Centering Prayer for Everyone
With Readings, Programs, and Instructions for Home and Group Practice
Foreword by Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler
Imprint: Cascade Books
Contemplative prayer is a way of saying yes to God's transformative presence. Centering Prayer for Everyone is the most welcoming and accessible guide to Christian contemplative practice available.
Focusing on five practices--lectio divina, visio divina, walking meditation, chanting the Psalms, and the silent practice of centering prayer--this practical guide collects in one volume everything needed to learn these practices, including concise instructions, readings, and programs. Clearly formatted so that instructions and programs are easy to find at a glance, Centering Prayer for Everyone can inspire beginners to enter the practices immediately and includes detailed instructions for starting and facilitating both in-person and digital prayer groups.
This inclusive handbook explicitly welcomes everyone to these practices, whatever their beliefs or doubts, including Christians, meditators from other traditions, twelve-step members, and anyone filled with longing for spiritual transformation and connection with God.
Lindsay Boyer is a spiritual director specializing in working with those who are uncomfortable with institutional religion. She is an adjunct professor at General Theological Seminary and a leader of retreats and workshops on contemplative prayer. She can be reached at her website, Spirituality for Questioning Minds.
“What a meaningful resource Lindsay Boyer has created in Centering Prayer for Everyone! Like the best contemplative teaching, it is pithy, clear, and simple. . . . Lindsay’s skills as a spiritual guide, contemplative teacher, and writer are evident on each page.”
—David Frenette, author of The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God
“I have been waiting for a book like Lindsay Boyer’s Centering Prayer for Everyone for a long time. There are many excellent books about contemplative prayer but none with the scope and practical guidance that this one includes. For the past decade or so I have been referring seekers to Lindsay’s highly informative website, and now she is offering an entire book with a clear, inclusive voice and even more practical guidance in centering prayer, lectio divina, walking meditation, and chanting the Psalms.”
—Anne Silver, Director, Center for Christian Spirituality at General Theological Seminary
“Centering Prayer for Everyone is a little gem. . . . brimming over with ways and means to practice silence: formats, beautiful prayers, resources, and everything you as a budding contemplative need to carve out and create a place for silence within your heart and within your own home.”
—Gail Fitzpatrick-Hopler, founding member and former president, Contemplative Outreach
“A welcoming and gentle guide into unlocking our longing for silence which is God’s first language and from which the contemplative journey begins—take the first step.”
—Carl J. Arico, founding member, Contemplative Outreach, author of A Taste of Silence