Friday, October 14, 2005
THE GURDJIEFFIAN CHURCH
Over the past several days I've been blogging about the activities of Catholic (and other) monastics. In particular this has led to Fr. Basil Pennington (deceased), Fr. Thomas Keating, Fr. Laurence Freeman, Fr. Richard Rohr, the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue organization, Action and Contemplation, the John Main Seminar, and the concepts of meditation/contemplation, the Gurdjieffian enneagram, and centering prayer.
Yesterday I linked Houston Contemplative, Contemplative Outreach, and centering prayer websites. All of these are interconnected, and all revolve around Keating, Freeman, Rohr, and a number of other monastics.
The 2005 Annual Conference of Contemplative Outreach includes a Taize Worship Service on Thursday evening, led by Susan Boulden.
Where does all of this lead? I think it leads to the Gurdjieffian Church, an emerging concept in worship.
G. I. Gurdjieff founded his center outside of Paris and called it the Harmonious Development of Man.
There is a church which uses similar language in its title called The Church of Conscious Harmony. This church holds a Taize service and a "contemplative lunch." It uses sacred chanting and Gurdjieff Music. It holds a "Midweek Contemplative Communion Service." Among the pictures across the top of the website is one of an enneagram. There is an icon of the Last Supper on the webpage. If you click the "calendar" link you will arrive here where you can see that they teach Centering Prayer.
If you go to this page in The Church of Conscious Harmony website, you can see the number of times that Catholic monastics Fr. Thomas Keating and Fr. Carl Arico spoke at this church. Clicking on the link provided there will enable you to hear what they said.
This church is not Catholic. Rather, it is the emerging church--the church that can accommodate more than one religion in peace and harmony. This emerging church has a logo. You can see it in the website header right next to the name of the church. It almost looks like one of the AOL symbols. They call it "The Mark" and that is the name of their newsletter. The meaning of the symbol is explained here. It really is an eye in a triangle.
To learn what the church teaches, go to the "Who we are" link on the left that will take you to the "Essence" webpage where you can discover that they teach "traditional Christian contemplative practices of silent meditation and active prayer" and that they are an "esoteric Christian school of the work of G. I. Gurdjieff."
For a better understanding of them, check out the Regeneration webpage where you will see the Tetragrammaton and a reference to the Holy Spirit. They are attempting to facilitate the spiritual journey for "People who want to make God-devotion the center of their lives while living in the ordinary world without the aid of monastery walls." That is the teaching of Gurdjieffian disciple P. D. Ouspensky's Fourth Way. This is a form of Russian occultism.
Read the 20th Chapter of the Book of Revelation.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
