Espresso series on centering prayer

For the past seven years I’ve enjoyed a very rewarding stage of my Christian journey in large part because of Centering Prayer, a meditation practice. The most striking thing about it has been a rich deepening of my experience of God Presence. I’ve told people about it, led various small-groups, written about it, given books to friends about it and generally tried to share my joy about it whenever the opportunity presents itself.

For several years I’ve worked on ways to explain the essence of Centering Prayer as simply and clearly as possible. For this I’ve developed series of short “espresso shot” videos of typically 5 minutes or less. Here’s the first one.

Why am I so passionate about this? Because I am convinced that an actual experience of God is necessary to change human nature, to satisfy the deepest need of our hearts and to unlock the divine potential dormant within us. A lot of Christianity today is philosophical, cultural and organizational. At its worst it is political and financial. Unfortunately, in many churches and countless lives, it is not spiritual, powerful or able to change people. Followers have learnt to become content with so little, thinking that better things are for the afterlife. But there is so much more of God available here and now!

Romans 12:3 invites us to spiritual transformation by renewing the mind. How do we do this? Memorizing scriptures, while useful, doesn’t do it and is not what St Paul meant. The interpretation of this scripture is given a few chapters earlier in Romans 8:6, “the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.” A renewed mind is one that is controlled by the Spirit within us, that part of us where God dwells. Control of the mind by the Spirit isn’t minute by minute “words from God.” It’s not making an effort to have different thoughts. Renewing the mind is transcending thoughts and moving out of the mind into the realm of the Spirit. It’s shifting from ego-driven thoughts and concepts to the deep inward place where Christ’s Presence dwells in the form of the Holy Spirit mysteriously merging with our hearts. This is transformation and renewal; this is the true spiritual life of love, power, righteousness, peace and joy. This is the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Bible-prescribed practice for renewing the mind is “waiting on God” – silent prayer, meditation, contemplation. The practice is what Jesus first taught on prayer, “go into your inner room and close the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” He wasn’t suggesting a physical location but a spiritual posture; one of going beyond the mind into the inner place of the heart. And closing the door to thoughts. This is the prayer of the heart where we train our distracted minds to submit to our desire to rest in God’s presence. This is the “secret place” where our neural pathways are rewired and the “mind of sinful man that is death” is restructured. Thought patterns that separate us from God are dissolved as we enjoy intimate connection with God’s indwelling presence. The mind doesn’t doesn’t fix the mind. Rising above the mind into the Spirit, into Presence, is what renews the mind and transforms our lives.

Centering prayer is probably the most widespread Christian practice of silent prayer. It was developed several decades ago by Fr. Thomas Keating, abbot of St Joseph’s monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts and a group of his fellow Cistercian monks and is a refresh of the early Christian church practice of contemplative prayer made famous by the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

Most of the videos in this Espresso Series were recorded while I was at Fr. Keating’s second home in beautiful mountains of Snowmass, Colorado. The Retreat House here at St Benedict’s Monastery was the epicentre of the worldwide explosion of Centering Prayer for many years.

I hope these are useful to you as a simple explanation of this powerful spiritual practice.

This first video discovers the roots of meditation – silent prayer – in Christianity.

We have a weekly group that practices Centering Prayer by video call. You can learn more here – on how to join or how to replay guided meditation sessions from this group.