by Rodney Marsh.

During June 2025, I spent a delightful winter month as Meditator-in-Residence at Campfire in the Heart. This visit fulfilled a bucket list desire for me to visit Mparntwe and Uluru and I wrote these blessings following my visit to Australia’s geographical and mythical ‘centre’. Hence the title, “52 Blessings From The Centre”.

The title of this booklet also emphasises that blessings are only truly real when they originate and are received from the centre or heart of both the giver and receiver. Grace is conveyed when the centre within the person saying the blessing meets the open heart of the person receiving it. As John O’Donahue, whose book of blessings partly inspired this work, says, “Blessing is from soul to soul. And the key to who you are is your soul.” Amen to that.

I owe a very great personal debt to John Main and these blessings are directly adapted from his published works. In preparation for my role as Meditator-in-Residence, I read many of his books, and, since I started my near twenty year meditation journey, I have used Paul Harris’ book of daily John Main readings . I am continually in awe of the simplicity and depth John Main found to express the necessity for a lifetime devotion to pure prayer so that we may be gradually ‘unformed’ in silence, stillness, and humility so that ‘Christ may be formed in us’. As noted above, John Main embodied and offered this tradition of prayer to our very needy age. I do not, however, claim ‘ownership’ of these blessings, since they rely so heavily on his words, and, of course, any
errors of expression in these prayers and blessings are mine.

The blessings reinforce John Main’s belief that Christian meditation creates community and were written to be used after a group meditation. These blessings may also be adapted for use as individual blessings or changed to a ‘self’ blessing by substituting the appropriate first-person pronouns. Perhaps the best introduction to these blessings comes from John Main himself, “… each of us is summoned to the heights of Christian prayer — each of us is summoned to fullness of life. What we need however is the humility to tread the way very faithfully over a period of years so that the prayer of Christ may indeed be the grounding experience of our life.”

My prayer is that these blessings will support the mission of the WCCM, “to communicate and nurture meditation as passed on through the teaching of John Main in the Christian tradition in the spirit of serving the unity of all”. Truly, John Main “died, but through his faith, he still speaks” (Heb 11:4).

My heartfelt thanks to Paul and Judi and the other Campfire Directors for the privilege to serve as MIR at Campfire and for being willing to host the download of these blessings from the Campfire
website.

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To read or download as PDF “52 Blessings from the Centre” please click here.