Thomas Keating

This book is designed to initiate the reader into a deep, living relationship with God. Written by an acknowledged spiritual master, the book moves beyond "discursive meditation and particular acts to the intuitive level of contemplation." Keating gives an overview of the history of contemplative prayer in the Christian tradition, and step-by-step guidance in the method of centering prayer. Special attention is paid to the role of the Sacred Word, Christian growth and transformation, and active prayer. The book ends with an explicit treatment of the contemplative dimension of the gospel. Open Mind, Open Heart will take readers into a world where God can do anything, into a realm of the greatest adventure--"Where one is open to the Infinite and hence to infinite possibilities."

The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel

Open Mind, Open Heart

This work brings together for each day of the year three prayer practices for contemplative living: first, a brief "active prayer"; second, spiritual reading; and, third, Lectio Divina. The brief introductory prayer sentences are from various sources - the Bible and traditional prayers of the church or of well-known spiritual writers. The spiritual readings come from eleven of Father Keatings books and one audiotape, with a month's worth of readings derived from each work. Each day's entry concludes with a brief selection from the Bible, or Lectio Divina.

Excerpts from the Works of Father Thomas Keating, O.C.S.O

The Daily Reader for Contemplative Living

On Prayer

"Manifesting God" is about the principles of contemplative prayer the retreat into the "inner room" mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 6:6, where the individual is able to meet God. In the inner room, the silent space in which God unloads the burdens and false selves that govern our individuality and our daily lives, God acts as a divine therapist, healing us and forcing us to recognize how many barriers we put up between ourselves and an authentic relationship with God. The process whereby this happens is the foundation of centering prayer a technique of prayer that Keating and other contemporary mystics have revived out of the ancient mystical traditions of the Desert Fathers and the medieval mystics. Abbot Keating explores in this book what it means to enter the inner room and the transformation that takes place there. It explains the guidelines of centering prayer and offers advice on how to develop the relationship more deeply."

Manifesting God

Taken from the Contemplative Outreach newsletter, these writings expand on Thomas Keating's thoughts on spiritual direction.

Spiritual Direction

A distillation of over seventy years as a monastic and more than three decades of writing on centering prayer, Reflections on the Unknowable is Fr. Thomas Keating’s latest volume on how we might develop our intimacy with God and our experience of the Christian contemplative tradition. The first part of the book consists of a long interview with Fr. Thomas, in which he examines concepts of the divine‐including the astonishments, playfulness, and transformation available to the individual willing to open the door to God. The second section consists of thirty-one brief homilies, which range over topics as diverse as the Trinity and the message of Epiphany, spiritual evolution and cultivating interior silence, and the treasure of spiritual poverty and the beauty of chaos.

Reflections on the Unknowable

A book on prayer by the monk who founded the Centering Prayer movement

Intimacy with God

Contemplation and Transformation (Wit Lectures.)

The Human Condition

20th anniversary edition of a best-selling spiritual classic by one of the founders of the Centering Prayer movement.

The Way of Christian Contemplation

Invitation to Love 20th Anniversary Edition

This book collects the intimate talks and daily presentations made by Trappist monk Thomas Keating to members of Contemplative Outreach, the organization Keating helped establish to promote the revival of the Christian mystical tradition. Oriented toward people who have been practicing centering prayer for several years, CONSENTING is addressed primarily to those with some experience of the spiritual journey and especially to those engaged in some form of contemplative service.

Consenting to God As God Is

In the course of numerous workshops and retreats Father Keating is asked many questions regarding contemplative practice. How will it affect my life? Where does it lead us spiritually? What obstacles will I encounter along the way? How does it work? As Keating answers, this book is "an attempt to provide a road map, as it were, for the journay that begins when Centering Prayer is seriously undertaken...for a deepening relationship with God.">

Invitation to Love

Introduces centering prayer, a Christian-based meditation practice, and explains the process, history, underlying principles, and barriers that can occur.

An Introduction to Centering Prayer

People interested in Centering Prayer often ask: "Which of Father Keating's books should I read first?" This single volume contains the three basic books for the practice of Centering Prayer and its conceptual background. Open Mind, Open Heart deals with how to practice Centering Prayer. Since its first appearance in 1986, this book has been read and used by tens of thousands of people all around in world, including many inmates of U.S. prisons. Father Keating's books have been translated into numerous languages, including Croatian, Czech, Finnish, Japanese, and Korean. A new Spanish translation of Open Mind, Open Heart appeared in 2001. Invitation to Love treats the conceptual background of Centering Prayer rooted as it is in the Christian contemplative heritage. It is a presentation of that heritage in dialogue with contemporary science, especially developmental psychology and anthropology. The Mystery of Christ is a series of homilies based on the liturgical year. It develops the theological principles on which Centering Prayer is based using the scriptural texts of the liturgical cycle as a primary vehicle of instruction. This instruction is embodied in the principal feasts of the year celebrating the themes of divine light, divine life, and divine love. The trilogy contained in Foundations for Centering Prayer and the Christian Contemplative Life develops the material presented in the Ten-Day Intensive Centering Prayer Workshop, in which the method of Centering Prayer is taught (Open Mind, Open Heart) along with its conceptual background (Invitation to Love). The homilies that were given during the liturgy integrate the method and its conceptual background into the mystery of Christ (hence The Mystery of Christ).

Open Mind, Open Heart; Invitation to Love; The Mystery of Christ

The Foundations for Centering Prayer and the Christian Contemplative Life

Betty S. Flowers

Companion Book

Heartfulness Transformation in Christ

For a quarter of a century, Trappist monk Fr. Thomas Keating has been contributing articles on Centering PrayerOCothe contemporary manifestation of the ancient Christian contemplative traditionOCoto the newsletter of Contemplative Outreach, the organization that he helped establish to promote this tradition. The Thomas Keating Reader gathers for the first time thirty of those articles (some never published elsewhere) to offer a valuable overview of some of the main strands of Fr. ThomasOCO thinking and practice on Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina, and interreligious dialogue. Rich with insight and humanity, The Thomas Keating Reader offers a broad introduction to the concepts that have animated Contemplative Outreach and reveals the gifts and challenges of the practice of the spiritual life."

Selected Writings from the Contemplative Outreach Newsletter

The Thomas Keating Reader

William Meninger

Joseph Boyle

Theophane Boyd

For many years, congregations have been inspired, challenged and charmed by the homilies given by the monks who live at St Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. This collection of homilies captures the vitality, wit and spiritual wisdom of the monks as they explore the Christian calendar.

Homilies from the Trappists of St. Benedict's Monastery

Sundays at the Magic Monastery

Nina Williams

This book explores how speculative thinking is shaping how we relate to our entangled social, mental, and environmental ecologies. It examines how speculative philosophies and concepts are changing geographical research methods and techniques, whilst also developing how speculative thinking transforms the way human, non-human, and more-than-human things are conceptualised in research practices across the social sciences, arts, and humanities. Offering the first dedicated compendium of geographical engagements with speculation and speculative thinking, the chapters in this edited collection advance debates about how affective, imperceptible, and infra-sensible qualities of environments might be written about through alternative registers and ontologies of experience. Organised around the themes of Ethics, Technologies, and Aesthetics, the book will appeal to those engaging with architecture, Black political theory, fiction, cinema, children’s geographies, biotechnologies, philosophy, rural studies, arts practice, and nuclear waste studies as speculative research practices appropriate for addressing contemporary ecological problems. Chapters 1, 3 and 4 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Ethics, Technologies, Aesthetics

Speculative Geographies

Lucette Verboven

"In these conversations with film maker and writer Lucette Verboven, Thomas Keating OCSO, bestselling author, Trappist monk and founder of the centering prayer movement, looks back on his long life and spiritual development"--Back cover.

World Without End

Following upon Open Mind, Open Heart, which presents a profound formation in Christian prayer, this book demonstrates the contemplative dimension of Christian worship. Here Father Keating recovers the deeper sense of the liturgical year and shares a theological and mystical perspective on the major feasts of the annual cycle. The reader is immersed in the wonder of faith in the mystery of Christ and of the unique nature of God's action and presence in and through the liturgy of our lives.

The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience

The Mystery of Christ

The psychological roots of authentic spiritual life, by one of the great teachers of contemplative prayer.

Thomas Keating

About

Books

Join the club