The 2025 COB Annual Conference featuring Rev. Dr. Stuart Higginbotham was held on September 6 at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Vestavia Hills. COB was honored to host Rev. Higginbotham for a one day contemplative conference focusing on ‘Poetic Imagination and the Consent to the Divine Presence’.  Toward the very end of his life, Fr. Thomas Keating engaged poetry as a means to express his greatest non-dual awareness of the Divine Presence.  His poems are both a description of his personal encounter as well as a teaching tool for us to explore in our own practice.  Given the significance of the insights, it is important for us to see why Fr. Thomas explored poetry at that point in his life.

 

How can poetry nurture such an awareness of the Divine Presence in our lives?  What can we learn about the juxtaposition of poetic imagination and contemplative practice – specifically Centering Prayer?  This retreat focused on the ways poetry nurtures our spiritual hearts and fosters that deep consent to the Divine Presence that is a hallmark of Centering Prayer Practice.

 

The Rev. Higginbotham is an Episcopal priest and serves as rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Gainesville, Georgia.  He is also Assistant Professor in the Practice of Spiritual Formation and Ministry at Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  He is the author of The Heart of a Calling: The Practice of Christian Mindfulness in Congregational Ministry and a new collection of poetry, Bones of Light: Poems of Spiritual Imagination.