Two different prayer groups – one on Zoom and one in-person, share their experience and approach to using the Spiritual Journey videos. Note that the entire series is freely available on the Contemplative Outreach YouTube channel here:
Fr Thomas’ Spiritual Journey videos have nourished and held together our Meditation Chapel group for over two years.
We started our Zoom group just as COVID arrived. With just a few people from southern Vermont (USA), we began with the intro to Centering Prayer workshop, then the six follow-up sessions. In May of 2020 we moved our little group to the Meditation Chapel because it is free and easy to use. We decided to start watching the Spiritual Journey videos. Others found us and now we have ten to 16 each week – from all over the US, and three from Europe.
Each week we watch a video together through the chapel (I screen share), then we have Centering Prayer and then we share our thoughts and reflections on the video. This sharing has led us into deep parts of our beings and our lives. One person calls it our “sacred sharing”. Several have said this is their weekly church service. If indeed “church is community” this is the church that the Holy Spirit has given us.
When we finished the series the first time we tossed around several ideas about what to do next. “What about watching the series again” someone suggested, “a year later we are different, our world is different”, so why not? Some of the videos are so packed with material to ponder that we spend more than one session with them. We recently watched 11b. The False Self in Action, Part 2 – for the second time. And if we’re all still around and able when we finished #28 b I suspect we’ll begin again. We are all so grateful for this gift Fr Thomas left for us.
If you’d like to join us, we’re in the Wisdom Chapel of the Meditation Chapel (you have to register first) at about ll:00 am Eastern Time (UTC-4) every Friday for the video, and at 11:30 am for prayer and sharing.
Mary McGuinness, June 2022
+++
What follows is a brief description of how we are using Fr. Keating’s “The Spiritual Journey” video series for study and discussion.
Our Centering Prayer group wanted to start meeting in person and learn about The Spiritual Journey. This is how I was able to do it:
I used my laptop and the monitor we have at our church to show the videos from YouTube. A compatible cable, like an HDMI cable is needed. You need to know what kind of outputs, called “ports” are on the computer (usually they located on the side of the computer), and what kind of input is supported by the monitor that will be used. Usually it is an HDMI input. That will determine the kind of cable you will need. And, of course, internet access is needed. Using the transcript books as a guide (which are also available as digital PDFs), select the video you want to watch. That’s it. The interaction is much better doing these videos “live” as opposed to using Zoom. Zoom is a great option if people are still not meeting in person, but this way works very well for us.
I hope this is helpful.
Darrell Blackwell, Chapter Coordinator, Contemplative Outreach of Maine (USA)
