A New Heart
“A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you;
and I will remove from your body the heart of stone
and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26
Thomas Keating and those who practice centering prayer, a contemporary form of contemplative prayer, believe that the daily 20 minutes of silence is not just prayer with God but also divine therapy, where during that time of quiet, God, the Holy Spirit, slips in and heals us of old and new wounds. They believe that silence may be the language of God where God can perform “open heart” surgery during this time of silent prayer, unloading our over-identification with the “false self” which developed since birth in order for us to survive in an imperfect world and be transformed into our true self. Keating has written extensively about centering prayer. Best known among his works is a trilogy, Open Mind, Open Heart, which is considered the handbook for his method of centering prayer, Invitation to Love, about the stages of spiritual growth, and third, Intimacy with God, which describes more deeply what goes on psychologically during centering prayer and Lectio Divina and addresses the theological basis for centering prayer.
Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart, 1986.
Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love, 1992.
Thomas Keating, Intimacy with God, 1994.
Joanna joannaseibert.com