Where the Merton Centre might go....

Wednesday, 10 August, 4:32 AM, 3°.

I've been awake for last hour listening to some of Jack Kornfield’s book on Buddhism, Bringing the Dharma Home, and now my mind is racing! I just got up, drank some water, and brought my computer back to bed. Right now I'm using Apple’s own native dictator application and some of its features are quite good -– others are lacking. 

Just talking out, writing about a lot of things right now, in no particular order:

I’ve thought for several years about the Buddhist Christian conversation that could be had by carefully studying Jack Kornfield’s book and comparing it to the contemporary western situation the Christian community is experiencing. It could be helpful and refreshing exercise for all participants interested in discussing it in an ongoing (likely online) community.

I am aware of the need, in my own personal life, for a new configuration between meditation, prayer, study, physical fitness and exercise, community, conversation, as well as personal writing, and publishing in the blogging/social media sphere. And what about authentic corporate worship look like in this context?

Is it time to talk about a new idea for “The Merton Centre” — the metaphor/organisation I’ve carried around for the last few decades; making it less a physical place where classes, gatherings, and programs happen (as it has been in its earlier incarnation), and more a sprectrum of online opportunities for ideas for shared reflections, encounters, asynchronous reading, study and reflection to occur over time and place. This could simply mean an expanded and enlarged webpage offering links to online education as well as other online communities and resources.

I have been exploring some of the options for making a more interesting presence with my current blogspot website: it offers a magazine kind of format where I could do some of the linking I talk about above and would lend itself to a more attractive online presence with photos, graphics, videos, and linkages to other interesting sites. 

With my more sustained writing work on Scrivener I am also finding new options for rearranging previously written texts in new ways to new effect; and it might be time to share some of this work for further conversation on social media. And do I now I need to look at other social media sites in order to understand and exercise better options in placing my writing and offering new ways to relate into the larger community? What might the Merton Centre look like in Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia, Cyberspace?

And where am I now, and how does this corporate work make sense and take place, in my own personal journey and development? 

Considers all these intermediate reflections, jottings for a journal; but I’d love your responses as well… 

And now it’s 6:00am.