The moment that changed my life

Rarely can you identify a moment, a discovery or a meeting, that changed your life.

From childhood in the ’60s, I had been a Christian with a strong sense that prayer – communing, somehow, mysteriously with the Divine – had to consist of more than words. But the tradition I came from – Reformed, Protestant – was wordy to a fault, and heroes tended to be activists with what seemed to be an inexhaustible commitment to social justice.

Having a modicum of self-awareness, I knew that this was never going to be a natural fit for me, and took myself off to monasteries basking, for a few days, in nothing but silence and prayer. On one such retreat, in the early ’90s, I picked up the biography of a monk by the name of John Main, born 100 years ago this year. Reading that book, responding to the wild attraction it held for me, altered everything.

Main, a Roman Catholic, studied theology but worked for the British Colonial Service, living in what is now Malaysia, where he was taught to meditate using a mantra by Hindu holy man, Swami Satyananda. In an era when many Christians were deeply suspicious of meditation as a practice of “Eastern religions”, Main discovered that meditation using a mantra – or “prayer word” – was also an ancient Christian tradition. He studied John Cassian and the other Desert Fathers and Mothers – ascetics who lived in the Egyptian desert in the third and fourth centuries. Eventually, Main became a Benedictine monk and spent the rest of his life promoting something he called “Christian Meditation”, eventually forming a body called the World Community for Christian Meditation, which now has branches and groups all over the world.

The discipline Main taught is the soul of simplicity. You pray using a mantra (most commonly an ancient word, “Maranatha”, which means, “Come Lord”) twice a day, for 20 to 30 minutes. That’s basically it.

The habit of Christian meditation over the past 35 years has changed me, rendering me more generous towards both others and myself.

There are different seasons in life: when I lived with four children, I meditated only once a day, climbing into a high cupboard, used as a makeshift chapel. Now that I have retired, the abundance of time in which I can practise this wonderful way of praying fills me with energy and joy.

Epiphanies of this kind are rare blessings in the messiness of life. And they are only the start. What comes after – the sheer hard but rewarding work of maintaining spiritual practices – is what makes the change not just a mountaintop experience, but one that you can carry with you throughout every season and situation, until death.

Clare Boyd-Macrae is a Melbourne writer.