The Mystery of Participation

"Contemplative Christianity invites us into a more spacious path — rooted in inner and outer transformation, radical compassion, and the lived experience of God’s presence in all things." Brian McLaren

"Before conversion, we tend to think God is out there. After transformation, God is not out there, and we don’t look at reality. We’re in the middle of it now; we’re a part of it. This whole thing is what I call the mystery of participation." Richard Rohr

Based on this concept, we might question whether we have been transformed if we still think of God as "out there" instead of within us and everyone and everything else.

My practice of Centering Prayer has made a decisive difference in the way I live out my faith in Christ.

Jesus said "If anyone wants to follow me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." Centering Prayer is a discipline for learning how to deny yourself, to surrender your compulsive, self-centered thinking and desires. It is a daily practice to devoting yourself to Christ, surrendering your habitual ways of judging and controlling everyone and everything around you. Centering Prayer teaches you a new way of being by consenting to the presence of God within you and allowing God to act in and through you.

When I started learning about the unknowing ways of contemplation, it rocked my world. As my carefully erected faith teetered with every weight-bearing pillar being knocked out, I experienced the initial stages of transformation. My view of God, myself, and the world was being broken down and restructured. I began to see and understand everything in a different way. And this way made my understanding not more concrete but less certain. It made me a beginner, an initiate, a novice, who realized that there was so much more to see and experience, and that the process of experience was the critical thing, not the understanding.

And this has made my world expand beyond my imagination. It has reintroduced the awe and wonder of childhood into my end-of-life stage that I am in now. It is helping me to let go of judgement and control, although that is a slow process. "Let go and let God" is my moment-by-moment mantra.

Life is spacious, expanded, open. No walls, no boxes, no boundaries. Nothing to judge, no need to judge. Nothing right or wrong, black or white, included or excluded. All the self-erected boundaries and borders are erased. No need for controlling, protecting, excluding, defending, opposing, guarding, or competing. Only letting go, sharing, opening, inviting, including, giving, and cooperating.

When you accept that you are with God and in God and God is within you, that is there is no separation from God, then solidarity penetrates everything and everything is possible. Your dreaded enemies are your best friends, the feared foreigner is your closest neighbor, your fierce competitor is your favored collaborator.

Contemplative practices like Centering Prayer help us to experience a taste of this spaciousness. The contemplative way nourishes our minds and exposes our faulty misperceptions. As Cynthia Bourgeault points out: "Our first step in joining [Jesus] on this journey is to recognize that his incarnation is not about fall, guilt, or blame, but about goodness, solidarity, and our own intimate participation in the mystery of love at the heart of all creation." ​