Programs 2021
At our December meeting, our first in-person meeting since before pandemic restrictions, Father Bob O’Donnell discussed the few facts and many legends that surrounded the life of St. Nicholas, the bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, who lived from A.D. 270 until 343. According to one legend, his secret gift-giving gave rise to the myth of Santa Claus or St. Nick (from the German Sinterklaas). His talk was “St. Nicholas: Legends that Give Life.”
Father O’Donnell recently retired as associate pastor of St. John XXIII University Parish and Student Center on the University of Tennessee campus.
Father Terry Ryan, CSP, presented our Zoom meetings for August, September, October and November, a four-part discussion on Rufus Jones, a Quaker theologian and leader who had a great influence on the Quaker spirituality called “The Inner Light.”
Jones was not a proponent of the Apophatic Way of prayer, or of anchorites, or monks in their cells. Mystical experience was to encounter the Presence in meditation and in the everyday world. It is both, not either-or. He was a powerful influence on Howard Thurman (discussed in previous SOS talks). One can also see Meister Eckhart, Francis of Assisi, Henry David Thoreau, and Julian of Norwich in his spirituality.
In April and May, Father Ryan also presented two sessions on Howard Thurman who was an American author, philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader.
Howard Thurman was all about inclusion and the “Inclusive Jesus.” Howard looked not look only at race, but also at the inclusion of different spiritual and religious paths. In all this he discovered the depth of mediation that we practice is SOS and teach in our invitations to speakers of different traditions. At Boston University he mentored Rabbi Schacter, whom we have recently studied. Thurman began a church of inclusion in San Francisco that was there when Father Terry lived in that city.
As a prominent religious figure, Thurman played a leading role in many social justice movements and organizations of the 20th century. Thurman’s theology of radical nonviolence influenced and shaped a generation of civil rights activists, and he was a key mentor to leaders within the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr.
Thurman served as dean of Rankin Chapel at Howard University from 1932 to 1944 and as dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University from 1953 to 1965. In 1944, he co-founded, along with Alfred Fisk, the first major interracial, interdenominational church in the United States.
Howard Thurman died on April 10, 1981 in San Francisco.
Our June meeting was the Seekers of Silence annual book share in which participants discussed books and other spiritual resources that had been important to them in the past year.
Seekers of Silence joined Contemplative Outreach and other prayer groups around the world to commemorate United Prayer Day in the global unity of silence as God’s first language at our March Zoom meeting. The meeting also honored the birthday (March 7) of Contemplative Outreach co-founder Father Thomas Keating. The Cistercian monk died October 25, 2018.
Although Seekers of Silence is not affiliated with Contemplative Outreach, we have for several years observed United Prayer Day by showing a video of a talk by Father Keating. This year’s program included a 29-minute video, “What is Divine Therapy Part I,” in which Father Keating discusses what happens when we pray in silence.
Father Terry Ryan, the Paulist priest whose workshops on contemplation and centering prayer when he was pastor of St. John XXIII Catholic Parish in Knoxville inspired the creation of Seekers of Silence, presented on Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi at our January and February Zoom meetings.
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi was a lifelong Hasid who explored ways for Judaism to participate and grow in a modern Inter-faith world free of fundamental triumphalism. One of his teachers was Howard Thurman, subject of our April meeting. He also met Thomas Merton at Gethsemane and corresponded with him. He appreciated St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. He met the Dalai Lama in India. He taught at Temple University and at Naropa, a Buddhist-inspired, ecumenical, and nonsectarian in Boulder, Colorado. Over time he shifted his focus from the restoration of Hasidism after the Holocaust to a focus on the renewal of Jewish life in dialogue with other religions and science. Part of his contemplative pursuit was a search for why so many young Jews got involved with Buddhist and Hindu spiritual life. He died in 2014.
Father Terry now resides in Colorado.