Centre for Spiritual Practice

The Centre for Spiritual Practice is a project of St. George the Martyr church to foster the practice of prayer. The Centre was the recipient of a Ministry Development grant of the Diocese of Toronto. The Centre exists to help you develop a personally meaningful spiritual practice.

We draw from the deep well of the Christian contemplative tradition. We offer opportunities for the deepening of prayer life within liturgical and non-liturgical contexts. We seek to nurture your spiritual formation through a variety of engaging workshops and presentations. We offer personal spiritual direction and referrals for spiritual direction. Our garden and interior spaces offer respite from the busy city. We seek to offer within our urban context the opportunity for personal guidance, retreat and renewal.

We have over the past three years hosted distinguished international teachers of prayer:

• the Rev. Dr. Tilden Edwards, former Director of the Shalem Institute of Spiritual Formation in Bathesda, Maryland;
• Fr. Thomas Keating, well-known author and proponent of “Centering Prayer”; Sr. Christine, Prioress of the Sisters of the Love of God, Fairacres, Oxford.

Rev. Max Woolaver is a graduate of the Shalem program (1989) and was, for a number of years, on the national board of the Jubilee Program in Canada , Canada’s only national program of spiritual formation and training of spiritual directors. Max is a member of the Spiritual Directors of Ontario and has been published in Presence, the journal of Spiritual Directors International.