Centered Living: The Way of Centering Prayer

by M. Basil Pennington

In an easy-to-understand, non-technical language, internationally renowned author M. Basil Pennington combines testimonies of practitioners, updated guidelines, theological reflections, and helpful hints for teaching others in an exploration of all the essential information about centering prayer.

Genres: Spirituality, Christian Living, Christianity, Nonfiction

214 pages, Paperback

First published August 5, 1986

About the author

Dom M. Basil Pennington O.C.S.O. (1931–2005) was a Trappist monk and priest. He was a leading Roman Catholic spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, and director.

Pennington was an alumnus of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Angelicum where he obtained a licentiate in Theology in 1959.[1] He also earned a licentiate in Canon Law at the Pontifical Gregorian University. Pennington became known internationally as one of the major proponents of the Centering Prayer movement begun at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, during the 1970s.

Reviews

[Eli Kittim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Drawing inspiration from ancient monastic practices—such as the prayer of stillness, or the prayer of quiet—this book offers a modern technique for achieving spiritual transcendence. Arguably, this Christian contemplative tradition is steeped in mystical philosophy that dates back to the time of Plotinus and Plato!

[Staci · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know, I can't say I've read many Catholic authors, but I appreciated much of what Pennington had to say (although I probably should have read his original book first). I also liked how he said it - it felt like a dialogue. I hope I have been shaped by the good of this book.

[djt · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book I read after a retreat and a visit to the Cistercian Melleray Abbey in Dubuque, Ia. my interest in the use of a Centering Prayer method of meditation was renewed and this was in their book store, so thought I'd read this to see what additional information it had from what I'd learned before about Centering Prayer. This is a type of meditation that uses a method similar to TM and possibly that's why I'd always had a difficult time with actually utilizing this form of meditation in the past and I wanted to gain a better understanding of its history and use today. Unfortunately, after reading this book I really was disappointed in its presentation, although I did find a few parts of the book that were spiritually uplifting and hope-filled, which was good. Centering Prayer is different from TM because, although it uses a focus word, and is suggested to be practiced for 2, 20 minute sessions each day, it's focus is on emptying oneself to allow a full focus of God's Will for us, while TM's focus is an emptying of self for a self-actualization fulfillment. In this book, I felt, the instruction didn't emphasize this as much as might be necessary to separate the two and often gave the feeling that these 2 forms of meditation were the same, except Centering Prayer was Catholic/Christian-based and TM's origin is part of the Vedic tradition of India. So...not sure I gained any really different, or more helpful information from this reading. It's a good book, and don't feel I wasted my time reading it, but to me it was just a 2-star "okay."