God Is All In All

Beloved Trappist monk Thomas Keating is best known as one of the primary founders of the Centering Prayer movement, which made the contemplative dimension of Christianity accessible through a simple method of silent, still meditation. He is also known as the convener of the Snowmass Interreligious Conference, which helped spawn the global Inter-spiritual movement. Keating's open invitation to people of all walks to embark on a spiritual journey, coupled with his emphasis on the oneness of all creation, made him a 20th-century harbinger of 21st-century ideals. "If something is something, it cannot be its opposite-or so it might seem. Not so with God, because God is...beyond opposites." In Thomas Keating's signature wise and whimsical style, this little book invites us to think big. "Think of God in a very big way. And if you do, that is too small." Transcribed from a 2012 keynote address, God Is All in All introduces some mighty themes-including nature as revelation, mystical teachings on interdependence, new cosmologies of religion and science, and evolutionary understandings of what it means to be human-in a much-needed update to theologies Keating describes as "out of date." Outlining a three-part spiritual journey from recognizing a divine Other, to becoming the Other, to the realizing there is no other, Keating boldly states "Religion is not the only path to God." Thoroughly Christian and fully interspiritual, this much-beloved outlier Trappist monk offers a message of "compassion, not condemnation" in a contemplative embrace of the cross as a symbol of humility, inviting those who would become co-redeemers of the world to join him in the kind of meditation and contemplative prayer that allows the transcendent self to emerge. "Be still and you will know, not by the knowledge of the mind but by the knowledge of the heart, who God is and who you are."