Description
Teaching by Cynthia Bourgeault
Available as a MP3 download – approximate running time 1 hour, 17 minutes.
This pre-Lenten retreat includes various teachings related to the mystery of death and the wisdom to be learned from the daily letting go until the final and ultimate surrender to death itself. It also includes a short summary on the practice of lectio divina. Cynthia speaks of the cross as the meeting point of the temporal and eternal which intersect in the present moment. The challenge is to stay present and resist temptation to get lost in daydreaming about past or future. Cynthia describes how sacred gesture (legominism) conveys a higher spiritual truth and is an embodied practice modeled by Jesus throughout his life and death. These gestures include abandonment, surrender, stripping, and ultimately death itself. We can learn to say “yes” to each moment and even to the final “yes” of our death. Jesus models this path with an openhearted acceptance of all that is. Drawing from Ladislaus Boros’ book, The Mystery of Death, Cynthia describes how Christ’s body has become fully accessible to everyone. In Jesus’ death, form meets the formless and the finite meets the infinite and it is through his death that the world becomes united with his mystical body. Everything we are in our essence will continue in this Body of Christ. We can abandon ourselves to and trust this place of Divine providence.
Recorded LIVE on Salt Spring Island; 1998. Re-released in 2018. As this is a LIVE recording you may notice some audio variability and background noise.
Sample audio:
