June 2020 Facilitators Bulletin: Welcome the Welcoming Prayer

During our present stay-at-home we now have an opportunity to lengthen or increase our Centering Prayer periods, and through the grace of Zoom technology we also can attend many more Centering Prayer groups--whether they meet around our town, the nation, and the world. We can indeed find out that we are not alone in this, can easily be with people who have a similar orientation, and feel that we are surrounded by community.  For example, I attended a Centering Prayer group in Brazil where Portuguese was spoken. We met in spirit,  although  it was a bit odd for me when the group practiced a Lectio Divina.  No Pentecost experience for me there!  

While at home I have been learning about a companion practice to Centering Prayer, called the Welcoming Prayer.  It is another way to consent to God’s will and meet the spirit in love.  It is a prayer that we can practice throughout the day and not only during a formal sit.

For about 1 ½ months, I have been attending a Welcoming Prayer group that is sponsored by our national organization, Contemplative Outreach. The group meets through the online Meditation Chapel. I have found it to be personally beneficial,  so I am devoting this bulletin to presenting what I have learned about this prayer in the hope that it may be beneficial to you and to people in your groups.  A disclaimer:  Although I have known about the Welcoming Prayer and have taken two trainings on it, I have never practiced it on a regular basis until now. So I am a relative beginner.

We may be meeting this tumultuous time in history with a mixture of feelings.  Sometimes with calm and peace; at other times with fear, uncertainty, or even anger.  At times we may experience free-floating anxiety, something like the low hum of bees in our midst, present but not entirely heard or grasped.  One thing for sure is that we are being bombarded through the media with events not in our control, and at the same time dealing with situations in our lives which may not be in our control.  Although our psychological experience of the present moment is real – whatever it is –  as Mary Dwyer says, “It is not the only story”.  Through the practice of the Welcoming Prayer we can intentionally “welcome the Indwelling Spirit’s Presence” into the moment, as we go about our day, and alter our experience of the moment. 

First, a very short overview of the prayer:

The Welcoming Prayer was developed in the early 1980’s by Mary Mrozowski while she was in  biofeedback training.  In creating it, Mary also drew upon the book  Abandonment to Divine Providence, written by the 17th-18th century mystic,  Jean-Pierre de Caussade.   She integrated ideas from her training and from de Caussade with Thomas Keating’s teachings on the “false-self system”.  Thomas Keating says this about the Welcoming Prayer:

The Welcoming Prayer is the practice that actively lets go of thoughts and feelings that support the false-self system. It embraces painful emotions experienced in the body rather than avoiding them or trying to suppress them. It does not embrace the suffering as such but the presence of the Holy Spirit in the particular pain, whether physical, emotional, or mental. Thus, it is the full acceptance of the content of the present moment. In giving the experience over to the Holy Spirit, the false-self system is gradually undermined and the true self liberated.

 

 The Three Movements of the Welcoming Prayer

 

Movement 1: FEEL/SINK into whatever you are experiencing in your body in this moment.

Allow your breath to touch your physical being without judgment.  Whatever is manifesting--sink into it.

In this part of the prayer we are noticing the physical part of ourselves. We are sinking into and not trying to change whatever we find and are just experiencing  our body.

Here we may do a brief guided inventory by internally scanning the different  areas of our body to discern which parts are, for example, tense, stiff, have tightness or have pain.  When we find these areas we just take notice but do not analyze the “why?” of what we are experiencing, or judge it.

We can take notice by asking ourselves:  What am I experiencing? Where is it? What does it feel like? Is it moving around? Am I tensing parts of my body or breathing differently than usual? We try to be fully present to this sensation rather than pushing it away.  When you become aware of a body sensation, rest or stop and sink into or experience it.  Stay with what you are perceiving whether it is positive or negative.  These feelings may change while you stay with them.  Just follow their movement.

Why first a focus on the body?  According to the Contemplative Life 40 Day Program created by Contemplative Outreach:  

The reason for paying attention to your body and your interior state is that the mind deceives.  The body never lies.  Listen to the wisdom of your body. Hear its truth. There is never a thought, feeling or emotion that does not have a corresponding body sensation.  Each experience is imprinted in every cell of our body.  Every thought, feeling and emotion has a location in the body, its own ‘zip code’.  Sometimes it may move to a new zip code.  Follow it.

Movement 2: WELCOME:  We silently say “Welcome”; it is the sacred word and the symbol of our consent to the presence and action of the Indwelling Spirit.

When I was first learning this second movement, I experienced some confusion about understanding what it was I am welcoming.  I think the following excerpt from de Caussade’s book helped me with this:

The Divine action, although only visible to the eye of faith, is everywhere, and always present...  There is not a moment in which God does not present himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed.  All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals his divine action.

“Saying the word ‘welcome’ is the action of embracing the Indwelling Spirit” whom we know by faith is always present. We are consenting to the presence of the sacred and to this moment, just as it is. So along with embracing the Indwelling Spirit, we are also welcoming every physical sensation that we are experiencing in our body and embracing what we find happening within.

We consent to God’s presence by embracing what is being triggered within us: the sensations we experience in our body and the accompanying emotions.  We are not welcoming the situations that are triggering us, whatever they may be: a medical diagnosis, Covid-19, or political unrest and turmoil.

You may want to go back or return to the part of your body where you are experiencing some sensation and perhaps where you feel some emotion. Sink into it, and be present to it as though you are lovingly taking care of someone else.  Don’t resist it. Just be with it, knowing the indwelling presence is with you.

According to Lindsay Boyer,  it can be difficult to be fully present to and accepting of what we are experiencing. So in the Welcoming Prayer groups I have attended through the Meditation Chapel, we have practiced  three cycles of the three movements.  This practicing of the prayer three times has been guided by a practitioner.   Another way to practice the prayer is to go back and forth between Movement #1 and Movement #2  before going on to Movement #3.   

      

We then move into

Movement 3: LET GO:  "I let go of my desire for security, affection, control, and embrace this moment as it is." 

In the third movement we  say “I let go of my desire for security.  I let go of my desire for affection.  I let go of my desire for control.  And embrace this moment as it is.”

In the moment we are letting go “of thoughts and feelings that support the false-self system”.  

The Welcoming Prayer is a prayer and also a practice and a method and is not confined to a meditation period.  It is a form of “consent on the go” that can be used as briefly as thirty seconds at a time and can be practiced as we move around in our daily life throughout our day.

According to Father Arico, as we intentionally turn over our programs for happiness to the Holy Spirit, we can “just allow the Lord to be our security, affection and control” by allowing the Spirit to join us in our difficulties.

The Welcoming prayer helps us to pause and can lead us to another way of responding to life, one that is different than our usual and habitual way of acting.

We can, with God’s grace, and with honesty and humility, move towards becoming “beacons of light” and take “responsibility for our part in the scheme of the things”. 

--Father Carl Arico, Mary Dwyer

With God’s help, may our trust and consent deepen.

In this bulletin I have given an overview of the Welcoming Prayer while providing a concrete explanation about how to go about doing it, so that if you are interested in practicing it, you have some tools to do so.

Please let me know about your experiences with the prayer and also send me any comments or questions you have about it.  Although it is a simple practice, I think this prayer is richly layered and nuanced, so I am planning to continue writing about it in a future bulletin. What I hear from you will guide me as I write.

The following are some resources on the Welcoming Prayer that I have used and drawn upon in this bulletin:

meditationchapel.org  Tuesdays at 7 am in the Peace Chapel;  Thursdays at 5 pm in the John Main Chapel: both 30-minute sessions.  Guided meditations on the Welcoming Prayer are provided by experienced practitioners. These groups are sponsored by Contemplative Outreach Ltd.

Contemplativeoutreach.org   Information on the Welcoming Prayer (Father Arico and Mary Dwyer); Brochure, and Practice Book.

Thechapelofthecross.org         Welcoming Prayer

The Contemplative Society      Welcoming Prayer

LindsayBoyer.com                    Welcoming Prayer

~Kathy Agnew