I remember as a child growing up in Northern India, waking up to the sound of the Mullah’s call to prayer echoing around the mountains, joining in with profoundly joyful Christian worship with my dad’s colleagues, hanging out with my Sikh, Hindu and Muslim friends at school, visiting temples and mosques on family holidays around India. On our occasional trips back to the UK, having deep conversations with my Granny about “going to heaven”—she was looking forward to it, although “I’ll miss all you lovely people,” she’d say.
There was a richness and a coherence to my childhood, which was full of fun and adventure. Amidst our sometimes scary challenges in India, my parents instilled in my sisters and me a lifestyle of surrendering and trusting. They modelled this so wonderfully to us – it was their way, their orientation.
Although I had a bumpy landing, when we returned to England for my teen years, I was on my way. The foundation had been set. I was on the Wisdom path. The spiritual experiences I had had in India and continued to have were what grounded me, motivated me and held me throughout my teen years and beyond.
And now, four decades on—the path continues to widen and deepen, to become ever more wonderful and compelling. Wisdom, for me, is the most deeply satisfying, nurturing, life-giving, thrilling undercurrent to our existence. I find it everywhere, in everything and in everyone. It’s the current and energy and Wonder that gives meaning to my and our existence. It’s what is propelling the world ever forward. For me, it is everything that is Real and Wonderful, and to quote the last line of one of my favorite hymns “it demands my soul, my life, my ALL.” The wider wisdom community is to me a family, a place of deep belonging, of deep connection, and…. a very fun playground….
My desire these days is simply to develop my capacity to love more deeply, to hear more clearly and to read reality less discriminatingly. My deepest desire and joy are in meeting with others at our deepest point of contact. To engage with others – both individually and in groups – in a spirt of listening together. Helping others to get in touch with and live out of their own deepest authenticity and wisdom. To walk alongside others as they seek to live in to and out of their truest selves; exploring how this can be – in fact always will be – in fulfilling service to the greater whole. To this end I am spending more of my time in the role of wisdom mentoring, a form of spiritual guidance/accompaniment that I have been engaging in and exploring with Bill Redfield in recent years, and which I am now offering myself. In this work the focus is on deep listening together, travelling the wisdom journey together, and helping to draw out the innate wisdom inside the person I’m with.
My grounding place for much of this is the Aspen Chapel, Colorado. Here are some offerings that everyone is welcome to join in on, just click on the links below:
Sunday morning contemplative services
every Sunday morning 9:30am MST (11:30EST)
Monday-Thursday centering prayer 9:00-9:30am MST (11am EST)
Wisdom Mentoring: please email me for more info at heather@vesey.net
More About Heather Vesey
Heather Vesey comes from a long line of missionaries in China. She grew up in the Himalayas in Northern India, where her father was a doctor specializing in community health care. These were profoundly formative years for Heather, where her Christian faith was nurtured and where she also developed and absorbed a deep appreciation of other religious traditions and cultures.
After completing her secondary education in the UK, Heather worked in Bolivia looking after street kids, and completed a Health Studies degree in London—and then moved with her husband Nicholas to the home of Julian of Norwich, where he was vicar in a parish. Cynthia Bourgeault, James Finley, and Richard Rohr came to speak at her church, and a deepening interest in the contemplative life began to grow. Heather and Nicholas spent some months in Richard Rohr’s community in Albuquerque before Heather enrolled in the Living School at the Center for Contemplation and Action, and then served as a mentor to Living School students.
Heather, Nicholas, and their two children, Samuel, 17, and Jessica, 15, moved to America in 2014 to help serve in the Aspen Chapel in Colorado where Heather is Director of Contemplative Work and currently leads services and meditation classes.