Centering Prayer

Last week we were thrown in at the deep end of silence without any instructions on how to swim. This week at the St. John's Waterloo Lent course Jill Benet of Contemplative Outreach came to teach us how to swim in our silent depths using the Centering Prayer approach developed by Fr. Thomas Keating. You can see a video of him describing the approach on Youtube.

Jill reminded us that contemplative prayer was quite common in the first 1000 years of Christian history. Then, somehow, in the middle ages it came to be seen as the preserve of highly specialised people - monks! Not nuns, in spite of the fact that there were some remarkable women in England and Germany for whom this would have been a perfectly natural way of praying if the men had not said females weren't up to it. Fortunately they got on with it anyway and even managed to write about it which is why we know about them now.

Jill gave us a set of guidelines for Centering Prayer:

1. Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God's presence and action within.
2. Sitting comfortably with eyes closed,settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred word.
3. Whenever you become aware you are engaged with thoughts return ever so gently to the sacred word.
4. At the end of the prayer period remain in silence with eyes closed for a few minutes.

The sacred word can be any short word (or maybe two)not necessarily religious. "I do," as the answer to "who wants to be a millionaire?" is totally different from the answer to "do you take this man/woman to be your wife/husband?" It's the context and the use of the word that makes it sacred.

Jill's handout gave us four "Rs" about 'thoughts' when engaged in Centering Prayer:

Resist no thought
Retain no thought
React emotionally to no thought
Return ever so gently to the sacred word

The purpose of Centering Prayer (and indeed of all meditation/contemplative prayer) is not having no thoughts but having detachment from them. "The only distraction or failure is if you get up and walk out or deliberately entertain thoughts."

So now there are 20 of us who don't need to become monks or nuns. We can carry our cloister around with us, rather like a snail who takes home with it - except that our 'home' is deep within.

Will the real Jesus please stand up.

'Will the real Jesus please stand up' is the title of the first session of a Lent course on contemplative prayer that I am running for St.John's Waterloo


The course is a 'journey home' - to a place that is familiar and safe -

“We remember wholeness so readily because we don’t have far to look for it. It is always within us, usually as a vague feeling or memory left over from when we were children. But it is a deeply familiar memory, one you recognize immediately as soon as you feel it again, like coming home after being away a long time. When you are immersed in doing without being centred, it feels like being away from home. And when you reconnect with being, even for a few moments, you know it immediately. You feel like you are at home no matter where you are and what problems you face.” (Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living, page 95.)

Or as St. Augustine said, "You have made us and our hearts are restless 'till they find their rest in you."

Home has two doors: one, our physical body (the temple of the Spirit) and two, the present moment (the 'narrow gate')

We looked at the announcement of Jesus's message at the beginning of Mark's Gospel: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel." The good news Jesus was announcing is that the contemplative life is for everyone: the Kingdom is now and it is within and it is about 'repentance' - but how wrong can you be about repentance!

We entered another brief period of silence after which I asked people to look again at the verse but this time to focus on the negative spaces, within and between the letters. This I suggested is repentance; it's a change of focus, of one's field of view, and way of looking at things. A mind shift has taken place which is what Jesus wanted his hearers to understand.

In feedback on this one person who is a graphic designer talked about using gobbledogook when designing a layout so that the designer's brain doesn't focus on the sense of the words but on the pattern of the layout. "The devil is in the detail" she said, and we had great fun with that; the 'devil' undoubtedly confuses the big picture with details! The trick in the contemplative life is not to lose sight of the big picture. Especially don't let the details of my life, who I think I am, blind me to the truth about me which is that I am rooted and grounded in love - and so is everyone else no matter what the external details of their life and behaviour may be.

But when we enter the silence of contemplation what about distractions? Are they the same as 'temptations'? We thought they were. Distractions are always temptations to leave the present moment and the object of meditation is to let the past go (leave the dead to bury their dead) and not anticipate the future (take no thought for tomorrow). It's not that the mind can ever be free of distracting thoughts. The big question is what you do with them. Confession, I suggest, is the basic stance of prayer, i.e. acceptance of whatever is going on in us without judging it as 'good' or 'bad'. Nothing can be effectively dealt with until it is fully acknowledged. Two of the most important words Jesus said were, 'judge not'.

Next week Jill Benet of Contemplative Outreach will be leading us into the art of Centering Prayer.

When things go wrong.

Surfing, I stumble upon Fr. Thomas Keating on youtube He's a Roman Catholic monk from the USA. I have heard of his method of 'centering prayer'from Cynthia Bourgeault. These are people who practice what, in Christian terms, is called contemplative prayer. When I was a young man contemplative prayer was seen as an esoteric, other-worldly discipline practised by people shut away from the 'real' world in monasteries. It turns out, of course, that contemplative prayer is simply the Now Show in Christian tradition and it is, in fact, the most practical of human disciplines, instantly transferable to everyday life. For people who like to use the word 'God', Fr. Keating explains it in simple accessible language.
For centuries the Christian tradition suffered from the idea that God is not here. He's somewhere else and getting in touch with him involves an arduous journey away from everyday life into special places, using special language and religious ritual. So, when things went wrong on this journey, we blamed ourselves. We were sinners who needed to repent. Someone has said, 'most of our anxiety comes from our search for tranquility'. We get upset when things 'go wrong'. Then we add a distressing story about what has happened so we have two layers of 'upset' and then the mind can really have a field day making us feel bad. There's a telling line from a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins, written when things were really going wrong for him. He begins,

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring."

It's a vivid evocation of the kind of mental distress we can get into if we start blaming ourselves when things go wrong.

Thomas Keating is one of those people who, in rediscovering the Christian tradition of contemplative prayer, is helping us to connect with folk in many religious traditions (and non-religious too)who understand that we have all the resources we need to cope with life already deep within us. Now, when things 'go wrong' there's no need to beat myself up. I just notice without judgement what is happening, let it be and let it go. It's a simple discipline. Sometimes when things really go wrong is not an easy one to practice but in essence it is simple.