** Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and perhaps share advice. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. :-)
Trappist monk and spirituality author Thomas Merton once wrote in a magazine article "if you've never meditated on Auschwitz, you don't know anything about meditation." I don't have the quote in front of me, so that's a close paraphrase, and I don't know the exact context of the remark, but I suspect I know what he meant. In Christian monastic tradition, "meditation" means prayerful mental reflection, for instance on a scene from religious scripture, like Jesus being nailed to the cross. I think Merton was bringing the practice down to earth, down to its essential intent, by insisting that this needs to be a practice of developing real, rather than theoretical or emotional, compassion.
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