Centering Prayer in Daily Life and Ministry

by Thomas Keating, Gustave Reininger, M. Basil Pennington

Book Overview

This book, with its ecumenical group of contributors, celebrates Centering Prayer as a common ground for Christian unity. It marks the first time that people other than William Meninger, Basil Pennington, and Thomas Keating (the three Trappist monks who distilled Centering Prayer from the Christian contmeplative heritage) have written in depth on Centering Prayer, its benefits and effects in daily life and ministry. There are pieces by Thomas R...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826410413
• ISBN13: 9780826410412
• Release Date: May 1997
• Publisher: Continuum
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 8.3" x 11.7"

Customer Reviews

Helpful book on prayer

Centering Prayer in Daily Life and Ministry is a collection of short essays on aspects and practices related to Centering Prayer, a way of Christian praying and being developed by Trappist monks. Centering Prayer seeks to focus the "attention and intention" of the person praying, gradually training the pray-er to be fully present to God and fully aware of every motivation for actions. The practice itself is simple--engaging in a time of silence focused upon a word (e.g., Jesus, peace, Holy Spirit, holy, etc.) while gently directing straying thoughts back to the word and the awareness of God's presence. Centering Prayer is designed to be practiced for about 20 minutes twice a day. Other books were published long ago that focus on the fundamental practice of Centering Prayer. This book offers reflections by a diverse group of practitioners of Centering Prayer on important subjects related to the practice. Centering Prayer was designed as a distillation of the ancient contemplative tradition, and one essay explores the ways in which Centering Prayer draws on the contemplatives. Lectio divina is a way of reading scripture in God's presence, slowly, listening to God's voice in the text. Walking the Labyrinth has become an important meditative prayer practice to many people in recent years. There are articles in the collection related to the connection of Centering Prayer to these and other practices. Several articles also deal with the relation of Centering Prayer to ministerial practice. These include articles on Centering Prayer and Pastoral Care, Systems Theory, and Priestly Spiritual Formation. As a newcomer to Centering Prayer, I had to read the brief description of Centering Prayer in the appendix first to have a good feel of what the authors were describing. The book is clearly a newer development in existing conversation with established vocabulary. It did not take much effort for a new comer to join the conversation and get up to speed, though. I do plan to read some of the older literature on Centering Prayer later and reread this book afterwards. The book does a tremendous job of communicating the feel of the practice, and defines as much what Centering Prayer is not as it describes what it is. This is important, because this is a practice that makes disciples who are different in all of their being and doing. It is not a spiritualized meditative technique for stress relief. I suppose the best recommendation I can give for the book is that I intend to begin the practice immediately and see how it helps me grow as a disciple. The book let me feel that the practice is in exhaustible yet completely accessible.