March 2025 Newsletter
- The Contemplative Society
- Mar 6
- 10 min read
“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
“…Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be distressed; …Thou shalt not be overcome.”
Julian of Norwich from Revelations of Divine Love.
A May 2025 online retreat with Heather Ruce is offered by TCS in this newsletter.
Silence, Presence, Creativity
by Barbara Cecil
I write to fellow travelers, who, like me, are wending their way into the living heart of silence…to women and men of all ages from far and wide, who are drawn to an inner stability that is not subject to the tempest of these times… to those opening their lives to a creative force awaiting expression just behind chaos and disturbance. I offer a few stories (out of untold myriads that could be highlighted) about ways an abiding ocean of latent potential, born in silence, folds out into this world. May they ignite real, out-of-the box, possibilities in a serious time that is in need of healing waters and life-giving creativity flowing freely.
For 15 years Peri Chickering and I have hosted monthly days of silence as a foundation for personal centering and as an initiation point for meaningful lives. Hundreds joined us. As planetary distress intensified at the beginning of 2024 we followed the urge to shift this rhythm into a daily pulse of silence in service to the well-being of all kin and the earth. Thus was born the Well Keepers community. Three hundred and sixty days were easily spoken for by people from all the continents who signed up on our website to sit by the headwaters of the spring. The only requirement was time in silence in the spirit of tending the wellspring of life. Whatever that meant to them. Most let a meditative focus of stillness flow into an unstructured day, following the impulses that arose. Every day in 2024 was cared for by someone who intuitively understood the responsibility. At the end of their chosen day, the well keeper passed the mantle of tending to the person who had signed up for the next day, via an email note.
The connections crisscrossed the planet. The remarkable thing, other than the great eagerness to be part of this, was the unique ways each person fulfilled the opportunity. As the momentum steadied and people got the gist of well tending, a steady, tangible life-giving movement began to spill from the wellspring. We designed a place for well keepers to share their experiences on our website, where we post photos and poetry and the music that tumbles out of the fresh waters. This year we have evolved into Silent Sundays only wherein a self-selected cadre of well keepers hold the weekly beat collectively. Descriptions of our experiences dance together on our Reflections page, which is open for anyone to visit or join. Stunningly beautiful accounts amplify a unified tone and a common reverence for life that has grown over the months and years. It is a never-ending prayer. Anyone drawn to participate is welcome to The Well Keepers.
Another stream flowing from that well has to do with the power of presence. I have a friend, Anne Dosher, now an ancestor, who took time every night to “put the day to bed.” This is an Anglican practice with Jesuit associations that was taught to her by her vicar when she was 5 years old. Straight through to her nineties, nightly, when Anne laid her head on her pillow, she scanned the day, beginning with most recent events and working backwards to her waking. With each vignette that came to mind she said “Thank you” and paused in the quiet. Anne was always learning from her daily encounters, and always returning the substance of her living to God.
Anne also started her days bowing to the dwelling place of being. The very first thing in the morning she walked barefoot into her backyard where she stood quietly, turning slowly in a circle, honouring the Creator of All and blessing the unfolding day. She specifically brought to heart people she knew who were in need.
Later in life, after decades of professional experience with large systems change, the Chief Administrative Officer of San Diego County asked Anne to join an advisory group charged with sorting out what the local press called “the County in Chaos”. The group thought of Anne as a “thinking partner.” After she retired, they asked her if she would remain with them to sit in on particularly difficult meetings. They called her the “elder consultant” though she rarely spoke, and never advised. The group counted on what they called Anne’s “blessing presence.” They were fully aware that the quality of their deliberations and subsequent actions were transformed because Anne was simply in the room. The generative power of Being, based in her deep invisible practices of many years, affected the lives of millions in a markedly positive way.
Lastly, I write about a great and unexpected avenue into the fertile realm of origins that lives within silence. This surprising route is a sacralized experience of endings.
My friend, Sarah-Jane Menato, and I discovered that we “fall into place” in profound ways when space and time is protected at the time of endings. Western society typically celebrates the beginnings of new cycles and seasons. We love when babies are born, or the bounty of summer ripens, or the promise of new relationship is honoured. It is far less preferable or polite to name losses, the things that are over.
We live in a time when familiar systems, structures, climate patterns, and invisible assumptions about life are creaking, cracking and collapsing. A pervasive cultural pressure asks us to show up daily to fix things or tough them out. What if we can’t? What if willful rising to the occasion compromises inner wholeness, needed rest, and above all entry into the peace that flows out of a deep pause that honours that which is ending.
In simple, well-supported ritual we found, embedded in this pause, solid ground for relaxation, new thought and language, an enduring trust in life, and a greater will beyond our own heroism.
We meet quarterly on Zoom, each time with a slightly different process. We always began in silence together. In small groups we each tell a story of one thing ending in our lives, and share what it feels like. We listen with utmost respect. We silently hold one another. We never console one other. Often, though, we cry together. When we return to the whole group, each is invited to describe in essence that which is ending for them, how this registers in their body, and what part of their identity is surrendering in the ending. Participants let go of homes, of country, of children, of health, of hope, of youth, of assumptions about the future, of cherished beliefs, of friendships, of dreams, and more.
After each account, there is simply space, a quiet bow from others, then more space in the reverberating silence. Everything slows down. Reliably, something “other” begins to happen in the space between words spoken. In the depths of the dark, the tender action of the silence begins to work on that which is being laid to rest and the one who softens their grip on certainty. It often feels like placing a loss on a sacred altar. At the same time, slowly, a strange new ground of being, devoid of form, begins to collect. We never try to explain the alchemy which enters in, but everyone feels it. Comfort and reassurance seep into the sadness and fear.
After each one has offered their experience of an ending into the centre, we again sit in silence, this time fully aware of a thickening, enfolding atmosphere. And a change. In the closing, surprising words find their way out of the depths. What slowly arises is often light-filled and original, laced with laughter, issuing from a very different sense of self. Always surrounded by more silence. This experience ripples into our lives.
Could it be that the rising tide of endings is lovingly engulfed in the rising time of Love?
I leave you with an image of a painting hanging in Peri’s sanctuary of contemplation. I called it the Vessel of Stillness, not because of the image, but because of the place in me from which this painting emerged. One stroke of paint suggested the next, and the next. When a colour or line didn’t feel right, I waited for another incitement from within, and began again. It is utterly amazing to me that we are endowed with a tuning fork that recognizes a gesture or a mark or a word that is life-giving and enhances the whole. The process of creating from silence seems to leave a hidden trail leading home.
The Contemplative Society Presents…
“Imaginal Activism:Exploring Cynthia Bourgeault’s Charge to Occupy the Essential Human Post.”
An Online Evening Retreat
with Heather Ruce.
Thursday, May 8th, 2025
6:00 to 8:30pm PACIFIC TIME.
As humans, we exist intertidally within this earthly realm and the imaginal realm, also known as the Kingdom of God coarising within the Ray of Creation. Our task as True Humans, should we choose to accept it, is to responsibly navigate this intracoastal territory as, in the words of Cynthia Bourgeault, “surrendered beings who can exert force.” Call it the death of modernity, the Second Axial Age, the emerging Integral Structure of Consciousness, or something else, the disorientations humans are experiencing in an exponentially complex and intense set of outer and inner conditions calls for a reminder of our essential human post. Through practice, teaching, and reflection, this evening retreat will be a time of strengthening our Whole True Human Selves to continue to say yes to this task.
Participation Fee: $45 or pay-from-the-heart.
Materials Needed:
Comfortable seating (a cushion, chair, or blanket);
A journal and pen for reflection;
A quiet space free from distractions; and
Optional: a candle or sacred object to create a space of reverence.
Schedule (subject to change):
6:00 Session I: Welcome & Opening Practices followed by Wisdom Teaching.
7:10 Break.
7:20 Session II: Space for Reflection, Question & Response, Closing Practices.
8:30 End.
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
You have been heard!
The Contemplative Society is soon migrating to a new payment processing provider.
The Contemplative Society (TCS) has heard from many of our contemplative family over years on a preference for alternative payment processing options. To that end of our listening and responding to your perspectives, TCS shares with you that we will now be transitioning from using the Keela service over to the Tithe.ly platform for payment processing. Your request for change is now underway! Tithe.ly has a specialty in supporting spiritual communities and so is a better fit with TCS.
TCS donors will soon be receiving an e-mail from Shawn DeWolfe, TCS’s migration specialist. Please be assured that this e-mail to come from Shawn is neither spam nor fraud. Shawn is engaged by TCS to ensure TCS donors are provided with a smooth and easy transition to the Tithe.ly platform.
Free TCS gift of an MP3 spiritual teaching from Gillian Drader.
In return for existing TCS donors migrating to TCS’s new Tithe.ly payment processing platform, or by your becoming a new monthly donor to TCS through Tithe.ly, once you have completed your migration or newly signed-up to Tithe.ly, TCS will send you a free MP3 recording of a spiritual teaching from one of TCS’s teachers, Gillian Drader. Gillian kindly offered this gift from her heart to yours as a way to thank TCS donors for making this migration and to thank TCS supporters for signing-up as new monthly donors in Tithe.ly.
In a world that currently presents as one in broad and sometimes uncomfortable change, your ongoing support of TCS ensures that contemplatives can also experience a deepening in Wisdom at one and the same time alongside change.
Thank-you for your loving support of your The Contemplative Society.
Coming retreats of The Contemplative Society:
ENHANCED DETAILS: Saturday 14th June 2025, from 10am to 12noon Pacific Time: TCS will hold an online retreat with Alana Levendoski. Tentative Theme: “The Alchemy of Song”. Registration to open soon.
Tuesday 05th October (starting at 5pm) to Saturday 09th October 2025 (ending at 12noon) Pacific Time: Heather Ruce joins TCS for an intimate in-person/hybrid retreat at Sorrento Centre in British Columbia, Canada. Zoom-only access to this retreat will also be available. Registration for members and donors to open in April 2025. Broader registration to open soon thereafter. With thanks to assistance from Sorrento Centre, group transportation options are being explored for travel to this retreat.
Advent 2025 – Saturday 06th December 2025, from 10am to 1pm Pacific Time: TCS will offer an online retreat with Therese DesCamp, Lorie Martin, and Milla McLachlan. This retreat, entitled “Wise as a Serpent, Gentle as a Dove”, is offered on the theme of Mêtis.
NEW: Details to come about a Year 2026 online retreat with Cynthia Bourgeault.
April 06th to 10th, 2026, Heather Ruce will lead an in-person Eastertide retreat for TCS.
September 24th to 28th, 2027, Heather Ruce will lead an in-person retreat for TCS.
To become eligible for early bird access and pricing to a TCS retreat as a TCS member, please be welcomed to become a member of TCS. Details on how to easily become a TCS member are found at: Membership.
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.
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