PRAYER:

The  fundamental purpose of prayer, including the prayer of petition, is not to get  something from God, or to change God, but to change ourselves. We pray in order  to give ourselves to God.

Fr.  Thomas Keating
The  Heart of the World
Contemplative Outreach News
Winter 1997

Contemplative Outreach of St. Louis – COSTL

  COSTL has been serving the contemplative community in Eastern Missouri and Southern Illinois and Missouri since 1989. We are a chapter of Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. an international spiritual network with offices in Butler, NJ.  Our mission is to teach the method of Centering Prayer and to support those who’s Spiritual Journey includes a practice of this prayer.  The volunteers in our chapter are grounded in Contemplative Service - God in us serving God in others.

Origin of Centering Prayer and Contemplative Outreach, Ltd.

    In the early 1970s, Trappist monk and priest, Thomas Keating and two others in the Order, William Meninger and the late Basil Pennington, worked at the request of the Vatican to bring people living outside monasteries a form of silent prayer now know as Centering Prayer. With roots in the 14th century book, The Cloud of Unknowing, this kind of prayer allows people to sit silently and become receptive to God’s gift of Contemplation. In 1984, interested in making Centering Prayer more available to more people, Fr. Thomas founded Contemplative Outreach, the namethat our spiritual network derived from the title of the initial grant written to get funding for this effort. Today, the network has hundreds of chapters and reaches people worldwide through numerous books and videos of Fr. Thomas’ teaching on Centering Prayer and its conceptual background.

Take some time to browse our Website for more about what we do and upcoming events. If you have any questions or would like to speak with someone, please contact us