Presidents Day reminds us of what our founders set down for us with this great experiment called America. They were brilliant but imperfect people. Many were ...
The second guideline of Centering Prayer is, “Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your...
“We lived a few blocks from the dens on Rankin; that’s where they kept the floats for the parade. We were little kids then and we were excited about the floats. I won’t lie about that. The parade was good, and my mother would take us to see it on Olive Street close to Grand. We would stand in the front row and look and wave at the guys on the floats. A lot of people from the south side would come over, so it wasn’t an all-black crowd. We would wave at the clowns and they would cross over ...
Carmelite nun Ruth Burrows reflects on the nature of prayer, laying a foundation for contemplative practice: Almost always when we talk about prayer we are thinking of something we do . . . . [I]t is of fundamental importance to correct this view. Our Christian knowledge assures us that...
“I remember when I got my first job after I got out of school. I had taken up machine shop in high school. I could read a micrometer and various gauges and I was armed with my stuff. I was going to show the Personnel Director my credentials and he said “You won’t need any of that. You go to the porter gang”….. and so I began working at ...
The first guideline of Centering Prayer is, “Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within.” This guideline reveals much about the nature of Centering Prayer and the purpose of all contemplative practices. The key action of any contemplative practice is consent, that is, consent to fully yield to the Divine will. Only trust in a good God will allow such a...
“They didn’t wait to see what kind of neighbors you were. They didn’t know Chris was a veteran of World War II, a Tuskegee Airman, or that I was a schoolteacher. They don’t care – they see color – and that’s it. People don’t want to get to know you.” (In 1957, Ernestine Newman and her husband Chris bought...
True contemplation is a pure gift of God. Yet, following after the example and teaching of Jesus, we know that God is desirous of relationship with us and thus bestows divine gifts with generous wild abandon. Thus, all disciples of Christ, and indeed, all children of the living God are called to contemplation. While contemplation is always initiated from God’s side, we...