Myth of the Isolated Self

So I made these slides for a talk on centering prayer and process theology, and instead of just presenting them, I sent them to Bo and we played a game where he tried to guess what I was going to say. What emerged was this really fun conversation about how centering prayer is just so different from anything most of us were taught about prayer. Like, it starts in a different place—with practice, not with what you're trying to get. It ends in a different place—communion, not transaction. It understands God differently—not a distant deity you're trying to reach, but the one in whom we already live and move and have our being. And it understands the self differently—we're not isolated individuals initiating contact with God, we're already woven into relation, already addressed before we speak. We dig into Thomas Keating, Catherine Keller, John Cobb, the Cloud of Unknowing, and how process theology makes sense of what the contemplatives have been saying all along. Bo found it both seductive and disorienting, which honestly is the best compliment I could get. And we end up talking about how this kind of prayer naturally leads to justice work and ecological responsibility, because once you dismantle the false self, you can't help but feel the suffering of others more acutely.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

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