Centering Prayer in Daily Life and Ministry

by Thomas Keating, M. Basil Pennington

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. Ward, Jr, Gustave Reininger, Thomas Neenan, David Walton Miller, Paul Lawson, Sarah Butler, David Forbes Morgan, Sandra Casey-Martus, and Jim Clark.

Genres: Prayer, Religion, Spirituality, Christianity, Nonfiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1997

About the author

Keating entered the Cistercian Order in Valley Falls, Rhode Island in January, 1944. He was appointed Superior of St. Benedict's Monastery, Snowmass, Colorado in 1958, and was elected abbot of St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer, Massachusetts in 1961. He returned to Snowmass after retiring as abbot of Spencer in 1981, where he established a program of ten-day intensive retreats in the practice of Centering Prayer, a contemporary form of the Christian contemplative tradition.

He is one of three architects of Centering Prayer, a contemporary method of contemplative prayer, that emerged from St. Joseph's Abbey in 1975. Frs. William Menninger and Basil Pennington, also Cistercian monks, were the other architects.
n 1984, Fr. Thomas Keating along with Gustave Reininger and Edward Bednar, co-founded Contemplative Outreach, Ltd., an international, ecumenical spiritual network that teaches the practice of Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina, a method of prayer drawn from the Christian contemplative tradition. Contemplative Outreach provides a support system for those on the contemplative path through a wide variety of resources, workshops, and retreats.
Fr. Keating currently lives at St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado.

Reviews

[Andrew Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably a great book for someone else but for me, eh, not so much. I was hoping for more definition of lectio divina and the like. I can't say I've ever had something close to the experience of prayer these authors described and that probably says more about me than it does about them. It's not a bad book. Your mileage may vary.

[Richard Burley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is solid overall discussion of centering prayer. It is not so much a how to book as it is a treatise of various topics about the subject. Very worth while.

[Pamela Mettler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good reference for lay leaders in churches everywhere.

[Sher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays about centering prayer written , primarily, by Episcopalian ministers and other clergy. Thomas Keating provides an appendix for centering prayer method, and the book begins with his essay on centering prayer. Pennington writes an essay about lector divina, which is a method of prayer whereby through "hearing the Word" the practitioner " hears God speaking through the inspired Word" (21). It was an interesting book to read from the various perspectives. Audience may be more the ministry than the general reader. I found the essay on Taize (meditative singing) and centering prayer very interesting from the perspective of young urbanites and what some of them are practicing. I would recommend the book if you want to hear a variety of voices about Christian contemplative practices.

[Eugene Pustoshkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In overall, it’s a nice collection of essays on the influence of Christian contemplative prayer on various aspects of spiritual life. It’s good to get some taste of what’s going on with the attempts to revive contemplation and direct apprehension of Spirit as stillness in contemporary Christianity (with contemplative prayer being an ancient practice that arose from within the Christian tradition rather than something borrowed from the Oriental).

[Curtis]

I always like this kind of book. I may not have read it all the way through, but pick it up from time-to-time to get inspiration for my prayer life.

[Catherine Casey]

Very good review re: Centering Prayer, as well as a thoughtful good read.