Centering Prayer – Our Discipline for May, 2013

Welcome to the month of May! Spring has sprung and we are hear because we are ripe and open to growth during this season of growth and new life!

In May we dedicate ourselves to a new discipline, the practice of Centering Prayer. This particular discipline places a stong emphasis on interior silence. The participant's sole occupation is to establish and maintain the will or intention to "consent to God's presence and action during the time of prayer." (Father Thomas Keating)

In Centering Prayer, we seek to center our hearts, minds, and spirits on God, on the creator. We seek his presence. This practice is all about our relationship with God. Metaphorically, we crawl into the Divine lap and do our best to stay there, centered in Presence with a capital P.

One of our chief modern day guides for this practice is Father Thomas Keating. To learn more about this practice, check out Keating's Youtube instructional piece at
           http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IKpFHfNdnE. 

Keating's first guideline makes reference to a "sacred word," a single word or brief phrase to anchor or center us in God. Possible sacred words might include Father, Mother, Creator, Spirit, Love, Jesus, Abba, Yahweh, Peace, or Breath of Life.

We hope you will join us and practice Centering Prayer with us on any of the Tuesdays in May. We meet at Yoga Roots at 444 E. Mitchell in Petoskey from 7:30-8:30 pm. Have a great May!

Toby Jones, founder of Living Vision 

As April came to a close, we wrapped up our practice of Lectio Divina. This Benedictine scripture based discipline was so powerful for all of us, that the suggestion was made that I post each of the passages we used to guide each of our Tuesday night practices. It is helpful to remember that we at Living Vision are an inclusive and integrative community, so we honor the practices and scriptures of all the great spiritual traditions and pathways. In posting these passages, our hope is that you might use them periodically to enhance your own spiritual practice. Grace and Peace to all!

April 9 -"The mind is restless, no doubt, and hard to subdue. But it can be brought under
               control by constant practice and by the exercise of dispassion."
                                         - from the Bhagavad Gita - Hinduism

April 16 - "Seeking help through patience and prayer is difficult, unless on is humble and
                   submissive."
                                        - from the Koran - Islam


April 23 - "I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you
                  may be children of your Father in Heaven. For God causes the sun to rise on
                  the evil and the good. He sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."
                                        -  from the New Testament Gospel of Matthew - Christianity

April 30 - "Just as a farmer can't predict when the fruit will ripen, so we can't predict
                  when Awakening will occur. So just keep your practice strong; the rest will
                  take care of itself."
                                         - from the Tipitaka - Buddhism

  * Our practice throughout the Tuesdays in May is Centering Prayer. All are welcome to join
     us at Yoga Roots in Petoskey from 7:30-8:30. For more information contact
     tobyjones48@gmail.com.

Lectio Divina - our Spring practice

In the month of April, our Living Vision community is dedicating ourselves to the ancient Benedictine practice of Lectio Divina, and what a gift we are finding this discipline to be. "Divine Word," as one translates the Latin, involves listening to a very small kernel of scripture read aloud three times in succession and then followed by an extended period (7-10 minutes?) of silence. After the silence, the same passage is read again three times out loud and the silence is repeated. The cycle is then done again a third time. During the silence, the disciple is to allow the scripture to bathe over him/her. Certain words or images may emerge, as may ideas or memories. Lectio Divina is a living conversation between these holy words and the practitioner. At the end of this 30-40 minute practice, the practitioners who choose to do so may talk about what they experienced.

It has been incredible to see how alive the scriptures really are. Not only is the experience entirely different from person to person, but the same person can have a radically different experience from the first to the third reading! The entire group has been edified by the practice itself and the debriefing of it.

As an integrative spiritual community, we have sought to open ourselves to a variety of scriptural voices - the Gita and the Hebrew Bible so far, and the Koran and Christian New Testament in the weeks to come. In doing so, we make no attempt to diminish one's particular faith or holy writ, but rather to recognize commonalities and the deep spiritual truths that we all share.

Most recently, we focused on the powerful tale of the disgruntled and besieged Hebrew prophet Elijah in I Kings 19:11-13. Here we find Elijah hiding in a cave from his pursuers. A visitor asks him to step out of the cave, for the Lord Yahweh is about to pass by. First there is mighty wind, then an earthquake, and finally a fire. But Yahweh is not present in any of those. It is the fourth form that contains the Creator - a still, small voice, or as one translation renders - "a gentle whisper."

How often do we look for God in the huge, in the dramatic, in the powerful display? What if, for us as well as Elijah, God chooses to reveal God's self a gentle whisper? Will we even notice? Will we attend to it? Or might we miss it entirely?

Join us each and ever Tuesday evening from 7:30-8:30 at Yoga Roots in downtown Petoskey, 444 E. Mitchell St. Enter by the back alley. All are welcome to practice with us, regardless of religious background, beliefs, or persuasion. We value silence over noise, reflection over argument, and practice over belief. For more information, contact tobyjones48@gmail.com.

Peace

Last Tuesday at Living Vision, we reflected on Celtic theologian, philosopher, and poet John O'Donohue's contention that "the way we look at things is the single most important thing of all." Our expectations combined with our perceptions do, in many ways, create our reality and the quality of our experience in the world. Jesus, in his sermon on the mount, seemed to affirm this same teaching when he said, "The eye is the lamp of the body. If you eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness."

We used our shared silence together, by the light of a single candle, to examine our expectations, our perspectives, our ways of looking at the people and events in our lives. We considered the ways in which our "eyes" or vision might be "unhealthy" or filled with darkness. For, as O'Donohue said, "if our thoughts are impaired and negative, we will never be able to see the beauty within ourselves or all around us." We see everything through the lens of our own thoughts and interpretations.

At the close of our meditation time, we shared ideas of how we might learn to look at ourselves and the world with gentleness, creativity, and a sense of adventure.

This coming Tuesday, February 20, we'll hear another segment from O'Donohue's Anam Cara lectures. This one focuses on the power and beauty of silence and silent contemplative practice. O'Donohue believes that our inner lives are actually being assaulted or evicted by contemporary technological culture. If, as he claims, silence is "the sister of the Divine," or as Meister Eckhart wrote, "there is nothing in the world that resembles God as much as silence, then it is certainly worth considering how we might befriend it.

Join us this Tuesday and every Tuesday at Yoga Roots from 7:30-8:30 pm, 444 E. Mitchell St. in Petoskey. (Enter by the back alley entrance and be sure to be on time, as the door is relocked at 7:30 in keeping with Yoga Roots' policy.) For more information, email tobyjones48@gmail.com.

Wednesday, January 30

What a night we had together last night at Yoga Roots! Celtic theologian and philosopher John O'Donohue led us through his reflections on loneliness, stillness, and solitude. For O'Donohue, stillness is absolutely vital to one's soul and offers itself to us as a life companion. In stillness, we are made ripe to meet and get to know ourselves. As Pascal once put it, "many of the major problems we have result from our inability to sit quietly with ourselves."

O'Donohue believes that the older we get, the more opportunity we have to be still and quiet with ourselves and to use that stillness as a space for solitude and self-knowledge. The problem, however, is that such stillness and quiet can make us feel lonely and vulnerable. So often we tend to run from that initial experience of loneliness and isolation. I know that I do.

O'Donohue shared a powerful story of a time during his student years in Tubingen when he felt horribly lonely, but he decided that rather than running from it, he would actually sit in a chair and "let loneliness in, let it have its way with me. I allowed myself to feel like the loneliest, most forsaken orphan in the world. I cried and I cried and I cried...But something amazing and unexpected happened. Once I decided to feel my loneliness, I wasn't so lonely anymore. Once I engaged and sat with my own loneliness, I befriended it until it became a natural part of my life, a companion." As one of O'Donohue's Gaelic friends put it, "Loneliness is a black, burned hole. But if you close it up, you close out so much that can be so beautiful for you as well."

This was the focus and essence of our meditation last night. We used the half hour of silence to engage our own loneliness, to let it have its way with us, to befriend us. We found, as O'Donohue suggests, that we need not be so afraid of our own loneliness. For if we engage it, it can do lovely things for us.

Join us next week, Tuesday, Feb 5, when we'll hear O'Donohue's reflections on the negativity in our lives, where it comes from and how we can transform it. All are welcome - 7:30-8:30 at Yoga Roots. 444 E. Mitchell St. in Petoskey. Contact tobyjones48@gmail.com for more information.

Peace

Our January Tuesday nights have continued to illuminate our souls and refresh our spirits. The writings and teachings of John O'Donohue, Celtic theologian and poet, are profound to say the least. Listen to this Celtic benediction he laid on us last night...

"May you recognize in your life the presence and power and light of your soul;
 May you realize that you are never alone, but that your soul in its brightness and belonging
   connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe;
 May you have respect for your own individuality and difference;
 And may you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny
    here, and that behind the facade of your life, there is something beautiful and good and
    eternal happening in you;
 May you learn to see yourself with the same delight and pride and happiness with
   which God sees you in every moment."

Wow! We spent time contemplating the implications of this in silence and candlelight and then shared some of the fruits of our individual and collective reflection.

On Tuesday, January 22, we will listen to O'Donohue's teaching on the mind and on ways of shifting our often limited perspective. Hope you will join us at Yoga Roots, 444 E. Mitchell St. from 7:30-8:30. ALL are welcome, regardless of religious perspective. We choose to practice together rather than to debate.

Welcome to Living Vision 2013! Our small, intimate spiritual community continues to offer a unique alternative to those seeking authentic connection to the Divine. During the Tuesday nights of January, we are exploring Celtic Spirituality with the great John O'Donohue as our guide. O'Donohue is an extraordinary Irish poet and theologian, and we're beginning each Tuesday night with 10-15 minutes of his CD series "Anam Cara."

Tonight, January 8, we used O'Donohue's teaching on Solitude vs. Loneliness as our contemplative focus. His image of the hearth that is deep in each person's heart/soul is a powerful metaphor of the profound welcome and grace that awaits all who plumb the depths of our soul in and through the silent practices. We pondered and discussed the notion that "we will never find outside ourselves that which we most need." We also considered his contention that "solitude allows us to rediscover our own beauty...a coming home to our own deepest belonging." Finally, we wrestled with the almost unfathomable notion that "in solitude we can be more at the heart of our true belonging than in any social situation or in any relationship."

Our twenty minute silent contemplation was, as always, a deep gift to each of us. Being silent together is radically different and infinitely more powerful than tackling this discipline on one's own. We invite you to join us as we continue our exploration and experience of Celtic spiritual teaching next Tuesday, Jan 15 and on each of the Tuesdays in January. EVERYONE is welcome at our Tuesday evening spiritual practice sessions, regardless of religious background or theological perspective. We meet at Yoga Roots at 444 E. Mitchell St. in Petoskey. For more information contact tobyjones48@gmail.com.

Grace & Peace - Toby