About Deep Spring Centre
Take a moment to meditate on the cool, running water.
We are living in dark and anxious times. War, hate, violence, greed, and climate change all attest to this. The need for contemplative wisdom and consciousness is urgent. Without a change in consciousness, the future for humanity, and the whole of creation, looks bleak.
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Only a change to a more contemplative consciousness, which has at its core what Anglican Solitary Maggie Ross calls “Deep Mind”, can offer a more hopeful future. In Christian terms Deep Mind is the Holy Spirit: the fount of love, grace, wisdom, care for others and all of creation, forgiveness and healing, unity and reconciliation, and life-giving creativity.
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Deep Spring Centre for Contemplation and Action therefore aims to promote and nurture:
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Contemplative wisdom and consciousness, both within the Church and also within the wider secular culture, and in particular the realms of politics/economics, the environment, the sciences and the arts.
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Christian meditation, and more broadly, contemplative prayer and the Christian contemplative tradition.
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Social justice and care for creation.
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Interfaith dialogue, understanding, peace and reconciliation.
The Team
Roland Ashby is the co-founder and co-director of Deep Spring Centre for Contemplation and Action, and the founder and contributing editor of Living Water. He lives in Melbourne, Australia. He was Communications Director for the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne and Editor of The Melbourne Anglican Newspaper for over 23 years, until he retired from those roles in December 2018. He has been a member of the World Community for Christian Meditation since 2001 and is a Benedictine Oblate. He has also undertaken a 30 week program reflecting on and applying the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius in daily life.
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He has a Master’s degree in theology, majoring in contemplative spirituality, and he is author of A faith to live by (Vol. 1) published by Darton Longman and Todd and Morning Star Publishing; and A faith to live by (Vol. II), published by Morning Star Publishing. He is also editor of Heroes of the Faith – men and women whose lives have proclaimed Christ and inspired the faith of others, and A Reckless God? – Currents and Challenges in the Christian Conversation with Science, both published by Garratt Publishing.
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Dr Stewart Sharlow is the co-founder and co-director of Deep Spring Centre for Contemplation and Action, and the founder of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Inter-religious Dialogue at Australian Catholic University (Melbourne) and the Karuna Spirituality Centre for Inter-religious and Cross-cultural Relations in Boronia. Victoria. He lives in Melbourne, Australia. He was Senior Administrative Officer in the Research and Graduate Studies Office at Australian Catholic University, until he retired from those roles in December 2005. He has been the head of the Australian Thomas Merton Society and a member of the Centering Prayer Network Australia. He holds Bachelor of Philosophy and Bachelor of Sacred Theology Degrees from Catholic University of America (in Washington DC) and a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Religious Studies from the University of Louvain in Leuven, Belgium.