Centering prayer again
Guidelines
“1. Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within.
2. Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action within.
3. When engaged with your thoughts, feelings, images, and reflections, return ever-so-gently to the sacred word.
4. At the end of the prayer period (20 minutes), remain in silence with eyes closed for a few minutes.”
Contemplative outreach, Ltd., www.contemplativeoutreach.org.
Reviewing the guidelines for Centering Prayer is worth doing often, even if we have been using this spiritual practice for some time. Catholic monks Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, and Quaker Richard Foster have described this contemporary form of the ancient practice of contemplative or listening prayer. This ancient prayer practice has its roots with the Desert Mothers and Fathers, The Cloud of the Unknowing, Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross.
A friend from New York, Steve Standiford, associated with Contemplative Outreach, has practiced centering prayer for over twenty years. He reminded us at a retreat at our church of an old story about how to deepen our relationship with God and experience God’s presence and love in our lives through centering prayer. “A first-time tourist to New York City gets into the cab and asks the driver, ‘How do you get to Carnegie Hall?’ The driver responds, ‘Practice, practice, practice!’”
As with most of our attempts to learn about a spiritual tool, we learn about the practice by practicing it over and over again.
Joanna joannaseibert.com