A Letter from Cynthia: Autumn 2010 Newsletter

“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 officially made its debut on September 14. Autumn has been stacked with a busy schedule of book signing events, beginning with our official launch in Blue Hill, Maine, then moving on to Southern California, where the highlight was preaching and concelebrating with the St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Apostolic Community in San Diego, whose two women priests recently made the cover of TIME magazine as the impulse toward women’s ordination gains momentum in the Roman Catholic Church. From there the book tour took me to Hong Kong, then to Asheville, North Carolina, and there will still be a couple of more East Coast events (Washington and New York) before I head back to my usual winter bivouac in Colorado in early December.

So far so good. While I fully expect at some point to run afoul of shocked traditionalists crying “Heresy!,” so far the reception of my book has been overwhelmingly positive, as folks see that what I’m really about is trying to liberate Christian theology from a long, painful history of neurosis around issues of sexuality and human intimacy, and to reclaim the way of the Heart as a transforming path, equally practicable by those in committed relationship as by celibate monks. In our own time, as so many of us watch in helplessness as the Church seems intent on dashing itself on the rocks of what one of my priest friends calls “the pelvic issues” (women’s ordination, gay marriage, abortion, birth control, priestly sexual misconduct), it seems clear that we all need to find our way back to a much higher anthropology of human sexuality. My book is among other things an offering in that direction.

My teaching priorities these days seem to be constellating around creating deeper and more intense Wisdom Schools for maturing contemplative practitioners, combining rigorous kenotic practice with a deepening participation in the Christian mystical life, particularly as it expresses itself in liturgy, and in the ancient but little known Christian practices around mindfulness and inner attention. Highlights of our Wisdom circuit this past year have been the Holy Week meditation retreat at the House of Prayer in Minnesota (with Calgary contemplatives Betsy Young and Susan Cooper in attendance), and our pilot Wisdom School in Assisi (this time with our Canadian “double B’s,” Bronwen Boddington and Barbara Britton on deck), where we were able to immerse ourselves deeply in St. Francis’ extraordinary path of deepening surrender.

I am particularly interested, as many of you already know, in the issue of the formation of Wisdom teachers, an area that has been sadly neglected in recent Christian centuries and which does not lend itself easily to standard contemporary methodologies such as “teacher training” or certification. In ancient times a Wisdom teacher was a “pneumatikos”—a person of mature spirit. Today’s equivalents are a master, a guru, or— as the Sufi’s have it, a shaik—and the mode of delivery of Wisdom is not academic discourse but “sohbet” (“spiritual conversation”), held energetically by a person specifically trained in moment-to-moment awareness and the conscious wielding of spiritual energy. How does one learn to do this? In the time-tested ancient transmissions, it was through internship and mentoring. A student went and placed his or her life in the fate of an “abba” or “amma,” a spiritual elder who had learned to “walk the talk.” Is there a way of replicating this process today, adapting it to the conditions of our own times? This will be a particular concern during our Advanced Wisdom School, and in a series of Wisdom Schools on the drawing board for 2011 and 2012, particularly our “Advanced” Wisdom School in New York State, and our “Radical Grace” Wisdom School which I’ll co-lead with Richard Rohr at Ghost Ranch in May 2011.

And yes, under it all there has been hermit time, rich and good hermit time on Eagle Island, where I was able to hunker down for nearly the entire month of October.. I am hoping to clear the decks in 2012 for about six months of a much more intensive response to a growing inner summons, as I sense both inwardly and outwardly that a new phase of my life is calling and a deeper intention is the price of admission….The whirlwind has been stimulating, and in so many ways valuable, but the time is drawing closer when the requirement to “hew the line deeper” (in Rafe’s words) will be simply inescapable…

So…in this brief All Saints foretaste here in Georgia, I wish all my northern friends the deepest of blessing as the cool and dark months, the inwardness of Advent, draw closer. I do so look forward to catching up with you all again in March.

Blessings!

Cynthia

*This letter was originally composed for The Contemplative Society's Autumn 2010 Newsletter