We build community that transcends walls.
Journeying together as people affected by incarceration, Praestolari shares Centering Prayer meditation and fosters connections to support healing and transformation, both personal and communal.
Praestolari is a fellowship, open to all, celebrating each person's unique relationship with the Divine.
Our community is composed of people from all walks of life, including: people holding various beliefs and those without a formal creed; those who are experiencing or have experienced incarceration; and those who choose to accompany them, whether as friends, loved ones, chaplains or volunteers, or simply fellow travelers on the journey. The healing invited by this work reaches beyond every wall. Recognizing our deep commonality across many outward differences, we are united through the practice of Centering Prayer, a silent prayer practice rooted in the Christian contemplative tradition and open to all.
“We are all prisoners in one form or another and some of us are behind bars.”
- From Finding God Within by Ray Leonardini
We believe that the experience of God within is the birthright of every person — that all are made in the Divine image and likeness, no matter how our ideas, beliefs, and personality have been shaped. In our circles, time for silent meditation opens into time for sharing, and those conversations become the seeds of a deepening spiritual journey grounded in our personal experience.
This gift is universal. So, too, is the human condition: we are all held captive by something. When we gather in silence together, the walls between us soften. Healing, we discover, is not a solitary act. We come home to ourselves through one another. This is the freedom Praestolari is working toward, for every person, inside and out.