On Oct. 26 …Thomas Keating …died at the age of 95 …. his
loss is … felt by thousands who … counted him as a gentle guide to our most
personal challenges and a soaring guide to the aspirations of the spiritual
life. …he left us a powerful but unlikely solution to our current national
crisis: centering prayer.
Father Keating was a member of …the Trappists. …They
dedicate their lives to vigorous physical work, observe a strict schedule of
chanting the Psalms, usually six times per day, live mostly in silence apart
from others, and believe their vocation to be one that leads to deeper love of
God and healing in the world. ..
But it was not the strict order of the monastery that
captured Father Keating’s passion… it was the goal of all those disciplines and
practices: to lead human beings to experience the unconditional “love beyond
love” that is God’s presence within us and to have that love lead us “to
respect and befriend and love one another.”
“Holiness,” he said … does not consist in any practice but
in a disposition of heart...trusting to audacity in [God’s]...unconditional
love. Only that can bring…[us] into full emotional or spiritual maturity.”
Father Keating and his fellow monks decided … to teach an
ancient way of developing a loving disposition of the heart… a practice ….
deeply rooted in the history of Christianity and of many other religions, but
to many … it was new …. They called it “centering prayer” and suggested that it
was not just for monks; it was for everyone.
Centering prayer involves sitting in silence and gently
letting go of all thoughts and sensations while repeating a sacred word when
thoughts arise. It emphasizes assent to the presence of God. Its goal is a
personal relationship with God ….The changes we all seek in our lives and our
world begin within: The sacred place of transformation is where you are.
… Father Keating drew on the overlooked insights of great
spiritual masters of that tradition—the consciousness genius of the anonymous
14th-century author of The Cloud of Unknowing, the remarkable simplicity of the
spiritual path of St. Thérèse of Lisieux and the transcendent unifying vision
of the 13th-century monk Meister Eckhart, to name a few.
… he saw through the false certainty that can warp all
religions, he believed this path to God was open to Buddhists, Jews, other
Christians and people of all religions or none at all—to anyone who sought the
source and experience of unconditional love.
……
… Father Keating saw that centering prayer could help fill a
void left when traditional religions focused too much on ideas and authority
structures….
If there is one thing our country needs right now, it is
what Father Keating tried to teach: a disposition of the heart that leads us to
love and respect one another… we need the calm and presence and silence that
will help us reduce the toxicity in our public discourse ….
Perhaps most important, we need a way to infuse our national
discourse with the kind of inclusivity and spiritual wisdom that marked Father
Keating’s life. We can be Democrats, Republicans or independents; we can be
Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists or have no religion at all; we can be from
cities or suburbs or rural areas. But no matter what identity …we can each
start to make the change our country needs by making ourselves into agents of
transformation and healing from the inside out. …
…. “Focus on trust,” he said. “When you trust that we are
all part of something beautiful beyond our wildest imagination, you will find
healing.”
…. [He said] “Keep returning to silence. It’s God’s first
language, and everything else is a poor translation. And say just one Hail
Mary, but say it slowly so you can feel the unconditional trust that made it
possible for Mary to allow God’s love to take over her life.... Meet her and
understand her model of trust in God and let her heal you.”
…
Thanks. I thought CP was some type of law practice thing. Derp.
ReplyDeleteCP also stands for continuous polishing , an ingenious method for automatically generating precision flat optical surfaces in glass. What I love about it is that it is a pure mechanical process requiring no damn computer.
DeleteThanks for linking this article, Anne. I love the part about needing "...the calm and presence and silence that will help us reduce the toxicity in our public discourse..."
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAnne, Thanks for the link. Am I really going to have to read "The Cloud of Unknowing"? Really?
ReplyDeleteWhenever the subject is something like Centering Prayer, I think of something Sidney Callahan said at the Hoytfest, celebration of Bob Hoyt's 75th birthday at Fordham in 1997. She and Dan, she said, had joined a Gregorian Chant group in the pre-Vat II days hoping it would revive the church. Gregorian Chant?
Well, CFM and Cursillo and Little Rock Bible Studies and Matthew Kelly and Enneagram and Centering Prayer and myriad other things have been proposed as our salvation, and it's only going to come through the Holy Spirit. But Centering Prayer, and all those other things, including Gregorian Chant, have nourished some people at some times on their faith journeys.
Have you heard of anything called Alpha? I don't know much about it. It sounds similar to Renew. On steroids. Some people with endless energy who are always up for the latest and greatest are pushing it.
DeleteKatherine, Alpha is a course that is an introduction to christianity. It was started by a charismatic protestant group at a church in London. It seems quite popular with religious conservatives of different denominations, including Catholic. From what I understand, the Catholic version is slightly adapted from the original protestant version, but apparently retains the charismatic bent. There is a "required" retreat weekend on the Holy Spirit for those who take the course which apparently is intended to have people "receive" the Holy Spirit in the charismatic way - tongues, being "slain in the Spirit" etc. I suppose each sponsoring church modifies some of the course. If you google it, you can see what each lesson focuses on. It's a "basic" intro to christian belief in general, and incorporates a meal at every session, a lecture on video, and discussion in small groups.
DeleteTom: But Centering Prayer, and all those other things, including Gregorian Chant, have nourished some people at some times on their faith journeys.
DeleteThere is no one thing that will "save" the church or our civilization. Tim Shriver is really just pointing out that a regular centering prayer practice can change people, and if enough people change, the church might change, or even society.
But, I doubt this will happen no matter what practices are adopted - whether centering prayer, or Gregorian chant, or any of the others you name. I don't know much about some of those (other than chant). Not enough people do any of these things to have a big impact on the world! Or even a parish. But maybe in the neighborhood, or office, or family.
I have seen dramatic transformations in many of the people I know who have practiced centering prayer for a very long time. The most "transformed" people I know who practice CP have done it for many, many years, and they are faithful to a daily practice. I was a much "better" person when I practiced daily. It took a few years, but I was definitely a nicer, gentler, more patient, more forgiving person than before. But after the second group broke up, I got out of the practice. And gradually the old, mean, me came back to the fore. I am now trying to stick to the daily practice again because it seems to make me a bit more patient, and a tiny, tiny bit less angry about what has happened to our country. I'm still not ready to forgive those who put Trump into office who should have known better. Not poor, displaced, under-educated people who felt hopeless and somehow thought Trump would "save" them, but educated, upper middle class professional white people in my own family. I have a long way to go on that. I have not seen or spoken to a couple of my siblings since the election. We correspond by email when needed.
Obviously transformation is not an overnight thing, but I suppose that's true of any spiritual practice.
I don't think there is a universal spiritual or prayer practice that is "right" for everyone. Each person has to find his or her own. Jean seems to get a lot of spiritual support from the lives of the saints. I never got anything from reading about saints, although I tried to be inspired by them because I was "supposed" to be inspired. I could not identify with any of them. They seemed to be almost a different species - one that looks human but really is very different from real human beings. Jim and Katherine obviously get a lot of spiritual support from the liturgy. I never did and never felt God's presence in any special way taking communion. But I have experienced this in centering prayer. We go to an Episcopal church because my husband likes liturgy (more than I do). I would like to try a Quaker congregation, but he is not interested. So I stick with the EC for now. I will say that I do like their liturgies better than the RC liturgies, especially the prayers used during the liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer.
A truism - each of us is different and we will each respond differently to specific religious and spiritual practices.
p.s. I have yet to make it entirely through the Cloud of Unknowing.
Anne, I have read Basil Pennington, but not much of Keating. In your opinion is there much difference between their approaches?
ReplyDeleteThe approach to centering is pretty much the same. Relax, breathe, still your mind, use a holy wood to return to the center if thoughts wander.
DeleteThomas Keating wrote quite a few books and he goes into the history, including more detail about the practice during christian history. He does not simply provide the simple step-by-step guide to the practice. I have only read one of Basil Pennington's books and it was fairly brief. I should google him to see what else he has written.
Tom Blackburn mentioned Sidney Callahan. Here's an article by her in America: "Centering Prayer: Contemplative practice for the 21st century"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/centering-prayer-contemplative-practice-21st-century
Thanks for that link, Gene. Thanks also to Anne for the comment after the article in which she links to this piece by Fr. Keating.
DeleteGene, How do you do that?
DeleteHi, Anne,
ReplyDeleteYou wrote, "I could not identify with any of [the saints]. They seemed to be almost a different species - one that looks human but really is very different from real human beings." That reminded me of what two film directors once said to me, about how they chose the subject of a documentary they were making. Their film, "Roses in December," is about Jean Donovan, a laywoman who, along with three nuns, was murdered here (El Salvador) in 1980. This next is from an article I wrote about the film:
Carrigan and Stone said that in the beginning they were constantly asked, “Why isn’t the film about the nuns?”
“They were extraordinary,” said Carrigan, “but in a way, being nuns categorized them. An audience could respond by saying, ‘they’re special, they’re different, that could never be me.’” There was, Carrigan and Stone felt, a greater chance that an audience might identify with Jean.
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/martyrs-el-salvador
I suggest seeing the film. I think Tom Blackburn will back me up on that suggestion.
I hope this next doesn't amount to self-promotion, but can I suggest you take a look at a piece I wrote recently? It's about Oscar Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop who was murdered in 1980 and was declared a saint last month. I wrote the piece to counteract the false portrayals of him as someone so different from the rest of us that we could never relate to him.
https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/archbishop-scar-romero-setting-record-straight
Amen to seeing "Roses in December." Snowflake trigger warning: There are scenes of the bodies being recovered. Gene's NCR piece is worth your time, too.
ReplyDeleteAnd I still can't imagine how you can say anything to him, and he has a link for it.
The Boy and I watched Roses in December. It's very worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteSaints: Reading hagiography makes for interesting literary archeology, peeling back the embellishments that accrue over the centuries, but it's not terribly inspiring spiritually. Sometimes there's nothing left when you get to the center (St. Swithwine). Sometimes there is (St. Cuthbert).
Reading what the saints wrote strikes me as more interesting, though that has to be treated carefully, as others sometimes diddled with it after they were dead (St. Terese of Lisieux). St. Catherine of Siena's account of accompanying a condemned man to the execution block is very graphic yet moving.
St. Julian of Norwich spent her whole life trying to write her spiritual autobiography, and in between times gave comfort to people who visited her anchorage. That she could put up with pilgrim/hysteric Margery of Kemp, who ripped off her visions, is proof Julian qualified for sainthood! All of Margery's neighbors tried to get her burned up as a witch because they couldn't stand her screaming freakouts during Mass.
OtOH, I might have found the saints obnoxiously perfect had I been exposed to them as a kid.
I have read about Jean Donovan and the nuns and their horrific murders, but did not know there is a documentary about it. I also know about Romero, of course, and did see that movie many years ago. Somehow I can relate to them a bit - including Romero and the nuns (who dressed like normal women) - perhaps because their lives and deaths occurred during my adult life. Not hundreds of years ago.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I spent a very short time visiting a sister parish to ours in Maryland in a very poor part of the Dominican Republic 20 some years ago. I met priests, a bishop, and nuns there who were all saints as far as I was concerned. Even the bishop was a normal person. No pretensions at all. When he arrived for his annual visit to the parish (of 60,000 scattered over a huge mountainous area requiring us to hike or ride mules up the mountains), our little group was having coffee in the parish house. It had been built with funds from our Maryland parish. A man came inside (people were always wandering in and out of the priest's house, along with the occasional chicken. Mules and goats at the back door. I'm sure Gene is very familiar with this environment)and we invited him to join us for coffee. He introduced himself in Spanish (our group's leader was from Chile and could translate) - "I'm Jose. It's nice to meet you". He was wearing a short sleeved white shirt, open collar, and we had seen him with another man looking under the hood of a pickup truck outside. We all enjoyed chatting together while we waited for the bishop to arrive and say mass for the beginning of his pastoral visit. After a while Jose got up and said, "well, we had best get ready for mass. I need to put on my vestments and will see you at the church". We traveled with (Bishop) Jose to numerous villages for the next week. I think maybe there are holy priests and even holy bishops here and there, but I think they mostly live in places where the poor live, not in the western, rich countries. Although there are a lot of nuns in the US who work with the poor and seem far more saintly to me than most men in collars.
The nuns in the community were from Spain. They worked to provide basic hygiene education to villagers, and stressed the importance when the village midwife would deliver babies (wash your hands with boiled water), to get clean drinking water via a simple filtration system into the villages and to build latrines to reduce the infant/child mortality rate from the bacteria in the water supply. They wore blue jeans, and were expert at raising their pick up truck's body so that we could drive through the shallows of the rivers. Very can do women. Tragically, two were killed when their truck went off the steep mountain road in the rain a few years later. Will they be canonized? No. But they were saints in my mind. And I'm so glad that weren't brutally murdered.
Since the movie about Jean Donovan and the nuns was made so long ago, I'm guessing it does not have closed captions, so I would not be able to follow the commentary.