On the 4th Saturday of each month from 10 -11 AM, Fr. Brian Goodwin will be facilitating a time for both listening with the “ears of our hearts” in Lectio Divina and silent contemplation in Centering Prayer at Good Shepherd. Each of these Christian spiritual practices have stood time’s test, offering space and silence for listening to God.

Lectio Divina is a four-step path for being present with the words of scripture, allowing them to speak to each practitioner as God’s Spirit leads. This spiritual discipline offers a balance to methodically reading the whole of scripture by making the ingestion of scripture the slow work of a lifetime. This practice was already one of the established means of reading and listening to scripture, when St. Benedict wrote his Rule for monastic life in the early 6th century. He describes the discipline there as it is still practiced. This process of reading, meditating, praying, and contemplating a select portion of scripture is referred to as Lectio Divina or Holy Reading.

In the later part of the fourteenth century, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing described a process of contemplation that has often been used in the fourth step of Lectio. This contemplative prayer of surrender to God re-emerged in the mid-twentieth century in monastic communities in North America through the leading of Fr. Thomas Keating and others. Centering Prayer offers practitioners a space for both silence and the continual process of surrendering thoughts and concerns to God as they arise, to create space to simply be in the presence of the One whose unfailing love created and sustains each of us.

No prior experience is required with either of these practices to participate. If you are interested in joining a group Lectio and Centering Prayer sit or have further questions, please talk with Fr. Brian.