Father Thomas Keating was voted by the members and visitors of Universe Spirit as our September Spiritual Teacher/Artist of the month.
Father Thomas Keating is one of the foremost teachers of contemplative prayer in the Christian tradition. He was born in New York in 1923 and converted to Catholicism while a student at Yale University in the 1940s. He entered a cloistered Roman Catholic monastery of the Cistercian order. Keating is the former abbot of St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, and has resided at St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado.
Father Keating along with M. Basil Pennington, is co-founder of the Centering Prayer movement and of Contemplative Outreach, a worldwide nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging the practice of this Christian form of meditation. Over the years, he has spoken to monks, clergy, and laypeople all over the world about devotional practices. He also frequently participates in dialogues with contemplatives of other religions.
Centering Prayer is a method of prayer, which prepares us to receive the gift of God's presence, traditionally called contemplative prayer. It consists of responding to the Spirit of Christ by consenting to God’s presence and action within. It furthers the development of contemplative prayer by quieting our faculties to cooperate with the gift of God’s presence. Centering Prayer is drawn from ancient prayer practices of the Christian contemplative heritage, notably the Fathers and Mothers of the Desert, Lectio Divina, (praying the scriptures), The Cloud of Unknowing, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila.
It helps that Keating also has an unusually open-minded attitude towards the meditative practices of other traditions and has studied with spiritual teachers from a variety of Hindu and Buddhist lineages, for this lead to the creation of the Snowmass Interreligious Conference in 1982, where teachers from diverse paths meet regularly to compare notes and evaluate the successes and failures of their respective practices. Other organizations graced by the presence of Keating include the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (which sponsors exchanges between the monks and nuns of every religion), and the International Committee for Peace Council.
Keating is also a best-selling author, having penned, along with many other publications, the best-selling Open Heart, Open Mind in 1986, a clarion call for many to the need for transformational practice within the Christian tradition.
Books and audio by Father Thomas Keating:
- Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel
- Invitation to Love: The Way of Christian Contemplation
- The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation
- Centering Prayer in Daily Life and Ministry
- Intimacy with God
- Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit
- The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy As Spiritual Experience
- Foundations for Centering Prayer and the Christian Contemplative Life
- Active Meditations for Contemplative Prayer
- The Better Part: Stages of Contemplative Living
- Awakenings
- Reawakenings
- The Kingdom of God Is Like
- Crisis of Faith, Crisis of Love (Crisis of Faith, Crisis of Love)
- Manifesting God
- Contemplative Prayer (Audio CD )
To learn more about Father Keating and the Centering Prayer movement visit: www.centeringprayer.org
To purchase further books, videos and tapes visit: https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=COB
And to hear a discussion/dialogue with Father Keating on Integral Naked’s site, please visit: http://www.integralnaked.org/talk.aspx?id=95
Newsweek Article: In Search of the Spiritual - "Move over, politics. Americans are looking for personal, ecstatic experiences of God, and, according to our poll, they don't much care what the neighbors are doing."
To read Father Keating’s weekly articles visit: http://www.centeringprayer.com/wklyart.htm