David Frenette - The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God

This work was supported by the Fetzer Institute

To Father Thomas Keating
and his centering prayer students

Deepening Your Centering Prayer Practice
in the Light of Contemplation

W riting a book on contemplative practice is a solitary activity, done in relationship with God. But because the revelation of contemplative practice happens when the divine life manifests in a community of seekers, in concrete circumstances, it is also true that a book on contemplative practice does not happen alone.

My immense gratitude goes to Father Thomas Keating for his commitment to God, his witness to selfless service, and for his belief in my work. I also want to thank his monastic community, St. Benedicts Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, and their abbot, Father Joseph Boyle, for their support over the years.

I offer thanks to my colleagues who staffed the intensive retreats at the Garrison Institute, at which these teachings were brought together in their current form: Steve Standiford, Marie Howard, Mary Dwyer, and Maru Ladrn de Guevara. Steve gave generously in many ways, as a spiritual brother, including recording the teachings. Marie used her organizational gifts and created a place for the retreat in Contemplative Outreach. My special thanks go to Lindsay Boyer, who, after recently staffing these retreats, took time from her own writing to read and edit the manuscript based upon her own practice. Lindsay and her husband, Mark, were my gracious hosts in the Catskill Mountains for two weeks as she and I worked on the manuscript. My thanks also to Julie Saad, Cathy McCarthy, and Gail Fitzpatrick Hopler, who supported the development of the material in earlier forms.

Many others supported this book along the way. To mention a few: Sister Bernadette Teasdale; Terri Murphy and the community at the Denver Center for Contemplative Living; Pat Johnson, Mary Ann Matheson, and Sherry Dutelle at the Snowmass retreat center; John Congdon, Carol DiMarcello, Margaret Johnson, Grace Huffman, Joanne Warner, Bill Wagner and Contemplative Outreach of Colorado; Gail Fitzpatrick Hopler, Father Carl Arico, and Olsiana Habazaj at the Contemplative Outreach International Resource Center; Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, who has been a source of support and encouragement; Catherine Le Dret and Jasmin Cori, who edited early chapters; my oldest spiritual friends, Sarah Harding, Bob Bartel, and Morgen Alwell; my newest spiritual friends, Peter Williams and Jeffrey Fuller; and my inquisitive and heartfelt students at Naropa University.

Special thanks to Eric Nelson, Wayne Ramsey, and David Addiss at the Fetzer Institute, who graciously stewarded this project through many phases.

Id like to thank Tami Simon and all the amazing folks at Sounds True for their belief in the book and skilled commitment to quality, including Jennifer Brown, Matt Licata, Rebecca Tate, Amy Rost, Haven Iverson, and Jennifer Holder.

And finally, huge thanks to my wife, Donna Zerner, who brought her profound insights and wisdom to help shape the book at key moments. The Spirit animates and inspires my life through her radiant presence. I live in daily gratitude for her.

W hen I cite texts from the Bible, I have used The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 2007. However, because there is not yet one Bible translation attuned to both gender-neutral language toward God and a contemplative understanding of scripture, a few biblical passages are taken from other translations, as noted.

God is a mystery beyond names, symbols, and forms, yet the Christian tradition uses names, symbols, and forms, often gendered, to refer to God. The Christian contemplative tradition, like other traditions, is being renewed for current times in inclusive language. As scholars attend to this important endeavor, I have chosen in this book to primarily use gender-neutral language when speaking of God, while generally retaining other authors use of masculine pronouns in citations and the language of standard Bible translations.

T his, David Frenettes first book, speaks to the ongoing development of centering prayer, and his teaching is a superb contribution to it. David has the special gift for contemplative teaching, the ability to share centering prayer and its conceptual background as well as its place in the Christian tradition. He is a careful student of the Christian mystical life, having pursued it through years of prayer and solitude and, even more importantly, by having his prayer life purified, enriched, and expressed in community and in the service of others.

I am grateful for Davids deep understanding of the contemplative life and the wisdom he is able to share from his own lived experience. He has developed the teaching of centering prayer beyond the fundamentals, while at the same time fully supporting the programs that are basic to the centering prayer ministry. David continues to explore how centering prayer, in its fullest expression, can reveal and transmit the incredible depth of the Christian faith. His teaching, based on actual experience, reveals the intimacy that God has made available to every human being and how unique Gods love is for each person.

Since 1983, David has worked full time on the development of centering prayer practices, the support of its practitioners, and the growth of Contemplative Outreach, the international network of centering prayer communities. He attended my first intensive two-week centering prayer retreat in 1983, where the seeds of centering prayer ripened within the group and Contemplative Outreach was born. David went on to cofound a residential retreat community, which we called Chrysalis House. There he lived a temporary form of monastic lifestyle and trained others in intensive prayer, community life, and service. He worked with the other community members to develop the contemplative practices that later became the foundation of Contemplative Outreachs spirituality. When his ten-year commitment to this community ended, David fulfilled its vision by seeking to integrate his contemplative training into ordinary life. He worked with adolescents in a treatment center for addiction, pursued graduate studies in counseling psychology, and served as a contemplative spiritual director while continuing his own intensive retreat practice in order to research and develop resources, programs, and practices for advanced centering prayer students.

In this book, David describes four ways of practicing centering prayer, building upon the basic guidelines offered in centering prayer workshops. These four deepening ways of practicing centering prayer are based on the three sacred symbolsthe sacred word, the sacred breath, and the sacred glanceplus a recently developed approach that might be called the sacred nothingness, which is pure contemplation. This last way is perhaps the most direct route to what Jesus called prayer in secret (Matthew 6:6), and David describes it with much helpful detail. He also presents interior attitudes that help centering prayer move into contemplation, making it easier for practitioners to deepen their experience of God.

This book is an example of how God continues to enlighten practitioners of centering prayer, opening up new depths of meaning and new aspects of the practice that encourage longtime practitioners to penetrate the mystery of Gods infinite love and ultimately to be transformed into it. Although he is an accomplished teacher, advisor, and spiritual director, this book shows that Davids primary spiritual gift is in bringing forth new dimensions and nuances of contemplative practice that are solidly rooted in the revelation of Christ that all Christian practices point to and flow from. This is an extremely important endeavor, for a spiritual tradition stagnates unless it continues to breathe new life into itself with practices and resources appropriate for longtime practitioners, new generations of seekers, and changing social conditions. Davids long years of retreat and early experience at Chrysalis House trained him for this work, which might be called contemplative research and development.