Quotes & Sayings About Centering

Vogue began to focus on the body as much as on the clothes, in part because there was little they could dictate with the anarchic styles ... In a stunning move, an entire replacement culture was developed by naming a 'problem' where it had scarcely existed before, centering it on the women's natural state, and elevating it to the existential female dilemma ... The number of diet-related articles rose 70 percent from 1968 to 1972 ... The lucrative 'transfer of guilt' was resurrected just in time. — Naomi Wolf

My own personal task is not simply that of poet and writer (still less commentator, pseudo-prophet); it is basically to praise God out of an inner center of silence, gratitude, and 'awareness.' This can be realized in a life that apparently accomplishes nothing. Without centering on accomplishment or nonaccomplishment, my task is simply the breathing of this gratitude from day to day, in simplicity, and for the rest turning my hand to whatever comes, work being part of praise, whether splitting logs or writing poems, or best of all simple notes. — Thomas Merton

For me, the writing life doesn't just happen when I sit at the writing desk. It is a life lived with a centering principle, and mine is this: that I will pay close attention to this world I find myself in. 'My heart keeps open house,' was the way the poet Theodore Roethke put it in a poem. And rendering in language what one sees through the opened windows and doors of that house is a way of bearing witness to the mystery of what it is to be alive in this world. — Julia Alvarez

Writing is always a restorative process. It's like paddling a kayak. When you're writing, you can't do anything else. You're in the space you're in. So, in that way, it's enormously centering and restorative. — Tabitha King

In centering prayer, the sacred word is not the object of the attention but rather the expression of the intention of the will. — Thomas Keating

The Alexandrian Mystics' emphasis on silent prayer gave their teachings interior depth missing from Western theology today. — Amos Smith

Try pausing right before and right after undertaking a new action, even something simple like putting a key in a lock to open a door. Such pauses take a brief moment, yet they have the effect of decompressing time and centering you. — David Steindl-Rast

In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America where it became an enterprise. — Richard Halverson

Probably the most important element in intricacy is centering. Good small parks typically have a place somewhere within them commonly understood to be the center - at the very least a main crossroads and pausing point, a climax. — Jane Jacobs

Live in this world, because this world gives a ripening, maturity, integrity. The challenges of this world give you a centering, an awareness. And that awareness becomes the ladder. Then you can move from Zorba to Buddha. — Rajneesh

As long as you're centering back to home base, and that's the strongest magnet in your life, that everything else is okay. — Charlie Ebersol

By centering our lives on timeless, unchanging principles, we create a fundamental paradigm of effective living. It is the center that puts all other centers in perspective. — Stephen Covey

Meditation is the one thing I do every day - meditate, pray. I do reading in the morning and try to center myself. I play music every day because that is very centering. — Mason Jennings

I also use that centering process I mentioned as a way to focus my mind and connect it to my physical body. I feel that when we are aware of our physical bodies, we become more aware of how we exist on the earth and more considerate of others with whom we share the earth. — Amanda Schull

Anyone who's promoting the exact diet that they were in previous years probably isn't keeping up with the latest science, though in general, the balance of evidence has remained remarkably consistent - centering one's diet around whole plant foods. — Michael Greger

Learn to listen to subtle cues from your spirit instead of the barrage coming from your brain. — David Brazzeal

We bask in sermons, conferences, and books that exalt a grace centering on us. — David Platt

God and Goddess, I greet you at the start of another day and ask that you send me the best day possible. Help me to feel my best so I might do my best for myself and for others. Send me the strength and energy to do the things I need to do, and the focus and creativity to do them well. Help me to let go of all those things that no longer work for my benefit so I might move in the direction of perfect health and perfect balance. Help the world move in a better direction, and watch over me and those I love. Please send me prosperity and healing, patience and wisdom, serenity and faith. ... So mote it be. — Deborah Blake

There is a yearning for people to return to elementary moral virtues, such as integrity and commitment. We distrust people who have no centering of values. We greatly respect businessmen, for example, if they display those virtues, even if we don't necessarily agree with the people. — Geoff Mulgan

A long, deep breath is the equivalent of a full stop and the key to centering. — Eric Maisel

By centering our lives on correct principles and creating a balanced focus between doing and increasing our ability to do, we become empowered to the task of creating effective useful and peaceful lives. — Stephen Covey

Follow through: As you continue with your day, carry with you the knowledge that simply with a change of mind, you can change your life. Return occasionally to this centering thought: I am creating perfect health with every choice. I am creating perfect health with every choice. — Deepak Chopra

Centering on principles provides sufficient security to not be threatened by change, comparisons, or criticisms; guidance to discover our mission, define our roles, and write our scripts and goals; wisdom to learn from our mistakes and seek continuous improvement; and power to communicate and cooperate, even under conditions of stress and fatigue. — Stephen R. Covey

It was in those first couple months that I fell in love with liturgy, the ancient pattern of worship shared mainly in the Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox, and Episcopal churches. It felt like a gift that had been caretaken by generations of the faithful and handed to us to live out and caretake and hand off. Like a stream that has flowed long before us and will continue long after us. A stream that we get to swim in, so that we, like those who came before us, can be immersed in language of truth and promise and grace. Something about the liturgy was simultaneously destabilizing and centering; my individualism subverted by being joined to other people through God to find who I was. Somehow it happened through God. One specific, divine force. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Because the bulk of a platform's value is created by its community of users, the platform business must shift its focus from internal activities to external activities. In the process the firm inverts-it turns inside out, with functions from marketing to information technology to operations to strategy all increasingly centering on people, resources, and functions that exist outside the business, complementing or replacing those that exists inside a traditional business. — Geoffrey G. Parker

We wanted to write a whole song about partying and then taking Yellow Cabs home. That's the weirdest topic we've ever thought of centering a song around. — Taryn Manning

Any time I sit down and write music, the first part of that is always centering myself and thinking about who I currently am. — Trent Reznor

I've practiced centering prayer. I've contemplatively prayed. I've prayed liturgically ... I've benefited from each, and I still do. In ways you'll see, elements of each style are still with me. — Larry Crabb

In the middle of the brutal reality of death, Jesus never stopped calling people to life. Centering his attention on life, he continually pushes past the smaller and cheaper things we tend to live for and goes right to the core issue, which is life itself. — Rick McKinley

Energy-fire experiences take us into ourselves only that we might reach outside of ourselves. Metanoia is a de-centering experience of connected-ness and community. It is not an exercise in reciting what Jesus has done for me lately. Energy-fire ecstasy, more a buzz than a binge, takes us out of ourselves, literally. That is the meaning of the word 'ecstatic.' — Leonard Sweet

Centering our thoughts on God begins with what I like to call discovery. That is, when we discover a great truth about God, we begin to meditate on that truth until it captivates our whole thinking process. That in turn will lead to worship.
If worship is based on meditation, and meditation is based on discovery, what is discovery based on? On time spent with God in prayer and the Word. It is sad that many view prayer primarily as a way to get things. We have lost sight of the companion aspect of prayer - of being still and aware of God's wonderful presence and just communing with Him there. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Centering prayer is a training in letting go. — Thomas Keating

Pause, breathe, and lift, undefined, what is possible. Let the feeling of celebration come upon you, even if you do not comprehend cerebral reasons to justify it. For from that center, it will generate its own, able to carry you, until the original ones manifest, from that very portal you chose to fashion, unrestricted. — Tom Althouse

Other forms of relating to God that have unique value in connecting us to Him include contemplative prayer and centering prayer. — Larry Crabb

In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys' bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple. — Frank Pittman

white people might find that when we decenter our apparent interests, and center Black interests, that all along we were not really centering ourselves but only "whiteness" as a symbol or key to power, wealth, and prestige - mostly for a few white people who despise us only a little less than they do Black people. They are laughing at us. We blame Black "welfare queens" and Mexican "illegal aliens" while the whites who run this country grow richer and richer at our expense. Let's stick up for the most exploited, the most terrorized, and this might wake us up to the terror and exploitation which we also have been experiencing to a lesser degree. — Samantha Foster

Stealth Meditation If you start to feel overwhelmed, take a quick, centering moment - as short as following three breaths - to connect with a deeper sense of yourself. — Sharon Salzberg

When we are in alignment with what we truly believe, we can stand firm and tall and tell it like it is. This healthy kind of anger sets boundaries, holding others responsible for their actions. You teach people how to treat you through setting all sorts of boundaries or not setting them! Healthy anger can be like a burning sword that cuts through illusions and delusions about a bad situation. The energy of healthy anger can point the way to positive change but even more so when you speak in a calm, firm way. Stop and think how you are training people to treat you. The secret of boundary setting is centering yourself, breathing deeply and connecting with your truth to align yourself with higher principles, letting them speak through you.
- The Quick Anger Makeover and Other Cutting-Edge Techniques to Release Anger! — Lynne Namka

One of the values of centering prayer is that you are not thinking about God during the time of centering prayer so you are giving God a chance to manifest. In centering prayer there are moments of peace that give the psyche a chance to realize that God may not be so bad after all. God has a chance to be himself for a change. — Thomas Keating

After doing this work or the past twelve years and watching scarcity ride roughshod over our families, organizations, and communities, I'd say the one thing we have in common is that we're sick of feeling afraid. we want to dare greatly. We're tired of the national conversation centering on "What should we fear" and "Who should we blame?" We all want to be brave. — Brene Brown

I talk about any number of things on my Facebook space. Politics. Current events. The writing life. The latest tempests in a teapot centering on fandom. Daily doings from my own life. My cats, for crying out loud. Flights of humorous fantasy. Books, both those I've read and those I've written. Movies. And occasionally, TV shows. — Adam-Troy Castro

The standard freak show chic bullshit which had beset the generation after mine thanks to a string of wildly successful reality shows centering on competitive body modification. I'd had fun watching Manual Mutants and Oddfellas when they first started, but then The League of Zeroes came along and made things too grotesque. They lost me when Rectal Rachelle died on the table during her ass-neck implant surgery. — Jeremy Robert Johnson

But it is not that you are something which is just watching what happens. "What happens" is just using your organism to watch itself. It is the universe centering as a particular being, though it is not necessary to use or insist on this concept, for what is important here is not the idea but the feeling of it. The words are only a special use of noises in the air, marks on paper, or vibrations in the brain. — Alan W. Watts

Hence they would be very foolish who would think that God is failing them because of their lack of spiritual sweetness and delight, or would rejoice, thinking they possess God because of the presence of this sweet ness. And they would be more foolish if they were to go in search of this sweetness in God and rejoice and be detained in it. With such an attitude they would no longer be seeking God with their wills grounded in the emptiness of faith and charity, but they would be seeking spiritual satisfaction and sweetness, which are creatures, by following after their own pleasure and appetite. And thus they would no longer be loving God purely, above all things, which means centering all the strength of one's will on him. — San Juan De La Cruz

Centering prayer involves consenting to God's presence and action within - beyond thoughts, images, and perceptions - in order to form a contemplative relationship with God. — David Frenette

What if you spent some alone time every morning? Call it prayer. Call it planning. Call it centering. I call it a powerful way to begin the day. — Steve Goodier

We live in a church culture that has a dangerous tendency to disconnect the grace of God from the glory of God. Our hearts resonate with the idea of enjoying God's grace. We bask in sermons, conferences, and books that exalt a grace centering on us. And while the wonder of grace is worthy of our attention, if that grace is disconnected from its purpose, the sad result is a self-centered Christianity that bypasses the heart of God. — David Platt

We are summoned not only to intimacy but to take possession of our very oneness with the Son of God in the inner life of the Trinity in the communication of the very Love of Father and Son, the Most Holy Spirit. This is what centering prayer is about. — M. Basil Pennington

One of the most important phases of maturing is that of growth from self-centering to an understanding relationship to others. A person is not mature until he has both an ability and a willingness to see himself as one among others and to do unto those others as he would have them do to him. — Harry Allen Overstreet

Happiness is self-generated as the mind becomes still. As we become involved with the desires of the world, we lose that centering, that stillness. — Frederick Lenz

I teach girls certain skills. The first and most basic is centering. I recommend that they find a quiet place where they can sit alone daily for 10 to 15 minutes. I encourage them to sit in this place, relax their muscles and breathe deeply. Then they are to focus on their own thoughts and feelings about the day. They are not to judge these thoughts or feelings or even direct them, only to observe them and respect them. They have much to learn from their own internal reactions to their lives. — Mary Pipher

The limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favourite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long-recognisable deed. — George Eliot

This vision of life is deeply centered in God, the sacred. So it was for Jesus. So it is in all of the enduring religions of the world. What makes Christianity Christian is centering in God as known in Jesus. — Marcus J. Borg

The word cellulite, for example, first appeared in the April 15, 1968, issue of Vogue magazine, and this invented disease soon had a believer base worldwide: Vogue began to focus on the body as much as on the clothes, in part because there was little they could dictate with the anarchic styles. ... In a stunning move, an entire replacement culture was developed by naming a "problem" where it had scarcely existed before, centering it on the women's natural state, and elevating it to the existential female dilemma ... . The number of diet- related articles rose 70 percent from 1968 to 1972. — Timothy Ferriss

God wants a love partner, centering on the place where husband and wife become one through their sexual organs, God wants to appear and meet us ... I wish you would center on the absolute sexual organ, unique sexual organ, unchanging sexual organ and eternal sexual organ and use this as your foundation to pursue God ... We have to realize that the Kingdom of God on earth and in heaven will begin on this foundation. — Sun Myung Moon

At some point each day (well, most days) I unroll my mat and practice for an hour. I sit in meditation for a while. This can be five minutes or twenty minutes, but the daily practice - simply showing up for it - is centering. — Dani Shapiro

Politically progressive black people on the Left who are not nationalist, like myself, share a perspective that promotes the eradication of white supremacy, the de-centering of the West, redressing of biases, and commitment to affirming black self-determination. Yet we add to the critique of white Western imperialism a repudiation of patriarchy, a critique of capitalism, and a concern for interracial coalition building. — Bell Hooks

My father was a man who didn't consider himself learned. He was a man who liked to be a farmer. He enjoyed his dairy farm and felt the calling. So there was a dedication. I was dedicated as a child to the service of God, and so there was this continual centering of a greater purpose than your own. — Phil Jackson

Great Goddess, Great God, I come before you at the end of another day and thank you for the many blessings in my life. For friends and family and pets, for home and health and good food. I thank you for (the names of whichever people crossed my path that day in meaningful ways) and for (whatever good things happened or whichever not-so-great things they helped me survive.). Please help me to get a good night's sleep so I might wake in the morning refreshed and energized and ready to face another day. Watch over me and those I love. So mote it be. — Deborah Blake

While doing centering prayer, the practice is to let go of any thought or perception. The priority is to be as silent as possible and when that is not possible to let the noise of the thoughts be the sacred symbol for a while, without analyzing them. — Thomas Keating

How time packs new years over the old ones but how those old years are still in there, like the earliest, tightest rings centering a tree, the most hidden, enclosed in darkness and shielded from weather. But then a saw screams in and the tree topples and the circles are stricken by the sun and the sap glistens and the stump is laid open for the world to see. — Tom Franklin, Crooked Letter Crooked Letter

I'm going to say a word, just for your general opinion and consideration," he said, his light blue gaze touching hers.
"I'm listening."
"Marriage."
Zephyr blinked. Had he actually just suggested a proposal? A marriage? With her? A thousand thoughts all flitted through her mind, none of them making any sense, but several of them centering on whether she was reading too much or too little into one blasted word. "I think" - she stumbled, backing away from him and toward the village - "that if you mean to ask a question, you should ask it. And you shouldn't make it so stupidly ambiguous just on the chance that a negative response might embarrass you or wound your feelings."
"Is that so?" He stalked after her.
"It is so. And another thing. Before you ask such a question, consider giving me - or whoever you intend on asking - a reason to say yes. — Suzanne Enoch

We may think we are centering our lives on God when we are really making Him a means to self-esteem. — John Piper

The exercise for centering oneself is a simple one.
Stop thinking of what you intend to do. Stop thinking of what you have just done. Then stop thinking that you have stopped thinking of those things.
Then you will find the now. The time that stretches eternal, and is really the only time there is.
Then in that place, you will finally have time to be yourself. — Robin Hobb

RESIST no thought; RETAIN no thought; REACT to no thought; RETURN to the sacred word. — Cynthia Bourgeault

Another way to think about Centering Prayer is training the mind to become free from distractions so it can "rest in God. — Amos Smith

Centering Prayer is an opening, a response, a putting aside of all the debris that stands in the way of our being totally present to the present Lord, so that He can be present to us. It is a laying aside of thoughts, so that the heart can attend immediately to Him. All prayer is a response. The Lord first knocks, beckons, calls to us. — M. Basil Pennington