Cynthia Bourgeault

hese notes are reflections and notes from Christopher's time at Cynthia's Through Holy Week with Mary Magdalene at the at Poet’s Cove, Pender Island, BC in 2011.

“All Saints’ Greetings to all you Saints!” I am writing to you on the eve of All Saints from Our Lady of The Holy Spirit Abbey in Conyers, Georgia, where I am a spending a few respite days in the midst of the teaching rounds. It’s a great pleasure to call you all to mind as I reflect back on the highlights of the past six months and ponder the shape of what may lie ahead. The big watershed event has been the publication of my book The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, which official

Dear Friends in the Pacific Northwest (and Beyond), How I look forward to being with you again in April! It seems unbelievable that I have not been on the Canadian side of the border for more than a year now, and I am counting the days until the chance to reconnect with many of you at our silent meditation retreat April 12 -16 at Cowichan Lake, a site new to me. We’ll be inviting “the medium to be the message,” as we focus our attention on Robert Sardello’s marvelously subtle

*This reflection was featured on the home page of contemplative.org in late 2009 to early 2010. It comes from Goop by Gwyneth Paltrow's newsletter #62. Question: “The figure and teachings of Jesus are too often broken down, adapted, and then shaped to fit people’s own particular needs and desires. Who was the real, walking, talking, preaching Jesus and what lessons can we take from him today?” Cynthia Bourgeault replies: Don’t get tricked into confusing truth with facticity

September 19, 2009 Dear friends and fellow contemplatives, What a wild ride this summer has turned out to be! When I broke camp back in Colorado shortly after Easter and headed back to my hermitage in Maine, I expected several months of hermit reclusion in the classic style, my nose to the grindstone on the Mary Magdalene book. The manuscript did get completed—in about two months, rather than the four I was allotting—but what opened up for the rest of the summer flung me and

June 04, 2009 Everybody, without a doubt, told me I would love this place. And the adjectives were so glowing that I came prepared to discount them by a hefty percentage. But no, every glowing word turned out to be an understatement. Take the incomparable rugged beauty of BC, the extraordinary sailing waters of Maine, the sassy, "in-your-face spirit" of pioneer America...and throw in the incomparably haunting presence of the Maori culture, and it's all good. And that's before

June 15, 2008 Dear friends in the Contemplative Society, As some of you may know, this spring has served up a cornucopia of opportunities for spiritual pilgrimage. This March it was India; in May (after a week of Centering Prayer teaching in England), I was privileged to be able to spend two weeks in Turkey and on the Greek islands of Paros and Patmos. The teaching in England went splendidly, thanks to my extremely gracious and competent hosts in Norwich and London, who are e

Dear members and friends of the Contemplative Society, It's Thanksgiving Day in the States as I write to you—an appropriate occasion, since thanksgiving is the main content of my message. I have been so deeply blessed during this past year by the loving support of the Contemplative Society, and particularly by the inspired and dedicated leadership of our board of directors. What an amazing year of enthusiasm and abundance! Your support made possible several wonderful teaching

The Divine Feminine in Hebrew Scripture and Biblical Wisdom Literature FOREWORD By The Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, Ph.D. You are now holding in your hands a small treasure. Prepare to be delighted—and transformed. When my friend Rami Shapiro asked me to contribute a Foreword to his soon-to-be-published manuscript on the Divine Feminine in Hebrew scriptures, I agreed partly out of skepticism. The Divine Feminine in the Old Testament?? It sounded like an oxymoron. Back in seminary

Aspen Chapel, April 2, 2006 by Cynthia Bourgeault “True love demands sacrifice because true love is a transforming force and the beginning of union at a higher level.” I first read these words more than ten years ago in an essay on the Lord’s Prayer written by an anonymous contemporary Christian mystic.  Even then they sent a numinous shiver up my spine.  I still don’t fully understand what they mean.  But I recognize their truth and their overwhelming bearing on my own human

Dear Friends, Greetings from points east! As I write to you this morning, I'm now nearing the end of yet-another cross-country migration. This afternoon, God willin', I'll cross Penobscot Bay in Bob Quinn's lobsterboat and take up residence once again in my little hermitage on Eagle Island, Maine. It will be another summer of "gitting further" with construction, along with a few writing projects and preparation for the summer's round of teaching and retreats. Just to make the

a homily given by the Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault Talk given by The Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault at Aspen Chapel On March 7, 2004, to launch a month-long focus on Christian Mysticism *This homily was pulled from Archived site data, uploaded to contemplative.org in 2004. There's a famous, allegedly true-story I may have told you before concerning a school board in Tennessee debating about whether or not to introduce the study of foreign languages into the high school curriculum. "Hell

*Image: Eagle Island, Maine (LOST) November, 2003 Dear Members and Friends of the Contemplative Society, When I immigrated to Canada in 1998 to help form a new organization called The Contemplative Society, nobody (myself included) knew how long my time among you as resident teacher would last. It was an adventure in faith and mutual trust. We set out together to discern what kind of "new wineskin" God wished to bring into existence here in the Pacific Northwest to contain th

*Image: Eagle Island, Maine (LOST) May 2003 Dear Members and Friends, As I write this letter, it is with some sense of coming to the end of a long winter that has had its share of growing pains as well some extraordinary blessedness and joy. Like every young organization emerging from the original "big bang" of enthusiasm and energy that launched it, the Contemplative Society board has found itself wrestling with the good but hard questions necessary to build a broader vision

*Image: Eagle Island, Maine (LOST) Dear Friends, This past July a quiet milestone passed: the Contemplative Society turned five years old! I still remember that original incorporation meeting in John Lowan's living room: five of us sitting there trying to hammer our hopes and dreams into a mission statement. While that task eventually got accomplished, I'm sure none of us had the slightest clue what we were setting in motion, or how providentially everything, including our or

*Image: Sr.Marguerite Lalonde,SSA and Fr.Thomas Keating, OSB Victoria, BC, March 2002 (LOST) Dear friends and fellow sojourners, The Annual General Meeting of the Contemplative Society will take place this year on Saturday, May 4, at St. Philip's Anglican Church, 2928 Eastdowne Road, in the Oak Bay section of Victoria. The meeting will begin at 10 am, followed by our traditional luncheon. I hope you will make every effort to attend, as the air right now is electric with possi

Fr. Richard Rohr with Cynthia at the mini-retreat on Contemplation and Action, held at the Centre in July 2001 Dear friends, As I write this letter to you, I am on the eve of my homeward journey to British Columbia. I will spend a few days with old friends in Toronto, then a week on retreat at St. Benedict's Monastery in Colorado before returning to you all the first week in December.It has been a very rich three months of sabbatical back here in Maine, a time of deep quiet

*Image: Cynthia and Fr.Bruno,OSB (LOST) Dear Members, The fourth Annual General Meeting of the Contemplative Society is  nearly  upon us, bringing with it the welcome  responsibility of the annual director's report.  It has been a good year for the Contemplative Society: another year of steady growth, experimentation, and transition. From my standpoint, unquestionably our most successful new venture  has been the addition of Heather Page as part-time administrative assistant