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“Seeing With God’s Eyes"
A Time of Chapter Planning and Prayerful Discernment
"Contemplative Outreach as a network is primarily a process. This process listens to the needs of the people who are growing in contemplative experience and tries to respond appropriately to them as we continue our pilgrimage into the unknown." ~Thomas Keating
"Contemplation is about seeing, but a kind of seeing that is much more than mere looking because it also includes recognizing and thus appreciating. The contemplative mind does not tell us what to see but teaches us how to see what we behold."
~Richard Rohr
As Father Keating noted, we as members of Contemplative Outreach are a network of people who are in motion together -- on a pilgrimage into the unknown. We are essentially a process that is evolving, and in response to that evolution, we must be perceptive and responsive to the changing needs of our chapter.
Contemplative Outreach of Northwest Florida was founded by Carol D. Lewis in 2010, and, in response to its rapid growth, split into the Pensacola and Tallahassee chapters in 2014. Currently, Contemplative Outreach of Pensacola (COPNS) supports approximately 20 Centering Prayer groups in southeast Alabama and northwest Florida, including three 11th Step groups that serve individuals in 12-Step Programs. About half of the groups serve the Pensacola and Gulf Breeze areas.
As we evolve as individuals and communities, so do our spiritual, physical, and intellectual needs and ways of meeting those needs. Beginning with Carol D. Lewis’s founding vision of the chapter, the servant leadership team has endeavored to meet the changing needs of our Centering Prayer groups and facilitators, including adapting to virtual ways of gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic. Numerous Zoom-based and hybrid in-person/virtual meetings continue today, providing a way for people to join with others in prayer and spiritual formation no matter where they reside or the mobility constraints they face.
On Saturday, May 10, we will be coming together as a chapter to envision our future -- to assess our needs of today and set our goals for tomorrow. We will be meeting at Christ Episcopal Church in downtown Pensacola from 10:00 am until 2:00 pm. Boxed lunches will be available for $12. Please register at the link below by May 3.
Click to Register
The meeting will begin with Centering Prayer, after which we will read and reflect on the Vision and Theological Principles of Contemplative Outreach, celebrate our strengths as a chapter, identify and prioritize our needs, and discern our callings to serve.
Whether you are new to the chapter or a long-time participant, we hope that you will join us as we communally discern what God has in store for us.
If you are not able to attend, we would appreciate receiving your heartfelt input in advance of our meeting, so that the group would benefit from the inspired vision of all who are dedicated to the practice of Centering Prayer. Regardless of whether you participate in one of our Centering Prayer groups, or simply receive the monthly newsletter, we welcome your prayerful consideration and response to the following survey questions in the link below:
Survey Link
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Losing Yourself
People often talk about finding themselves, about going off and being alone and looking inward to find who they really are. But the task that we really need to undertake is to lose ourselves, to remove ourselves from the center of our thinking. In Centering Prayer we let go of our thoughts, and we find that they want to keep on returning, they won't go away. Somehow we insist on being someone, even if we don't know who that is. But in losing yourself, you become part of the whole, indistinguishable from other individuals. And that gives us anguish; we can't or won't accept that we should be wrapped up with so much more than ourselves. But that is why death is so frightening to us, because we don't want to let ourselves go; we don't want to lose the one who we have nurtured and built up our whole lives long. Everything we have achieved, everything we have accumulated, everything about us is about to be sacrificed, taken away, blown to the wind. It seems such a waste, to have invested so much in who we are and then to just let it go. It doesn't make sense and we insist on hanging on by our nails to the very end, rather than just voluntarily offering ourselves to the whole.
Entering into Centering Prayer is indeed practice for dying. Each day we practice letting ourselves go. When I realize I have returned to myself, to my foolish, self-centered thoughts and I consent to the Lord by allowing my sacred word to retake the foreground of my mind, I feel as if I am falling into the abyss. I experience weightlessness, a turning of my stomach as I freefall, not in control of my body or mind, a helplessness. It is a feeling of dread of my own mortality. I am terrified of the inevitable--my ultimate annihilation. I am a moment from nauseousness, a churning of my inwards, out of control, anticipating... I know not what. That is part of the inequilibrium, the disorientation, a loss of who I am, where I am, where I am going, who I will be.
Just when we think we are lost forever, the Lord rescues us, He saves us from the utter abyss. Our faith, at its core, if it is real, if it is existential - that seems twisted, ironic, because what I am seeing or questioning is whether I will continue to exist. If I let go, I won't exist - that is what I insist or want to keep insisting. I want to hold onto my version of reality, insisting that what I see, what I perceive, what I conceive is first and foremost true, not only true to me but true to everyone. I want everyone to see things my way. To surrender that is to sacrifice my ego. I will not let go, I will not say "uncle", I will not surrender. No, no, no. Before I will truly believe, truly trust in God, I want proof. Until God shows me that He has me, he loves me, he catches me, he saves me from my fall.
In transcendence, I discover that I was not falling into an abyss - I was suspended all along! It was my perception that the world was rushing by me, it was out of my grasp, out of my control. But from the beginning, God had me in His hands. I was never in danger of losing my identity. My identity isn't bound up with me in my head; my identity is bound up with God and safely embedded in His creation. It was only my mistaken view of reality, of my relationship to the Cosmos that was giving me this stomach-falling feeling of losing everything, when instead I was safe--saved--all along. I had said to myself that I believed that I was saved by God, but I wasn't trusting Him. I kept a steady fear of losing myself to eternity...until I had fallen safely into His Being, into the net woven and held between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A safety net woven and as intricate and beautiful as that of a numinous spider web. God seemed to catch me when I felt myself falling, but my senses had deceived me. I wasn't falling...God had me in his hands all along.
May our practice of Centering Prayer give us confidence that God has hold of us. May we realize that our feeling of losing ourself is a false-self-induced perception and not reality. Our continued return to the inner room and the sacred word is our consent to God’s presence and action: our acknowledgement that He has us.
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Spring has sprung and as the butterflies flitter and the flowers bloom, we truly have poetry in motion. Even Keating turned his hand to poetry in the final season of his own life and in his last poem (#8) he addressed What Matters:
Only the Divine matters,
And because the Divine matters,
Everything matters
Our library has several works by poets including Mary Oliver, Kathleen Norris, Christian Wiman among others. We also have some poetry anthologies. If you feel drawn to read some poetry this spring, check out:
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Check these and other resources out at the Carol D. Lewis Centering Prayer Library, housed in the Centering Prayer Room on the second floor of Christ Church's Education Building. The collection is listed by author, title, and subject in the online catalog: https://CenteringPrayerLibrary.librarika.com.
There are no due dates or fines, so feel free to use the collection. Please contact Caroline Thompson, the librarian, at cthompson57@gmail.com if you have any comments, questions, suggestions, or donations.
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The Contemplative Outreach of Pensacola website (centeringprayerpensacola.com) is being updated and expanded to include more content and more opportunities for readers to engage and interact. Changes will be occurring over the coming months and we invite you to visit the website and provide your feedback and suggestions to our webmaster, Jenni Arnold, at copns44@gmail.com.
Contemplative Outreach of Pensacola
PRAYER GROUPS
We welcome all those new to Centering Prayer as well as established practitioners to our Pensacola area prayer groups. Check with each group's facilitator to learn the current meeting status.
CLICK HERE for updated information
12 Step Outreach- Contemplative Outreach
For those interested in or currently practicing Centering Prayer as the 11th step, discover new opportunities to participate in monthly on-line Introductory workshops and countless other offerings.
CLICK HERE
The Meditation Chapel
Find the Meditation Chapel schedule with instructions to register for access to the calendar of daily listings for opportunities to pray with others globally throughout the day and night. These groups have grown and matured since the early days of the pandemic. If you are looking for new connections for practicing centering prayer in community, give the Meditation Chapel a try.
CLICK HERE
Websites of FL, AL, GA, LA, TN
Check out the websites of these regional Contemplative Outreach chapters to learn about their events, which include many free Zoom & in-person meetings.
CLICK HERE for a specific chapter's events.
Contemplative Outreach of Colorado
Website of events:
CLICK HERE
Closer Than Breath~ Founder Keith Kristich offers a weekly newsletter, monthly contemplative days, and events and resources to deepen contemplative practices.
CLICK HERE
Lindsay Boyer: Spirituality for Questioning Minds including teachings, contemplative practices, prayer groups, special Quiet Days:
CLICK HERE
Fr. Richard Rohr: Center for Action and Contemplation offerings for daily meditations, podcasts, subscriptions and other resources:
CLICK HERE
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You are invited to enjoy the monthly Contemplative Outreach, Ltd E-Bulletin for beautiful offerings and E-bulletin.
CLICK HERE for the mid-April E-Bulletin.
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Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. website: CLICK HERE
Theological Principle #3 -The theological foundation of Centering Prayer is the Divine Presence in every member of the human family.
Commentary - "The presence of the Divine in us is the permanent self-giving of God to every human person. The Word of God and Source of all creation sustains everything that exists and relates to each human being in a personal way. The primary call of the Spirit is to consent to this intimate relationship."
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What Matters
"Only the Divine matters,
And because the Divine matters,
Everything matters."
Thomas Keating
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