A Letter from Cynthia: Spring 2010 Newsletter

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 book, Silence.

Life has been busy down here in the States as I continue my appointed rounds of Wisdom Schools, Spiritual Paths Institute, and The Nine Gates Mystery School, as well as two very intense Christophany retreats held in upstate New York State this past summer and fall. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel: my Mary Magdalene manuscript which has been bedeviling me for three years is now officially off my computer and into production! It will make its official appearance on September 14, 2010, under the title, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity. So far the advance endorsements have been outstanding—and varied as well, including such “strange bedfellows” as Andrew Harvey, Phyllis Tickle, Richard Rohr, and Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. I am particularly grateful for Bishop Katharine’s generous endorsement (true to form, she has once again proven herself willing to go out on a limb for a worthy cause!), and I hope that through her words of encouragement my book will spark real conversation in the Church, rather than simply further polarization.

Before I head your way again, I will be making a brief trip to the UK and Spain in early March. If all goes well, I will lead a day-long retreat at a convent in London, sponsored by “Silence in the City,” then head down to Barcelona for an audience with Raimon Panikkar, now 91 years old. After two years or more now of sharing his remarkable teachings at a variety of retreats and seminars, I am so looking forward to meeting him in person. Hopefully, I will be able to give you a full reporting before the time of the AGM, as our meeting is scheduled for March 11-12.

Looking ahead to the spring and summer schedule, you will see some changes in the pattern: a couple of new events I am really looking forward to, both of them in conjunction with the Episcopal House of Prayer in Minnesota. During Holy Week we will be offering our first-ever meditation immersion retreat, a vision I have held in my heart for more than a decade now. About twenty seasoned Christian contemplatives from all over North America (including our own intrepid Calgary crew!) will convene for a week of intense deep meditation, teaching from Ladislaus Boros’s remarkable book The Mystery of Death, and simple contemplative liturgy.

The hope is to hold a space together in which we can begin to enter the Paschal Mystery from the “inside,” through deeply attuned hearts following Jesus on his redemptive journey beyond the grave. It has taken many years to develop a quorum of people ready and able to cast themselves loose from parish and family obligations to make this rare opportunity possible, and I am deeply grateful.

Then, in early August, a group of about 30 of us will travel to Assisi, Italy, for a week-long immersion in the theme of Conscious Love. This is a Wisdom School, not a pilgrimage. We will be holding to a regular schedule of meditation, conscious work, and teaching, to invite the remarkable energy of Assisi, still palpably vibrating from the energy of St Francis and St Clare, to touch and transform our hearts. When I was in Assisi last summer with the Global Peace Initiative of Women, I was struck by how this city is in many ways a Christian Dharamsala, radiating an energy of peace and compassion which our war-torn world and war-torn Christianity badly need to discover again. We come as a Wisdom “scout party” to give ourselves to how that might happen, and perhaps to lay the foundation for future retreats and Wisdom Schools in this sacred site.

Overall, I find my priorities gravitating toward wanting to create a series of more intense teaching/meditation retreats during the sacred-seasons times of the Christian year: Advent, Holy Week, All Saints, and that mysterious liminal space between Ascension and Pentecost. In these longer gatherings, grounded in silent meditation, and contemplative chanting and Eucharist, my hope is that we might more deeply touch the mystical heart of Christianity which I believe both our churches and our world are hungering for. What lies beyond the polarizations, the schisms, the old paradigms and the new paradigms? Does the voice of the turtledove still sound in our Christian lands? And if so, how can that voice grow stronger, more beautiful, haunting and compelling? I don’t know, but it is to that which I most want to dedicate these next several seasons of my life.

With love and blessing,

Cynthia

Originally found in The Contemplative Society's Spring 2010 Newsletter