A Statement of Attention & Intention for
Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage

Meetingbrook Dogen and Francis Hermitage is a place for the side-by-side practice and study of Buddhist Zen Meditation, Christian Contemplative Prayer, and the Engaged Mindful Service flowing from them.

In the traditions of Dogen Kigen Zenji (1200-1253) and St. Francis of Assisi (1183-1226), the Hermitage (with its Bookshop & Bakery) is a quiet place for collation, recollection, & learning. 

By encouraging an environment of simplicity, silence, solitude, and stillness, the Hermitage wishes to be a community resource to emerge new forms of embodied personal integrity and inclusive community interconnection. Our side-by-side emphasis includes

1) Zen meditation (the practice of no barriers)
2) Contemplative prayer (long loving looking),
3)Engaged service (attentive caring & being with others in everydayness).

Meetingbrook Dogen and Francis Hermitage intends to serve a loosely knit association of individuals who travel the meditative & contemplative road in their spiritual lives -- from initial dependence, to freeing independence, to compassionate interdependence.

The Hermitage is meant to be a resource for practitioners who walk the pilgrimage between two worlds and are open to awakening spirit and truth in root tradition and new creation.

Providing a forum and place for solitaries & hermits, seekers & contemplatives, the hermitage invites any individual interested in deepening their wholehearted listening to sacred life, ordinary life, to hold monastic promises of contemplation, conversation, & correspondence.

Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage is an invitation into silence, solitude, and stillness -- a monastic simplicity of learning, praying, and practicing between traditions.

With gratitude and prayer we begin each day new.  The invitation is to practice and study dwelling in the wholehearted, original, obvious.