Contemplative Prayer - Saint Mark's Episcopal Cathedral

Contemplative Prayer

The Contemplative Prayer group gathers in the Saint Mark’s Cathedral nave each week. Meetings begin with a time of silent meditation, followed by a discussion of contemplative experience and practices, including Centering Prayer. All who yearn for a richer spiritual life are welcome, whether you sit regularly and want to practice with others or you’re curious and looking for support—or, especially, if you think you can’t sit in silence because your life is too hectic or your mind won’t shut up or you tried it and it “didn’t work.” Come, sit. There’s no such thing as not being able to meditate—whatever happens happens. All are welcome, and over time, it will change you.

Phil Fox Rose (phil@philfoxrose.com)

7-8 p.m., weekly on Tuesdays September to May, typically in the nave

Upcoming Events

There are no upcoming events.

About Centering Prayer

Prayer is relationship with the divine. There are lots of expressions of relationship, each with parallels in prayer—talking to each other, listening to each other, doing things together, and, sometimes, when you're with a loved one, you aren't doing or saying anything; you're just being in each other's presence. That's what meditation is in the Christian tradition: sitting in the presence of the divine, or, as St. Gregory the Great in the 6th century described it, “resting in God.”

For 1,600 years in the Christian tradition, prayer was understood to include formless contemplation. Starting in the 1200s and deepening in the 17th century, there was a shift towards scholasticism and rational study, away from the mystical and contemplative, until most Christians thought it something only for the odd mystic.

Centering prayer brings the Christian meditative tradition out of the monastery to make it more widely accessible again. The contemplatio phase of lectio divina is part of its foundation. The example of Jesus in the Gospels, who often went off alone to be with his Father, forms another part. Centering prayer is also inspired by writings of major contributors to the Christian contemplative tradition, including the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, and John Cassian, Symeon the New Theologian, Francis de Sales, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thérèse of Lisieux and Thomas Merton.