May 2025 Newsletter
- The Contemplative Society
- May 1
- 11 min read
“Our talent, our gift, is our willingness to enter the reciprocal dance with whatever cards we’ve been dealt in this plane.“
(Cynthia Bourgeault)
In this newsletter are:
retreat registration opportunities, including for TCS’s upcoming annual in-person retreat;
a 15% discount coupon for TCS’s online store;
links to a new TCS video; and
an important update for donors.
Witnesss
by Therese DesCamp
Every night at 8 p.m., after the war began, Pope Francis called Holy Family Church in Gaza. Every night until he drew his last breath, Francis faithfully picked up the phone and checked in.
I haven’t been able to get this picture out of my head.
Actually, what I haven’t been able to get out of my head is the image of what happened after the Pope spoke with Fr. Romanelli, the pastor. After the assembled community, listening in on speaker phone, said hello. After Francis asked about the bombings of that day, about whether they had food, if there was clean water. After he asked for the names of the ones who were hurt. After he heard about the losses around them, about the new people sheltering in the church. After Francis hung up.
This is the image that I can’t get out of my head: the handset of the phone replaced and silent. Francis alone, eyes closed and head inclined, silent.
I don’t know this, of course. It’s my mental image, and it might not be how it happened. But try as I might, I can’t get this vision of Francis—bowed down, stillness surrounding him, praying in silence—out of my head.
In spite of being the pope, Francis couldn’t fix the situation in Gaza. He couldn’t relieve the pain of those with whom he spoke every night. God knows he tried: he issued appeals for peace, he met with families of Israeli hostages, he called for an investigation of genocide, he decried growing antisemitism, he urged Hamas to release prisoners. But he couldn’t fix the situation, couldn’t end the war, couldn’t even make sure people had clean water.
Still, every day, he faithfully called and witnessed.
In my experience, the hardest work of all is the work of simply witnessing. When bodies are broken, when suffering is present, when no end or solution is in sight, simply being with a suffering one is excruciating. Everything in my body wants to run away from these people and places where I feel powerless to help.
Staying with those people and in those places is absolutely necessary.
Because faithful witnessing is the start of real prayer, the prayer of contemplative solidarity that occurs when we come alongside each other in the heart of Love. It’s this kind of prayer that softens us and changes our tightly held ideas. It’s this kind of prayer that moves us out of the way so that the Spirit can flow. It’s this kind of prayer that will reveal the actions that we are called to take. It’s this kind of prayer that forces us into a deeper reliance on the Holy and a willingness to see the world with a different pair of eyes.
But it has to start with the painful act of witnessing.
The Easter and post-Easter gospels are rife with the question of witnessing. There are witnesses who accompany the dying Jesus, witnesses who run away, witnesses who believe, witnesses who want to see for themselves, witnesses who stand in front of the risen Christ and still can’t see him, witnesses who only recognize Jesus when he feeds them.
It’s always interesting to me that the women who witnessed at the foot of the cross are also the first to witness the evidence of the Resurrection. It’s also interesting that they can’t necessarily see what it means. The evidence of our own eyes can be insufficient to wake us up. Waking up requires that we see with the heart. When Mary runs into Jesus in the garden, she doesn’t recognize him until she hears the voice of her Beloved. Cleopas and his walking partner—likely his wife Mary, who was among the women at Golgotha—need to experience the bread being broken in order to have their hearts broken open to Christ.
So steadfast witnessing is the start—but not the end—of how we stand with the suffering of the world. The end is a kind of wild letting go into the overwhelming, creative glory of God: it is opening the eyes of our heart to see The Beloved. The end is letting ourselves see, and believe, that new life is among and within us. The end is beginning to live as if the living Christ were really risen, inhabiting our hearts even as—especially because?—they are breaking. Even as we do everything within our power to excise and heal the corruption that cripples this world.
These days, if you are paying even a little bit of attention, there’s a lot to witness. We might sometimes want to hide from all this suffering: I know I do. But if we are being faithful—as the women were faithful, as Pope Francis was faithful—we will know that witnessing is the very thing that can lead us to recognize The Beloved in this world. Witnessing is the very thing that can shift us from self-centered fear into right action, regardless of the “success” of that action. Witnessing is the very thing that can lead us to recognize that The Beloved lives in us, and loves through us, for as long as we draw breath.
Therese DesCamp is the author of “Hands Like Roots: Notes on an Entangled Contemplative Life,” now available at your local bookstore and online at Indigo.ca and Amazon.ca. If you wish to connect with Therese about this reflection, please e-mail TCS at admin@contemplative.org. Your e-mails will be forwarded onto her.
Spring has sprung!
TCS offers our supporters with a spring special: a discount coupon to use in our online store.
Until May 31st, 2025, receive a 15% discount on all purchases over $10 of MP3 recordings, e-courses (video and audio), and PDF transcripts purchased through TCS’s e-store.
At check-out, use our “TCS Spring has Sprung Special 2025” coupon code of: 5HTB74GZ to receive your discount.
Link HERE to TCS’s online store.
Important Message to TCS Donors.
Over the past few months, The Contemplative Society (TCS) has e-mailed our donors and provided newsletter notices related to our moving to a new donations system, Tithe.ly. Your donations to TCS, whether recurring or one-time donations, will now be re-established or made through TCS’s Tithe.ly donation gateways page HERE.
For support in migrating your donation, please be welcomed to contact TCS’s migration specialist, Shawn DeWolfe, at his e-mail address of: shawn@web321.co (yes, his e-mail address ends with .co) or via telephone at: +1.250.661.4834
After you migrate your TCS recurring donation to Tithe.ly or make a new donation to TCS through Tithe.ly, TCS will gift you with 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…
“The Alchemy of Song: Dissolving the Egregore with the Deathless Power of Love.”
An online morning retreat, with Alana Levandoski.
Saturday 14 June 2025
10am to 12noon PACIFIC TIME.
(To accommodate diverse time-zones, this retreat is being recorded for its availability for later playback.)
Journey through David Hawkin’s structures of consciousness map with some of Alana’s favourite folk songs, to collectively reach the frequency of love, to offer boundless presence and coherence in place of mutations and chaos.
Participation Fee: $45 or pay-from-the-heart.
Alana Levandoski is a celebrated songwriter and recording artist who guides women from Western/Christian heritage through the process of alchemy, to integrate and heal their ancestral and spiritual inheritance, and step into a sensuous life.
A Christian ritualist, minstrel, pagan earth-lover on the bardic path, a depth huntress, mother, lover, and apple farmer, Alana is trained as a rites of passage guide, has gone deep into the practice of Western Alchemy, and trained at the Living School in the path of nondual consciousness found in the perennial tradition. Find out more about her at: alanalevandoski.com
The Contemplative Society Presents…
“Writing as a Three-Centred Practice: A Conversation with Author Therese DesCamp.”
A gift from TCS to our community.
(Donations welcomed.)
Saturday 31 May 2025
10am to 11:30am PACIFIC TIME.
Join Therese DesCamp for a 90-minute conversation focused on the implications, obligations and revelations experienced by contemplatives who write. DesCamp, who’s been meditating and writing for 35 years, will speak about the role of head, heart and body in her own work process, and facilitate a discussion on these three elements in conscious composition. Included in the workshop will be selections from her new book, “Hands Like Roots: Notes on an Entangled Contemplative Life” (Santos Books, April 2025).
Therese DesCamp has wriitten essays, articles, reflections and reviews for Willamette Week, The Holy Ghostwriter, the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Religious Studies News, the Journal of Pastoral Psychology, the Monterey Herald, the United Church Observer, Broadview Magazine, and the Valley Voice newspaper. She was long-listed for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize, and has received awards for her scholarship, research, and teaching from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California and United Theological College, Montreal. Therese has taught at Pacific School of Religion; University of California, Berkeley; Graduate Theological Union; Vancouver School of Theology; and in the Grade 4-5-6 classroom at Lucerne Elementary School in New Denver, B.C. She is a member of the 2020 cohort of the Living School, a program of the Center for Action and Contemplation; works as an ordained minister and spiritual director; and has spent over three and a half decades in twelve-step recovery. Therese lives in New Denver, B.C., where she served ten years on the Slocan Lake Stewardship Society and co-sponsored the Convergence Writers’ Retreats from 2012-2019. She currently serves on the board of The Contemplative Society.
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.
(To accommodate diverse time-zones, this retreat is being recorded for its availability for later playback.)
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
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).
EARLY BIRD REGISTRATION WITH DISCOUNTED FEES FROM APRIL 01 TO MAY 30, 2025.
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.
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
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can unsubscribe from this list.
Comments