Welcoming Prayer

The Welcoming Prayer was created by Mary Mrozowksi, who helped the development and popularization of Centering Prayer. Welcoming Prayer is based on the teachings of Thomas Keating and her experience of transformation. 

The method of Welcoming Prayer involves noticed feelings, emotions, thoughts, sensations, and commentaries in your body. The prayer introduces the welcoming of the divine indwelling into what you sense in your body by saying “Welcome.”

Then the prayer follows with “letting go” statements that initiate bringing about inner change to the “false-self system.” Different formats provide for the experience to practice the prayer with specific guidance. With this experience and information provided, participants will be able to do the Welcoming Prayer on their own. 

“To welcome and to let go is one of the most radically loving, faith-filled gestures we can make in each moment of each day. It is an open-hearted embrace of all that is in ourselves and in the world.” 

Mary traveled this path to the end, and the last decade of her life was an increasingly go-for-broke experiment in how far Welcoming Prayer could take you.

Guide to Welcoming Prayer

• Notice any feelings, emotions, thoughts, sensations, or commentaries in your mind and body. 

• Accept God into what you are experiencing by simply saying, “Welcome.”

• Silently affirm a sincere intention to let go of the desire for security, control, satisfaction, or peace.
  You can welcome God by inwardly saying, “I let go of the need to change the situation.”