“Silence is God’s first language. Everything else is a poor translation.”
Thomas Keating died on October 25th. Cynthia Bourgeault wrote the following: “ He will be remembered as one of the giants of contemporary contemplative spirituality, not only for his groundbreaking work in Centering Prayer—which made contemplation truly accessible to Christian lay people for the first time—but also for the breadth and depth of his interspiritual vision, which kept growing in luminosity and compassion right up to his very last breath. I have never witnessed a more triumphant and powerful conscious death, modeling for us all the wingspan of spirit that can dwell in a life courageously and recklessly tossed to the winds of God.”
I aspire to that kind of death; one that is powerful and conscious, one that is the final act of a life recklessly tossed to the winds of God. I’m working on that kind of a life. It’s definitely a work in progress.
Thomas Keating was considered to be one of the pioneers of centering prayer, a type of meditation that is rooted in silence. I just discovered centering prayer a couple of years ago. I have been an undisciplined meditator for over twenty years, and an undisciplined meditator loses out on the lessons to be gained from meditation. I started meditating in my late twenties, when I became a licensed hypnotherapist. The methods I used were either guided imagery, or breath meditations. After the first couple of years, my meditation practice became more and more sporadic. A couple of years ago, I decided to renew my practice and discovered centering prayer by reading a book by Cynthia Bourgeault. I’ve found the journey into silence to be much more challenging than the types of meditation I’ve done in the past and much more compelling. I love silence. I long for it. I struggle with it. Real silence is hard to achieve. Even when I cut out the noise from the outside, the noise from inside persists. The ego likes to chatter and doesn’t like to let go. Thomas Keating is known to have said, “Silence is God’s first language. Everything else is a poor translation.”
Here is a lovely prayer from Thomas Keating:
The Welcoming Prayer (by Father Thomas Keating)
Welcome, welcome, welcome,
I welcome everything that comes to me today,
because I know it's for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and God's action within.
Amen.
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