Contemplative Outreach of St. Louis has been serving the contemplative community in Eastern Missouri and Southern Illinois since 1989. We are a chapter of Contemplative Outreach, Ltd., an international spiritual network with offices in Butler, N.J. Our mission is to teach the method of Centering Prayer and to support those whose 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 other Trappists, Fr. William Meninger and the late Fr. Basil Pennington, worked to bring people living outside monasteries a form of silent prayer now known as Centering Prayer. With roots in the fourteenth 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 available to more people, Fr. Thomas founded Contemplative Outreach. Today, the Contemplative Outreach 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 Web site for more about what we do and upcoming events. If you have any questions or would like to speak with someone, please contact us at cpstlouis@earthlink.net

“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