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DIVINE THERAPY
APRIL 5, 1996
TRANSCRIPT
As Easter approaches, "Time" Magazine's religion correspondent, Richard Ostling, looks at the power of prayer.
RICHARD OSTLING: (Church Bells Ringing) Nestled in a valley only a 30-minute drive but worlds away from the bustling ski resort of Aspen, Colorado, is St. Benedict's Monastery. On a recent Friday, twenty lay Christians joined a dozen of the Trappist monks for a morning Mass. The visitors were attending an intensive 10-day spiritual retreat, much of it spent in silence. These monks open their doors to retreats like this throughout the year. Though once attended by few, it's estimated that this year, 1.2 million Americans will go on retreats at Catholic centers across the country. Father Thomas Keating, a national leader of what's known as the contemplative movement, thinks over-stressed Americans have a deep need for solitude.
FR. THOMAS KEATING, Trappist Monk: A certain amount of silence is almost like food and bread and drink. It's part of human life. It's a place in which one reflects on, on the day and sips through one's motivation and lays aside that which is harmful to others and to oneself, and, and above all, put it this way, silence is God's first language. So to know God, we need to learn how to be silent.
MR. OSTLING: Those attending the Colorado retreat are among the growing numbers who follow a practice known as centering prayer. It was developed by Keating and fellow monks in the 1970's at a time when many sought a deeper spiritual life through meditation in Eastern religion. The monks wanted to offer a Christian alternative, making their tradition of contemplation available to lay Christians in everyday life. In this method, a person sits in silence and focuses on a sacred word that expresses an intention to be in the presence of God, a form of prayer beyond words, thoughts, and emotions. Keating recommends 20-minute sessions, twice a day.
FR. THOMAS KEATING: Centering prayer is a consenting--and that's all it is--to what is, that is to say to the existence of God within us and love, and so one is moving towards that presence of love at the deepest level of one's being and leaves behind the ordinary psychological self and the events of the day and also our emotional reactions to what is happening. If you think of prayer as just words or songs, it's very limited. Prayer is primarily, in essence, a relationship.
CAROL WEBER: And I tasted a peacefulness within myself that I certainly could not have imagined and yet I experienced it. I tasted it.
MR. OSTLING: Carol Weber, a long-time Catholic, is attending her third intensive retreat at St. Benedict's. A month after she returned to Minnesota from an earlier retreat, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
CAROL WEBER: My reaction to it surprised me in that I had a sense of joy and peace inside. Now, if someone would have asked me how would you respond if you had cancer, I would, I would think I would have had a lot more emotional turmoil and, and fear, but that really wasn't the case. I had a sense of, of joy, and I told my friends and I told my family, you know, this may change, and I don't know what will happen tomorrow down the road, but right now, I do feel peace and a sense of being carried, cared for.
MR. OSTLING: For those like Weber who follow the practice, centering prayer is not just for retreats. It's a daily discipline. Denver lawyer John Congdon leaves his downtown office at lunchtime each day to meditate in a nearby chapel. He says the discipline helps him let life unfold, rather than trying to control people and events.
JOHN CONGDON: It opens one to the understanding of the importance of, of loving God totally and trying to consent to God's will in one's life, however that unfolds. But it also, it also leads one to understand the importance of loving all other people unconditionally. I think this is the only reason we're here is to learn how to do this.
MR. OSTLING: Centering prayer involves what Keating calls divine therapy. He says the deep rest allows the person to let go of painful emotional experiences, even from early childhood, a process similar to psychotherapy, only in centering prayer, Keating says, it's the experience of God's love that brings about the inner healing.
FR. THOMAS KEATING: It's a moment of union with God, with the ultimate existence, by experiences within you and loving you and affirming you and accepting you and knowing all about you and still loving you. It is this experience that changes one's idea of life and its meaning, and moves one to see life as a service of others, not just as, as an opportunity for one more grandiose ego trip after another.
MR. OSTLING: Carol Weber says centering prayer has helped free her from painful childhood experiences and what she felt was an inordinate need to be loved and noticed by others.
CAROL WEBER: I like to be liked by people. I like to have recognition for things, and I've been going through a time of letting go of all of those ambitions, letting go of, of the need to be recognized and the need to be esteemed for anything.
MR. OSTLING: Pat Johnson, who runs the retreat program at St. Benedict's, says the release of painful memories is sometimes emotionally charged.
PAT JOHNSON, Retreat Coordinator: In an intensive situation like this, sometimes it comes erupting out like you hit an oil well, and in those times, umm, the staff has to be ready to help the person get through that and to see that this is absolutely normal, and, umm, better out than in. Sometimes, you know, we just hold a person and don't say a word, and basically we're there to let 'em know that they're really not crazy.
MR. OSTLING: Although some see a potential danger in these crises, Johnson says her staff is able to handle most situations, and professional counselors are kept on call. Others criticize meditation, saying the practitioners become too preoccupied with themselves and not others. A retreatant put this concern to Keating during the retreat.
WOMAN: Is there a safeguard against developing an indifference towards social justice or towards action in the world?
FR. THOMAS KEATING: On the contrary, true detachment makes one more concerned about what--the injustice of the world and it also gives one the courage, the strength, and the stamina to deal with difficult ministries.
MR. OSTLING: The strongest criticisms from conservatives within the Catholic Church. One program which ran on the Eternal Word Catholic Cable Network accused centering prayer of being too close to Hinduism. Father Mitchell Pacwa of the University of Dallas, who experimented with various forms of Eastern meditation, is a commentator on the Eternal Word Network. He raised another concern with producer Kate Olsen.
FR. MITCHELL PACWA, University of Dallas: The technique is still one where you put the intellect on "hold." You know, you dismiss all thoughts, you know, hold on to no thoughts, react to no thoughts, retain no thoughts. These are some of his phrases. And why? The rational mind is one of the characteristic gifts of what it means to be a human being. And I don't see Christ ever saying, you know, stop thinking, stop using reason, clear your mind. He never taught that.
MR. OSTLING: But Keating says he's simply recovering a tradition of prayer practiced by the early Church which hasn't been visible at the parish level for centuries.
FR. THOMAS KEATING: And it's drawn right out of gospel, as Jesus said that you got into the closet when you want to pray and be quiet and talk to your heavenly Father in secret and He'll reward you in secret, but God not in a thought, not in a feeling, not in an experience, but God as he is in himself. And since we don't know what that is, it's God as mystery.
MR. OSTLING: Keating insists his method is different from Hindu meditation which uses a mantra to quiet the mind and doesn't involve prayer to a personal God.
CAROL WEBER: (speaking to group) Centering prayer is not made to take the place of other prayer in your life.
MR. OSTLING: The movement is expanding in Catholic parishes across the country. Carol Weber presented it to a large turnout at her home church in Staples, Minnesota. And centering prayer is moving well beyond Catholic boundaries. Keating recently addressed hundreds of people from many denominations attending a day-long retreat at an Episcopal church in Denver.
FR. THOMAS KEATING: The babe has risen, the most sensational event of all time. What does it mean to you? What could it mean to you? What will it mean to you on Easter Sunday?
MR. OSTLING: The Ecumenical group then joined him for a period of centering prayer in the sanctuary. For those who take up the rigors of a daily spiritual practice, the experience of silence, once confined to monasteries, is quietly making a mark on their lives.
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