This Week

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

   We speak of prayer as simply being in the presence of God along with a conscious awareness that we are there!  Both are necessary.  The experience of Presence moves us beyond what we might impose upon ourselves when we speak of “saying prayers,” or “setting aside time for prayer,” as if there is a need for transition into prayer from our realm of everyday experience to the realm of the sacred.
   Spirituality calls us rather into a “community of the Sacred in all things, where Presence touches us at the root of our everyday human experience.  Prayer is a backdrop to all our experiences of life.  It is like the ever present bass of Pachebel’s Canon in D, grounding us in the dance of life.
   Such moments of beauty as being moved by Beethoven’s Pastoral, a first visit to the Grand Canyon, the bright autumn colors, the smell of a freshly baked apple pie, the laughter of a toddler, the sharing and welcome that happens here at Centering Space – all these are experiences of Mystery — of being opened to the sense of More than what we see, smell, hear, taste, or feel. Moment by moment we enter into Presence.

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Contemplative prayer is
simply being in the presence of God
and knowing it.
Bishop Ken Untener