Chapter 8: Lighting the Lamps, The House with the Golden Window (2)

Leighton Ford comments on Centering Prayer on page 179 in Chapter 8 of The Attentive Life: Discerning God's Presence in All Things. Here is what one Christian who practices Centering Prayer says concerning her practice:

We do not need to go to Calcutta to find Christ in the poor. If we have not found Him in our very midst, if we have not learned to love those who share our daily oives more than ourselves, preferring their needs to ours, then we will not find Him anywhere else. As Mother Teresa has daid: "Do not search for Christ in far off lands. He is not there. He is in you."

We find Christ in every moment, which is truly present to use and we to it. The present moment is, therefore, always the moment of Christ. Our neighbour is, therefore, always the present Christ. Saying the mantra [the sacred word many use in Centering Prayer] restrains our ego and roots us in the present; likewise turning to the poorest of our neighbours restrains our egoism and shatters our illusions, revealing to us the only wisdom we can hope to acquire--the wisdom of humility. Humility is to be ground in the truth about ourselves--that we are poor.

Lee-Moy Teresa Ng, "Meditation and Working among the Poor"

Image: Roman Catholic priest and champion of the poor, Abbe Pierre