I am happy (and honored/humbled) to announce that I’ve recently appeared as a guest on the new podcast from Contemplative Outreach! Opening Minds, Opening Hearts is a new initiative from Contemplative Outreach International, hosted by Colleen Thomas and Mark Dannenfelser. Other episodes of the podcast feature wonderful folks like Lerita Coleman Brown and Adam Bucko. Definitely check it out and subscribe to it. You can access the podcast’s home page by clicking here: www.contemplativeoutreach.org/podcast — or scroll down to read more about my episode and to listen…
Episode 1: Centering Prayer as a Gesture of Consent
“The gesture of centering prayer is a gesture of consent, willingness, openness, receptivity and basically saying to the spirit ‘Here I am and you are love’. I am thrilled to be responding to your love and I’m choosing to spend the next minutes available to you ” — Carl McColman
On this very first episode of Opening Minds, Opening Hearts, we welcome special guest and friend of Contemplative Outreach, Carl McColman. Carl is a spiritual leader, author, and teacher on mystical spirituality and contemplative living. Although Carl is a practicing Christian, his approach to contemplation and mysticism is inclusive and expansive. Carl sees the elegance and simplicity of the method of centering prayer as a larger conversation that the Christian community is having about reclaiming this contemplative practice.
What’s in this episode:- The relationship and distinctions between mystical traditions, Christian meditation, contemplation, and Centering Prayer.
- Silence, sacred words, and the daily practice of Centering Prayer.
- Father Thomas Keetings’s metaphor: Centering Prayer compared to boats on a river
- Exploring the four guidelines of the method of Centering Prayer.
- Mysticism as theology and the accessibility of Christianity through the gift of contemplation.
- The four questions used in spiritual direction and slowing down to savor the graces.
- The importance of interfaith dialogue, diversity, and inclusion in relation to the struggle for justice.
