The School of Contemplative Life

07/07/2025

Into the Silent Land offers profound insights for the student of silent prayer but is especially intended for the non-specialist who feels drawn to discover the deep wisdom of the Christian contemplative tradition. This retreat will be led by Chris Whittington, founder of The School of Contemplative...

17/03/2025

Countless voices over the centuries testify to the practice of meditation (silent prayer) as a path to peace.

✨ We teach meditation as a simple, spiritual practice. ✨ We share contemplative wisdom from many voices. ✨ We host a growing online practice community.

Join us on Saturday between 8:30-9:30 and meditate with likeminded others. Click the link in our bio to sign up. It’s free.

13/03/2025

11/03/2025

In the words of Martin Laird OSA: “While we continue to see fewer and fewer people regularly attending church services, their deep, genuine longing for the depth-dimension of Christianity has only grown through the years. Sadly, most Christians have absolutely no idea that Christianity has anything to say about this, much less that it has its own vibrant contemplative tradition.”

Join our one day online retreat on Sat 26th April, where we will meet Jesus the Contemplative Teacher, the great Desert Father Evagrius, St. John Cassian who brought the wisdom of the desert tradition to the west, as well as other teachers from the first Christian centuries.

Reflecting on the recorded sayings and accounts of Jesus’ life in scripture, we will explore his invitation to:

*Journey through the noisy activity of the mind to the silent depths of the heart and its life-renewing gifts
Replace fear with trust
*Move from bo***ge to freedom, from distractedness to wholeness
*Know the infinite, unconditional love of God.

Never before in our history has it been more important to encounter a wisdom tradition which teaches that prayer is an ever-deepening journey into the oneness of God’s love, a letting-go of self-consciousness that leads us into harmony with each other and all creation.

Tickets cost £30 although bursaries are available for people on a low income.

Click the link in our bio to book.

10/03/2025

Wise words from Rev’d Dr Rowan Williams’ address to the Synod of Bishops in Rome during his tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury.

28/02/2025

We are happy to announce that Chris is hosting a five-day silent retreat at the beautiful Ripon College in Oxfordshire between Mon 15-Fri 19 Sept.

In this unique experiential retreat, we will explore the essential skills and wisdom of the spiritual practice of meditation, as set out in Martin Laird’s ‘Into the Silent Land’ - widely recognised as one of the best introductions to meditation in the Christian tradition written in generations.

Words from Martin: “The School of Contemplative Life will surely rate among the most significant responses to the spiritual longings of the people of this nation and abroad. It will directly nourish and cultivate the depth-dimension of life - the wellspring of silence and compassion flowing within.”

Tickets start at £440 (although a bursary can be applied for if you are on a low income).

For more information and to book please head to: https://www.rcc.ac.uk/short-courses-retreats/silent-land

This is the only residential retreat we are currently advertising which is not fully booked and we expect tickets to sell quickly.

Ripon College

27/02/2025

“We are built for contemplation. Communion with God in the silence of the heart is a God-given capacity, like the rhododendron’s capacity to flower, the fledglings for flight, and the child’s for self-forgetful abandon and joy.”

With these words, Martin Laird begins his classic book Into the Silent Land: The Practice of Contemplation – widely recognised as one of the best introductions to meditation in the Christian tradition written in generations.

He brings together an engaging introduction to the Christian contemplative tradition for people inside or on the margins of the churches who feel drawn to the world of silent prayer.

Martin Laird shows how silence and meditation can offer a remedy to many contemporary dilemmas and emotional struggles. Writing with great clarity, poetic depth and authority, Laird examines central meditative methods and traditions found within contemplative prayer. Exploring the role of breath in the spiritual life and the nature of awareness – so often associated in the minds of many with other spiritual traditions – he shows that this is also an ancient concern of Christian thinkers.

Into the Silent Land offers profound insights for the student of silent prayer but is especially intended for the non-specialist who feels drawn to discover the deep wisdom of the Christian contemplative tradition.

How do we enter the ‘Silent Land’ of Divine presence?

“By the silence of surrender,” says Laird: “The contemplative discipline of meditation…is not a technique but a surrendering of deeply held resistances that allows the sacred within to gradually reveal itself as a simple, fundamental fact.”

“The more we realise we are one with God the more we become ourselves, just as we are, just as we were created to be. The Creator is outpouring love, the creation, the love outpoured.”

26/02/2025

50% of people who participated in the last UK census and said that they don’t identify with a religion, do believe in God.

Who is God to you?

25/02/2025

The three things which people tell us that they most value most about our online practice group:

✨ The teachings
✨ The sense of community
✨ The simplicity of the practice

Join us on Wednesday between 8pm - 8:45pm and Saturday between 8:30 - 9:30am.

Click the link in our bio to sign up.

13/01/2025

One space has unexpectedly become available for our sold-out weekend retreat "Resting in God" happening between Friday 24 - Sun 26th January at the beautiful Launde Abbey in Leicestershire.

Click here for more information: https://www.laundeabbey.org.uk/event/restingingod/

Words from a previous participant:

"There are innumerable things that I valued about this retreat experience. It was highly organised, yet there was true space for the self to sit, rest and be free, with God. I felt guided and nurtured. I came away with an almost elated sense of peace and joy, knowing that God was with me at all times, and that the journey of my life (which has struggles but also many blessings) would be a continual encounter with God. I feel that, through this retreat experience, I 'met' God (who was always there!). I came away feeling 'in love', with God, with my life, and with creation. I am so full of gratitude for this moving experience, which will stay with me forever."

Launde Abbey

17/12/2024

We may think of creation as something that happened in the past. Perhaps 13.8 billion years ago for the universe. Perhaps at the moment of our conception for each of us.

But what if creation is continuous? What if we and all things are ceaselessly being created by God’s ceaseless gift of himself?

~~~~~

Continuous Creation: The ceaseless arrival of God within'
Half-day online workshop on Sat 18 Jan from 10am - 1pm (£15)

This ancient and beautiful Christian understanding does not claim that we are God, but rather that God is our being.

As David Bentley Hart put it, “I’m just me. I’m just a finite being. But the ground of all I am, the essence of all I am, the existence of all I am, is not my own. Considered in terms of my source and end...I’m God...there is nothing other than God that gives being.”

If we could be aware of God’s ceaseless influx into us and all creation as the gift of being, said my teacher at Prinknash Abbey, Sylvester Houedard, then we would see God reflected in everything, see that everything is a manifestation of God, theophany (“God appearing”).

“When we come to see that creation is continuous, we come to see that our creativity is not just simply a continuation of God’s creativity, as though that stopped at a certain point and we took over. Rather, we come to see that all that we do is part of God’s creative act.”

How might this understanding help transform how we live?

Drawing on teachings from David Bentley Hart, Sylvester Houedard, Julian of Norwich and others, we will explore:

*the classical Christian understanding of continuous creation as an important and liberating message for today

*how many contemporary ways of speaking about God and creation arise from a forgetfulness of classical Christian theology and reinforce the illusion that we are separate from God

*how meditation (silent prayer) can help us open to the ceaseless arrival of God within us and all creation

As we step into a new year, this workshop offers an opportunity to lay a new foundation and refresh your intention to open to the ceaseless arrival of God within.

Visit this link to book:
https://ow.ly/bpo050UsX92

04/12/2024

Words from someone who comes to our online practice group:

"I feel God 'carrying' me and within me. I feel like a lot of fear has dropped away I feel that I am so much more open, and at one, with myself, and with others. Although I was meditating before I joined you, there is something about the whole dynamic of the School's way of teaching and group meditation which has truly bolstered me."

Join us tonight for online meditation between 8 - 8:45pm UK time. Over 100 people gather for a short reflection, 25 mins of silent meditation and a short period of conversation. It's free to join. Just click the link below:

www.linktr.ee/schoolofcontemplativelife