Spirit Journal - December 2017 -

Preview

Merry Christmas!

Our December issue of Spirit Journal announces the continuation of our Living Wisdom Program in 2018 – with all-day Saturday workshops exploring three facets of the Wisdom tradition. It also features an in-depth reflection on the 2018 Winter Weekend Retreat, written by Alan Krema, who will serve as the retreat guide.

In addition, we inform you about several other upcoming contemplative activities and events, locally and further afield. Christmas Insights come from Calvin Coolidge, G.K. Chesterton, Dale Evans, and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Please help us make Spirit Journal an active forum for the members and friends of Contemplative Outreach – Chicago. We invite your active participation: use the email address provided at the end to send in your responses, ideas and insights. We love hearing from you!

New Living Wisdom Series Begins in February – Registration Open

A new series of workshops in 2018 will continue our exploration of the Wisdom Tradition, in the lineage of Cynthia Bourgeault.

Contemplative Outreach Chicago presents a new series of three full day workshops, each dedicated to a theme of wisdom in the Christian contemplative tradition. The vision of this program is to deepen the contemplative wisdom in each participant.

The program consists of three Saturday workshops at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Mount Prospect, Illinois:

February 17: G.I. Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way, with David Orth

March 24: Spirituality from the Ground Up, with Jeff Ediger

April 14: Wisdom of the Gospel of Thomas, with Alan Krema

For complete information and a chance to register, please visit the event page or download this brochure.

A Reflection on the Winter Weekend Retreat

by Alan Krema

(Note: The 2018 Winter Weekend Retreat will take place February 9-11, 2018, at the Portiuncula retreat center in Frankfort, Illinois. The theme is From the Mind to the Heart . . . an exploration of intuitive wisdom on the spiritual journey. Please visit the event page for further information and a chance to register. The following reflection by Alan Krema, who will lead the retreat, is offered as a thought-starter for those who may be thinking about attending.)

Recall the words of Thomas Merton:

When I am devoid of thought I enter into the cloud of unknowing in which mind is pure but by no means blank, passive, or inactive. Emptiness is also a kind of fullness. Stillness is not dead or inert.

In me, Merton’s words raise important questions: How much kenosis? What does it mean to empty ourselves? How do we empty but not to nothing, not to passiveness, not to blank or dead or inert? How much ego is too much or too little?

These are questions we all encounter in Centering Prayer practice. How still can I be? How quiet? How silent?

The questions expose our cultural upbringing. We have a need to be something, to know that we are on the right path, and to differentiate our state of being into something we know is the right way, the good vs. the bad. We are embedded in the spiritual life of attaining a sense of something, some higher being. The mind has thoughts, and we all create a narrative which defines our self, derived from our thoughts.

We find ourselves in a body, which is in constant motion. The body is constant energy in motion, beginning with the energy center of heart beat, blood flow, and the lungs’ exchange of carbon dioxide for oxygen. We cannot rest in this center of energy as a separate self. We cannot divorce our inmost being from the gift of flesh and blood that we are. We cannot be in this body without the connection to air, water, earth. As we sit in stillness we are in union with the larger body of which we are a part.

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We did not create ourselves, though we often act as if we are “self-made.” Our parents participated in our creation in a sacred event, our conception, but they were just people like us, without the wisdom or skill to fashion a new human life. We are gifted with life in a mysterious, unfathomable way. Likewise, our parents did not create themselves. Our mother and father were each created in two sacred events. Our grandparents were created in a similar way. As we try to connect to our great grandparents, we begin to sense that our existence results from an almost infinite number of sacred events stretching back to the distant past.

We can think about who our great-great grandparents were and how they must have lived, but this becomes more abstract, more like a distant story. This story may have some unique and personal connection for us but as we move to a fourth and fifth generation of ancestors, we are reading a history book and dependent on others for scholarly interpretation. We say that we “lose touch.”

Our body, though, carries a remembrance of all the sacred events that created us. Our most intimate sense of personal touch comes when we rest in moments of stillness and open ourselves to the flow of energy which created us and to which we contribute. We empty ourselves of the things we cling to and we open to a spaciousness in which, held and sustained, we stand uniquely and personally in great union with the infinite sacred events of human life. Our body remembers. Our body holds the touch of the sacred reality which created us, just like the extreme simplicity of bread and wine eaten and digested touches us and unites us to the whole.

We are simultaneously embedded in the body we are given and divorced from it by mental abstraction. There are the constant desires for food, sleep, sensuality, serenity. In addition to our ancestral connection, we are constantly interacting with our present social reality. We have built great mental abstract structures in an attempt to control our interactions and satisfy our needs.

What can we observe going on within us? We have developed as beings that need to characterize, categorize, and differentiate our lives. Our mind reinforces the self which we have “self-made” by telling a good story about it. Have you observed that you never achieve the satisfaction of your desires? You are always called to more, and eventually you have to determine how you can become more. Who do we live for when we experience the greatest motivation or desire? Do we live for our self-made story or do we live for the one who made us? For the one who calls us to a greater, higher, and deeper level of being?

Somewhere on road to wisdom we begin to see not just what we are but that we are. We sense over time in retreats and meditation that there is a source to our being that has been there all along. We can touch and be touched by this source. When we connect with the source of our being, we often sense that we are “grounded.” We feel we are connected to the earth in a vast feeling of being a wonderful, if small, part of this great world. We can access this sensation by placing our awareness in the body and allowing a sense of flow to happen from the core into the legs and, in a transcendent way, into the ground below us. We sense our flow into the earth and we sense the flow of the earth into us and upward through our body.

How do we open to or access this higher mode of being? Do we wait passively? In the course of our Winter Weekend Retreat, we will explore intuitive wisdom which invokes in us an awareness of our self that is connected to the reality of our Self, in the wholeness of our being.

One example of this is placing our attention in our heart space, as a way to sense the source of our being more intimately. Here there is a vast emanation of our body energy as well as a reception of energy from without. Our sense of self takes a smaller space here than in our ego narratives, but still a place is there for it. There is also a sense of connection to other persons and the cosmos. We notice that we all have a place, perhaps small in terms of ego story, but vast in that we are all connected to the same thing – the same source – the same sense of personhood that is beyond the story. We hold the ego and all the identifications we cling to as our self, but now in a lightness of being. A being that is at once an agent for my ego and part of a vast connection to others and to the transcendent.

Here is a quote to think about, from Robert Sardello’s Silence – The Mystery of Wholeness:

Silence itself is pervaded with knowing. A kind of knowing lives inherently within the Silence and cannot be separated out as a “knowing about” something in the way that we, in our usual cognition as spectators, know about things from the outside. We are within a non-mental way of knowing, as if head and heart unite. Silence takes us into the heart, and similarly, if we place our attention into the interior of the heart, we are taken into Silence.

At the Winter Weekend Retreat, we will work with the holding of ourselves in heart-awareness and heart-listening. This interior spaciousness is greater than our minds can think of. The feeling of this field of loving wholeness is not a thought, but it can be accessed in our contemplative activities of Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina, and Welcoming Prayer. I invite you to come along. Lovingly.

The 2018 Winter Weekend Retreat will take place Feb 9-11, 2018, at the Portiuncula retreat center in Frankfort, Illinois. Please visit the event page for further information and a chance to register.

Upcoming Events, Retreats, and Conferences

Here are some upcoming contemplative activities that may be of interest:

Ongoing Centering Prayer “11^th Step” Programs in Northfield and Chicago

In AA 12-step programs, the 11^th step is making a personal effort to get in touch with a Higher Power, however one understands it. Increasingly, people in 12-Step programs are deepening their

relationships with their Higher Power using the method of Centering Prayer.

Here in the Chicago area, two new Centering Prayer-based 11^th step groups have formed. One meets on Sundays, 4:30-5:15, at 319 Waukegan Road in Northfield. For more information, please contact Leonette Kaluzny – leonettekaluzny@aol.com.

Another Centering Prayer 11^th step program meets on Fridays at 6:45pm in conference room “C” on the 7th floor of the Community First Medical Center, 5645 W. Addison Street, Chicago. For further information on this program, please contact Philip Lo Dolce — stuffer1@ameritech.net.)

Living Flame Program Offered January – November in Indianapolis

The seven-part Living Flame program will be offered at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Indianapolis on seven Saturdays from January-November 2018.

Living Flame is a series of seven, full-day gatherings spread over the course of one year. Each of the seven days includes periods of prayer, and discussion, but the heart of each day’s program will be a presentation by a nationally recognized Contemplative Outreach teacher on a specific aspect of the practice of Centering Prayer. Marilyn Webb, the National Service Team Leader of the Living Flame Program describes this panel of presenters as “excellent speakers who have a history of dedication to Centering Prayer and Contemplative Outreach.”

Living Flame participants will learn more about the background needed to support and enrich a faithful practice of Centering Prayer. They will develop a better understanding of the purification process and the benefits of divine therapy. They will have the opportunity to both give and receive spiritual companionship. They will also learn how to discern when psychological skills can be useful tools.

For further information, download the brochure or contact Linda Farley lleefarley@aol.com or 317-430-3822. Attendance at the Living Flame is limited. If you would like to participate in this program, please submit the mail-in registration form as soon as possible.

Merton Society’s Series of Sunday Afternoon Programs Continues in January

All of the Merton Society presentations are held Sundays at 2 p.m. in the Rectory Assembly of Immaculate Conception Parish, 7211 W. Talcott, Chicago. Signs with arrows indicating “Merton Lecture” will be posted.

On January 21, 2018, the Merton Society will be showing the film In Pursuit of Silence, a meditative exploration of our relationship with silence, sound and the impact of noise on our lives. No special reading or background is required for any of these Merton Society events, which are open to the public. Admission is a freewill offering. Refreshments will be served. For more information, call Mike Brennan at 773-447-3989. RSVPs to cc.itms@gmail.com are welcome, but not required.

The Seven Mansions of the Interior Castle – February 2-4 at the Marianist Retreat Center Near St. Louis

Interior Castle is one of the most celebrated books on mystical theology in existence. Join Susan Komis for a special retreat weekend, offering sacred space and time to explore the Seven Mansions of Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle. Teresa is one of Christianity’s great mystics and teachers. The Seven Mansions of the Interior Castle is her final work and one of the most profound literary works on contemplation and experiential mysticism.

Prayer stood at the center of Teresa’s teaching. Her fidelity to prayer was a means of deepening her intimate relationship with God. She considered a life of prayer in terms of love. This retreat will reflect on the light of Teresa’s timeless insights into the human soul, its journey towards God, and how Teresa’s teaching is relevant to our personal contemporary spiritual journey today.

Susan Komis is the former Director of Chapter Programs and Services of Contemplative Outreach and continues to serve as a commissioned presenter and retreat director. She is a Pastoral Minister and has been active in adult faith development, spiritual direction and inter-spiritual dialogue.

Click here for more complete information and a chance to register.

Three Midwest Wisdom Schools in Dubuque Iowa, the First in February

If you are longing to go deeper in your Centering Prayer practice, and perhaps yearning for a community of like-hearted seekers, you are invited to participate in one or more Wisdom Schools being offered next year at the Shalom Spirituality Center in Dubuque:

February 5-8, 2018 – Mary Magdalene as Unitive Wisdom

August 6-9, 2018 – Surrendering Into Presence (Centering Prayer and Non-duality)

Oct 15-18, 2018 – Placing Our Mind in Our Heart (Introductory Level Wisdom School, Part A)

All of these Wisdom Schools will be led by Beth O’Brien, Benedictine oblate and Founder of Contemplative Presence. A long-time Centering Prayer practitioner, Beth has been a direct student of Cynthia Bourgeault. In 2014, she received Cynthia’s blessing to teach and carry forth the Wisdom lineage. Beth led a one-day workshop on Mary Magdalene that was part of Contemplative Outreach – Chicago’s Living Wisdom Series earlier in 2017. For more information & registration, please visit the Contemplative Presence website.

Secure Your Place at Next Spring’s Mega Wisdom School in North Carolina

The next “Mega” Wisdom School with Cynthia Bourgeault will take place Sunday, March 11 – Friday, March 16, 2018 at Kanuga Conference Center in North Carolina.

Entitled Introductory Wisdom School Part B: The Divine Exchange, the retreat will cover the Wisdom metaphysical map, the Divine Exchange, Vertical Exchange, Reciprocal Feeding, the Jesus teachings based in exchange, an introduction to Trinitarian metaphysics and selections from the Gospel of Thomas. For complete information, visit the Wisdom Way of Knowing website.

“Cynthia’s Wisdom School events, including the larger-capacity “mega” retreats, always fill up,” says Alan Krema, Contemplative Outreach Chicago Coordinator, who will be assisting as a facilitator at the retreat. “It isn’t necessary to have experienced the Wisdom School Part A to participate in and benefit from Part B, but it is suggested that participants have an established Centering Prayer or meditation practice.”

If you are interested in attending or have any questions about the Wisdom School, please email Alan at coordinator@centeringprayerchicago.org.

Insights

Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world.

– Calvin Coolidge

Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.

– G.K. Chesterton

Christmas, my child, is love in action.

– Dale Evans

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmastime.

– Laura Ingalls Wilder

Your Turn

Please write in to comment on or add to any of the items in this month’s newsletter. Let us know if you are aware of an upcoming event you think others should know about, or send us an inspirational quote you’d like to share, or information about a book, website, podcast, or video you recommend. You are invited to contribute by emailing the newsletter editor at news@centeringprayerchicago.org.