Q: Do I have to be a Christian or have a religious belief to practice Centering Prayer?
A: Thank you for this beautiful question.
Centering Prayer is a spacious place that makes room for all of who we are. It is a perfect place for someone who is not sure if she’s a Christian or even if she believes in God to spend time with God, experiencing the source of her being and her own basic goodness. We may be drawn to the silence and sacredness of Centering Prayer without even understanding why.
It is not necessary to make statements about one’s own faith in order to practice Centering Prayer. The teaching of Centering Prayer may be accompanied by various amounts of God language which might make some people uncomfortable, but it is not necessary to use this language in order to enter the heart of the prayer. Centering Prayer has its roots in Christian teachings, but its practice of silence takes us beyond words, beyond dogma.
Our longing to be connected to the sacred, even when we do not know or understand what that means, can motivate us and energize us to enter more deeply into the prayer. Think of the prayer as a space where you can be with God without using the word God, without knowing whether you believe in God or what God is, a place where you can trust that you will be healed, transformed, and made more loving.
It can be helpful at the beginning of the Centering Prayer time as you take your posture to spend a moment reflecting on who God is for you right at that moment. Is God a sense of mystery, gratitude, community, justice, presence, absence, emptiness, darkness, longing? What is your language for the divine, or are you drawn to go beyond language and just feel a wordless connection to the source of all being? Take a moment to get in touch with your sense of the sacred and allow it to infuse your prayer time. You will let go of your thoughts about the sacred during the prayer time, as you let go of all thoughts, but taking a moment at the beginning of the prayer time to get in touch with your sense of the God of your understanding can help you to deepen your intimacy with God and bring your prayer to life.
It can take courage to let go of beliefs and dogma and be completely honest, open, or uncertain about how we are called to be in relationship with the sacred. Perhaps people who come to Centering Prayer without a lot of definite beliefs even have a certain advantage in terms of their readiness to stand naked before God.
At the beginning of my Centering Prayer journey, your question was especially alive for me. I meditated with the Buddhists for a number of years, and was relieved to take a break from some of the Christian language and imagery that I found problematic and hurtful. However the sense of God that I continued to feel during my meditation eventually brought me to Centering Prayer. Eventually I wrote a book, Centering Prayer For Everyone, that is my attempt to use inclusive, welcoming language to reach out to anyone who longs to connect to God using this beautiful and simple practice.
May all of us who long for the sacred find intimacy with the God of our understanding in this silent practice.
Warm regards,
Lindsay Boyer
