Manchester Zen Peacemaker Circle, 13th March 2010
We had the first Manchester Zen Peacemaker Circle of 2010 on Saturday in Howard's house, from 11-6pm. It was the first of our "closed circles" for this year- between now and the end of 2010 we decided to have a few meetings only for those who have been involved with the ZPC before and who are able to commit to coming to every meeting during the year. The aim of this is to be able to deepen our practice together and work more on understanding what it means to meet as a circle- last year we had many wonderful days of training, but they were more like drop-in sessions with many different people coming each time. The aim is to "reopen to public events" in Deceember 2010, starting with our annual celebration of the Islamic mystic poet Rumi.
Five of us attended the circle on Saturday- Howard, Tom, Suleyman, Kim and Zang- travelling from Oxford, Leeds and Leicester, so we're beginning to have a broader geographic pull than in the beginning, when people only came locally from Manchester. We began the day listening to a short piece of lute music from Howard's collection, then held a checking-in council circle. Then we moved on to study the Introduction and first chapter of "A Deeper Beauty" by Paramananda, the book we've agreed to study over the year. We held a discussion facilitated by Kim on our responses to what we read.
After a shared lunch (including great pasta brought from Leeds by Suleyman!), we had a period of silent meditation, incorporating the exercise from the end of Chapter 1 of A Deeper Beauty. then we held a full Council Circle on the theme "Psychoses and Neuroses".
After a short break, we listened to another piece of the lute music, and then Tom gave a presentation on the effects of climate change on Bangladesh, where he worked as a volunteer in 2009. He used his own photographs together with statistics on global warming to show what's happening and what's likely to happen, and then showed us a project he worked on building a water-filter well to clean the polluted pools the villagers need to use for drinking and bathing. He's continuing to raise funds for this project and will hopefully go out there later this year to help build more wells...
The following morning, Suleyman, Kim and Zang met in Leeds and went along to a service of the Unitarian chapel in the city centre- we met the minister there, who used to be a coal miner and a stand-up commedian, and who has a vision of a multi-faith community drop-in centre open to all without any boundaries of belief or background. Then whilst having adrink together afterwards we met by chance one of the main local organisers of the Leeds Pagan community, who joined us and told us about his own practice and events.
Five of us attended the circle on Saturday- Howard, Tom, Suleyman, Kim and Zang- travelling from Oxford, Leeds and Leicester, so we're beginning to have a broader geographic pull than in the beginning, when people only came locally from Manchester. We began the day listening to a short piece of lute music from Howard's collection, then held a checking-in council circle. Then we moved on to study the Introduction and first chapter of "A Deeper Beauty" by Paramananda, the book we've agreed to study over the year. We held a discussion facilitated by Kim on our responses to what we read.
After a shared lunch (including great pasta brought from Leeds by Suleyman!), we had a period of silent meditation, incorporating the exercise from the end of Chapter 1 of A Deeper Beauty. then we held a full Council Circle on the theme "Psychoses and Neuroses".
After a short break, we listened to another piece of the lute music, and then Tom gave a presentation on the effects of climate change on Bangladesh, where he worked as a volunteer in 2009. He used his own photographs together with statistics on global warming to show what's happening and what's likely to happen, and then showed us a project he worked on building a water-filter well to clean the polluted pools the villagers need to use for drinking and bathing. He's continuing to raise funds for this project and will hopefully go out there later this year to help build more wells...
The following morning, Suleyman, Kim and Zang met in Leeds and went along to a service of the Unitarian chapel in the city centre- we met the minister there, who used to be a coal miner and a stand-up commedian, and who has a vision of a multi-faith community drop-in centre open to all without any boundaries of belief or background. Then whilst having adrink together afterwards we met by chance one of the main local organisers of the Leeds Pagan community, who joined us and told us about his own practice and events.
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