San Francisco Bay Area Retreat & Meditation Center
Address
Mercy Center is a ministry of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, West Midwest, an order of Catholic women religious. Mercy Center was established in 1981 in Burlingame, California, as a retreat center and a conference center for religious and non-religious nonprofit organizations.
Mercy Center provides opportunities for people to become more attentive to the presence of the Divine in their lives and in the world, and then respond with care for the Earth and service to others, especially people who are poor and vulnerable.
Dear Friends of Mercy Center,
We are OPEN and keeping busy with lots of online programs and virtual prayer services. The Burlingame Campus is still closed.
Please call the office at 650-340-7474 or call me directly at 650-340-7492 from 9am-5pm PT. Our email is mc@sistersofmercy.org – we will respond as quickly as we can.
We pray that someday soon we will open the doors to the Center once again. Until then, join us in this “deepening season” and find a community of support as we pray, meditate, and learn online.
Please sign up for our email list to be informed of upcoming programs and updates.
Blessings, Mary
Join us for weekly East West Meditation and Centering Prayer
Mercy Center Burlingame
“The major premises that underlie spiritual direction are disarmingly simple: namely, that God is active in our lives, constantly taking the initiative; that God’s actions are unrelentingly loving (which is not to say always easy or comforting but, rather, always on the side of our deepest desires); that we can experience these actions of God, can sense the movements of God’s Spirit; and that we can respond to these movements either with willingness or with resistance.
Spiritual direction at its best entirely focuses on helping the directee to become attentive to the presence, action, and movements of God in ordinary human experiences, and on noticing the directee’s own responses to these movements of the Holy. Whatever content the direction conversation may hold, however many interesting twists and turns and diverse paths it takes, the director listens for one thing only. The director “tunes in” like a person fiddling carefully with a radio dial, spinning from one music clip to another, one fragment of speech to the next, until “Aha, this is it!”: the director recognizes the presence of God in the conversation, and then helps the directee to explore further what has occurred or is occurring.”