Contemplation in Community

Contemplation in Community

Praying in solitude is a daily, often hourly, practice that keeps us grounded in Love, connecting with the Divine, and sets our hearts AWAKE. 

Gathering for contemplation in community keeps us strengthened beyond ourselves, connecting with one another and the Divine, and sets our hearts ON FIRE!

The Centre hopes you will cherish your times in solitude and find spaces to pray with others – many opportunities are listed on the Centre’s Fall Program – Come, let us pray.

“Little by little we enter into prayer without any other intention except to consent. Consent becomes surrender. And surrender becomes total receptivity, as this process evolves. And total receptivity is effortless. It has nothing to do with attaining something, or getting anything, or the desire for enlightenment, peace, or spiritual experience. Such desires are still ego, however devoutly masked. So, no thinking, no reflecting, no expectations, no words.  
 
“Everything is impermanent, which is another way of saying everything is changing. That is the nature of reality. Or to put it another way, God is not a noun, not an object. A better metaphor would be a verb. That is, God is always happening. Hence the thing that doesn’t change about God is that God is always changing.  
 
“The discipline of Centering Prayer gradually adapts us to this mystery of the Ultimate Reality by enabling us to change and to let go of everything that prevents us from doing so.” - Thomas Keating

Photos from a mini-retreat, Still and Still Moving, at Christ Church Cathedral with the Primate Shane Parker in May and the annual spring Loon Lake Retreat with this years facilitators: Peter & Thomas Roach. 

 

Photos by James Xavier Lam