Nebraska
contemplative outreach
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NEWSLETTER
2012 Winter - Spring
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Contemplative Outreach Annual United in Prayer Day
9:00 am - 2:00 pm
Lakeside Village Retirement Center, Community Room
17475 Frances Street, Omaha, Nebraska
(Event details, registration, and luncheon cost coming soon.)
Join us this year for our 20th Annual United in Prayer Day featuring spiritual enrichment from the newly released DVD Contemplative Journey Revisited where Fr. Thomas Keating presents "The House of God, The Womb of God" and Fr. Micah Schoenberger, a wonderful, insightful monk from St. Benedict’s Monastery, Snowmass, Colorado, presents "Reflections on Lectio Divina".
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Introduction to Centering Prayer Workshop
(Location and further details will follow later.)
Thomas Hall, Presenter
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September 29 - October 6, 2012
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8-day Intensive/Post Intensive Centering Prayer Retreat
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St. Benedict Retreat Center, Schuyler, NE
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(Retreat details and registration info will follow later.)
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Fr. John Mark Ettensohn, OMI
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Retreat Director
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Fr. John Mark Ettensohn, OMI, has been a Missionary Oblate of Mary Immaculate since 1985. Ordained in 1989, he has served in ministry as a pastor, retreat/renewal preaching team member and director, spiritual director, writer/producer/director in television for Oblate Media Productions. His education has included a Bachelor of Science Degree in English and World History, a Masters in Telecommunications, and a Master of Divinity Degree with emphasis in Word and Worship from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. He recently finished his work as a member of the Mission with Secularity ministry (an effort to better determine how to be effective missionaries in a secular culture) that the Oblates inaugurated in Indianapolis. Currently, he is involved full time in preaching parish missions and giving retreats.
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BOOK REVIEW
Keating, Thomas. Active Meditations for Contemplative Prayer. Continuum, 1997.
If you are someone who thinks you don’t have time to read a book on centering prayer, then this is the book for you. Here is a compilation of over one hundred short entries designed to help you in your journey of centering.
Organized in ten sections, the quotes are taken from four of Father Keating’s previous books: The Heart of the World, Open Mind, Open Heart, Crisis of Love, and Invitation to Love. The selections open with a question and answer, “What is the essence of contemplative prayer?” “The way of pure faith.” Food for thought fills this book. Consider these three.
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•“Contemplative prayer is not so much the absence of thought as detachment from them." (Page 13)
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•“This much is certain, that once we make up our minds to seek God, he is already seeking us much more eagerly…” (Page 17)
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•“The fundamental purpose of prayer… is… to change ourselves.” (Page 96)
You can learn much about centering prayer practice as you read the wisdom of this book. Got a minute? Pick up Active Meditations for Contemplative Prayer and be inspired.
~ Mary J. Lickteig
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QUOTES & SNIPPETS
The kingdom of God is among you.
— Luke 17:21
The Contemplative Life
Everybody who does Centering Prayer always asks, "How can I be a contemplative in everyday life, with its noise, turmoil, and constant interruptions? How can I be interiorly quiet when the world is getting noisier and the pace of life faster?"
The answer is to slow down and pray more. Prayer has the great advantage of giving us a perspective on what we have to do. If we practice contemplative prayer every day, we find that we have more time for everything else. This is because we were doing a lot of things that we don't really have to do. Contemplative prayer cultivates the gift of discernment. Spiritual discernment is not something we have to try to do; it arises spontaneously as one of the fruits of the Spirit communicated to us during contemplative prayer.
The greatest source of security, independence, and true love is the firm conviction that the Divine Trinity--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--dwells within us all the time, twenty-four hours a day, under all circumstances, and is totally available to us.
~ Thomas Keating, The Transformation of Suffering
Thomas Merton
The Christian life
-and especially the contemplative life-
is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places.
Julian of Norwich on Prayer
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✤ Prayer is not an idle occupation. It's a very powerful instrument of our work and love.
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✤ Pray inwardly, even if you do not enjoy it. It does good, though you feel nothing. Yes, even though you think you are doing nothing.
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✤ Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.
"Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need;
the remainder is needed by others."
Help one another with the generosity of the Lord, and despise no one.
When you have the opportunity to do good, do not let it go by.
“The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry;
the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked;
the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot;
the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor;
the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.”
Richard Rohr
Who is this God?
This Divinity is surely not beige or boring–
or afraid of a multicolored world.
Nebraska Contemplative Outreach
