Mission & Beginnings

We are a growing network of global Wisdom seekers supporting one another as we work with our founding teacher Cynthia Bourgeault to reclaim the Christian Wisdom path.

We offer programs to help the community connect to the greater Wisdom tradition and to one another. There are on-the-ground retreats and Wisdom Schools led by founding teacher Cynthia Bourgeault and other seasoned Wisdom teachers. Our website features online courses, daily meditation, book circles, and chant groups to support you as you journey deeper into Wisdom. We also offer spiritual companioning (both one-on-one and in a group), while our lively Facebook Community Forum provides an opportunity for members to exchange insights and perspectives. Periodic workdays and practice days (both online and on the ground) provide an opportunity to integrate the head and the heart—and the hands as well—as they both hold a tool for practical work and reach out to one another in sacred movement and prayer.

Our Mission

TRANSMIT the Christian Wisdom tradition through teaching retreats, Wisdom Schools, conferences, online courses, and a variety of other formats.
NURTURE the Wisdom community across the country and around the world through an active communications network and regular opportunities for online exchange, fellowship and practice.
PREPARE an emerging crop of Wisdom leaders, particularly among the younger generation.
ENGAGE with the other great sacred Wisdom traditions of humankind through inter-spiritual dialogue and shared practice.

Our Beginnings

Wisdom Waypoints began as pure gift. In 2012 charter Wisdom student Helen Daly, bravely facing her impending death from cancer, left a generous bequest that launched our tiny New England Wisdom hub (then known as “Northeast Wisdom”) as a physical and spiritual presence. Her husband John Daly offered their meticulously restored New England farmhouse as our first gathering place, and Hallelujah Farm became our Wisdom headquarters for those formative years of our collective Wisdom journey.

By 2018 Wisdom was overspilling its New England boundaries, as graduates of our early Wisdom Leadership Training School (hosted by Wisdom students in North Carolina!) took the teaching to all four corners of North America. Joining hearts and visions with other regional Wisdom hubs in the American southwest and northwest—and with our original Wisdom flagship, The Contemplative Society in British Columbia— we emerged as Wisdom Waypoints, an international Imaginal network. A “God-Positioning-System,” as Sufi teacher Kabir Helminski likes to call it.

Today our network spans five continents stretching from the Yukon to the southern tip of New Zealand. There are active Practice Circles in Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia, Denmark, Canada, Germany, and Great Britain, each in their own way exploring what timeless Wisdom looks like in their own time and place.