An invitation to join in spirit together on January 20, 2017.
You are invited to participate as friends of Wisdom gather for a moment of silence at noon on January 20 as Donald J. Trump is sworn into office as President of the United States.
This practice has been envisioned as “a pause to create a ‘dwelling place for Wisdom’ on behalf of our nation, and a prayer from our hearts for our world.”
“As we learn to open ourselves deeply to this mysterious Source, help will always come, for the Source ‘leans and harkens towards us’ with a tenderness of love that is both the medium and the message.”
~ Cynthia Bourgeault
In addition to this moment of silence, and in response to Cynthia’s timely call for the “deep practice” of “collecting our hearts so as to be more directly and acutely in alignment” with Wisdom, Marcella Kraybill-Greggo has created a template for a two to two and a half hour Community Gathering on January 20, 2017. You are invited to work with this outline (printed below with links to resources) individually and collectively in gatherings on Inauguration Day.
Cynthia’s impulse with this call was to follow Wisdom’s way and “to put the heart out there and see how it seeds itself.” This program was born through the creative weaving of Wisdom. As Marcella contemplated her sense of what was being called for, what came to her was a deep recognition of the criticalness ‘of such a time as this’ for us as contemplatives to ‘prepare our nervous systems’, to hunker down into spiritual practices deeper than ever before. The call was to stabilize, to more fully ingrain the practice of kenosis, and to ‘make more space for Wisdom’ to make her dwelling within and among us.
Also unfolding in Marcella’s spirit was the invitation to find ways to dedicate these times, and the energy of constriction, diminishment and suffering, to a cause and ‘a higher order’. And, to do this as a means of serving Wisdom’s evolutionary consciousness that is breaking open in our world, leading us (in Cynthia’s words) toward a single mystical body encompassing All, to Unity.
Marcella brought this understanding to her work with students, into her Law of Three groups, and continued to pray and listen, to wait, to dig down under, both in the horizontal and in the vertical.
Marcella’s inner work, the call of the times, and the group work with her students collectively midwifed the below template. In a teaching about ‘holding the post’, Cynthia spoke of the humbling journey as a wisdom leader, knowing that what happens is dependent on what the group brings, as well as what the leader brings. That ‘alert, supple and humble’ postholding makes space for the electricity and the ‘graced movement’ that can come when the conditions are right. These words, key to Marcella’s Wisdom work, are embedded in the process that gave birth to this program.
Marcella invites us to find what may be calling to each of us, what we want to dedicate our practice to in these immediate times. To take Wisdom practice into our day, attend to the life of sensation in the body, and consciously name what we dedicate the vitality of those arising sensations to; for her, right now, it is to Wisdom’s unfolding.
Marcella’s offering is to take this outline into our own heart’s process and let it evolve and connect. Join us, as many friends of Wisdom convene in the silence at noon EST, and gather in groups, and individually, with shared intent on Friday, January 20th.
Wisdom Way of Knowing Community Gathering Program for Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017
3:00 – 3:30 Welcome and Centering
Gospel of Thomas Reading: Logion 33
Body Prayer
Chant “Love Says…”
20 min Centering Prayer3:30 – 3:50 Cynthia Teaching & Debrief (10 min teaching)
3:50 – 4:45 Stations of Wisdom – Explanation and Experience
Labyrinth (walking or finger labyrinth)
Anointing for the Journey (Mary Magdalene)
WISDOM POST station (placing your symbolic wisdom post in sand – a tall candle or stick)
Wisdom Stations for Contemplation and Prayer
(with wisdom quotes and contemplative questions for pondering…at each of these 4 stations)for Courage
for Clarity
for Peace/Equanimity
for Solidarity /Community4:45 – 5:00 Elm Dance
5:00- 5:10 Prayer of St Frances (small group body prayer)
5:15 – 5:25 Mass on the World
5:25 – 5:30 Benediction
As we learn to open ourselves deeply to this mysterious Source, help will always come, for the Source “leans and harkens towards us” with a tenderness of love that is both the medium and the message. – CB
Cynthia says: And so, Contemplatives, “Allons! ” Let us go forward. There is work to be done; prayer, joy, courage, and strength are deeply needed. And we do know the way there. This is Wisdom’s hour.
Resources
These links below offer visual and written thoughts to work with for the Prayer of Gesture and Movement developed by Deborah Welsh, in partnership with Bill Redfield and Lois Barton. The links are provided by WisdomWayofKnowing.org.
Link to audio visual of Body Prayer
Link to explanation of the Body Prayer
The chant “Love Says”, created by Kristy Christian Petrow, a wisdom student in Marcella’s class at Moravian Seminary.
Link to suggested Cynthia teaching, great teaching, not great video quality
This is an example of a handout “A Pause for ..Courage..” created for the Courage Station of Wisdom by students in Marcella’s Wisdom group at Moravian Seminary, Kim Denyes and Janet Bickford. Please feel free to create your own of the other Stations of Wisdom if desired, or contact Marcella for more information.
These links are from Joanna Macy’s website, who worked extensively with the Elm Dance. Resources include instruction, music, translation and much more.
Link to Elm Dance music
Link to instructions for Elm Dance
Words and movements (video) for the Saint Francis Prayer as used with movements found in the visual, created by Kathryn Sparks, and danced by Sarah Carlson, dance instructor and sacred movement instructor for Marcella’s Wisdom Schools at Moravian Seminary.
Mass on the World Reading, A Liturgical Version by Cynthia Bourgeault. Adapted from the Offertory of Teilhard’s “Mass on the World” (The Heart of Matter, 119-121) as excerpted by Ursula King (in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Selected Readings, 80-81)
Link to Mass on the World music, Peter Kater’s “Essence”, suggested by Cynthia as an excellent companion to the reading.
More About Marcella Kraybill-Greggo
Marcella is Co-director of the Spiritual Direction Graduate Certificate Program at Moravian Theological Seminary as well as the Clinical Director for Moravian’s MA in Clinical Counseling. Marcella holds a Masters in Social Work along with a certificate in Spiritual Direction.
She is featured on the Seedlings page as an emerging Wisdom teacher and postholder, where you may go to read more of her story.