An Integrated Path

When we are resting in God during contemplative prayer, our everyday busy life often feels very separate from that sacred experience. However, because God is in everything, at every time, in every moment, there is ultimately never any separation between prayer and life.  We can use our contemplative practice to help us bring that realization to fulfillment.

All the activities of everyday life -- working, cooking a meal, caring for children, dealing with traffic -- do not have to be separate from the life we are discovering in prayer. In fact, they are all invitations to greater awareness, remembrance, and surrender to God.  Freedom in life comes when we learn to see things from God’s perspective -- which includes everything.

There is a wonderful richness in one’s prayer and life when active contemplative practices are an integrated expression of Centering Prayer. Thomas Keating has animated such a series of practices to bring the effects of Centering Prayer into daily life.

Many Centering Prayer practitioners have learned these practices, which include Lectio Divina, the Active Prayer Sentence, the Welcoming Prayer, the Forgiveness Prayer, and the Attention/Intention practice. However, the way we often experience them is more like a list of things to do that are separate from each other than as an integrated means of opening to God. 

This branch of the Path of Centering Prayer--Integrating Prayer in Life--helps connect these active practices with Centering Prayer in a living way. The result is then a profound ability to experience God more fully as the source of your Center Prayer practice, your active practices, the activities of your daily life, and your humanity.

Then, this branch goes further.  As prayer and life become more integrated, our “divine” nature -- created in God’s image -- and our “human” nature -- created in God’s likeness -- are also brought together.  All contemplative practices can be prayed within the grace of Christ’s life within.  Christ’s Incarnation transformed the possibilities of our human condition.  Our wonderous human life, broken and dependent upon God -- our bodies, emotions and minds --  are gifts to be freed and used in greater service of others.