June 14, 2025 | Phil Fox Rose, Leader
It is useless to talk at large to those working people mostly living without privacy in noisy streets about the reality and necessity of prayer unless you provide a quiet place in which they can practice it. It must be a place which does not receive them with that forbidding air of a spiritual drawing room in dust sheets during the week but which abounds in suitable suggestions, offers an invitation which it helps them to accept. — Evelyn Underhill, Concerning the Inner Life (1926)
For many, encountering deeper Reality through contemplative practice is the beginning of, or a turning point in, their spiritual journey. Enabling this encounter is a subversive act — challenging society’s values. As writer and poet Tricia Hersey says, “rest is resistance.” Drawing from the work of Evelyn Underhill, we will explore the centrality of quiet and contemplation to the spiritual life, and both the how and the why of having more places and practices to facilitate it, inside and outside of traditional church settings. Two examples are a regular centering prayer practice, and a space like Underhill House in Seattle that provides quiet space outside the church building.
Phil Fox Rose is executive director of Underhill House in Seattle, Washington, a unique contemplative ministry offering a quiet space for people — regardless of their personal situation and their spiritual tradition or lack of one — to come in off the street and pray, meditate, or just enjoy stillness. He is also a spiritual director, mindset coach, writer and editor. Phil has been editorial director of Spiritual Directors International, editor-in-chief of Paraclete Press and content director of Patheos. He has been teaching, practicing and writing about contemplation for over 30 years, since being introduced to centering prayer (and Evelyn Underhill) by Cynthia Bourgeault, and leads weekly contemplative prayer at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle.
Quiet Day participants that require overnight accommodations on June 13 or 14 may be able to stay at the Virginia Mae Center (formerly the College of Preachers) on the Cathedral Close, next to St. Alban’s Church. VMC is kindly offering the Evelyn Underhill Association reduced room rates, depending on availability. Please contact Jodi Chambers to make arrangements.
