Q: I thought Centering Prayer was just for Christians. When reviewing your website, it seems that Buddhist, Sufi and others can use it to get close to God. But isn’t it only through Christ you can get that connection? Just wondering.
A: Thank you for your important question.
You ask whether it is only through Christ that we can get close to God. While there are scriptural references that seem to suggest that Jesus is the only path, there is also a scriptural tradition that acknowledges the existence of other paths to God:
I have many sheep that are not of this fold. (John 10:16)
I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God. (Acts 10:34)
Thomas Keating, a founder of Centering Prayer, was a pioneer in interfaith dialogue, exploring with religious leaders of many faiths the ways in which contemplative practices from a number of traditions can help us to experience the oneness of the divine. The Contemplative Outreach Vision and Theological Principles state‚ ”We affirm our solidarity with the contemplative dimension of other religions and sacred traditions. As they join us, may they also be open to respecting the Christian source of Centering Prayer.”
In the past I have explored meditation in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions, but whatever method I use, I have a strong sense that the presence of God I experience is the one God that I have known throughout my life and Christian upbringing. The one God has the power to touch and reach all people, very slowly transforming us through our practice and our longing for the divine so that we become more loving. God invites us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and will use every means necessary to move us towards that love.
God offers us many paths to God because human nature and experience are so rich and diverse. One of the gifts of our global culture is an opportunity to learn from people who are different from us. In Centering Prayer we have a beautiful contemplative practice for those of us in the Christian tradition, but as we follow Jesus’s call to love our neighbor, we may become ever more open to seeing what we may learn about love from our neighbors. Centering Prayer helps us to taste our own basic goodness, a goodness that is not unique to Christians but which is spoken of and accessed by many traditions. Our contemplative practice teaches us to see love and goodness wherever we might find them.
Our tendency is to make ourselves the center of our experience unless we allow ourselves to be transformed by practice and by love so that we slowly come to be able to see the other people around us more clearly and recognize that they are sometimes, perhaps often, more kind, honest, and loving than we are. As our Centering Prayer practice deepens, our small “I” is transformed into a broader “we.” The circle of those we are able to see and appreciate widens and our sense of community grows. It is our faithful practice that transforms us more than our beliefs.
May our relationship with our loving God teach us to love our neighbors as ourselves and draw us ever more deeply into loving community.
Warm regards,
Lindsay Boyer
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Related question: “Do I have to be Christian or have a religious belief to practice Centering Prayer?”
