For those who would like to try - or return to - Centering Prayer let me suggest Cynthia Bourgeault's website: The Contemplative Society. You may find it here @ https://www.contemplative.org/cynthia-bourgeault/) Under the banner go to "Contemplative Practices" and scroll down to Centering Prayer. She writes:
Most faith traditions have some form of meditation or contemplation. Virtually all methods of meditation have a goal of expanding, or deepening, the consciousness of the practitioner. The details vary. The Contemplative Society focuses on Centering Prayer, a surrender method of meditation, or contemplative prayer, that reaches back to the early days of Christianity.
There is also a concise "how to do centering prayer" that will get you started. NOTE: I was grateful to find a reference to an app available from Contemplative Outreach for use on a smart phone that offers an overview, opening chimes, prayers and a timer. Go to your App Store and search for it there or copy this link: https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/centering-prayer-mobile-app. It is are truly helpful use of technology!
After a few days I am aware of how lively my "monkey mind" really is, and, how wonderful it is to begin practicing being beyond time. The late Henri Nouwen and others have written that when our journey through this life is over, and we enter being with the holy beyond time, we shall be at peace. In a way, Centering Prayer is a foretaste of life beyond life and certainly beyond time. It is also a way to learn how to live into the wisdom of our feelings without being enslaved to them. In another section of Bourgeault's website, "Welcoming Practice," she writes:
It is the practice of living as a non-anxious presence in a world obsessed and addicted to anxiety. Earlier in the day I came upon this stunning poem from the heart of the poet Karen An-hwei Lee. (find out more about her @ https://karen anhweilee.com/about/) I heard it on the January 1, 2020 podcast of "The Slowdown" @ https://www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2020/01/01/288-on-the-turning-of-the-year. What a perfect way to be grounded in the start of this new year even as Christmastide subsides" "On the Turning of the Year."
cycles in a lifetime—To hear an entomologist refer to cycles
as blooms—
To say a metallic clicking noise repels the crows in our apple
orchard—To say cicada blooms explain the crashing
bird populations—
To list reasons why I wish to murmur injunctions of praise
in the ellipses of fireflies—to wonder if a funicular monikered angel flight,
rusted out-of-commission on a city hill,
a mourning dove over beds of grass-licked cloud, hovers—
To ponder the alpha and omega of eating
salmon roe—To sing the floating syllables of winter suns—
trilling rose-fire of melisma—
To arrange stargazer lilies on a console so a day
brightens—To seek an equivalent for nonexistence
not absence—
To pray until we vanish together, in sum—
To say, without song, hosanna—at the turning of the year
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