Intensive Contemplative Immersion Training

07/11/2022

Dear Folks,
The good people of Christian Contemplative Experience at Holy Family will be housing an Intensive Contemplative Immersion Training this September 16-18.
Holy Family Passionist Retreat Center is in West Hartford, Connecticut. This is an overnight retreat practice and is geared to support seated Centering Prayer with the traditional chanted offices. The chant will be very simple and the focus will be on integrating Centering Prayer with the psalms and prayers of the Church, in much the same way the author of the Cloud of Unknowing wrote about, and the milieu from which Centering Prayer arose in St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer.
The conferences or talks will be on Centering Prayer practice and Contemplation.

Please See the Link to Holy Family's website for more details.

peace,
justin+

September 16-18, 2022 This contemplative immersion weekend retreat will flow through periods of centering prayer, walking meditation, teaching, and the simple chant of the Divine Office. Learn more >>

09/27/2017

Contemplative Exchange gathering 2017 August 2017, St. Benedict's Monastery, Colorado, USA - Center for Action and Contemplation - Contemplative Outreach -…

08/23/2017

Fr. Justin back from monastic training and the New Contemplatives Exchange.

05/16/2017

Fr. Justin, has recently been invited by Fr. Thomas Keating, O.C.S.O. to become a member of The New Contemplatives Exchange, a global network for contemplative studies and practice. This invitation from Fr. Keating comes as one of the four founders of this new group. Each of the founders; The Reverend Tilden Edwards (The Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation), Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M. (The Center for Action and Contemplation), and Fr. Laurence Freeman O.S.B. (The World Community for Christian Meditation) each invited 4 young contemplative scholars and practitioners from around the world -- all in their 30s and 40s -- to come together with the Founders at St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, CO, in mid-August to pray, talk, and build relationships with the overall vision "to awaken a larger embrace and expansion of Christian contemplative understanding and practice as the vital grounding of Christian life, with openness to collaboration with all streams of contemplative wisdom, in response to the urgent social and spiritual needs of our time."

http://wccm.org/content/gathering-thomas-keating-tilden-edwards-richard-rohr-and-laurence-freeman

https://youtu.be/ykvQ6iDMo-o

Fr. Justin hopes that the ongoing work of the Exchangers, in retreat and workshop collaborations, joint articles and book publishing, as well as gatherings and joint trainings, might help foster a dialogue and network among contemplatives and the people of Province I and the Diocese of Vermont.
Fr. Justin recently met with one of Fr. Rohr’s student’s; the Reverend Mark Longhurst pastor of First Congregational Church, UCC, Williamstown, MA.
firstchurchwilliamstown.org/about/staff/carrie-bail/
www.ordinarymystic.net

Fr. Justin has also been in touch with Fr. Stuart Higginbotham the Rector of Grace Church, Gainesville, GA who is one of the Reverend Edward’s students.
www.gracechurchgainesville.org/administration/stuart.html

Fr. Higginbotham’s doctoral thesis “The Practice of Christian Mindfulness as an Imaginative Challenge in Parish Ministry,” describes Grace Church’s work over the past few years to reorient its image of discipleship and ministry away from the “program-maintenance model” toward a practice of spiritual imagination, discernment, transfigured awareness, and desire. The two priests have recently shared ideas on contemplative formation, such as the work Fr. Justin did with one of the Sitrrings of the Spirit Grant in 2015
https://youtu.be/lAZ0QxZlB-I
and Holy Week liturgies and practices in parishes.
If you have an interest in this kind of practice and would be encouraged by getting together with to pray and study please get in touch with the Reverend Justin Lanier, Rector of St. Peter’s Church in Bennington, stpetersvt.org

In October of 2016 four “founders” met in Snowmass Colorado to deepen our friendship and to gather and nurture a communion of Christian contemplatives. In order of age, Thomas Keating, Tilden Edwards, Richard Rohr, and Laurence Freeman are united in our commitment to renewing the practices of the Ch...

09/07/2016

"This is a gift that has been given. There's no place to go to get it. There's no place you can go to avoid it." Fr. Thomas Keating

Watch online now: iTunes - http://apple.co/1iPfy70 Amazon - http://bit.ly/ARisingTideofSilence Google Play - http://bit.ly/1LgtL8d Microsoft/xBox - http://bi...

09/01/2016

08/24/2016

Tauler+ makes his debut at St. Peter's, Bennington.

The board for Asking Some Friends of God, has returned. We have a new addition to this Choir, blessed Johannes Tauler aka "Doctor Illuminatus et Sublimis" Tauler was a Friar of the Order of Preachers and a Priest in the Order. He is a student of Meister Eckhart but unlike Eckhart did not go on to do advanced academic studies rather he was known as a Lebmeister or Master of Living. Here we have asked him "What is most necessary to live from love?"

05/17/2016

-I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
-Ego sum Alpha et Omega, principium et finis.
-ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ Ἄλφα καὶ τὸ Ὦ ἡ ἀρχὴ καὶ τὸ τέλος
-I am the Alpha and Omega, the inner most and uttermost.

Revelation 21:6

04/04/2016

A brief note on the development of a liturgical aspect of this ministry. Over the year since the retreat, a small group of priests and laypersons have been experimenting with the some of the chanted daily offices. We have been simplifying the chant for daily and memorized use in private and ecclesial prayer. The Group at St. Peter's Episcopal in Bennington have been using one of these offices (Evening Prayer) before the two sits of Contemplative Prayer (most are using Centering Prayer) on Wednesdays. This has lead to the removal of the 20 minute period of silent prayer within the office itself. There is a period of silence after the lesson, but it is not treated as a formal sitting period just after the canticle, as in the original

One of the subtle effects has been more stability in recollection when we come to the formal still prayer/ centering prayer periods after this liturgy. The office has within itself more continuity as well and so lets the group's chanting warm up and unfold as prayer more directly. Part of the intention of this office and the ICIT office in general is to use only a few simple tones for use by folks who do not think of themselves particularly as "Singers". So that we can work on the fundamentals of chant as prayer and not get bogged down in the acquisition of more elaborate musical skills. (a point taken from St. Theresa of Avila)

This office last about 30 minutes, and we cover one lesson from the Gospel. In Lent we experimented with a second lesson from Patristic writers without canticle. This second reading has been dropped in Eastertide will probably not be brought back in.

Attached is the Eastertide Evening Prayer for one 8x15 sheet of paper. This office relies heavily on Recto Tono (monotone) and the irregular tone In Directum. Tonus In Directum is used two ways; in the Canticle the full tone is used, both the median and the termination line and in the psalms just the termination line at end of the verse. This has given folks unfamiliar with chanting a simple way to pray with a simple tone and pulse of the unpointed psalms. There is also a tone for the Suffrages which is from the Hymnal 1982, and though it was not familiar is uncomplicated to hear.

All in all, hearing and thus recollected receptivity have been the great key to the development of this office. Basic instructions being, "Listen for a while until your ears can hear and pray the chants. Then when you heart is ready, add your voice softly and gently. This prayer is 99% hearing."

11/08/2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAZ0QxZlB-I

Intensive Contemplative Immersion Training 2015 A short Video report to the Diocese of Vermont Convention