Centering, Silence, and Stillness: Weekly Summary
Sunday
A prayer practice—contemplation—is simply a way of maintaining the fruits of great love and great suffering over the long haul and in different situations. And that takes a lot of practice—in fact, our whole life becomes one continual practice.
—Richard Rohr
Monday
Most people think they are their thinking. In contemplation, we move beneath thoughts and sensations to the level of pure being and naked awareness.
—Richard Rohr
Tuesday
Centering Prayer is quintessentially a pathway of return in which we move from a smaller and more constricted consciousness into that open, diffuse awareness in which our presence to divine reality makes itself known along a whole different pathway of perception.
—Cynthia Bourgeault
Wednesday
Pausing and being still enough to notice love within and around is a deeply powerful and countercultural act. It challenges the notion that it is better to be busy and occupied. It refuses the call to be constantly distracted and perpetually plugged in.
—Charles Lattimore Howard
Thursday
The Light became a kind of touchstone in my life. It was so much love. Like an infinite compassion. At the same time it was something very precious and intimate.
—Rosemarie Freeney Harding
Friday
One of the main works of contemplation is detaching from the ego, but it isn’t really that meaningful unless that detachment is accompanied by an attachment. Do we have an increased attachment, sympathy, empathy, and compassion for the suffering of the world?
–Richard Rohr
Week Thirteen Practice
A Moment of Practice
We invite you to this brief practice of contemplative prayer with Mirabai Starr, author, spiritual teacher, and friend of the CAC.
Reference:
Mirabai Starr, “A Moment of Practice,” in CONSPIRE 2021, Center for Action and Contemplation, September 2021, video, 5:40, Youtube.
Image credit and inspiration: Exisbati, Untitled (detail), 2021, photo, India, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Silence invites us to attend deeply to the present moment, like a hand extended in a field, aware of each blade of grass sliding over the skin, simply being here now.
