Fall/Winter 2002-03 Newsletter

A Conversion to Silence 

By Renée Bennett

    When I recently returned from our annual ten day Intensive/Post Intensive Retreat at Il Ritiro in Dittmer, Missouri, my husband, who is not a Centering Prayer practitioner, asked me, “Didn’t you get incredibly bored?” “Not at all,” I answered —but how could I ever begin to make him understand the evolution of my personal “conversion” to silence?

    Extended retreats are a key component of the Contemplative Outreach Ltd. program prescribed by Fr. Thomas for those beginning this contemplative journey in his Ongoing Process Formation in Centering Prayer and Its Conceptual Background booklet. In his “Process of Formation” at least four main elements can be found: 

1. Conceptual Background 
2. (what I call the...) “Body of Christ” Experiences 
3.Deepening Experiences 
4. Formation for Service (as an Outgrowth of the Prayer).

    The Conceptual Background includes all the presentations offered by Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. which provide the necessary intellectual background, including information on prayer as relationship; thoughts as a normal, integral part of Centering Prayer; the human condition (including our emotional programs for happiness, or energy centers—the constituents of the “false self ” system); and the Christian model for transformation. Series such as The Spiritual Journey Videos, The Living Flame, and The Cloud of Unknowing explain these conceptual elements of our journey.

    The “Body of Christ” element includes the small faith community experience: our communal Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina sessions, our contemplative liturgies, our prayer groups...all opportunities to come together as the Body of Christ in solidarity with similar prayer communities around the world.

Deepening experiences include Days of Prayer, Weekend and Extended Retreats (Intensive, Post Intensive, and Advanced).

Fr. Thomas has said that one can accomplish more in an Intensive Retreat than in many months of the daily Centering Practice. Why is this so? For many reasons: a retreat deprograms our cultural conditioning about what is really important and the way we should spend our time; a retreat breaks the tyranny of our culture’s frenetic pace: we really “slow down.” And, yes, on a retreat we may have to face some of our “demons,” those un-Christlike aspects about ourselves that we usually keep at bay by being too “busy” to notice. (So a retreat is not always a time of extended bliss!) But most important of all, a retreat gives an opportunity to have long enough periods of silence that we can sink deeply into the presence of the Lord.

Perhaps a little personal testimony can make this clearer. At this point in my life I have attended several “Intensives,” several “Posts” and one “Advanced” retreat. Yet it has taken me this long to come to a fuller appreciation of their value. Many may chuckle to learn that I brought to my first Intensive two suitcases: one for my clothes and the other for a least a dozen books and notepads. Still in my “graduate school mode,” I figured that if I was going on a spiritual vacation for ten days, I’d be able to read all the non-course material that had accumulated! On my next retreat, I gave Susan Komis a good laugh by showing up with my TV/VCR combination! At that time I was transcribing the Spiritual Journey videos. It seemed logical that since the topic matter was spiritual, I might as well get some work done! I’m sure Susan must have been asking herself, “What is it about the words “silent retreat” don’t you understand, Renée?” And that is exactly the point. At that time I did not grasp the meaning of true silence. Annette Stamm is another person in my area who helped me to understand silence through her wise comments at retreat meetings, her personal example, and her extensive experience in facilitating retreats. (We don’t have to travel this journey alone. We can travel it with wise companions who exemplify the Fourth aspect of Fr. Thomas’ program, Service as an Outgrowth of the Prayer.)

This summer’s retreat was a watershed experience for me. I now realize that it is possible to walk into a retreat without electronic equipment and even books! An extended retreat is an opportunity to practice “the sacrament of the present moment”, moment by moment, for an extended period of ten days. But this involves an understanding we come to through our Conceptual Background which reveals that being created in the image of God means that God is the very foundation of our being. At every nanosecond of our existence God breathes us into life. In a retreat, we can make ourselves totally available to our God, moment by moment. We are able to realize at each instant: God is here. God is now!

It is to living our entire life in this realization that our Centering Prayer practice, our on-going training in the “school of consent,” leads. All of the retreats offered by Contemplative Outreach shepherd us to this realization by providing us the space and the time to practice, in an “intense” way, the sacrament of the present moment—to be converted to the true meaning of silence.

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