Stepping Out of Daily Life: The Gift of Centering Prayer Retreats

“Of all the Contemplative Outreach events offered to those who practice Centering Prayer, one of the most valued is the experience of a CO Intensive, Advanced or Post-Intensive Retreat. These retreats … offer a unique opportunity for stepping out of daily life for an extended period of time and surrendering to a total immersion experience of Centering Prayer in spiritual community.”
​CO Retreats Guidelines & Schedules – September 2012 “Deepening Centering Prayer”

I “stepped out of daily life” for my first Intensive Centering Prayer Retreat in June at St. Mary’s Sewanee in the Cumberland Plateau of southern Tennessee. There I experienced eight days of silence and three hours a day of Centering Prayer in a community of two dozen people. For four of those days, we practiced “the Grand Silence,” meaning that we fasted not only from speaking to one another, but also from making eye contact.

At other types of spiritual development retreats that I’ve attended, I have been spiritually moved to a felt solidarity, but I discovered something deeper about human relationships in this intensive Centering Prayer retreat.

At dinner on the fifth evening, I sat at a table outside on the porch to eat my meal, gazing at the valley below and the distant mountain ridges, admiring the perfection of the scene, illuminated by the late evening sun nearing the western horizon. Someone sat down next to me, but in keeping the Grand Silence, I simply continued to stare at the pastoral scene in front of me.  As I sat and watched, I had a hyper-awareness of the presence of the unknown person beside me. I thought I might know who it was, but truthfully, I didn’t know. I had only met about half a dozen retreatants the first night before the silence began. I did not even know everyone’s name, including one of the people who sat next to me in the prayer circle every day!

After I finished eating dinner, I pushed back my plate and breathed deeply and just sat there for a while and watched several rough-winged swallows continually flying loops and circuits around the lawn in front of the porch. I imagined that they were eating insects as they swooped through the air, but they appeared to be having so much fun arcing and pirouetting – like they were dancing together. I thought, “For them, this moment might be like being in heaven.” 

My consciousness soaked in the beauty of the cumulus clouds and shafts of light streaming from the sun low in the western sky, angling toward the ground. The glorious orange strands of light filtered by atmospheric dust illuminated the checkerboard of farm fields across the valley floor, each square contrasted with its neighboring squares in varying shades of green. A row of three equally large trees cast bulbous shadows across the field to its east. It all seemed so perfect, yet out of reach – something I could see and maybe one day touch, but for now it might as well be heaven.

Sitting there with the person next to me taking in this same scene – the same sights and sounds and smells, not speaking or even able to discern who it was that was sitting next to me, I experienced an intimacy – a felt human connection – that would have been missing if I had been sitting there alone. The identity of the other person did not matter, nor did my conscious relationship that I had or did not have with that person. I believe that it could have been anyone – friend or stranger, extroverted or introverted, male or female – and the feeling would have been the same – the same intensity of intimacy, not because of any exchange of words or glimpses or touch – only our shared humanity mattered. We were there together sharing a common experience of being human, no matter our names, our origins, or our beliefs.  
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Who knows what parts of the 8 days that we shared together – the cumulative hours of Centering Prayer, the daily Holy Eucharist, the daily Compline evening prayer service, the 20-plus meals, viewing the Spiritual Journey videos, or simply being held by the same sacred beauty and divine presence – created the intimacy and solidarity that I felt in my inner being. I thought that it might be that elusive “unitive consciousness” that Thomas Keating and others refer to. Whatever anyone might call it, I am grateful for having allowed myself the time and space to step out of daily life and into silence on a mountaintop, where I discovered God’s presence and the gift of shared humanity.