Welcome...
Contemplative Outreach of St. Louis – COSTL
COSTL has been serving the contemplative community in Eastern Missouri and Southern Illinois and Missouri since 1989. We are a chapter of Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. an international spiritual network with offices in Butler, NJ. Our mission is to teach the method of Centering Prayer and to support those whose Spiritual Journey includes a practice of this prayer. The volunteers in our chapter are grounded in Contemplative Service - God in us serving God in others.
Origin of Centering Prayer and Contemplative Outreach, Ltd.
In the early 1970s, Trappist monk and priest, Thomas Keating and two others in the Order, William Meninger and the late Basil Pennington, worked at the request of the Vatican to bring people living outside monasteries a form of silent prayer now known as Centering Prayer. With roots in the 14th century book, The Cloud of Unknowing, this kind of prayer allows people to sit silently and become receptive to God’s gift of Contemplation. In 1984, interested in making Centering Prayer more available to more people, Fr. Thomas founded Contemplative Outreach, the name that our spiritual network derived from the title of the initial grant written to get funding for this effort. Today, the network has hundreds of chapters and reaches people worldwide through numerous books and videos of Fr. Thomas’ teaching on Centering Prayer and its conceptual background.
Take some time to browse our Website for more about what we do and upcoming events. If you have any questions or would like to speak with someone, please contact us.
Fr. Thomas Keating, oCSO
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Contemplative Outreach of St. Louis
11939 Manchester Rd #402
St. Louis, MO, 63131
Phone: 314.918.8288
Co-Coordinators:
Michael Kramer
Pat Simon