Speaker: Matt Reeves, WCCM National Coordinator - USA
Matt Reeves: I'm Matt Reeves. I'm the national coordinator of the WCCM USA and I'm so looking forward to the 2024 John Main Seminar because it's going to take up some questions that are dear to my heart, and I really think really dear to our community and even to our world. Archbishop Jason Gordon is going to lead us on reflecting on what it means to widen our tent. Widen your tent is the theme of this year's Seminar, and it's going to get us asking: How is God calling us to widen who we love and how we love and also widen the way that we listen to the world? When I listen to the world so often it can just feel so discouraging. We live in a world that is filled with such polarisation and violence and division and all kinds of ways in which we are not living into the fullness of the glory of our humanity. We're going to take up a question as the Seminar moves on, and as we get into some days of contemplative listening. A question about the kind of hope that contemplative Christianity has to offer for our time. Some of this will be to ask: How does the WCCM have a special purpose in the way God is at work, in our time? We're gathering in New Harmony, which is a special place for its significance in 1991. At that time, Father Bede Griffiths gave talks on the new creation in Christ and the WCCM received its formal name. Well, we think that a return to this place is really delightful and special for how we can claim the new creation God is making not only in our community, but out in the world and the way that contemplative Christianity is a fresh way of hope for our world that is in such need of hope. So I invite and encourage you to come whether in person or on the ground, because I think that by the end of the week, we will have hearts that are more full of confidence, that God is at work doing new and wonderful things and the WCCM and contemplative Christianity are very much part of it. I hope to see you at the JMS!
