Last month, Rev. Elizabeth Rechter led an online workshop for Claremont Presbyterian Church introducing Centering Prayer. The text for her presentation provided a way to think about and begin to practice this method of meditation, which we use on Friday mornings when we gather online. Thanks to Rev. Rechter for making her talk available.
By The Rev. Elizabeth I. Rechter
1. Intention Con-template
2. Apparatus
St. John of the Cross wrote, ‘God spoke one word from all eternity and spoke it in silence, and it is in silence that we hear it.’ This suggests that silence is God’s first language and that all other languages are poor translations. The discipline of Centering Prayer is a way of refining our receptive apparatus so that we can perceive the word of God communicating itself with ever greater simplicity to our spirit and to our inmost being.
+Thomas Keating
3. The Sacred Word
It’s very, very simple.
You sit, either in a chair or on a prayer stool or mat and allow your heart to open toward that invisible but always present Origin of all that exists. Whenever a thought comes into your mind, you simply let the thought go and return to that open, silent attending upon the depths. Not because thinking is bad, but because it pulls you back to the surface of yourself.
To help you let go of the thought promptly and cleanly. You use a short word or phrase, known as a “sacred word, “such as “abba” or “peace” or “be still” or “trust”.
You do this practice for 20 minutes or longer; then you simply get up and move on with your life.
+Cynthia Bourgeault
4. Sabbath Keeping
Be still and know that I am God.
5. Interior Awakening
What goes on in these silent depths during the time of Centering Prayer in no one’s business, not even your own; it is between your innermost being and God; that place whereas St. Augustine once said, “God is closer to your soul than you are yourself.” Your own experience of the prayer may be that nothing happened - except for the more-or-less continuous motion of letting go of thoughts. But in the depths of your being, in fact, plenty has been going on, and things are quietly but firmly being rearranged. That interior rearrangement- or to give it its rightful name, that interior awakening- is the real business of Centering Prayer.
+Cynthia Bourgeault
6. Return, return, return.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” the old cliché goes, and it aptly describes the experience of nearly everyone who begins to work with Centering Prayer. You’ll sit down to pray with lofty intention of making yourself totally available to God, sincerely wishing to offer up your being in the way just described. And then, not twenty seconds later, you’ll catch yourself deeply embroiled in some mental or emotional scenario: replaying that argument you had, pondering what to cook for dinner, or whether you remembered to lock the storage bin.
The method of Centering Prayer begins with the reassurance that all this is perfectly normal.
7. Fruits of Practice
Resources:
Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart
Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening
Peter Traben Haas, Centering Prayers: A One-Year Daily Companion for Going Deeper into the Love of God
Carmen Acevedo Butcher The Cloud of Unknowing: A New Translation
You can find a Centering Prayer app in the the iTunes App Store or the Google Play Store if you have an Android; search for Centering Prayer, select the one by Contemplative Outreach.
Pray in silence with practitioners from all over the world. Centering Prayer groups are forming on this global video platform. Access explained in this Meditations on Meditation post.
Photo: San Gabriel range and Mt. Baldy, Charles Taylor Kerchner, 2008