Spiritual exercise: Centering Prayer
Centering Prayer: Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form by M. Basil Pennington, we are invited to experience the presence of God through prayer.
image taken at Norbertine Abbey chapel, ABQ, New Mexico
Invitation. This month the spiritual exercise Centering Prayer seems fitting as the remembrance and reflections of the season of lent, in the leaning in, and leading up to the cross and resurrection is forefront. Christ-centering comes again…
You may already have been guided by the Holy Spirit to this kind of prayer, but maybe like me, you never knew it had such rootedness, depth and deepening ways.
In reading through the pages of Centering Prayer: Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form by M. Basil Pennington, he has offered this depth I was unaware of. He writes this about sharing Centering Prayer:
“One of the best ways we can help others to come to know their true selves with their limitless potential to share divine life and happiness is to help them find the way to leave behind entanglements of their false, superficial selves and come to their center, to the ground of their being, where they are constantly coming forth from the creative love of the Father.” (165)
“To share Centering Prayer with others is a preeminent way to fulfill our Christian mission “we are created in the image and likeness of God” and to open out to our brothers and sisters the Way, the Truth, and the Life; that is, the Good News.” (165)
This is Good News! In receiving God’s saving grace in our daily life we have the renewing desire to live into and to share it with others—Thanks be to God.
A simple Centering Prayer guide from Pennington’s book (79):
Sit relaxed and quiet.
—Be in faith and love to God who dwells in the center of your being.
—Take up a love word and let it be gently present, supporting your being to God in faith-filled love.
—Whenever you become aware of anything else, simply, gently return to the Lord with the use of your prayer word.
A Centering Prayer Moment (from my own life)
Sitting in stillness, lifting the eyes of my heart and mind upward
The word “radiant” became present.
Listening, listening, wondering, seeing God’s radiance in the sunlight through my window this morning
Imagining God’s radiance beaming from the heavens
Upon Moses, Upon Jesus
Sitting, listening, “radiant”
“Sing aloud and shout for joy” “be radiant over the goodness of the Lord” —(Jeremiah 31:12)
“Radiant light” “radiance of God’s Presence”
Radiance rests within, upon, around me.
