June 2025 Newsletter
- The Contemplative Society
- Jun 1
- 15 min read
“Love is the religion and the universe is the book.“
(Rumi, his sentiment as expressed in Coleman Barks’ book, “Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing.“)
In this newsletter for you:
A new reflection from Paula Pryce;
Save-the-dates for two new and upcoming TCS retreats with Cynthia Bourgeault;
Thanks to donors;
Advance details on TCS’s Advent 2025 retreat;
A poem by Ilka Fischer; and
Continued registration opportunities for TCS’s October 2025 hybrid (in-person or Zoom) retreat with Heather Ruce at Sorrento Centre.
The Zen of Boston Driving
Tools for Carrying the Burdens of a Hostile World
Part Two: Intentional Suffering
by Paula Pryce
Traffic in Boston is mythic. People racing, gesticulating, and jockeying in whatever way possible. Rules are optional, it seems, and civility? Well – I’ve often thought Boston traffic to be the perfect microcosm of the get-ahead society.
Here are a few of the images seared into my mind:
A father with a carload of toddlers drives onto the sidewalk to jump the queue and gives the finger to anyone who dares honk.
A prim grandmotherly type tosses her head, flaps her arms, and swears like a sailor, spoiling for a fight over a fender bender that she herself caused.
A smartly dressed professional leans out the window of his BMW to yell at a woman trying to cross the street with two small children, “You f**kin’ mothers think you own the road!”
Not a pretty sight. Thrashing alligators are the dark side of communities that honour above all else ingenuity and brilliance in the individual. Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, Elie Wiesel, Leonard Bernstein, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Martin Luther King Jr., Noam Chomsky, Elizabeth Warren, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Yo-Yo Ma, and any number of Nobel Prize laureates . . . they and scores of other innovators have flourished under the Boston banner of individual heroism. The city has supported its stars like no other place.
But what about everyone else? Few play a cello like Yo-Yo Ma. If you aren’t at the apex of humanity, there’s no soft landing and the anxiety seeps out in all kinds of places. People who kindly greet their neighbours over the fence regularly succumb to fight-for-your-life competitiveness in the bubble of their cars. Yes, Boston driving culture used to upset me in the years I lived there – especially when I realized my growing inclination to gesticulate and swear like everyone else.
The stresses of Boston drivers may not be an earth-shattering kind of suffering, but it is nevertheless real. Aggressors or the recipients of aggression, privileged or impoverished, every one of us suffers. Granted, illustrating the universality of suffering with an everyday annoyance like bad traffic likely seems misguided in the complex upheavals of our times. We are all aware how the social wheels of power turn to favour the few and leave others to poverty, imprisonment, violence, and oppression.
Yet, little things are a substantial part, even the primary source, of suffering for many of us. Waiting on a colleague’s late report or facing a stack of dishes standing between you and your hike are sometimes the most dispiriting things we deal with in day-to-day life. So ubiquitous and so ordinary that, in our irritation, we forget that the Divine really is in our midst, and that every banal or exasperating moment offers the possibility to suffuse the world with compassion.
The stagnant grocery line or a string of stoplights is as good as anywhere to choose sanctity.
"That something is everywhere and always a miss is part of the very stuff of creation." – Annie Dillard
There’s no denying that suffering is an existential part of our world. Not a judgement, not a retribution. Just part of life. In The Wisdom Jesus, Cynthia Bourgeault says that a recognition of the fundamental presence of pain dawned on her only when she read Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Cynthia pondered “the jagged, binary nature of this realm of existence, a reality attested to by all the great spiritual traditions” and concluded that only in the “particular density” of earth’s “sharp edges and term limits . . . do the conditions become perfect for the expression of the most tender and vulnerable aspects of divine love.” In other words, the “irreducible brokenness” in which we dwell gives us the seeds that can transform the world.
Jungian psychologist Helen Luke notes that we use the word suffering in two distinct ways. Suffering can describe things that weigh us down, such as affliction (from fligere – “to strike”) and grief (gravare – that which is grave), or it can refer to something almost opposite in meaning: to hold up or support. The word suffering derives from the Latin root, ferre, meaning “to bear.” Add the word’s prefix, sub (“under”), and we come up with something like “carrying from beneath” or “undercarriage.” Kind of like the chassis of a vehicle – a car, a train, a wagon – that bears a load to its destination.
Helen Luke’s view of suffering as undercarriage encourages us to reconsider our compulsion to avoid pain and seek pleasure. By setting aside our urge to fly, deny, or collapse in the presence of adversity and instead consciously accept the reality of pain, we can begin to assist in subduing its effects.
Cynthia Bourgeault would call this intentional suffering. Introduced in the works of G.I. Gurdjieff, intentional suffering is an understandably confusing term that could easily be interpreted as seeking affliction on purpose. That, however, amounts to a martyr syndrome and a warped search for power. Intentional suffering instead describes how we can consciously address the pain that exists regardless of our fantasies of heroism. Our part begins with humility and a recognition that we have a choice to bear pain in the service of others. Cynthia writes in Eye of the Heart, “If conscious labor increases our capacity to stay present, intentional suffering radically increases the heartfulness of that presence.” Like conscious labour (the subject of my last TCS reflection), intentional suffering works against the entropic force that bleeds away energy fueling restorative care. Intentional suffering “invites us to step up to the plate and willingly carry a piece of universal suffering.”
Demanding lucidity and contemplative maturity, intentional suffering evokes Divine flow and thus alters sites of pain. “Close at hand the effects are immediately visible,” writes Helen Luke. “Those around us may know nothing of what is happening, but a weight is lifted from the atmosphere, or someone we love is set free to be herself, and the sufferer acquires a new clarity of vision and sensitivity.” Luke illustrates the difference between self-oriented and detached approaches to caring for others who suffer. If a nurse “reacts with intense personal emotion to the patient’s misery,” she writes, “she will either repress what she cannot bear and become hard and unfeeling, or else will increase the sick one’s burden through her unconscious identification.” A “true nurse,” on the other hand, carries the afflicted by attending them with compassion (“suffering with”), not emotional reactivity. Luke says, “The difference is subtle but absolutely distinct when experienced.”
Intentional suffering is more than a pragmatic diffusion of panic or misery. At its best, “sitting with the beast,” as Cynthia Bourgeault has called it, is an incarnational intercessory prayer. Intentional suffering invites the Divine to make her presence known where people experience anguish and sorrow.
Yes, but how? How do we enter into the prayer of making things better, not worse?
The practice of intentional suffering requires that we let go of our agendas, steer clear of self-interest, and open ourselves to God. “There’s no ‘you’ in it, no story, no drama, no ‘I’,” Cynthia once said at a Wisdom School when explaining our role in intercessory forms of prayer. In the practice of intentional suffering, one must have a “deadpan compassionate calm almost unknown in Christianity” that willingly participates in “a cycle that is bigger and more ancient than you,” she said. We need to let go of all the noise and simply consent to the Divine.
Humility and a surrendered heart are essential, but the actual methods can vary. Tonglen – the Buddhist practice of breathing in the pain of the world and breathing out peace – is an obvious way to carry suffering on behalf of others. Another is statio, an ancient Christian practice first introduced to me by the monks of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist in Cambridge, across the river from Boston.
Statio is the classic monastic practice of stopping, reflecting, and reorienting oneself toward the Divine. In monasteries, there is often an architectural space designated especially for the prayer of stopping. A small vestibule called the statio (what else?) links the sacristy, where monks and nuns do the work of preparing liturgies, to the sanctuary, where they chant, pray, and perform the Eucharist. The statio is a liminal space where monks and nuns stop and gather themselves before moving either to formal worship or to the tasks of ordinary life. It is a space that links the energy of the chapel to the larger world.
Keep attention in yourself, not on yourself
While the Welcoming Prayer may be the most familiar form of statio for Centering Prayer practitioners, the one I most often attempt comes from Cynthia Bourgeault’s teaching to “keep attention in yourself, not on yourself.” Tinkering over the years, I adapted this adage to a practice of energetic redirection. Have you noticed how much energy we expend when we are in the emotional whirlpool of our own stories? If I perceive myself engaged in the temperamental weather of daydreams and dilemmas (“keeping attention on yourself”), I turn to kenotic self-emptying. Stopping, stilling, and remembering helps me shift my attention from psychological hubbub to the physical sensation of the Divine gaze. I consent to God’s presence in the parameters of my body and the present moment by taking emotional energy – worry, anger, pride, even elation if it’s excessive – and recasting it as enlivened physical energy.
Redirecting the energy that already exists in one form (“on myself”) toward another form (“in myself”) opens the field so that paradoxically, the inward gaze catalyzes a receptivity to others’ pain. The shift from self-concern to conscious awareness gives freedom to serve others with less reactivity, less desire for personal gain, and less urgency to push in the direction of our own agenda. The practice of “in yourself, not on yourself” prompts us to deftly switch the energetic gaze from psychic rumination to embodied connectedness with the Divine. It cleanses the palette and resets the field so that our offers of service are less about ourselves and more about carrying the weight that others bear.
The Zen of Boston Driving
One evening after Evensong at the SSJE monastery, I stepped out beneath the leafy sycamores on Memorial Drive. Cars whizzed by, a harried boundary between me and the shore of the beautiful Charles River. My heart sank. Yet again, I was to face the demons of another rush-hour commute home.
But that day I reflected on what I had learned from the monks, Cynthia, and other teachers I’d been following while living in New England. Then and there I decided to make Boston driving a contemplative experiment. My primary intention was to not get upset with other drivers. I needed to drive responsively to people who didn’t follow the rules, but I didn’t need to get emotional about it. Instead, I promised myself that when something unexpected happened, I would persist in stopping, noticing, and redirecting any ricochetting emotion to an awareness of the Divine at the centre and let that energy flow to the people around me.
Committing to this practice over the weeks, I found that the daily drive through rush hour became almost like a dance with other drivers. I felt I was part of an active but seamless flow in a river of cars. Coherent, receptive, even joyful. Later I joked with some Wisdom School participants that I would write an Op/Ed piece for The Boston Globe called “The Zen of Boston Driving.” Zen, of course, is not exactly what people think of when they get into a car in Boston, and yet there I encountered a universe of possibility by willingly entering a tiny corner of the suffering world. Rather than abandoning myself to anger or ratcheting up pain and anxiety, I committed to making things better, not worse. Driving in Boston, like anything else, can become a mode of healing prayer.
Cynthia Bourgeault considers intentional suffering a “high practice,” one that demands nerve, experience, and a firm commitment regardless of conditions. If we refine the practice of “fiercer suffering,” Helen Luke tells us that “a strange thing may happen. We [lift] the weight and, instead of being crushed by it, we find it is extraordinarily light.” Such work neither gives the fragile hit of the martyr complex nor the thin veneer of frantic pleasure. Serving others with detachment and compassion instead bestows true joy, one that can help change the world right where we are.
An ancient Christian symbol for the Incarnation is the four-wheeled chariot. Helen Luke made that symbolic connection when she started thinking about suffering as a kind of undercarriage. It turns out that we don’t have to be Yo-Yo Ma or Helen Keller or Jon Kabat-Zinn to help transform the hurly burly of a suffering world. Like Elijah rising to heaven in his chariot of fire, we simply have to get off the curb and open the door.
This reflection draws from Cynthia Bourgeault’s The Wisdom Jesus (Shambala, 2008) and Eye of the Heart (Shambala, 2020), Helen M. Luke’s Old Age (Morning Light, 1987), and my own book, The Monk’s Cell: Ritual and Knowledge in American Contemplative Christianity (Oxford, 2018). See especially chapter three of Eye of the Heart, chapters 10 and 15 of The Wisdom Jesus, and the essay “Suffering” in Old Age.
Paula Pryce writes reflections for The Contemplative Society every other month. She is a cultural anthropologist and writer who specializes in ritual studies and contemplative religions. Her publications include The Monk’s Cell: Ritual and Knowledge in American Contemplative Christianity.
To connect with Paula about this reflection, please e-mail TCS at admin@contempaltive.org. Your e-mails will be forwarded onto her.
The Contemplative Society (TCS) offers our heartfelt gratitude and appreciation for The Divine gift to humanity that is Paula Pryce. TCS’s community is blessed to have Paula offer of herself to us through her wise reflections.
Save these dates for…
New and Upcoming TCS retreats with Cynthia Bourgeault.
→ Saturday, November 29, 2025 10 am–12 noon Pacific Time.
→ Saturday, February 28, 2026 10 am–12 noon Pacific Time.
More details are to come from TCS.
Thank-you, TCS Donors.
Thank-you, Merci beaucoup, Gracias, Grazie mille, Danke schön, Fēicháng gǎnxiè, Arigatō gozaimasu, Shukran jazeelan.
Whatever the language, TCS’s heart overflows with thanks and gratitude to our donors for being so generous in supporting TCS’s migration to our new donor relationship platform, Tithe.ly.
While almost all TCS donors have made this migration, for those still wanting time to make the move, or for those supporters who wish to make a new donation, TCS’s new Tithe.ly donation gateway page is accessed HERE.
For TCS donors who newly migrate or supporters who newly donate to TCS with Tithe.ly, TCS continues to offer you with the gift of a free MP3 spiritual teaching from Gillian Drader. This MP3 teaching is entitled “Embracing the journey: Intersecting contemplative practices and emotional wellness.”
The Contemplative Society Presents…
Advent Retreat 2025
Here I Am: An online evening retreat with Therese DesCamp, Lorie Martin, and Milla McLachlan.
Thursday, December 11th, 2025
6:30 to 8:30pm Pacific Time
To be contemplative is not to be relieved of our humanity. We are instead called to integrate our humanity with the divine potentialities that contemplation awakens within us. This integration yields mêtis, the term that Cynthia Bourgeault uses to describe the capacity to take skilful action in the moment.
Want an example of mêtis? Think Solomon and the baby. Think Judith and Holofernes. Think Jesus and the temple tax. Think Mary and the Archangel Gabriel! In each of these situations, the central actor needed to let go of their fear, go beyond the analytical mind to the wisdom of the heart, and to be ready and willing to step into the well-timed, skillful response which the Holy invites.
Advent is the season for active waiting, the season to wake up and pay attention to what is and what is coming. In this Advent retreat, we’ll consider mêtis as a practice modeled on the deep attentiveness, bold questioning, and clear assent of Mary. We’ll renew our commitment to those contemplative practices that would hone our readiness to be available for skillful action. We’ll consider the time-honored virtues of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and how they ready the body, the mind and the heart for mêtis. We’ll learn about the ways that other worldviews define and support the practice of mêtis, and how to use these resources. We’ll consider mêtis as a communal capacity. And inevitably, we will talk about what happens when we fail, and how humility and persistence make mêtis an ongoing practice rather than an isolated event.
Led by The Contemplative Society board members Therese DesCamp, Lorie Martin and Milla McLachlan.
Registration for this retreat will open in September 2025.
Teacher Facilitators:Therese is a writer, spiritual director, and minister living in New Denver, BC. Her most recent book is Hands Like Roots: Notes from an Entangled Contemplative Life. Lorie is the vicar at St. Thomas Anglican Church in Chilliwack, the director of the inter-parish Centre for Spiritual Renewal, and a contemplative retreat leader. Milla is a coach, facilitator and poet who lives in Portland, Oregon.
Letting Go, Again and Again
by Ilka Fischer
God,
I come to you not with words,
but with a heart too heavy to carry alone.
You know the places in me that still ache,
still wish it had been different,
still wait for something that may never come.
And so I sit,
not to change anything,
but to be changed—
by your presence,
by your stillness,
by your mercy.
I let go—
not by force,
but by trust.
Not forever,
but for this breath.
I release my grip on outcomes.
I lay down the need to be understood.
I return to you—
again and again—
the one place I do not have to earn peace.
Be in the silence with me.
Hold what I cannot.
And teach me, moment by moment,
how to let go
and rest in you.
Amen.
This poem emerged through prayer, where Ilka glimpsed a truth she’s still learning: that God meets us tenderly — even where we hesitate to be met.
The Contemplative Society Presents…
“A Wisdom School on Wisdom Rhythms & Relationships,“ with Heather Ruce.
Online and In-Person at Sorrento Centre, British Columbia, Canada.
Sunday 05 October (5 pm) to Thursday 09 October 9th (12 noon) 2025 (Pacific Time).
In any moment, regardless of how significant or insignificant it may seem, we can offer ourselves as instruments, vessels, means by which worlds beyond can enter into this world, which has often been termed by several traditions ‘mixtus orbis.’ Wisdom teacher Cynthia Bourgeault often reminds us that this world’s dense conditions are not a mistake but a place where the rough material of our lives can be mixed with spiritual substances and nutrients from beyond and in so doing, something essential is created.
There is much to glean from the Wisdom lineages in every tradition, including Christianity, about waking up to a different reality and orienting our lives to something more than our everyday circumstances. In the case of the Christian Wisdom lineage, we can place our gaze towards the world beyond—kingdom of heaven, the imaginal realm—which is always in our midst when we have eyes to see and ears to hear. When we can attune ourselves to this dimension, we can begin to draw from an endless wellspring and be of service to God in our day to day lives and relationships. Drawing on the work of Cynthia Bourgeault, G.I. Gurdjieff, and others, this Wisdom School will focus on listening for the Wisdom rhythms that deepen presence in our three centres – intellectual, emotional, body – in order that we can perceive and act in accordance with the higher laws of the kingdom of heaven in cosmic servanthood and in particular in conscious relationships.
Join us in person or online at the Sorrento Centre. There will be an invitation to a ‘Wisdom way of knowing’ through a daily rhythm with periods of silence, centring prayer, teaching, conscious conversation, Gurdjieff Exercises and Movements, chanting, mindful work, lectio divina, and contemplative reflective time.
Heather Ruce facilitates Wisdom practice circles, groups, retreats, and schools. She offers teaching and guidance in various embodied Wisdom, contemplative and mindfulness practices including Centering Prayer, Christian meditation, sacred chanting, lectio divina, conscious work, Gurdjieff Exercises and Movements in service of seeing through the heart. Her approach is especially informed by her Masters education in family systems therapy and depth psychology and the teachings of Cynthia Bourgeault in the Christian Wisdom Tradition, Deborah Rose Longo in sacred movements, and Steve Hoskinson in the integration of trauma healing and complexity science through his model Organic Intelligence. Find out more about her at heatherruce.com.
Sorrento Centre: Engage your heart, mind, and spirit at Sorrento Centre. Come to rest and relax in a place of great beauty in the Shuswap region of British Columbia. The Centre has serene surroundings and a welcoming atmosphere, a space for spiritual exploration, personal growth, and community engagement. Whether it’s a tranquil escape into the natural beauty of the Shuswap or a place for deep reflection and learning, Sorrento Retreat and Conference Centre is a haven for those seeking renewal, inspiration, and meaningful connections.
TCS is a non-profit society and registered charitable organisation in Canada run by a volunteer board and a dedicated circle of contemplatives. It was formed in Victoria, BC, Canada in 1997 to serve an emerging contemplative renewal, and to support and spread the teachings of Cynthia Bourgeault and other distinguished Wisdom teachers. We lovingly carry forward this work, adapting to the changing needs of the present and future, while anchoring ourselves in the ancient Wisdom tradition.
We would love for you to join us as a member and to help sustain and build our offerings with a donation of any amount.
Please visit our website to find out more
Copyright © 2025 The Contemplative Society, All rights reserved.
Our mailing address is:
PO Box 23031, Cook St. RPO
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, V8V 4Z8
E-mail: admin@contemplative.org
Telephone: +1.250.381.9650
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