Thomas Keating

Thomas Keating, O.C.S.O. (March 7, 1923 – October 25, 2018) was an American Trappist priest known as one of the principal developers of centering prayer, a contemplative method that emerged from St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts.

Life Keating was born in New York City in March 1923 and attended Deerfield Academy, Yale University, and Fordham University.

In 1984 Keating, along with Gustave Reininger and Edward Bednar, co-founded Contemplative Outreach, Ltd., an international and ecumenical spiritual network that teaches the practice of Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina, a method of prayer drawn from the Christian contemplative tradition. Contemplative Outreach provides a support system for those on the contemplative path through a wide variety of resources, workshops, and retreats.

Keating died at St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer, Massachusetts on 25 October 2018, aged 95 years old.

Centering prayer Keating was one of three principal developers of centering prayer, a contemporary method of contemplative prayer that emerged from St. Joseph's Abbey in 1975. William Meninger and Basil Pennington, also Trappist monks, were the method's other principal developers. When the concept was first proposed by Keating, Meninger started teaching a method based on the 14th-century spiritual classic The Cloud of Unknowing. Meninger referred to this as the "Prayer of the Cloud" and taught it to priests at the retreat house. Pennington gave the first retreat to a lay audience in Connecticut where the participants suggested the term "centering prayer". Since Thomas Merton had been known to use the term prior to this, it has been suggested the phrase may have originated from him.

Panentheist views In his 1993 article, Clarifications Regarding Centering Prayer, Keating suggests that Jesus describes a panentheistic rather than pantheistic view of God: