Advent Day 21: Thomas Keating
God's first language is silence
God’s first language is silence. Everything else is translation.
Advent Day 21: Thomas Keating
Few in modern times have done more to revive Christian contemplative practice than Trappist monk Thomas Keating.
Thomas was born in 1923 to an affluent New York family. At age five, he became gravely ill and promised God that, should he recover, he would one day become a priest. Thomas did recover, and he kept his word. In 1943, he took a vow of poverty and entered Our Lady of the Falls monastery in Rhode Island. After the monastery burned down, he and his Trappist brothers transferred to St. Joseph’s Abbey in Massachusetts where, in 1961, Thomas was elected abbot.
His twenty years at St. Joseph’s spanned one of the most tumultuous periods in American, and church, history. As the country’s youth joined social movements that rejected old ways of doing things, many fled the faiths in which they’d been raised. While some rejected spiritual life altogether, most were, in fact, on a quest for deeper, more meaningful and liberated lives. They longed to get in touch with their higher power, but their childhood faiths had not equipped them with the tools to do so. Instead, they turned to Eastern traditions, particularly Buddhism, which had gained a toehold in the west.
When the Insight Meditation Center, a Buddhist mindfulness retreat facility, opened just a few miles from St. Joseph’s, Thomas watched with chagrin as many young people flocked to it. He was not envious of the center’s success but rather dismayed at the public’s lack of familiarity with Christianity’s contemplative traditions. A contemplative himself, Thomas knew Christians had the tools and practices to foster deep connection with Ultimate Reality. But he was also painfully aware that, since the Reformation, the church had done a horrible job of transmitting those traditions, even to monks. Nor did modern life with its noise and busyness help matters. More and more people were living isolated lives, separated from neighbors and nature.
For Thomas, God permeated everything.
We rarely think of the air we breathe, yet it is in us and around us all the time. In similar fashion, the presence of God penetrates us, is all around us, is always embracing us…The chief thing that separates us from God is the thought that we are separated from God.
Like Bede Griffiths, and other modern monastics, Thomas lamented the fact that Westerners had largely lost the sense of God-in-everything, and the ability to access the deepest dimensions of their souls. He decided the time was ripe for a contemplative revival.
Over the next few years, Thomas and fellow monks Basil Pennington and William Meninger resurrected the ancient Benedictine practice of Lectio Divina and promoted Centering Prayer, a style of meditation described in the spiritual 14th century spiritual classic The Cloud of Unknowing. In The Cloud, the author describes a (deceptively) simple prayer—similar to modern Transcendental Meditation and Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen—where one releases all conceptions of God and oneself, and all desires except to know God.
This is what you are to do: lift up your heart to the Lord, with a gentle stirring of love desiring him for his own sake and not his gifts. Center all your attention and desire on him and let this be the sole concern of your mind and heart.
Through Thomas’s efforts, Centering Prayer (described in the Practice section below) quickly began to catch on. In 1981, sensing that a spiritual revival was afoot, Thomas moved to St. Benedict’s monastery in Snowmass, Colorado where he created Contemplative Outreach, a ministry to support contemplative Christian practice. There, he ran popular retreats and fostered dialogue with leaders and practitioners from the world’s religions.
For Thomas, his work was all in service of
… opening the mind and heart—our whole being—to God, the ultimate mystery, beyond thoughts, words, and emotions. Through grace, we open our awareness to God whom we know by faith is within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking…closer than consciousness itself.
Thomas’s primary practice was Centering Prayer, in which silence was the key. It is in silence, Thomas believed, where we are best able to become aware of God’s presence. Of course, this Presence is there, and available, all the time, but is difficult to access through the noise, egoism and anxiety of modern life. So, Centering Prayer becomes about letting go—of noise, control, our false selves, our hunger for approval and praise, our conditioned responses and reactions, our drives for “happiness” by pursuing things that don’t actually make us happy. In silence we walk through a gateway into a deeper life. This is the paradox Jesus points to in Matthew 16—by losing the lives we think we are living we, in fact, save our souls. If we can consent to “losing” our lives, we start to discover that the immersive kingdom of heaven about which Jesus speaks (Luke 17:21) is already working on and through us.
But this is tough work and takes daily practice. There is simply no spiritual shortcut. As they say in 12-step programs, it works if you work it. This is not spiritualism or a sales pitch. Modern science is now proving what contemplatives of all traditions have known forever—that the brain, body and behaviors can actually be rewired by long-term, sustained meditation practice.
Thomas Keating died on October 25, 2018 at the age of ninety-five. He spent the last four decades of his life preaching the gospel of Centering Prayer through retreats, seminars and bestselling books. And though meditation and contemplative practice may still be more closely associated with Buddhism, thanks to Thomas a great shift has occurred. Today, Contemplative Outreach operates chapters in 39 countries, and interest among Christians in their own meditative traditions has dramatically increased, becoming a more and more important part of faith practice. If what famed Jesuit priest and theologian Karl Rahner once predicted—the Christian of the future will be a mystic or he (or she) will not exist at all—comes true, then someday we may have Thomas Keating to thank for the survival of the faith.
Practice
Thomas Keating spent the last half of his life evangelizing about Centering Prayer. On paper, Centering Prayer seems simple. And it is. But if you are going to benefit from it, this practice—and all practices—requires purpose, perseverance, and patience. Getting to a place where one’s labor bears fruit is not easy. Nor should it be. In my experience, it is an unfolding with no end. I would encourage anyone seriously interested in Centering Prayer to seek out a workshop, get a book, or find a local Christian contemplative community (ideally, all three). Contemplative Outreach is a great place to start looking for resources in your area.
For a short introduction, here are two video resources:
A brief intro to the guidelines from Thomas Keating.
Another description of the method, along with a short practice, led by my teacher Cynthia Bourgeault who studied with Thomas Keating. In this video, Cynthia describes the method then leads you through a session.
If you decide you’d like to take a stab at Centering Prayer, you’ll find five basic steps below. Again, the method is simple on its face but requires intention. When I first took it up, I’d been working with various forms of meditation for years, and I found the first couple months very challenging. But if you stick with it, over time you will begin to make headway. And, someday, you’ll wonder how you ever did without it.
The ideal is to practice Centering Prayer in 20-minute sessions. But if you’re coming at meditation with little to no experience, you may consider starting with a short session of five minutes and build from there. Keep in mind that the steps below are just intended to give you a little to go on. There is no substitute for finding a community, either in person or on Zoom.
Find a comfortable, quiet spot and sit upright with your eyes closed.
Choose a sacred word as a touchstone. Words like peace, love or God are commonly used, though any word will do (the shorter the word, the better).
Try to get into a state of relaxed presence. This is not the type of prayer where you are trying to problem-solve, petition or make appeals to God. When you catch your mind drifting to memories or your to-do list or an emotion you’re wrestling with, then….
Silently repeat your sacred word to gently guide yourself back to Presence.
Try and remain in this state for 20 minutes.
Upcoming Holiday Happenings at Life In The City
Dec. 18, 11:15 am: Fourth Sunday of Advent service.
Dec. 21, 7:30 pm: Blue Christmas, an intimate service for the longest night of the year.
Dec. 23, 7:00 pm: Our annual Christmas Eve-Eve service.
Dec. 25, 11:15 am: Celebrate Christmas morning with your church family.
Jan 1, 11:15 am: A quiet, contemplative service to welcome 2023.
Feedback
This is a first draft of a book that will go to publishers in 2023. If you spot typos or have suggestions, leave them in the comments below or email Greg Durham at greg@lifeinthecityaustin.org.
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Read the Introduction to The Heart Moves Toward Light: Advent With The Mystics, Saints and Prophets.
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