March 28, 2024

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Silent Retreat

Video of Friends of Jesus Church members on silent retreat at Dayspring, April 2012. By Michael Smith.
By Martin Laird, O.S.A., Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Villanova University. 2006.
By Thomas Merton with introduction by Sue Monk Kidd. 1961.
Photos taken during a Baltimore Yearly Meeting Silent Retreat at Dayspring Retreat Center in Germantown, Maryland in October 8-11, 2010. Created and posted by Joe Robbins, Mt Rainier, MD. Montgomery County is considering building a highway through Dayspring property. These photos show the beauty of the landscape as a stand against destroying this sacred land with yet another highway in the area.
Contemplative Outreach is an international organization with roots in the work of three monks at St. Joseph's Abbey in  Massachusetts in the early 1970s. Inspired by the decree of Vatican II, they wanted to develop a method of Christian contemplative prayer that was appealing to laypeople. Fathers Thomas Keating, William Meninger, and Basil Pennington embarked on an experiment….In 1983, Fr. Keating gave the first Centering Prayer retreat in New Mexico. In 2012 Contemplative Outreach supports 120 active chapters in 39 countries and communicates the wisdom teachings of Fr. Thomas Keating through books and articles, the internet, teleconferences and more.
A 25th Anniversary Edition of the classic that helped launch the Centering Prayer movement, with a new foreword by Father Basil Pennington. 2007.
A Washington Post article on the proposed 6-lane highway near Dayspring Silent Retreat: 'Path considered for highway would slice through retreat property.' Saturday, July 17, 2010.  “The road would run between the lodge where gatherings are held and the dense woods and stream valley where retreat participants have walked in quiet reflection since 1953. ...Community concerns about new roads bringing traffic noise are common. But rarely does a property's use -- a quest for no sound whatsoever -- bump up so jarringly against a road-building plan....it is one of the largest retreat centers in the Washington area and one of the few to offer only silent retreats...”
By Elizabeth O'Connor, long-time member of The Church of the Saviour, Washington, DC. 1986. From the Foreword by Gordon Cosby, co-founder of The Church of the Saviour: "God comes to most of us through the commonplace events of life, which become extraordinary events because out of our time in the silence we bring to the ordinary a deepened sensitivity and a new quality of seeing and hearing."