Beginnings
Contemplative Outreach, Chicago, is launching this online publication – Spirit Journal – in an attempt to create a supportive online community for Chicago-area contemplatives. We hope to be able to point readers like you toward activities, resources, information and inspiration that will support your spiritual journey. At the same time, we hope that you will share your knowledge and thoughts with us and with other readers.
Please let us know what you think of this issue and to start your side of the conversation by emailing the newsletter editor at jack.lloyd@earthlink.net. We look forward to hearing from you.
News
Midsummer Retreats at the Port: Intensive and Post-Intensive
The Practice of the Presence of God
by Ted Curtis
At one of the national meetings of Contemplative Outreach held in Chicago over the past two decades Thomas Keating stood up, after some 800 people had prayed in silence for 20 minutes, and said he was going to tell us what each of us could do for Contemplative Outreach. I reached for my pen, smoothed out the paper on my lap, and prepared to take notes. “Do the practice every day,” he said. “Oh,” I thought, “not what I had expected” and put the pen away.
The July Contemplative Outreach Chicago retreats at the Port for Prayer in Frankfort, Illinois, are intended to help us live out Fr. Thomas’ vision for the contemplative community: doing the practice changes us; as we are changing we become more Christ-like in this world; as this world becomes more Christ-like we see before us the reign of God for which we so fervently and frequently pray (“Thy will be done on earth”). Big job, demanding of us our commitment to this simple, profound practice.
Praying up to six hours a day (in twenty or thirty minute sessions), the Intensive retreat track folks hear and respond in a small group to Fr. Keating’s Spiritual Journey video instruction. The teaching helps participants understand what is happening to them, and going on with them, in this extended silence. The Post-Intensive folks (having had an intensive retreat as a pre-requisite) spend more time in silence. We all pray as one group in a great circle of silence.
So simple. So profound. So life-changing. So world-changing. One consent to God at a time.
Hope you can join Ingrid and me on this journey.
About the Retreat Guides
Ingrid Forsberg is a former co-coordinator of Contemplative Outreach Chicago. She has served as a group facilitator for over 10 years and is a commissioned presenter of the introductory programs in Centering Prayer. Ingrid has participated in intensive, post-intensive and weekend silent retreats. She admits freely that Centering Prayer and silent retreats are like oxygen for her spirit.
Ted Curtis has served the Contemplative Outreach Chicago chapter in many roles, most recently as the leader of the Formation for Contemplative Service retreat in 2014. He has practiced this prayer since 1992. He has pastored urban congregations of the Episcopal Church for over thirty years.
Further Information and Registration
The cost for eight days/seven nights including 22 meals is $790 for private room with shared bath, or $690 for double occupancy.
For more information about the flow and content of retreats themselves contact Ted at grizchic@aol.com
For information about registration, dietary/physical needs, or scholarship issues contact Ingrid at ingridf23@hotmail.com.
Free Videos Celebrate “30 Years of Grace and Gratitude”
Curious about the history of Centering Prayer? The national headquarters of Contemplative Outreach has made six new videos available as part of the celebration of our organization’s 30th anniversary.
2015 Contemplative Prayer Workshop Set for October in Western Springs
Please save the date: Our Chicago chapter’s third annual Contemplative Prayer Workshop is set for Saturday October 3 at St. John of the Cross in Western Springs, Illinois. This event has become a wonderful opportunity for Chicago-area contemplatives – both newcomers and those with long experience of Centering Prayer – to connect in person and deepen their spiritual practices.
View our full calendar of upcoming events to find events of interest to Chicago-area contemplatives.
Insights
“Our basic core of goodness is our true Self. Its center of gravity is God. The acceptance of our basic goodness is a quantum leap in the spiritual journey.”
– Thomas Keating, from Open Mind, Open Heart
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
– Albert Einstein
“God is the most obvious thing in the world. He is absolutely self-evident – the simplest, clearest and closest reality of life and consciousness. We are only unaware of him because we are too complicated, for our vision is darkened by the complexity of pride. We seek him beyond the horizon with our noses lifted high in the air, and fail to see that he lies at our very feet. We flatter ourselves in premeditating the long, long journey we are going to take in order to find him, the giddy heights of spiritual progress we are going to scale, and all the time are unaware of the truth that ‘God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.’ We are like birds flying in quest of the air, or men with lighted candles searching through the darkness for fire.”
– Alan Watts, from Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion
Book Recommendation: The Snow Leopard
In 1973, author Peter Matthiessen and scientist George Schaller embarked on a three-month fall/winter trek into a remote, road-less area of Nepal, known as Inner Dolpo. Their ultimate destination was the Crystal Monastery, a high-altitude Buddhist outpost rarely visited by Westerners. For Matthiessen, the trip was about spiritual growth, emotional healing (after his wife’s recent death), and a hoped-for chance for an in-the-wild glimpse of the elusive, enigmatic big cat of the Himalayas — the snow leopard. (Schaller’s scientific objective was to be the first to collect accurate field data on the mating habits of another exotic species, the Himalayan blue sheep.) The book, based on a day-by-day journal Matthiessen kept during the trek, won the National Book Award for non-fiction. It’s a beautifully written and moving record of one person’s dramatic quest to reach higher ground.
Your Turn
Do you have a comment on any of the items in this month’s newsletter? An upcoming event you think Chicago-area contemplatives should know about? An inspirational quote you’d like to share? A book, podcast, or video to recommend? Please email the newsletter editor at jack.lloyd@earthlink.net.