Camaldolese monk, author and musician Fr Cyprian Consiglio visited Australia in November last year. Recently retired Prior of New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California, he is now based in Rome, having been appointed the International Secretary General of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. He spoke to me in Melbourne in the wake of the US election, and reflects on what this means for Christians; what the East has to teach Western Christianity; and his practice as a devotee of meditation and yoga.

When Australian national treasure Michael Leunig died last week aged 79, the sense of loss was profound. I had the great privilege of interviewing this man of extraordinary creative gifts, insight and sensitivity, in 1996 and 2000. The following extracts from the interviews explore his yearning for beauty, enchantment, the transcendent and eternal, and his desire to be a voice for the voiceless.

An icon is a window onto the divine, and the word ‘iconic’ has become a favourite word to describe our heroes. One of the most famous icons is the 12th century Byzantine icon, The Virgin of Vladimir, as shown above. It depicts Jesus as a child being held in the arms of his mother Mary, and it still speaks poignantly to us today.

One of the greatest privileges of my life was recently to spend time in prayer and meditation with a dying and dear friend, Rosslyn Lam. I last prayed and meditated with her in hospital, accompanied by her sister and three adult children, two days before she died last month, following a long battle with cancer.

Through the spiritual exercises developed by the founder of the Jesuits, St Ignatius of Loyola, Roland Ashby has experienced Christ’s loving and healing presence as a physical reality. Roland, who is contributing editor of Living Water (www.thelivingwater.com.au), reflects on how Ignatian spirituality has for him been life-transforming, a spring of living water*.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died in 2021, could radiate the energy of the love of Christ by his very presence. Fiona Garrigan vividly recalls the moment she saw him nearly 35 years ago, a powerful life-transforming encounter that has remained with her ever since.

August 6 is the day we commemorate the Transfiguration of Jesus (Luke 9:28-36), in which he radiated a dazzling light. August 6 1945 was also the day that America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, which also radiated a dazzling light, but of a very different kind.

Bird watching is akin to praying. Or, more precisely, bird waiting is an act of contemplative prayer. The Welsh poet and Anglican priest R.S. Thomas, who lived by the sea in North Wales, was a passionate bird watcher. His poem ‘Sea-Watching’ (below) explores the relationship between prayer and bird watching while looking out to sea.

God has poured his love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit he has given us. (Romans 5:5)

This is one of my favourite Scripture verses, and for me is at the heart of my faith, and why we celebrate Easter. Through a simple practice of mantra meditation (see below) we can tap into this stream of love, and verify the truth of this claim through our own experience.

Following the Rwandan genocide, a planned campaign of mass murder in 1994, World Vision sent John Steward and his wife Sandi there in 1997 to manage its reconciliation and peace-building program. Here John reflects on what he learned about peace-building, and the lessons that can be learned in the Middle East, particularly as we celebrate the coming of the ‘Prince of Peace’.

It is with an almost overwhelming sense of sadness and despair that we have witnessed such diabolical atrocities being committed in the Middle East, and the unleashing of such terrifying anger, hatred and violence.

It is all too easy to fall into despair at the state of our world. Global warming, war, greed and inequality all pose a serious threat to the future of humanity and the future of the planet.

The following two responses, written in the style of Psalms of Lament, of which there are many examples in the Bible, cry out to God in sorrow, grief and anger, while also clinging to the hope that the God of Love, infinite source of a love that is stronger than death, will not desert us in this hour of need.

The primary lesson to learn in life is to love. This was one of the many profound insights that Eileen Caddy (1917-2006) received in her daily meditations. Through an inner voice, she believed that God was guiding her in her co-founding of the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland in the 1960s, a community whose vision is to  “radically transform the world”  through teaching and embodying the core principles of deep inner listening, co-creation with nature, and work as love in action.

Love is stronger than death. That is the hope that Christians celebrate at Easter, in their belief that the Spirit of Christ lives on, and is present to each one of us, whether we are aware of it or not. And that this ‘Christ Consciousness’ or ‘Christ mind’ can be found at the centre of our being, particularly in times of prayer and meditation.

Suffering, for many, is one of the greatest stumbling blocks to faith. But for the Christian mystics, it is a way of entering into the suffering of Christ and transforming our attitude to the suffering of others. Roland Ashby reflects.

As our hearts cry out for peace in Ukraine and throughout the world this Christmas, we recall with even greater poignancy the coming of the Prince of Peace. For peace, joy and love are at the heart of Christ’s birth, and celebrated in this painting of Mary and Jesus by Sister Maria van Galen*.

Roland Ashby, Contributing Editor of Living Water, reflects on St Teresa of Avila’s understanding of prayer, in which God’s love is always available to us in abundance. She says that growing union with this love, if we let it, can transform the soul from a silkworm into a butterfly, and transport us into a life of true freedom.

Contributing Editor of Living Water, Roland Ashby, reflects on his own recent experience of confronting his mortality, and how this relates to what Spanish mystic St John of the Cross termed the “dark night of the soul”. Through this “dark night” God is encountered as passionate, intimate lover who seeks to liberate us to live in true freedom, in the fullness of love.

The times are such that they demand that each of us find our inner prophet, says one of the great prophets of our age, Benedictine nun Joan Chittister. In her recent book, The Time is Now – A Call to Uncommon Courage, she quotes the late Jesuit priest and prophet Daniel Berrigan, who spoke out against the Vietnam War: “The prophet is one who speaks the truth to a culture of lies.”

As Australia heads towards a federal election on 21 May, I am daily reminded of western culture’s urgent need for a deep wisdom arising out of a contemplative consciousness. During this election campaign, as in previous campaigns, the political discourse has largely been reduced to slogans and sound bites, shaped by advertising/PR agencies and focus groups, and there has been very little discussion of some of the underlying challenges facing Australians, and indeed humanity globally.