Spirit Journal - February 2016 -

Preview

Our February issue invites you to participate in an important “Discernment Day” on March 5 to help plan future directions for our organization. It also presents Part 3 of Alan Krema’s discussion of the Wisdom School.

In addition, we offer a final opportunity to complete a quick survey and help design an expanded lineup of 2016 programs, and we provide information about upcoming Centering Prayer workshops and other events at Healing Gardens, suggest three ways you can celebrate United in Prayer Day on March 19, and link to information about an introductory Wisdom School that takes place in Wisconsin in late March. This month’s Insights come from Dogen Zenji, Black Elk, Cynthia Bourgeault, and Contemplative Outreach.

Please help us make Spirit Journal an interactive forum for Chicago-area contemplatives. Use the e-mail address at the end to send your ideas, contributions and feedback.

Discernment Day: Please Join Us on March 5

Our Day of Discernment will take place at Mary Seat of Wisdom church in Park Ridge, 8:30am-4:00pm on Saturday March 5. Lunch will be provided. We hope you will be there to help plan Contemplative Outreach – Chicago’s future.

This will be a day for visioning and discernment, an opportunity for all persons attending Centering Prayer groups or interested in learning about Centering Prayer to gather together to assess our needs as a developing contemplative community. The day will include large and small group processes, led by Susan Komis, a skilled and experienced group process facilitator who has worked closely with Thomas Keating for decades as a leader of Contemplative Outreach at the national level. All participants will have an opportunity to offer input and be a part of planning for our future.

One key decision we will address is the selection of a new Coordinator for Contemplative Outreach – Chicago. Phil Jackson’s five years in this important leadership role are coming to an end, and the meeting will include a careful process to choose Phil’s successor. It would be very helpful to have a large turnout of Centering Prayer practitioners to participate in making this decision.

It’s your chance to help plan future growth and direction for Contemplative Outreach in the Northern Illinois and Northwest Indiana region. We are excited about this day and encourage all to attend. Follow this link to our website if you want more information.

RSVP: If you can join us, please e-mail Phil Jackson at coordinator@centeringprayerchicago.org so that we can plan for the right number of participants. We look forward to seeing you March 5!

The Wisdom School – Part 3: The Prayer of the Heart

by Alan Krema

(In our two most recent newsletters, Alan introduced the Wisdom School as a means of enhancing and deepening our experience and attentiveness to the divine indwelling, and provided an overview of the true meaning of wisdom. This installment introduces the concept of “heartfulness” – a key characteristic of Christian contemplation and the Wisdom School. – Ed.)

In a recent article in Contemplative Journal, Matthew Wright points out that the early desert Christians—the first to wander off into the wilderness to form alternative communities of spiritual practice—spoke about “drawing the mind into the heart” or “seeing with the eye of the heart.” The heart was considered the seat of wisdom.

Today, we habitually differentiate between the mind and the heart as separate parts of ourselves. Increasingly people use the term “heartfulness” to describe what they are trying to achieve in Christian contemplative practice. For example, Centering Prayer cultivates a heart-centered awakening. It offers an alternative perspective to our assumption that our center of self is our thinking mind.

Along with heartfulness, humility is another distinctive aspect of the Christian contemplative journey, one that we encounter again and again in the writings of the early desert Christian contemplatives and the mystic saints throughout the ages. The modern thinking mind may view humility as placing ourselves in a lesser state of being. But humility can also be viewed as not attaching to something attractive or, more powerfully, not even attaching to the thought of the attraction and its perceived benefit to us. When this happens we shift the nature of our relationships from thinking about them to experiencing our sensation of connection.

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Ingeniously, the Christian path focuses on cultivating the qualities of the heart that allow us to live in a place of connection, and not only an experience of contemplation. The Christian way tends to focus not so much on a goal, such as ‘enlightenment’, as the process, leading us quietly and almost unexpectedly into awakening and oneness.

Each day, as a Centering Prayer practitioner strives to draw the mind into the heart, slowly the eye of the heart begins to open, moving one into the place of unitive seeing. Humility, gentleness, mercy, and love are moving us away from the dualistic mind and into the oneness of the awakened heart.

When asked about heart awareness in Centering Prayer as a means dissipating a thought by moving it into the vast space of the heart, Thomas Keating said: “This is a safe place to go habitually in your formal prayer time, but also in everyday life when assaulted by temptations or negative thoughts and scenarios.”

As Matthew Wright puts it: “The brilliance in this approach is precisely in its relational, rather than goal oriented, process. As one ‘gets to know’ the qualities of the heart by repeatedly drawing the mind into their energy and influence, they gradually become your primary vibration…Without fail, the Christians who write about the ‘prayer of the heart’ speak of warmth, quiet, and sweetness as its signature essence. To get to know it, you simply turn in its direction. You might try touching this dimension of yourself right now by imagining breathing through your heart. Use your breath as an anchor to hold your awareness in the center of your chest, rather than in the busy mental faculties where we usually stake our sense of self. Sit with this for a few minutes. Do you begin to feel the warmth and quiet that Christianity has traditionally associated with this center?”

To a large extent the Christian spirituality has in many ways devolved in recent centuries. We experience our thinking mind and our heart as separate parts of ourselves. We forget that we ever walked a path of awakening the heart. With guidance of modern contemplatives such as Thomas Keating, Thomas Merton, and Cynthia Bourgeault, we are rediscovering and recovering the precious gifts of Christian contemplation and wisdom.

If you feel drawn to participate in a Contemplative Outreach Wisdom practice group, please feel free to email me at alkrema@gmail.com.

Please Complete a Quick Survey to Help Plan Our 2016 Programs

Contemplative Outreach – Chicago is currently evaluating two programs we may offer later in 2016. Each program would consist of a handful of Saturday workshops beginning in fall 2016 and extending through spring 2017. We will almost certainly offer one of the programs, and may offer both if there is sufficient interest in participating. (Note: These activities would be in addition to our annual Fall One-Day Workshop, not in place of it.)

Please help us by clicking this link today to complete a quick survey (less than five minutes) that will help us gauge the level of interest in each program and decide how to proceed. Please do it right away if you can — we are meeting February 27 to evaluate the survey results and understand what you would like to see happen this year.

Two Introductory Centering Prayer Workshops and Other 2016 Events Scheduled at Healing Gardens

Healing Gardens, a lovely two-acre expanse of woodland and perennial gardens in Saint Charles, Illinois, has announced a number of contemplative events during 2016. Plans include two opportunities to take part in introductory Centering Prayer workshops, the first on Saturday March 19, and five scheduled Silent Saturdays, the first on March 5. An introductory workshop is a great way to begin or solidify a regular practice of Centering Prayer. The presenters are specially trained and commissioned in teaching this short course, which covers the essentials and conceptual background of the method. After the first six-hour workshop, the program continues for 5-6 weeks with 90-minute gatherings to pray, view and discuss a video presentation by Fr. Thomas Keating and to support an emerging daily practice of Centering Prayer. For more information, visit the Healing Gardens website.

United in Prayer Day – March 19

March 19 is the 24^th annual United in Prayer Day! Contemplative Outreach suggests three ways you can take part:

Attend a local group retreat, 9:30am-2:00pm, at St. Clement Catholic Church, 642 W. Deming Place, Chicago. The program will include silent Centering Prayer periods, group discussions, a contemplative craft and a short video. Hospitality (coffee, tea and cookies) is included. Please bring a sack lunch (refrigerator and microwave available). A free will donation is requested to cover the costs of the day. Parking is free in the church parking lot, across the street from the church. Please enter using the office door to the right of the church. For more information contact Claire Epperly at cpepperly@gmail.com.

Organize your own in-home retreat. Here is a link to further information and a suggested schedule of activities for the day.

Participate in a 24-hour, worldwide silent prayer vigil March 18-19 to celebrate silence as a source of relationship with our Creator and with all creation. All are welcome to sign-up for 30-minute prayer periods, either as individuals or in groups. Go here for further information and to sign up.

Contemplative Presence Offers Introductory Wisdom School in June

Galanthus_nivalis_close-up_aka — Photo: André Karwath

Contemplative Presence, “a ministry of spiritual transformation and evolutionary promise,” offers a range of spiritual classes and programs at the Holy Wisdom Monastery in Middleton Wisconsin. For example, Placing Our Mind in Our Heart, an Introductory Wisdom School Part A will take place June 22-25. Following the Benedictine rhythm of ora et labora (prayer and work), this four-day retreat will offer an introductory immersion into Wisdom Work. Silence, small group teachings, instruction in spiritual practices, and group meditation will provide the framework to introduce retreatants to the Christian contemplative tradition. Visit the Contemplative Presence website for more information on this and other programs.

Insights

Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment.

– Dogen Zenji

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.

– Black Elk

Only when the mind is “in the heart,” grounded and tethered in that deeper wellspring of spiritual awareness, is it possible to live the radical openness and compassion that are beyond the capacity of the anxious, fear-ridden ego.

– Cynthia Bourgeault

We affirm our solidarity with the contemplative dimension of other religions and sacred traditions.

– Theological Principle #11, Contemplative Outreach

Your Turn

We’d love for you to comment on or add to any of the items in this month’s newsletter. Are you aware of an upcoming event you think other contemplatives should know about? An inspirational quote you’d like to share? A book, website, podcast, or video to recommend? If so, please contribute by emailing the newsletter editor at news@centeringprayerchicago.org.