 Contemplative Outreach of Central Pennsylvania Newsletter
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Welcome to the March 2014 issue of the
Jet and I have been co-editors of this newsletter since its inception in April 2009. This is the 18th issue of the newsletter! (All past issues are available here.) It has been a joy to work on these newsletters with Jet, and an honor to provide this service to our local chapter of Contemplative Outreach. Many thanks to the many people who have supported and contributed to the newsletter. This will be the last issue of the newsletter for now. Jet and I are stepping down as co-editors, and we did not have others volunteer to take it over. But if you are interested in volunteering for this service, please contact me or Nancy Cord-Baran any time. Also, Tim Reddington is stepping down as co-coordinator of our chapter. Thanks for your service, Tim! If anyone is interested in volunteering to be co-coordinator with Nancy Cord-Baran, please contact Nancy at 814-237-1002 or e-mail. The beautiful nature photographs in this issue were generously provided by Oedi Oudshoorn, the Netherlands. Gwen Stimely & Jet Schneider PLEASE NOTE!! Fr William Meninger, noted spiritual teacher and developer of Centering Prayer, will be at Bethany Retreat Center this September. Click the link to the left for more information. |
United in Prayer Day March 15, 2014
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Saturday, March 15, 2014
1pm to 3:30pm
Good Shepherd Catholic Church
867 Grays Woods Blvd, Port Matilda, PA 16870
 United in Prayer Day gathers Centering Prayer practitioners from around the globe for a day of unity in prayer. The day will include group Centering Prayer and a new DVD from Thomas Keating, Falling Into the Hands of God, in which he explores the deepening that comes from the new information from science and evolution into the Mystery of God. He talks about the games that God plays with us and how this impacts on our daily living. Once again we are struck with the intimacy, tenderness and forgiveness of our God. In the words of the Epistle to the Ephesians 3:20:
Yes, may you come to know his love, although it can never be fully known, and be completely filled with the very nature of God.
This presentation took place at St Benedict's Monastery, Snowmass - July, 2013.
For more information, contact Nancy Cord-Baran at 814-237-1002 or via e-mail. If you are planning to come, please contact Nancy to let her know.
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Food for Thought
| | From Thomas Keating in The Better Part
Add Positive Energy to the World
 Contemplative prayer is a major contribution to the diminishing of world problems of injustice and prejudice. If enough people progressed in contemplative prayer, they could reduce a sizable portion of the negativity in our world. The atmosphere of the planet has been filled with negativity from the endless procession of false selves that have peopled it from the beginning of time, including ourselves. But charity (divine love) is so strong that just a little of it can negate an enormous amount of negativity. A critical number of people actually meditating is an insight our Hindu and Buddhist friends also have. Contemplative prayer enables people to clean up their lives through the insights of self-knowledge that flow from such a practice, so that at least they don't continue to pour negative energy into the atmosphere. We would all do everyone on earth a great favor if we would die to our false selves and pour the divine energy of pure love into the atmosphere instead of the energy of our selfish drives for happiness. When contemplative persons get together in prayer, there is an enormous amount of positive energy generated, especially if they have been practicing for a long time.
To Practice This Today:
Make your intention for a period of silent prayer to be that you are adding positive energy to the world. Know that in doing so you are joining with thousands of people from all religious traditions whose prayers of divine love are overriding the negativity of countless false selves.Top
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Poem by Mary Oliver
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It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
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Haiku
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sacred ground appears,
once green, now a snowy path
labyrinth transformed
-Barbara
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This picture was taken at the Community Peace Labyrinth in State College, PA. From April through September, the Labyrinth is open for group walks every Wednesday evening at 7 pm, weather permitting (from October- March, Wednesday's at 4:30 pm.) We'll walk in silence for world peace. For more information, please contact Don and Jet Schneider, 814-238-0010. Top
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Centering Prayer and Seeing Deeply
| | Submitted by Jet Schneider
 Practicing centering prayer invites us to being open to God's Presence within and all around us. Through the help of the Divine Therapist (to use Fr. Thomas Keating's words) we become more aware, we awaken to all that is and we see with new eyes. In her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Annie Dillard writes about this process: The effort is really a discipline requiring a lifetime of dedicated struggle; it marks the literature of saints and monks of every order East and West, under every rule and no rule, discalded and shod*. The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind's muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness.Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights; you look around it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects act and rest purely, without utterance. "Launch into the deep" says Jacques Ellul, "and you shall see".  The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price. (...) But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise. (...) I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff". (From: Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, pp. 32-33; Harper & Row 1974). Fr. Richard Rohr writes about the process of becoming aware of the Ground of All Being, seeing in the Divine Light, as well: Everything exposed to the light itself becomes light (Ephesians 5:13). In prayer, we merely keep returning the divine gaze and we become its reflection, almost in spite of ourselves. (2 Corinthians 3:18). (Adapted from Richard Rohr: The Naked Now, Learning to See as the Mystics See, pp. 22-23). When practicing centering prayer, let's remind ourselves of "sailing on the solar wind," and opening our sails "to the merest puff," so the Divine Therapist can work in and through us, gently healing all our wounds by the light; transforming us, and through us, the world, like a pebble's ever widening circles in a pond. (*Editor's Note: In case some of you, like me, didn't know the meaning of "discalded and shod" this is the meaning: Discalded means a catholic order where there are no shoes allowed , and shod means shoes are allowed. St Theresa of Avila was a discalded Carmelite nun.)
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From Brother Roger of Taize
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When human beings grasp intuitively the beauty of creation, there can be a sense in which that takes hold of them, however partially. Is not contemplation an inner disposition in which the whole being is caught up in the wonder of a love, taken hold of by the infinite beauty of the living God?
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Contemplative Outreach Annual Conference Last October
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Submitted by Nancy Cord-BaranI was fortunate to attend the Contemplative Outreach Annual Conference in October in beautiful Snowmass Village, Colorado. The Wisdom of Monastic Heritage in Everyday Life was the title. It included fantastic speakers: Fr. William Meninger, Fr. Thomas Keating, Abbot Joseph Boyle and Sr. Mary Margaret Funk.
 | Fr Thomas Keating with Contemplative Outreach members from Mexico
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 | | Fr William Meninger and Nancy Cord-Baran |
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