Time of Prayer

My prayer of choice is Centering Prayer in the tradition of The Desert Fathers (The Cloud of Unknowing), Fr. Richard Rohr (Center for Action and Contemplation) and Fr. Thomas Keating (The Contemplative Outreach).  The journey that is this practice has long taken me down the back roads of my interior, a mirror into the dark night, which ultimately reflects the outside bright of day. The first work is anonymous, but the latter authors both maintain that a contemplative embrace of the silence is the most powerful response to attachment of this world. In the evolving face of reality it is difficult to express what this experience means to me except to say that with it, the walk seems smoother. Not the path so much as my approach to the path, my reception of what the path yields and the degrees of my heedful acceptance of what it illumines, what it is. My prayer walk this semester was enthralling in that what is usually a more solitary passing through the heart of the Liturgical Cycle became something shared as our group breathed the same sacramental air. Nearing the summit of the Sacred Paschal Triduum, I could feel a spirit of formation, of becoming, of connection on the level of Soul. 

In light of these luminous revelations another sense grew increasingly within my meditations. At onset I regarded them as just (yet) another series of distractions, the shapes of which may change but whose effects remain consistent. Then it was placed within my thought that this was something other, not a diversion but a call to greater integration. As these forms began to emerge from their contours, I slowly began to recognize them as representations of the multi-dimensional impressions of sacramental life as viewed by our class, the essence of which transcends any imposition of finite objectivity.  In time, these perceptions lead me to a place of serenity, of calm, of surrender to the underlying actuality that is at the center of all the Sacraments; the incarnate Divine in all things: 

The Presence of Spirit.

Blessings to my Soulful Sisters in Him/Her  ~ Walter