- "Be still
- and know
- that I am God."
- Psalm 46:10
- In 1974, Father William Meninger, a Trappist monk and retreat master at St. Josephs Abbey in Spencer, Mass. found a dusty little book in the abbey library, The Cloud of Unknowing. As he read it he was delighted to discover that this anonymous 14th century book presented contemplative meditation as a teachable, spiritual process enabling the ordinary person to enter and receive a direct experience of union with God.
- This form of meditation, recently known as 'Centering Prayer' (from a text of Thomas Merton) can be traced from and through the earliest centuries of Christianity. The Centering Prayer centers one on God.
The Cloud was written, not in Latin but in Middle English - which means that it was intended primarily for laymen rather than for priests and monks. Father Meninger saw that it was a simple book on the ultimate subject, with only 75 brief chapters.
He quickly began teaching contemplative prayer according to The Cloud of Unknowing at the Abbey Retreat House. One year later his workshop was taken up by his Abbot, Thomas Keating, and Basil Pennington, both of whom had been looking for a teachable form of Christian contemplative meditation to offset the movement of young Catholics toward Eastern meditation techniques.
Ten years later, Abbot Keating, now retired and a member of Father Meninger's community of St. Benedict's in Colorado, initiated his highly organized and effective Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. in order to facilitate a spirituality focused on Centering Prayer.
Like Abbot Keating and Father Basil, Father Meninger takes a limited time each year from his silent monastic life to travel the world and teach contemplative prayer. His book, The Loving Search For God is an effort to bring the message of The Cloud of Unknowing to men and women of the 21st Century.
This workshop has been videotaped and rendered as television and audio programs of approximately four and a quarter hours. Father recommends these recordings as a way to learn more about prayer in general and in particular how to practice contemplative meditation.
- These recordings are available to you via this website's online store in many formats. You can view portions on your computer screen right now in the Chapel. Join us?
Curriculum Vitae
Father William was born, raised and educated in the Boston area in Massachusetts. His mother was born and raised in County Kerry and his father was a Quaker from Pennsylvania.
Ordained in 1958, after 8 years in St. John's Seminary, he was incardinated into the Diocese of Yakima, Washington. where he worked on an Indian Reservation and with Mexican traveling workers for 6 years. In 1963 he entered the Trappists at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, where he served in the guest house for 15 years, taught Scripture, liturgy and patristics; served as subprior, prior and dean of the junior professed monks.
In 1979 he was transferred to a daughter house, St. Benedicts Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, where he served as Prior, vocation director, novice master, and teacher of theology and scripture. He spent 3 years in Israel where he studied scripture and taught at the Center for Biblical Studies in Jerusalem and at the Trappist Monastery of Latroun.
He also did graduate studies at Seattle University, Harvard Divinity School, and Boston University. In 1974 he originated the workshop on Contemplative Meditation (later known as Centering Prayer) which he now teaches worldwide along with workshops on Forgiveness, the Enneagram, Sacred Scriptures, and Prayer. He leaves the monastery only 4 times each year to do this lest he lose his own monastic orientation while sharing it with others.
- FATHER WILLIAM'S MESSAGE, Sixth Sunday of Easter
- Enter the Resource Store
- NOW AVAILABLE IN THE RESOURCE STORE: Father William's latest workshop-- Models of Contemplation.
