Out of Control in the Time of Pandemic

Jun 6th, 2020 @ 10:00 AM
- @ 11:00 AM

(All Event Times Listed are Central Standard Time)
St. Mary’s Sewanee
770 St. Mary's Lane
Sewanee, TN 37375

Life feels out of control for many of us right now.

The world’s landscape has changed and we don’t know how the future is going to unfold. Practicing Centering Prayer is one way to help us to better navigate this uncertain time.

Spend an hour learning about, and practicing Centering Prayer, facilitated by Susan Packard. Susan is a co-founder of HGTV who left a career building businesses to build a life around teaching, writing, and 12-Step Recovery. She is a regular Centering Prayer workshop teacher. During this workshop, she will provide instruction about the topic, then lead a silent, 15-minute Centering Prayer meditation, leaving time for questions and answers.

Each month, for three months, Susan will discuss a teaching of Fr. Thomas Keating, one of the founders of Centering Prayer, and where it ties in, a teaching from Bill W, the founder of AA and 12-Step Recovery. The spiritual teachings and practices of both Centering Prayer and 12-Step Recovery are two of the most important contributions to the world’s spiritual traditions.

In the first session on June 6, she will discuss how our need for control is a part of the human condition. The July session will be about our need for affection and esteem; the August session will be about our need for safety and security. Fr. Keating and Bill W often wrote about these three sets of human instincts, and how we can “overwork” them, making our lives chaotic, and out of balance. Prayer, meditation, and building kinship with others are solutions they embraced, and we will do the same in these sessions.

These hour-long workshops will be held via Zoom on

This special series of events is FREE (we welcome donations to support St. Mary’s Sewanee and its programs). Each of the three events is unique: sign up for all three or participate in just one.

If you prefer to protect your anonymity,
send an email directly to <admin@StMarysSewanee.org> for log-in information.


This event is fully booked.