Chapter 8: Lighting the Lamps, The House with the Golden Window (1)

I've just finished reading this chapter and am delighted to see that again Leighton Ford makes mention of Centering Prayer, this time a half-page comment wherein he says, "I have found it helpful both at the beginning and at the ending of a day to spend a few minutes in this kind of quietness . . . ." (179). While I realize that a few Sundays ago I passed out a small descriptive brochure providing you with an introduction to Centering Prayer, I hope it's all right with everyone that this week I begin a more earnest introduction to its practice. Let me be openly professing: I practice Centering Prayer quite regularly and would like to share its praxis with you in more detail. To that end, I'd like to share two "talks" by Father Thomas Keating that are available on video tapes in late November. The first is The Method of Centering Prayer; the second, The Psychological Experience of Centering Prayer; they are both from a larger series, "The Christian Contemplative Heritage: Our Apophatic Tradition."

I'd like to suggest that we listen and watch Fr. Keating either during class on two Sundays, November 16 and 23, or that we get together at my home for two evenings; if we do the latter, then we can learn from the tapes and then actually put into practice what we see Fr. Keating suggesting as a way of deep prayer. Now, as I hope you know, I don't want to dragoon any of you to watch Fr. Keating's "show and tell," but I would like (in an evangelical manner, with radical hospitality) to present his introduction to CP as an opening to prayer as perhaps you've not envisioned prayer before. So let's chat about the possibilities and see where the Spirit leads us.

As we read Chapter 8 and then come to Ford's comments on Centering Prayer near the end of the chapter, I'll be posting quotations, scrapes of sayings, and some poetry along the way. Here's one by Thomas Merton:

Our real journey in life in interior: it is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an every greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts.

[From The Road to Joy: Letters to New and Old Friends; qtd. The Fire of Silence and Stillness, ed. Paul Harris, p. 10].

Image source: Silent Prayer