Fifty Thin Days of Easter Wisdom Course – Free Info Session with Marcella Kraybill-Greggo
Please join us on Zoom for a free info session on Friday March 6, from 2 – 3 pm Eastern, where you can find out more about the 50 Thin Days of Easter online course. Our info session will include Wisdom Practice and discussion and Q&R about the upcoming course, which will be offered between Easter Monday (April 6) and Pentecost (May 24). Orientation emails will begin on Holy Saturday, April 4.
In her book The Wisdom Jesus, Cynthia Bourgeault says: “For the first 40 days [post Easter] Jesus is back on the planet among his friends, and disciples, offering his final teaching and transmissions by way of a series of miraculous visitations known collectively as the resurrection appearances. Next comes the ascension — then 10 days of hushed expectant waiting. Then comes the promised fiery descent of the Holy Spirit, which Christians celebrate as Pentecost.“ [aka the 50 days of Easter] (The Wisdom Jesus, p.125-6)
Cynthia also says in The Wisdom Jesus, “I believe firmly that during these great fifty days of Easter, that same invitation is extended to each one of us: to catch the drift of what Jesus is really inviting us to and to deepen our capacity to receive the intense spiritual energy available to us during this sacred season as a catapult to our own transformation.” (p. 126).
Event Facilitator: Marcella Kraybill-Greggo, MSW, LSW, AOJN Director of Spirituality Programs and Spiritual Direction Training Program and long term Wisdom Practitioner
Reflections from a Pilgrimage: Working at the Border
This blog was contributed by Wisdom community member Adele Ver Steeg, who journeyed to Armenia as part of the 2025 pilgrimage.
Armenia? Why are you going there?
My family and close friends had questions. Ten hours of time difference, an unfamiliar country, a unique language, somewhat rugged terrain, and nearly three weeks of being in close quarters with others. People didn’t accidentally find themselves in Armenia.
Part of me had an answer at the ready and part of me knew better than to try.
The first part of me answered that Armenia is the oldest Christian nation in the world. Its patrons were Thaddeus and Bartholomew, two of the Apostles, who brought the Gospel east. There were sacred sites to visit. This would be a pilgrimage.
The second part of me was interested to continue to hold open an inquiry. In coming to this Wisdom Work, my reading in the Fourth Way canon, Meetings with Remarkable Men and In Search of the Miraculous, located Gurdjieff’s homeland and search in this part of the world. Kars, Etchmiadzin, and Ani, the City of 1,001 Churches. All were exotic, unknown to me, even though I’d spent my entire life in the arms of the (Western) Christian Church. Christianity of a place so different from what I’d experienced, which has existed since early in Church history. What in Armenia might speak to a contemporary Western seeker?
A map of Armenia’s present-day geography shows a land-locked nation in the vast expanse of ‘not-Europe not-Asia’, and gives a sense of being in the middle of things, which is exactly the case. Historically, it was an important crossroads on ancient trade routes. If Armenia has been a crossroads, it has also been in the crosshairs of invaders and occupiers: Persian, Arab, Mongol, Ottoman, Russian. Its position is one of openness to trade and vulnerability to invasion, from all directions, and in the last century, to genocide at the hands of a neighbor.
Roughly two thousand years ago, the territory of Armenia stretched west and south, far beyond its present bounds. During that time, Gregory the Illuminator, born in Armenia, educated in Cappadocia, returned to Armenia, as a Christian. He was tortured and imprisoned for his faith by King Tiridates for 14 years, but in 301 CE Gregory converted the king to Christianity and founded the Armenian Apostolic Church, serving as the first Catholicos, head of the church. A chapel and monastery were built on the site of Gregory’s imprisonment, Khor Virap, “deep dungeon.”
As we climbed toward the flagpole atop the rocky hillside at Khor Virap, the border with Turkey was visible. The focus of the scenic lookout, though, is beyond the fence: Mt. Ararat. Earlier on the trip, when I first saw the snow-capped mountain from the window of our bus, it was a shock. Hovering, like a massive spaceship, it appeared, apart, of its own level. Out of that came a new impulse, to position myself where I might catch a glimpse, a way of orienting. Where is it? Always, always, just across the border.
Mt Ararat from Etchmiadzin
Traversing the country by bus, cruising alongside rushing valley streams, through the orchards and vineyards of the Ararat plain, winding around switchbacks in lush mountain forests, we visited sacred sites in 10 of the 11 marz, or provinces.
Ninety monasteries, some active, others in ruins, are spread across present-day Armenia. Ninety. Consider, then, that the area of Armenia is roughly that of the US state of Maryland, or the country of Belgium. After a few days, it became easy to pick out the spires and blocky shapes in the landscape as we traveled. We were surrounded.
On the Feast of the Elevation of the Holy Cross, we attended Badarak at Surp Astvatsatsin, Holy Mother of God Church, in Gyumri, Gurdjieff’s hometown. Badarak is a two-hour, three-centered service of worship and sacrament, engaging mind, heart, and body: the soprano cantor’s voice cascading over the assembly from the choir loft; waves of incense; the embroidered black curtain being drawn open and closed in front of the altar; changing body postures, kneeling, bowing, prostrating, kissing. (But no sitting—there are no pews.)
Our hotel was across the street from the church, and our group would gather to meet near the church’s displaced—but still intact—steeple, ejected from the roof in the devastating 1988 Spitak earthquake. Each time we met, day and night, we observed young, old, women, men, couples, individuals, families, entering and leaving through the church’s doors. Certainly some were travelers, as we were, but many emerged from the church back first, facing toward the altar, bowing, and signing themselves, as they reverently crossed the threshold.
On our final day together, our guide, artist Ara Haytayan, spoke to our group in his studio, surrounded by his Allegorical Landscapes and Still-life Margins. He shared about a particularly difficult time when Armenia was at war with Azerbaijan. Many places he had worked were in the zone of conflict, and he was no longer able to go there to paint. He explained that his way to overcome the grief was to go to the border, and work there. Go to the border and work there.
Armenia showed me this: clear-eyed witnessing challenges my need for a world that is comfortable and convenient, attuned to my preferences and aligned with my pet beliefs. A spirituality of borders is by definition intentional and confrontational. It is a lived path of engagement with how. From a Christian stream that has been scattered across time and territory, always on the edges, those who witness ask, where are the borders within me? How can I work there?
Many of us long to deepen our Wisdom practice and create more integration within our local spiritual communities. And yet, if there are no existing groups, we may feel intimidated by how to start our own Wisdom offering in our area. As part of our aim in supporting the ever-growing Wisdom network, Wisdom Waypoints is offering a 3-session training on how to start a local Wisdom Circle.
Across three gatherings, participants will de-mystify what a ‘Wisdom Circle’ is and gain comfort on how to facilitate an informal group in your own community. The first session will introduce the rhythm and tools of the “Wisdom Way of Knowing” which are integral components of a Wisdom Circle. The second session will be attending an existing Wisdom Circle to better understand the flow and experience. The third session will include reflections from the first two meetings and then offer a chance to explore practical questions for starting your own Wisdom Circle within your network of local friends, family, or peers.
The program will include an Experience Guide for starting your own local Wisdom circle with helpful teachings and resources. The event will be guided by Wisdom Waypoints Board Members Janine Siler Jones and Henry Schoenfield.
EVENT DETAILS
When:
Friday, April 10, 1:00pm-2:30pm ET
Friday, April 17, 1:00pm-3:00pm ET
Friday, April 24, 1:00pm-2:30 pm ET
Where: Online via Zoom. A Zoom link will be sent several days before the first session.
Cost: There is a suggested donation of $45. We never want cost to be a barrier to participation, therefore, please pay an amount which is sustainable within your means.
Facilitator: Jeanine Siler Jones and Henry Schoenfield
REGISTRATION
Starting a Local Wisdom Circle – April 2026
Chanting the Psalms Everyday of Lent
Throughout the Lenten season, we are adjusting our Chanting of the Psalms to seven days a week so that as a community we can more deeply immerse in the invitation of the season.
Through this seven-day-a-week practice, we invite you to walk with us in hope and to remember that fear, danger, uncertainty, exhaustion, and broken-heartedness are not the final word. As Rumi says, “Our Wisdom Path is no caravan of despair.” So we plant seeds of trust, mercy, compassion and grace even as we look unflinchingly into the mouth of this heartless winter world. We feed and nurture those seeds of hope with our work and our suffering, knowing that that even from a frozen wilderness, something new can grow. As Albert Camus said, “Spring cannot fail us.”
The psalmists knew this, too. In 150 stories that lead us through every emotion and event that the human heart can hold, 149 times the psalms refuse to let fear or hopelessness be the way the story ends. Chanting the psalms helps the heart remember what Cynthia calls mystical hope, a hope that does not depend on external circumstances, but blooms green and verdant, warmed in the mercy and steadiness and trustworthiness of God. And even psalm 88, which ends in despair, is full of the knowing that even in the hardest times, even in moments that seem like a descent into hell, we are not abandoned or forgotten. God is there. Mercy is there. We simply need to hold out our arms to join that stream of never ending grace.
Please join us during this season of Lent to go deeper into the rhythm of the Psalms. Our individual voices contribute to the whole and meet winter with seeds of hope that feeds everything.
Event Details
When: 7-days-a week beginning February 18th through Easter Sunday, April 5th from 8:30-9:00 am ET
Calling a Stop With the Intellectual Center: Inner Task Series by Jeanine Siler Jones
This month our inner task is working with Calling a stop with yourself and noticing your mechanical ways of moving, feeling and thinking. (You may want to experiment with a periodic timer during the day). Last week we focused on the emotional center, noticing how strong emotions can drain us of energy or create outbursts of negativity that cause us to get caught in our smaller self. This week, we’ll focus on the intellectual center.
Recently, in an interview with Cynthia for our practice day, she offered an inner task of being aware of the activity or buzzing in our heads, the ‘monkey mind’ of thoughts, plans, stories. To establish a reference point, take a moment to sense your head and how it is balanced on your shoulders, held up by your spine. Sense its volume, spaciousness, and shape. Engage it as another limb of your body.
Then, as you go through your day, notice when you get ‘buzzy’. Pause and allow that energy to gently melt down into your body, or remember the spaciousness and shape of your head rather than joining the content of the buzz. Then, begin again.
Calling a Stop With the Emotional Center: Inner Task Series by Jeanine Siler Jones
This month our inner task is working with Calling a stop with yourself and noticing your mechanical ways of moving, feeling and thinking. (You may want to experiment with a periodic timer during the day). Last week we focused on the moving center, noticing how being aware of everyday gestures or movements can call us back into Presence. This week, we’ll focus on the emotional center. As we know, the emotional center is much faster than the intellectual center, but these centers can combine forces and create ‘strong emotions’ which can drain us of energy or create outbursts of negativity. So, catching an emotional reaction, before we get identified with it, calls us to practice with all three centers. Can you stop, notice and pause by recognizing the ‘taste’ or ‘vibration’ of the reactivity? Can you step back, or separate from the experience and see it without judgment? This allows you to be non-identified for a moment and be less likely to be caught in the mechanical patterns that disconnect us from a direct encounter with Mercy.
Calling a Stop with the Moving Center: Inner Task Series by Jeanine Siler Jones
Inner Task Friday (from our second month of Mystical Hope book circles)
“Centering Prayer, with its emphasis not on clarity of the mind but on surrender of the heart, leads straight down into the heart’s depths, straight toward the point vierge. It becomes a direct encounter with the Mercy.” (Mystical Hope, p.56)
Meditation invites us to dwell within Hope, to connect with Mercy, to sink down into the deeper waters of our being. Thomas Keating described it as ‘taking a small vacation from yourself”. Our inner task invites us to practice weaving our experience of meditation into our daily living, a ‘boots on the ground’ way to catch ourselves in our over reliance on ordinary thinking and wake up (!) in Mercy.
This month: Call a stop with yourself and notice your mechanical ways of moving, feeling and thinking. (You may want to experiment with a periodic timer during the day). Each week we will break this task down, beginning today with the moving center. There may be a gesture, posture, or movement that is habitual (crossing your legs, how you hold utensils, the way you stand in line etc..) that you to choose to alerts you to stop, or you may use a periodic timer. However you bring yourself to a stop, Notice and Pause.
As you are paused, connect with your breath. As you inhale and exhale, allow yourself to sink down into the deeper waters of your being for a moment. “…something of our being presses deep into the heart of God and begins to swim in the infinite ocean of God’s mercy.” (p.39) Sense and taste this connection with Mercy. Then begin again.
Vertical Alignment: Inner Task Series by Jeanine Siler Jones
“…hope is not intended to be an extraordinary infusion, but an abiding state of being. We lose sight of the invitation—and in fact, our responsibility, as stewards of creation—to develop a conscious and permanent connection to this wellspring. We miss the call to become a vessel, to become a chalice into which this divine energy can pour; a lamp through which it can shine.” (Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope, p. 17)
On Tuesday of this week Wisdom Waypoints launched 10 Mystical Hope book circles with 13 seasoned leaders and 175 participants worldwide. We began a collective reading of this foundational book of Cynthia’s while also including a focus on engaging practices together. For our Friday Inner Tasks for the next 4 months we will anchor in the monthly task we are offering in our book circles. Our aim is to return to the repetition that can guide us as we work consciously with attention in our daily living. The invitation is to see our conditioning and the ways we are not present, without judgement, then allow all to be held in a greater awareness as we return again and again to presence.
Monthly Inner Task:
Sense into your vertical alignment by connecting with your spine—beginning at the base of the spine, below your sacrum all the way up to the top of your spine where you tilt and nod your head. Sense into your “I AM” presence in your spine. Set for yourself the outer task of pausing and returning to your verticality throughout the day, just being present there. Invite an inner attitude of sensing your presence and noting that you are a vessel of hope, receiving and pouring out divine energy.
For this first week, we invite you to simply focus on connecting with your spine. Spend some time sensing into your spine. Return, notice and connect with your spine throughout the day, whenever you remember. Make that your ‘step one’ practice this week.
Vessel of Hope: Inner Task Series by Jeanine Siler Jones
We continue our work with the inner task for this month from our Mystical Hope book circles:
Sense into your vertical alignment by connecting with your spine—beginning at the base of the spine, below your sacrum all the way up to the top of your spine where you tilt and nod your head. Sense into your “I AM” presence in your spine. Set for yourself the outer task of pausing and returning to your verticality throughout the day, just being present there. Invite an inner attitude of sensing your presence and noting that you are a vessel of hope, receiving and pouring out divine energy.
Today our focus is on this part of the monthly inner task:
Invite an inner attitude of sensing your presence and noting that you are a vessel of hope
As we engage in many outer tasks throughout the day, we are also holding an inner attitude of the practice of being present, sensing into our “I AM” Presence, and returning to this practice throughout the day. When you remember, pause and collect yourself. What do you notice? Sensations in the body become a portal and connect us with the quality of our aliveness. Can you notice the sensations of your aliveness and presence? Of course, there is such a variety of sensations, emotions and thoughts. Simply notice them as aliveness and see what happens when you allow them to be. What is underneath that? What is also Here? With these practices, you are developing and deepening a conscious connection with your Being, becoming a vessel that can live in hope as an abiding state of being (p. 17 Mystical Hope).
Calling a Stop with all three centers: Inner Task Series by Jeanine Siler Jones
Inner Task Friday (from our Mystical Hope book circles—final week for this task)
“Centering Prayer, with its emphasis not on clarity of the mind but on surrender of the heart, leads straight down into the heart’s depths, straight toward the point vierge. It becomes a direct encounter with the Mercy”. (Mystical Hope, p.56)
Meditation invites us to dwell within Hope, to connect with Mercy, to sink down into the deeper waters of our being. Thomas Keating described it as ‘taking a small vacation from yourself”. Our inner task invites us to practice weaving our experience of meditation into our daily living, a ‘boots on the ground’ way to catch ourselves in our over reliance on ordinary thinking and wake up (!) in Mercy.
This month: Call a stop with yourself and notice your mechanical ways of moving, feeling and thinking. The last three weeks we have focused on calling a stop when we notice aspects of mechanicality in each center and some of you have been working to notice each center separately. As we wrap up this month’s task, I invite you to engage all three centers in tandem this week. Call a stop, be alert to Self-remembering in all three centers together, and from your innermost center, notice and pause. Allow yourself to sink down into the deeper waters of your being for a moment. “…something of our being presses deep into the heart of God and begins to swim in the infinite ocean of God’s mercy.” (p.39) Sense and taste this connection with Mercy. Then begin again.
