Contemplative Outreach's Origin Story

Contemplative Outreach’s Origin Story

The Christian Contemplative Tradition and Centering Prayer: A Brief History

(slightly adapted from a handout provided by Bonnie Shimizu during a Presenter Training in 2011). 

I. Contemplative Prayer is the opening of mind and heart—our whole being—to God. It is a process of interior transformation leading to Divine Union.

II. In the first sixteen centuries A.D, silent contemplative prayer was a very acceptable way of praying.

III. During the Reformation of the 16^th century, the tradition became suspect, especially for the laity and the active religious, and much of it went underground or was lost.

IV. In the 20^th Century, there was a revival in interest in SILENT prayer. How did this occur?

            A. The publication of Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain in 1948. This spiritual autobiography inspired scores of WWII veterans, students, and young people to explore offerings of monasteries across the U.S.

            B. Two pivotal events in the 1960s, one in the East and the other in the West, happened almost simultaneously:

                        1. The exile of the Dalai Lama from Tibet in 1960, and

                        2. Vatican II (1963-65), the Catholic Church’s second ecumenical council, which  

                            addressed relations between the church and the modern world.

                        3. The Dalai Lama’s exile birthed forth the monastic tradition into the marketplace, and

                            Vatican II opened the door to ecumenism and interreligious dialogue.

                        4. It was during this time that many Christians began looking to the East for a deeper

                            prayer life. Why? Because they found in the East a meditation practice leading to

                            deep and meaningful changes within themselves.

                        5. Pope Paul VI recognized this need for the revival of contemplative prayer in our

                            own tradition – something that had been part of the Christian tradition but which

                            had been lost. So he asked the abbots of monasteries to develop a method of

                            contemplative prayer and make it available to those seeking a deeper prayer life

                            within Christianity.

            C. Fr. Thomas Keating took this invitation from Pope Paul IV seriously, and as abbot at St. Joseph’s Monastery in Spencer, MA, he asked Fr. Basil Pennington and Fr. William Meninger to put together a method of contemplative prayer that could be taught to others. So, they developed a practice they initially called “Prayer of the Cloud,” drawing from the wisdom of the 14^th-century classic, The Cloud of Unknowing.

            D. In the mid-1970’s, people began coming to the monastery. Soon, the monks were asked to go outside of the monastery to teach the Prayer of the Cloud. In the first workshop that Fr. Basil led outside of the monastery, a religious suggested the name “Centering Prayer.” (Fr. Basil had been using quotes from Thomas Merton, such as “the best way to come to God is to go to your own center and pass through that center into the center of God. The name caught on!)

            E. In the early 1980s, Fr. Thomas Keating, who had moved to St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, CO, began giving workshops in Centering Prayer. Eighty people, the majority of them laypeople, showed up for one workshop at a parish in Basalt, CO. Keating knew that something new was happening…

See also this more detailed information in the ”History” tab at the Contemplative Outreach, Ltd., website:  https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/history-of-contemplative-outreach/

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The following story is drawn from the book Audacity to Be Divine which is about Mary Mrozowski’s life and journey with Centering Prayer, as described by her daughter, Judith Halbreich.

In 1983, a two-week retreat was given by Father Keating at the Lama Foundation.** Some of the twelve people at this retreat were instrumental in helping Father Keating start the organization of Contemplative Outreach in 1984. They included David Frenette, Father Carl Arico, Father Bill Sheehan, Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler, and Pat Johnson.

At the retreat, Father Keating taught Centering Prayer and meditation along with the conceptual background to these practices. After the retreat, Father Keating returned to NYC, where he was invited to assist a young man from Columbia University who wanted to establish a contemplative center and form a board of trustees. Contemplative Outreach was formed!

Father Keating asked Father Arico and Gail F-H to be on the board of trustees of this new organization. Mary Mrozowski was asked to be the first director of Contemplative Outreach. Pat Johnson moved to Colorado and became the chief cook for retreats, and she later was to become a highly valued spiritual guide for the retreats given at St. Benedict’s Abbey in Snowmass. She still serves on the board of CO. After Mary Mrozowski’s death in 1993, Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler became the director and president of CO until her retirement in 2019. In 2020, Mary Jane Yates became the administrator for Contemplative Outreach, Ltd.

**The Lama Foundation, north of Taos, New Mexico, is a retreat center and a community. It was designed as a community that embraces all spiritual traditions and has hosted dozens of spiritual teachers and groups from many religious heritages.