Centering prayer

Pauldron Catherine Collins has written a book, Girl in a Box.

And I think for the listeners out there, if you've done any type of beginning work, like say maybe even centering prayer, You obviously go to a quiet place and you're so pleased.

Maybe if it's early in the morning, there's no dog barking yet or it's just very quiet and you want to try to really, you know, be quiet and hopefully things will be quiet and there won't be interruptions.

And even though there's not interruptions outside, it seems like all of a sudden all these thoughts are coming from everywhere.

And it ends up being a very short centering experience.

But seriously, we hope today that maybe...

I forget to ask you this question later, if you do have like even just some small hint for someone that is beginning to do some type of a centering prayer, and obviously none of us, you know, have the expertise that you have, but we would be glad to get any positive hints that wise.

And I also remembered what struck me was I didn't realize when you do meditation, I just always picture someone in a seated position, maybe their legs crossed, you know, very quiet.

Welcome to Opening Minds, Opening Hearts, a podcast about the transformative practice of Centering Prayer.

In each episode, we will talk to friends of Contemplative Outreach about their personal practice, listen in as our guests share insights about the teachings of Father Thomas Keating, how the practice impacts their work in the world, and their thoughts about how Centering Prayer connects to the living traditions of contemplation and meditation.

We are your hosts, Colleen Thomas and Mark Dannenfelser, Centering Prayer practitioners and contemplative life seekers who love to talk a little too much about how the practice of contemplative prayer transforms our inner and outer worlds.

Our hope is to open the door for you to explore more deeply this powerful practice of Centering Prayer.

Hello, hello, we're live.

All right.

I don't know, but I was talking about the challenge of the season and talking about the shadow and realizing like, well, of course, the shadow does not want to be seen, let alone defined.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And so I'm crying out to God because they were talking about this idea of, in the Pentecostal world, it's very much Centering Prayer.

We called it Soaking Prayer because Pentecostals weren't all that trustworthy of Catholics, and Centering Prayer was a Catholic thing, so we had to name it something else.

But the idea of Soaking Prayer is a prayer of receptivity.

where you're being watered by the Spirit, you know, you're being refreshed and renewed, you're receiving.

So that we forget that we are interconnected, right? And so when you ask for practical things about how do you practice this love? What is practice? For me, it...

It is anything that brings me back to the light.

And so I do have a like a centering prayer practice where I sit quietly and receive the love of God.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Yeah, I have practiced Christian meditation called Centering Prayer, made popular by Thomas Keating.

I'm sure you're familiar with that.

It's kind of the same thing.

I titled this episode Keep Faith because I wanted to leave something in our hands, not another idea to think about, just something small enough to carry into your day.

For the last few weeks, I've been a little obsessed with a beautiful song by Porter's Gate called Centering Prayer.

Now, Centering Prairie is an ancient Christian practice of gently returning our attention to God.

I'll link the song in the show notes if you'd like to listen to it as well.

And I thought, if I just tried harder, I would get it.

I continued to attend weekly Mass, journaled and practiced Centering Prayer daily, went on a retreat, but I still didn't have that personal relationship that other people would talk about.

I began to wonder if I was more enamored with the idea of a relationship with God than my real relationship with God.

I wondered if I had projected this relationship with God into something and I wasn't sure it was real.