, and the context in which he/she is acting.
Experiencing God is not about having a particular experience, it is about having the ground or the context for all our experiences. God is that in which everything else is contained.
To experience God (to experience Love) is to experience the ultimate reality for us as gift and grace. It is to experience ourselves at home.
The christian faith offers a particular vision of God and human possibilities in relation to God, when this sense of things is alive for us, it transforms how we act. It leads to those full of faith to trust in abundance, it leads them to generosity and courage and to trust that there is a direction in our lives that is given. God is present and active. The power of reconciliation is at work in the world. It invites us to live and act in hope, even in situations that seem hopeless. Meditation leads us to this experience of reality, to this possibility of faith.
This talk was part of a Silent a Silent Retreat led by the Rev. Dr. Sarah Bachelard in the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand January 2017.
Sarah Bachelard is an internationally respected theologian, retreat leader and priest. She is the founder and leader of Benedictus Contemplative Church in Canberra, Australia and an honorary fellow at the Australian Catholic University. Sarah was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University where she studied theology with former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. She is the author of two books, Experiencing God in a Time of Crisis and Resurrection and Moral Imagination.