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Centering Prayer Retreat
October 20, 2019 @ 8:00 am - October 25, 2019 @ 5:00 pm
Contemplative Living
October 20–24, 2019 (Sun. to Thurs.)
Presenter: Mary Dwyer
This five-day retreat will explore how our contemplative practices shape our daily life. Contemplative Living is the call to bring the contemplative dimension of the Gospel into our every day, ordinary lives filled with ordinary activities.
How do we lead ordinary lives with extraordinary love?
We will share in community extended periods of Centering Prayer, silence, and conferences exploring the Welcoming Prayer, Forgiveness Process/Practice, Lectio Divina, and other prayer practices. Our hope is that each of us commits to a personal "rule of life" that supports and sustains our deepest desires. “… Centering Prayer is a life to be lived. Not just a method.” (Thomas Keating).
Prior Centering Prayer experience is helpful.
Offering: $275 per person (includes overnights & meals)
Deposit: $75 (nonrefundable)
Mary Dwyer is a long-time student of Fr. Thomas Keating and has been practicing Centering Prayer since the 1980s. In the early 1990’s, she lived at Chrysalis House, a contemplative live-in community experiment blessed by Fr. Thomas. Her housemates included Mary Mrozowski, David Frenette and Cathy McCarthy. The community lived according to a rule of life, and became an incubator of practice and programs in the early years of Contemplative Outreach’s growth. It was her experience at Chyrsalis House – what she refers to as her “inpatient” or “residential treatment time” – that proved to her that a life of prayer, consent and practice is real, stable and deeply rewarding. Mary Mrozowski taught her that a devoted life of prayer was the real work of life; what we did the rest of the time was just how we made a living.
In 2008 she met her beloved Juan through the Living Flame program. She moved to Miami, FL in 2009 and they married. Juan recently retired and they moved back to Erie, PA in July, 2018.
Mary is currently serving as a member of the Gift Committee of Contemplative Outreach. She previously has served as Chairperson of the Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. Governing Board; member of the Contemplative Outreach Faculty; Member of the Welcoming Prayer service team, and Coordinator for the Living Flame program. Mary now devotes her time to giving retreats and workshops on behalf of Contemplative Outreach throughout the US and internationally.
