Holistic Health Log: Day 2, Centering Prayer

If you read my blog regularly, you’ll note that I really value silence in my life and in my relationship with God. Starting in my senior year of college at Davidson, I was exposed through the Catholic Fellowship group on campus to the spiritual discipline of contemplative or centering prayer. While it was extremely difficult at first to sit in silence for 20-30 minutes at a time repeating a prayer word, concentrating on my breathing, and making space for God, the discipline has become life-changing for me.Currently, a group of 5-10 of us meet in my room on Tuesday nights to do lectio divina and engage in about 20 minutes of centering prayer. After we read the scripture and dim the lights, the silence invades the room and all that is left is the sounds of breathing, rhythmically, in and out, in and out. On each evening it is apparent how little silence, how little space, we make in our lives for God, and how little time we provide God in just breathing before him, being ourselves. Centering Prayer has revolutionized the way I theologically and spiritually interpret silence. Whereas silence is often interpreted as the absence of God, Centering Prayer has convinced me that God is actively moving in the silence. The discipline causes one to value, even crave the silence, because it represents a time in which in our willingness to meet God with openness and reverence is met by God’s overwhelming grace.