image courtesy of Ron Barnett

“If we refuse to think of anything except what we are doing or the person that we are with, we develop the habit of being present to the present moment. …

“Attention, then, is a way of doing what we are doing. It cracks the crust of the false self (our psychological awareness of daily life) in which we are the center of the universe while everything else is circling around our particular needs or desires. This is an illusion, but unfortunately it is the heritage we all bring with us from early life.”

Thomas Keating
The Thomas Keating Reader

 

Save the dates

  • Enrichment for Centering Prayer Group Facilitators – Saturday 12 October via Zoom. Please register here.
  • Welcoming Prayer online course, November 4 – 29, 2024, in partnership with Spirituality & Practice. Registration opens soon.
  • “Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Mystic — A Dialogue with Cynthia Bourgeault and David Frenette.” Tuesday December 10 at 1pm Eastern Time via Zoom. More details to come.
  • Date change: United in Prayer Day 2025 will be March 14-15, 2025 via Zoom.

You can read the complete E-bulletin at    https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/2024-sept-e-bulletin?e=9aa0837e74

August e-bulletin

Georgiana Houghton, The Risen Lord, 1864

God is more like a verb …. “is-ing” all the time and inviting us to “is,” too. What that involves may take us a lifetime to understand. It is an incomprehensively beautiful vision – only the Ultimate Goodness could have thought it up.

Thomas Keating
God is All in All: The Evolution of the Contemplative Christian Spiritual Journey

 

In honor of Fr. Carl J. Arico’s 90th birthday at the end of this month, please see the many free audio and video teachings he has given over the years — which you can find collected here on this page. Fr. Carl is a founding member of Contemplative Outreach, teacher and retreat leader, and long-time friend and companion with Fr. Keating.

Happy Birthday, Fr. Carl, servant of God!

 

You can read the full bulletin at          https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/2024-august-e-bulletin?e=9aa0837e74

July e-bulletin

Georgiana Houghton, The Sheltering Wing of the Most High, 1861

“Faith suggests that we are in fact complete and never separated from God, but we just have not found it out yet. We have not awakened to the loving presence of God within us that is forever waiting to be discovered. In this perspective, the primary gift we can give to one another is to practice Centering Prayer faithfully and allow circumstances to refine the experience of peace that occurs. The abiding state of peace that God calls us to in the Beatitudes maintains it in daily life. Life happens. God works with our willingness and consent to bring about the transformation of our inmost being into the eternal happiness for which we have been created.”

Thomas Keating
Consenting to God As God Is

 

                                                                                                 Q&A

 
Q: I find it difficult to endure an hour of Sunday Mass, unless the priest happens to be an involving speaker. … I find it close to impossible (with my ADHD) … I know that not all priests have the oratory skills of Fr. Keating and I feel shame and defeat that I could not endure today’s Mass despite my years of Centering Prayer practice. I would much appreciate some guidance at this point.

A: Read the full question and Leslee’s response here.+++

You can read the complete newsletter at    https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/2024-july-e-bulletin?e=9aa0837e74

 

January e-bulletin

“Live that prayer, let it live you … so that your deepest purpose in life is more accessible to you in every breath, in every movement, and in every ordinary failure and forgetting. I constantly forget my heart intention practice, but the grace and the beauty and the gift of it is that I can always come back. I can always let the prayer come back to me. ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Son of God, amen.’ I can always let a new discovery arise in me of the oneness and the love that unites all of created life beneath it, all the turmoil and the politicization and the conflict. Life is radiating love in being. That can come back to me out of the gift of oneness in an encounter with another person. And I can always let the mantra, the resonant energy of life resound in my heart, in my mind, ‘Yeshua Maranatha Hesed Amen‘.”

– David Frenette
excerpted from a self-guided e-course about the Heart Intention practice
 

Q: Our group has been doing a contemplative walk before meetings.

Do you have any information about this practice?

A: Read Leslee’s response here.

+++

You can read the complete e-bulletin at   https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/2024-january-e-bulletin?e=9aa0837e74

December e-bulletin

 

“As incarnations of the Son of God,
we allow God to experience what it is like to be human
in each one of us.”

Thomas Keating, Reflections on the Unknowable

+
 
Hail, all of you.
All of you filled with grace
in every cell and particle of your being.
May you incarnate and radiate Presence
in your homes, workplaces, the dear streets of your life,
simply by being you
on purpose.
Amen.

The above passages were excerpted from the Word of the Week for 17 December, which you can read in full here.

Join a community of over 4000 global practitioners in this free and weekly practice-based enrichment aimed at going deeper into the heart of God. You can read more about it here and sign-up for the weekly email and links to the live prayer groups.

 

You can read the full bulletin at    https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/2023-december-e-bulletin?e=9aa0837e74

16th Dec. Contemplative Outreach Dublin Advent Reflection Day

Contemplative Outreach Dublin Advent Reflection Day

Date: Saturday 16th December

Time :9.30 am – 3.00pm

Venue : Avila Carmelite Centre, Bloomfield Avenue, Morehampton Road, Donnybrook, Dublin 4 Avila have parking facilities. The centre is served by the following bus routes 39A (Blanchardstown to UCD), 46A (Phoenix Park to Dun Laoghaire) and 145 (Heuston Station to Kilmacanogue) buses

Structure of the Day

9.30-10.00 – Tea, Coffee, and time for greeting one another

10.00 am – Centering Prayer

10.30 am – Presentation 1

Denis Gleeson cfc – Theme of Peace

12.00 – Participants are welcome to join in with the Carmelite Community for the celebration of the Eucharist.

12.30: Lunch – Tea and Coffee are provided at lunch time but participants will need to bring their own lunch

13.30: Presentation 2

Ann O’Reilly “Exploring our Yes to life in the spirit of Arnaud Desjardins”.

Arnaud Desjardins (1925-2011) was a French film director and author who travelled to India and Afghanistan in the 1950s and 1960s, making television documentaries about spiritual traditions not well known to many Europeans at the time, including HinduismTibetan BuddhismZen, and Sufism.  He was a deep seeker who brought the wisdom of India back to France and began a lifetime of teaching that helped to open and heal many, many people. He opened his first Ashram in France in 1985.

2.30: Centering Prayer

 

There is a fee of €20.00 per participant to cover costs. This can be paid by cash or by cheque made out to Fionnuala Quinn. We will not have any facility to accept card payments. If you prefer to pay by bank transfer in advance please let me know.

All are welcome. If you would like to attend this event, please send an email to anaoreilly13@gmail.com to reserve your place.

November e-bulletin

Alfred Delp, Advent of the Heart, Seasonal Sermons and Prison Writings

 

Christ was placed in the full human condition that we experience without being able to do much about it. It is an extraordinary expression of love. In other words, when you join me in descending into hell, you help release the prisoners of the consequences of their unevolved situation. Just as the immune cells heal the diseased cells that are there, so to be a living cell in the Body of Christ is to have the same disposition of total self-giving or self-surrender, including the willingness to suffer our slice of the human condition for the love of God and the healing of humanity.

We are accountable to everybody else. What you do, I do. What you are doing, your virtue, I can claim. I can also burden you with my vices. Everything is in common.

Thomas Keating, “Redemption,” God is All in All

 

 

Special Event

 

A free event with meditation sponsored by
World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM)
November 26, 2023, via Zoom

3:00pm – 5:00pm CET (UTC +1), 9am EST (UTC -5)
use this time zone converter

 

Fr. Laurence Freeman OSB, says this about the event: “The news and images of human pain created by inhumanity in Gaza and Ukraine understandably outrage, sicken and depress us. But, like the illness of one body when it is undergone in community, the ordeal of these two places – and so many others – can illuminate the One Body we belong to. That becomes the source of hope and of our hunger and thirst for justice and peace.

“Because of the mystery of oneness revealed in suffering, please join me on online on Sunday 26 November. [We] will convene a community of love in solidarity with those desperately struggling in Ukraine and Gaza and also in extreme loneliness on the streets of our cities, in hospitals and prisons. May we celebrate the healing that comes when we see the grace of oneness revealed.”

For more information on the schedule and to register, go here. 

 

You can read this months bulletin at    https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/2023-nov-e-bulletin?e=9aa0837e74

October e-bulletin

 

The Second Consent of Centering Prayer: Interior Silence )

” … [This is a] movement beyond the ordinary realms of thinking and judging and commenting and reflecting, and if all the other thoughts dissolve there still is the thought that I have no thoughts. So, the ‘I’ thought is the last bastion of the ego self. … So … the interior silence is capable of changing as practice deepens and it changes by becoming deeper so that at some point in that second consent to interior silence one morphs into presence …”

Thomas Keating
“The Second Consent of Centering Prayer: Interior Silence”

(You can find the English and Spanish transcripts of this segment here. This segment is part of the weekly series shared on the home page of the website.)

October 25 is the fifth anniversary of Fr. Thomas’ death.

 

 

 

Some useful  YouTube links

The Contemplative Outreach YouTube channel offers a treasure of free videos of shorter and longer lengths. 
 

Recently added: 

In this month of October, when we remember that five years ago Fr. Thomas and Abbot Joseph Boyle passed on, their talks from the 2006 Annual Conference are now on YouTube. Transformative Listening is the topic:

The Dimensions of Listening, Abbot Joseph Boyle (29 minutes)
https://youtu.be/iUSe7V15PyA

The Consequences of Listening: Thomas Keating on his “Encounter Group” Experience in the Sixties (17 minutes and quite funny at times!)
https://youtu.be/OlCmCMhLfYI

Panel Discussion; Gail Fitzpatrick Hopler, Thomas Keating, Joseph Boyle (23 minutes)
https://youtu.be/aOpifzzFbXo
 

 

You can view the complete bulletin at    https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/2023-oct-e-bulletin?e=9aa0837e74

Workshop. Do you seek the still,quiet voice of God.

 

Do you seek the still,quiet voice of God.

This workshop will help us to understand the Presence of God within each of us
and our intimate relationship with that Presence.
A simple meditation practice known as Centering Prayer will be introduced as a method
to help us “rest in God”
We will experience two periods of Centering Prayer practice during the day,
and also explore the benefits of Centering Prayer in ordinary life.
All are welcome to attend – those new to Centering Prayer and those re-viewing
the method.
The program will be presented in:
The Cherith Pastoral Center, Church of St Columbanus,
Loughlinstown
by Finbarr O’Leary and Conor Crowley;
Commissioned Presenters of Centering Prayer
Saturday September 30th
10am-2.30pm
OR
Saturday October 7th
10am – 2.30pm
(Please bring your own lunch – Tea/Coffee will be available)
Cost €20 per person
To book a place, please contact Teresa in the Parish Office
(Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 8.30am-2pm

Tel. 012824085
Email: parishofloughlinstown@gmail.com
Contemplative Outreach Dublin

2023 July E-bulletin

“One advantage that Centering Prayer offers is that it establishes the letting go of self, the total sacrifice of ourselves, as the orientation and direction that grows along with our relationship with God. But, sacrifice in this world is not like it is in Heaven. It can be very difficult, very painful, even unbearable at times. All kinds of difficulties can arise, both socially and emotionally, and spiritually. Faith believes that whatever happens in the present moment is God’s will, and the only thing God can will is what is for our greatest good. By letting go of our doubts and turning them over to God, the presence of God begins to grow even in the midst of activity and adversity.”

Thomas Keating
“The Present Moment and All That Is”

That We May Be One: Christian Non-Duality

 

 

Q: Can I practice Centering Prayer as my main prayer (morning and afternoon) and during the day practice the Jesus prayer? Am I using two practices with different meanings and therefore leading my spiritual path in two directions? I also do Welcoming Prayer during the day. Should I choose between the Welcoming Prayer and the Jesus prayer?

 

 

 

 

A: Read Leslee’s response here.

 

You can read the complete bulletin at     https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/2023-july-e-bulletin?e=9aa0837e74