News and Events
• Online Course on Lectio Divina June 2 - 27, 2014
Lectio Divina is the ancient practice of listening to scripture and sacred texts with the ear of the heart. This online course from Spirituality and Practice will include
• three emails per week with excerpts from the contemplative teachings of Fr. Thomas Keating and others, exploring the practice and its background in the Christian tradition;
• video and audio excerpts of Fr. Thomas Keating;
• guided meditations and practices to help participants learn and develop a daily practice of Lectio Divina;
• engagement with the retreat leaders Mike Potter, Leslee Terpay, Julie Saad and Pamela Begeman for questions and guidance;
• an online community and support through the Practice Circle.
I have signed up myself for this online course. The presenters are from Contemplative Outreach and I have heard good things about these online courses from Spirituality and Practice. If you'd like to join me, perhaps I'll see you in the online community. The course costs $49.95 and partial scholarships are available upon request.
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• Spirituality and Creativity Quiet Day
Grace Church, Brooklyn
254 Hicks Street, Brooklyn 11201
Take a day to refresh yourself and listen to God and your inner voice through prayer, the creative arts, and silence. On Saturday March 22nd from 10 am to 3 pm there will be a Lenten quiet day at Grace Church, Brooklyn on the theme of spirituality and creativity. I will lead a number of quiet, meditative activities, including a brief talk, centering prayer, guided meditation, poetry reading, and brief interludes of quiet music. Participants are invited to bring knitting, drawing, crafts, journaling, or any activity that may be pursued in silence, and we will have time to work, play, rest, and pray together in silence. All activities will be optional so that participants may have as structured or unstructured an experience as they would like. Lunch will be provided and we will eat in silence. Books and art materials will be available. A voluntary contribution may be made to cover the cost of the lunch.
Email me to sign up or for more information.
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• Join David Frenette, Steve Standiford and me on our annual retreat
Heartful Life, Centered Life
An Exploration of Heartfulness Practice and Centering Prayer
The Garrison Institute, Garrison NY
March 14- 16, 2014
This year our retreat at the Garrison Institute will focus on the Heartfulness Practice, a deeply embodied meditation practice that helps us to cultivate sacred attention and to turn to God in the present moment with a tender heart.
This silent, practice-oriented weekend retreat is appropriate for both experienced practitioners and beginners in meditation. David will introduce the Heartfulness Practice, exploring how the practice helps to ground us in sacred attention, open to divine presence, and integrate contemplation into everyday life. He will also examine its relationship with Centering Prayer.
While the practices taught on this retreat come out of the Christian tradition and our activities will be rooted in the Psalms and other sacred Judeo-Christian scripture, we welcome those of any faith. There will be many meditation periods during which retreatants may choose whether to practice Heartfulness, Centering Prayer, or other silent forms of meditation.
This weekend retreat runs from the evening of Friday, March 14 through lunch on Sunday, March 16. We regret that we have had to cancel the nine day option that was originally scheduled for this retreat.
For more information or to register for the retreat
Watch a video of Thomas Keating inviting you to the retreat.
Watch a video of David inviting you to the retreat.
Read an article about Centering Prayer and David's book The Path of Centering Prayer
in America: The National Catholic Review.
Read an article about my personal experience of the Heartfulness Practice.
Email me for more information.
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• There is a nice article on the General Theological Seminary website about News of the World Lectio Divina by the Rev. K. Jeanne Person, who is just leaving her role as Director of the Center for Christian Spirituality at General to become Canon for Pastoral Care in the Episcopal Diocese of New York.
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• South Indian Spiritual Adventure March 1 - 10, 2014
My friend Dandapani, a Hindu priest, will be leading a tour of South India in March. Members of the tour will visit some of the holiest temples in Tamil Nadu such as Chidumbaram and the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai and also tour beautiful Kerala. Dandapani will teach meditation and provide information about Hindu practices. I have traveled to India with Dandapani three times; he is a wonderful guide! For more information, visit Dandapani’s website.
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• News of the World Lectio Divina
I am creating a series of short daily videos which combine chanting of the New York Times and the psalms. These short videos provide a way of entering into prayer for the world as if attending a very brief prayer service, about two minutes long.
The ancient prayers of the psalms ask many of the same questions that we may be asking as we listen to the troubling events described in the news: Why are you sleeping, God? Why do you seem to hide in times of trouble? Will you help us and comfort us as we try to deal with this situation? Why is the world so lost? Lectio divina is a traditional way of listening to sacred readings with the ear of the heart and invites us to listen in a deeply engaged way. Both the news and the psalms are full of material that may evoke difficult feelings in the listener. It’s all right to hear the words of prayer that are being chanted and not agree with them. Prayer does not demand that we stop questioning, doubting, thinking, or struggling to find our own voice. These prayers invite you to be with your feelings and questions about what is happening in the world and go deeper, whatever that may mean for you.
These videos can be found on Youtube and Facebook and there is more information about them here.
These videos are very much a work in progress and I welcome comments and suggestions.
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• Janet Cardiff’s Installation of Tallis’s Forty Part Motet at the Cloisters
For those who love sacred music, I highly recommend The Forty Part Motet, a sound installation by Janet Cardiff that will be presented at The Cloisters from September 10 through December 8, 2013. The installation consists of 40 high-fidelity speakers positioned on stands in a large oval configuration playing the forty part vocal work Spem in alium numquam habui by the fifteenth century composer Thomas Tallis.
I saw this installation when it was at Lincoln Center a few years ago and returned again and again to experience its meditative power and the unique experience of being able to walk between the forty speakers, experiencing the eleven minute piece from different positions as it plays continuously. I would expect that in the beautiful Fuentiduena Chapel of the Cloisters this version of the Spem, as the work is known to its many devotees, will be even more extraordinary.
Read a New York Times review, with a sample of the music.
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• Grace Church Brooklyn Centering Prayer Group Resumes Tuesday, September 10th at 7 pm in the Hope Library
Join us any Tuesday as we enter our eighth year of practicing centering prayer, a silent, wordless form of prayer that is easy to learn, and lectio divina, a traditional way of praying with scripture. The meeting usually lasts about an hour and a quarter. Newcomers are always welcome. We have recently made a few adjustments to our program to make it more comfortable for those of all faiths. During renovations in the main church, we are located in the Hope Library. Enter through the Hicks Street entrance and go all the way up the stairs to reach this cozy, quiet room. For more information, contact me or see more details about our program on this website.
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• Your Body Knows The Answer: Five-week telephone course in Mindful Focusing, led by David I. Rome
Five Tuesdays, beginning October 1, 7:30 – 9:00 PM US Eastern time. Cost: $245.
I have taken this course with David Rome and highly recommend it. Learning how to find the felt sense is a very useful way to access your body’s own deep, non-conceptual knowing. The techniques used in this course are based on the work of Eugene Gendlin and are a very useful complement to a meditation practice. The teleconferencing format works well for this course.
To learn more contact David Rome.
To register please go to David's website.
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• Course on Spiritual Practice and Digital Media at General Theological Seminary
In Fall 2013 at General Theological Seminary I will be teaching a three credit course on spiritual practice and digital media on Wednesdays from 9 am to 10:50 am, plus a digital lab time to be determined. General Theological Seminary is located at 175 Ninth Avenue, between 20th and 21st Streets in Manhattan.
AT393 – Spiritual Companionship & Digital Media Practicum
This course will explore the use of digital media in spiritual community and practice. We will experience how we are present to each other through spiritual practices such as lectio divina, centering prayer, focusing, group and individual spiritual direction, intercessory prayer, pastoral care, and worship in traditional formats and then experience these practices in digital contexts such as the telephone, the web, social media, email, and Skype.
This class will be of interest not only to those who are interested in using digital media in ministry but also to those who are not particularly attracted to digital media but would like to learn more about the nature of spirituality using digital media as investigative tools. We will also explore the more troubling uses of digital media in our culture, the ways in which they may endanger spiritual values, and the ways in which we, as spiritual leaders, may be called upon to take a prophetic role in guiding others in their use of digital media.
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