Silence and Prayer

Silence is God's first language.
Everything else is just a poor translation - Thomas Keating

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Prayer and Imagination

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We live in a rational, left brain world... Yet as human beings, our soul is still fired by colour and imagination. Our minds are storehouses of images and memories and through them God works in our hearts. Praying with our imaginations can create a deeper and more personal intimacy with Jesus, Mary, the disciples and others written about in the scripture. We can take the familiar stories we know and let them flow through our own imagination and see where the Lord guides it.

Using the imagination in prayer has been a treasured tradition in prayer for centuries. It prompted St Francis of Assisi to encourage people to create nativity scenes at Christmas, to imagine the Holy Family as people like we are. four hundred years later, St Ignatius of Loyola used imaginative prayer as a key of his life-transforming Spiritual Exercises...

See more here

http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/Imagination/Intro.html

 

Taize

A street in the village of Taize

The Taize Community is an ecumenical Christian monastic order in Taize, Burgundy, France. It is composed of about 100 brothers who come from Protestant and Catholic traditions. The brothers come from about 30 countries across the world. The monastic order has a strong devotion to peace and justice through prayer and meditation. It was founded in 1940 by Brother Roger Schutz.

The community has become one of the world's most important sites of Christian pilgrimage. Over 100,000 young people from around the world make pilgrimages to Taize each year for prayer, Bible study, sharing, and communal work. Through the community's ecumenical outlook, they are encouraged to live in the spirit of kindness, simplicity and reconciliation.