Monday 4th April, 2022
Julie Saad, Contemplative Life: Discovering Our Path into the Heart of God (balboaBooks, 2021), 49.
Image: Soheb Zaidi, India & Sydney, unsplash.com/msohebzaidi
Today's quote is from Julie Saad's Contemplative Life: Discovering Our Path Into the Heart of God (Balboa Press, 2021), 49 - see here. Julie lives in Denver, Colorado, where she is a Centering Prayer teacher, a Board member of Contemplative Outreach (CO - the international organisation that supports this silence-based prayer practice - see their website, here) and coordinator of CO's Contemplative Living Experience program. Julie writes openly about her transformation through engagement with an Al-Anon Twelve Step Program. In 2001 Contemplative Outreach established '12 Step Outreach' to support people following these programs in using Centering Prayer as an 11th step prayer/meditation practice. See here for more about this wonderful work, which is now quite deeply embedded in a growing number of recovery groups in the USA and parts of South America. For a 75 minute video of Saad teaching 'Transformation: Deepening Our Practice - Grace Throughout Our Lives', see here. For more about Julie in her own words on her website, 'Into the Heart of God', as well as three audi guided meditations from her at the bottom of the page, see here. There is one on 'Sacred Place', another about 'The Forgiveness Prayer', and one entitled 'Stepping Stones'. You can also read a sample extract of the book from which today's quote is taken.