Compassion lies at the heart of contemplative traditions, including those within Christianity. In fact, the teachings of Jesus describe radical love in terms of compassion. According to contemplative Christianity, these teachings and the shape of Jesus’ life offer an invitation to become formed in the image of Divine Compassion –a love-your-enemies way of life filled with compassionate thoughts, feelings, and actions. But how do we embrace such compassion? This retreat-like workshop answers that question through guided, experiential explorations of key compassion-forming practices throughout Christian history, including Desert Contemplation, Recollection, Centering Prayer, Prayer of the Heart, Imaginative Contemplation, Contemplation to Attain Love, and a contemporary Compassion Practice. These practices engage basic human faculties –“foundational capacities” –such as intention, attention, and awareness. They also engage particular “compassion-cultivating capacities” that the Christian contemplative traditions emphasize as crucial for a life formed in radical love: intimacy, imagination, and emotion. These three are the capacities that directly cultivate radical compassion for oneself and for others (even those experienced as “enemies”). While this workshop will highlight Christian contemplative contributions to compassion cultivation, the practices will be offered in a way that allows them to be accessible to anyone, Christian contemplative or not.
About the Presenter:
Dr. Dreitcer has been the co-founding director of a seminary program in spiritual direction and served 15 years as a Presbyterian pastor. Studies with Henri Nouwen and a year spent at the ecumenical monastic community of Taizé significantly shaped his own spiritual life and his perspective on both the role of spiritual formation in theological studies and the value of contemplative studies in academia. Dr. Dreitcer’s current research and teaching interests lie in the exploration of the nature and experience of contemplative practices across religious traditions, the relationship between spiritual practices and neuro-scientific understandings, the ways in which contemplative practices form compassionate actions and attitudes of living, and Christianity as a spiritual path of engaged compassion. He is also Director of Spiritual Formation at Claremont School of Theology, co-director of the Center for Engaged Compassion, and director of the Hybrid/Online Doctor of Ministry (D.Min) in Spiritual Renewal, Contemplative Practice, and Strategic Leadership.
