Centering Prayer Summit: Learning to See in the Dark

Centering Prayer Summit: Learning to See in the Dark

Opening to Mystical Hope in the Collective Dark Night

A two-day contemplative journey into honest seeing, shared courage, and the deeper Light that never stops shining.

What if the darkness we face—alone and together—helps us uncover the hope already within us?

In a time when uncertainty, division, and collective weariness touch nearly every soul, many of us find ourselves navigating both personal shadows and a world that feels increasingly dim. Yet the contemplative path reminds us that even in the darkest places, something tender and resilient is already at work within us.

This year’s 5th Annual Centering Prayer Summit offers a sacred space to meet this moment with honesty and openness. Together we will explore how the dark night—both personal & collective—can become a place of awakening rather than despair, a place where the deeper Light that has never stopped shining, begins to make itself known.

Through shared stillness, in-depth teaching, and real-time interaction, you’ll experience how Centering Prayer opens us to the quiet hope already alive within: a hope not dependent on circumstances, but rooted in the Presence that holds us all.

Together we’ll explore:

Mystical hope as a lived experience—a subtle current sustaining us even when the way forward is unclear

The personal and collective “false-self systems” that shape our inner lives and our culture

Practices that steady the heart, opening inner stillness where divine guidance can arise

A sense of shared courage and belonging with a global contemplative community

How contemplative presence moves into compassionate action, allowing love to become embodied care in the world

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Event Details

When: January 24-25, 2026, from 9:30am – 5:00pm ET

Where: Online, via Zoom. All Sessions recorded with lifetime access.

Cost: Sliding Scale from $99-$149, for scholarships email: events@closerthanbreath.com

Registration: https://www.centeringprayersummit.com/referral/CPS2026/d2qmxBDGU5Uw3g71

Cynthia Bourgeault and David Frenette in Dialogue – Online Event

In this hour-long Zoom conversation, Cynthia and David will discuss Father Thomas Keating’s non-dual teachings on unity consciousness, exploring how they can deepen our practice of Centering Prayer and enhance our lives. This is a rare opportunity to experience these two wise teachers and longtime friends of Fr. Keating in lively conversation. Time will be provided for some questions.

Cynthia and David will also be offering an in-person retreat at the Garrison Institute in March. For more information, go here.

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Event Details

When: Friday January 9, 2026, from 1:00-2:00pm ET

Where: Online, Zoom. ***This event will be recorded***

Cost: Free; $25 suggested donation, Donations of any size are greatly appreciated.

Registration: https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/event/cynthia-bourgeault-and-david-frenette-in-dialogue-via-zoom/

About Cynthia Bourgeault

Cynthia is a modern-day mystic, Episcopal priest, and theologian. She divides her time between solitude at her seaside hermitage in Maine and traveling globally to promote the rediscovery of the Christian contemplative path. She is a core faculty member emerita at the Center for Action and Contemplation and founding director of an international network of Wisdom Schools. Cynthia’s articles and essays have appeared in many journals and publications, and she is the author of numerous books, including Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, Eye of the Heart, The Wisdom Jesus, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three, and The Heart of Centering Prayer. You can find out more about her teachings and events at wisdomwaypoints.org and cynthiabourgeault.org

About David Frenette

David Frenette is author of The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God, and a spiritual director/transpersonal counselor (now retired). He studied and worked closely with Father Thomas Keating for 35 years, and co-founded and co-led Chrysalis House, a Christian contemplative retreat community under Fr. Keating’s guidance. David has led Centering Prayer retreats at leading venues across the country, served as a trustee of Contemplative Outreach, on the faculty of Naropa University, and was involved with the founding of Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute. More info and teachings can be found at www.davidfrenette.com/.

Year End Impressions and Our Ask to You

As you consider your end of year giving, we offer you some fresh impressions from our recent journey working through the new Introductory Wisdom School in cohort groups which just ended in early December. Our leaders gathered to reflect on the fruits of this experiment and some clear themes emerged which will guide our Wisdom Waypoints efforts in the coming year.

There is a hunger and readiness to pursue this Wisdom Path together, in a collective Web.
While we might begin a group gathering with an individual need or spiritual longing, we often leave being transformed in service of the whole, embodying a three centered presence that ripens us to hold our post in the world.
A project like this is a birthing. It entailed a gathering and filming of a Wisdom School in May, making it into a course with robust resources, then facilitating a guided learning experience in the fall. And we see the elements of any creation: desire, conception, preparation, nourishment, growth and many kinds of labor. The new arising goes beyond our imagination and feeds new living water into the ancient river of Wisdom flowing through our world.

As we look at what this collective web can do and how we are bolstered when we come together—we are in Awe. Our Wisdom Waypoints Board has hopes, dreams, and new ideas for resourcing our community and strengthening our Web as we walk this Wisdom Way together in 2026. It takes many hands and hearts. We are grateful for your gifts that sustain us in our work together.

Christmas and New Years Blessings, The Wisdom Waypoints Board

Read additional year end reflections here, from Cynthia Bourgeault and Jeanine Siler-Jones.

Supple Tenderness With Nuestra Señora

A reflection offered by Wisdom students Henry Schoenfield and Jenn Hughes.

Between Thomas Merton’s death, on December 10th, and Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi’s death, on December 17th, lies the celebration of another luminary in this season who bears in her body the blending of different cultures and spiritual streams—the Blessed Mother of God under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12th.

Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared between December 9-12, 1531 to Juan Diego, a poor, indigenous peasant man on the Tepeyac Hill near Mexico City speaking in Juan Diego’s native language of Nahuatl. Both the language and site of her appearance are significant in our understanding of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s offering. Prior to the Spanish Conquistadors, Tepeyac Hill was an Aztec holy site where the Mother Goddess Tonantzin was worshipped. Likewise, Nahuatl was the language of the Aztecs.

Her appearance on this sacred site occurred ten years after the Spanish had brutally destroyed the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlán and begun their colonizing reign of the region. In contrast, the vision of Our Lady was not one of conquest or takeover, but rather of a gentle presence of solidarity and tenderness. She arrived not as a dominating symbol of the Catholic church, but rather as a fluid mixed-race woman of both Indigenous and European roots. Our Lady was resplendently garbed in prominent symbols of the Aztec cosmology and emergent offerings from Christian theology, both seamlessly embedded in her being.

Perhaps one way to understand her visitation to Juan Diego is that Our Lady humbly entered a space which had been warmed and already made sacred by the Native Divine Feminine, the Mother Goddess Tonantzin. She did not arrive to supersede, but rather to stand with and in the lineage of feminine Wisdom figures long present in Indigenous culture. Drawing on the words of T.S. Eliot, Our Lady appeared where ‘prayer has already been made valid.’ And yet, the people and the land were in need of comfort and care and, as a Mother who understands deep suffering, Our Lady arrived to provide just that.

As we continue into these last days of Advent, may we listen for the presence of the Blessed Mother in this way—as one who enters into the human experience with a supple fluidity, a shape-shifting ability to arrive right where gentle Mercy, steady and always available, is most needed. As we climb our own sacred hill, may we catch a glimpse of Our Lady of Guadalupe, cloaked in her mantle of heaven, the moon and stars, encouraging us to bow down and pick up the roses of this earth, inviting us to continue bearing what still needs to be born in these dark and divided days.

And so we begin again. . . 2026: An Online New Year Retreat with Heather Ruce

“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

Online Retreat Saturday, January 3rd 12:30-3:30pm ET

As one year folds gently into the next, we are reminded that while there is nothing particularly rare about the turning of the calendar, it always invites us to pause. To stop, to reflect, and to listen to the quiet stirrings within and the movements of the world around us. In doing so, we nurture our spiritual intelligence, the inner compass that helps us live with depth, presence, and purpose.

This timeless ritual of reflection has taken countless forms throughout human history. When we enter into it, we join the great circle of all who have ever paused to listen for Wisdom between the breaths of beginnings and endings.

This online retreat offers a sacred space to stop, reflect, and listen in a space that we hold together. It is a time to explore what nourishes our Whole selves, what reconnects us to the genuine sources of hope, meaning, direction, and comfort. Through practices, readings, and reflection, we will dwell in quiet and allow insight to arise naturally.

Please bring a candle, your journal or art supplies, and, most importantly, an open heart.

***This event will be recorded for later viewing.

<<<Registration and More Information Here>>>

Event Details

When: Saturday, January 3rd from 12:30-3:30pm ET

Where: Online, Zoom. A recording will be available after the event.

Cost: $26

Registration: This event is hosted by Wisdom teacher, Heather Ruce. Follow this link for more information and to register: https://www.heatherruce.com/challenge-page/4e52aa32-a266-4c48-b502-6af735fa060d?programId=4e52aa32-a266-4c48-b502-6af735fa060d

Gospel of Thomas: Lectio Divina | Winter 2026

This winter, Wisdom Waypoints is pleased to showcase a new series of Gospel of Thomas Lectio Divina gatherings hosted by seasoned Wisdom students within our network.

Why Lectio Divina? Lectio Divina is a foundational practice in one’s embodied, contemplative toolkit. Engaging this method offers a portal to a Wisdom way of reading, listening, and absorbing sacred text. Emphasis is placed on slowing down, listening with the heart, and allowing new meanings to wash over and inside us.

Why Gospel of Thomas? Diverging from the canonical gospels, the emphasis in Thomas is on conscious presence, awakening, and an imperative around transformation of consciousness. These short, koan-like texts are just familiar enough to be reassuring, yet just different enough to wake one up. Repeatedly, readers find that the way to break these texts open is not through scholarly commentary but to inquire: How does this resonate in my own life? What does this touch off for me? And specifically asking, where does this text land in me in sensation — in my heart, in my gut, perhaps a tingling in my hands?

Winter 2026 Gospel of Thomas Lectio Divina Offerings

The Gospel of Thomas Lectio Divina gatherings will vary slightly by facilitator but, in general, each session will begin with a preparatory exercise, such as a brief time of Centering Prayer or an embodied practice, before moving into the ritual of praying the text together. The guided sessions are typically $10 per meeting and will commence in January 2026.

***We invite you to peruse the sessions available and reach out directly to the facilitators for questions and to RSVP.

Note: All times listed are US Eastern Time Zone (ET). Use this tool to convert to your time zone.

Weekly Meetings

Monday from 2:00pm-3:00pm ET with Shirley Willihnganz. Begins January 5th. Email Shirley for more information and to register.

Tuesday from 10:00am-11:15am ET with Laura Copeland and Liz Whitehurst. Dates: January 6, February 17, March 17, April 7, and May 5. Email Liz and Laura for more information and to register.

Tuesday, January 13th from 11:00am-12:00pm ET with Marcella Kraybill-Greggo. Register here with Marcella.

Tuesday from 11:00am-12:00pm ET with Marcella Kraybill-Greggo. February 3-April 21. Register here with Marcella.

Tuesday from 6:30pm-7:30pm ET with Marilyn Boyd. A beginners group. Third Tuesday of the month, beginning January 20th. Email Marilyn for more information and to register.

Wisdom Introductory Frame Drum Zoom Circle with Laura Copeland

“One of the most powerful aspects of drumming and the reason people have done it since the beginning of being human is that it changes people’s consciousness. Through rhythmic repetition of ritual sounds, the body, the brain and the nervous system are energized and transformed…. It’s really the oldest holy communion.” – Layne Redmond, author of When the Drummers Were Women

As we enter our third year of drumming in community, please join us for a 2-week Introductory Wisdom Frame Drum zoom circle on Fridays: January 23 and February 13, from 10:00-11:15 am ET.

It’s easy and fun! We will learn:

Simple rhythms in the upright and lap style methods set to wisdom chants.
Ancient Middle Eastern rhythms such as Maqsoum, Ayub, Saidi, Masmoudi and more.
Tips for your drum practice, warm-up, learning a simple rhythm with a wisdom chant, learning a world rhythm and playing it to music.

After completing this 2-week course, you may also join our monthly Frame Drum Circle to practice your techniques and meet fellow wisdom drummers.

Event Details

When: Fridays, January 23 and February 13, from 10:00-11:15 am ET

Where: Zoom, Online

Cost: Please consider a $15 donation to Wisdom Waypoints for each introductory session (Jan 23 and Feb 13) you attend. Note “Frame Drum Intro” in the “leave a comment” line. Click here to donate.

Registration: Register directly with Laura Copeland at lgcopeland8@gmail.com to receive the Zoom link and for any questions.

For more information, download the flyer here.

“When 8000 sacred drums sound together, an intense healing of Mother Earth will commence.” – 500 year-old Otomi Prophecy

Event Facilitator: Laura Copeland is a Wisdom Waypoints Practice Group Co-Facilitator (Gospel of Thomas Lectio Divina and past Wisdom Book Circles), and Wisdom Frame Drum/Chant Group Facilitator. She practices frame drum regularly with Yousif Sheronick and Glen Velez. Her other frame drum teacher/influencers are Marla Leigh Goldstein, Miranda Rondeau and River Guergarian.

An Unexpected Wisdom Cohort

As our first round of cohort groups exploring the Introductory Wisdom School (sponsored by Wisdom Waypoints) ends, and the new year begins, we offer this beautiful reflection from a self-organizing Wisdom circle. As you read how they came together and what they have experienced, we invite you to wonder how this might organically happen in your own circles, both locally and internationally.

It was unexpected. We had all done the Introductory Wisdom School at different times but we all came together in The Divine Exchange (both have been offered through The Center for Action and Contemplation—CAC, currently on hold) in the spring of 2024. We were Seekers finding each other. We come from four different countries with an ocean dividing us, four different time zones having a seven-hour time difference and a 30 year span in ages. It began with several people in the cohort almost simultaneously asking on the CAC discussion board whether there was a way we could talk to each other. Jim cleared the idea with the CAC facilitator and set up the first zoom offering to handle the technology. 11 people responded affirmatively and after the first zoom gathering we became a group of 10.

What became clear from the outset was that we were all seeking what we came to know as the Wisdom Way of Knowing. All of us wanting more of a connection than simply posting on the CAC course discussion board could provide. All of us seeking fellowship and understanding and wanting to build relationships with people who were also seeking the Wisdom Way of Knowing. There was, perhaps, a desire to see the faces and hear the voices of the people who were beginning to write about deeply personal aspects of life. As we have built those relationships, what was once an hour zoom gathering has grown to more than an hour and a half to meet the needs of the relationships that have been built and the learning taking place.

“As one of the people who instigated the Zoom sessions, I recognized that the message board was not giving me the full learning engagement I was seeking. Having done some other group conversations online, I believed that having real-time interaction would benefit me in working through divine exchange material that was both challenging and intriguing – supporting my effort to know more deeply, and beyond just my intellectual center.” Jim

“While participating in “The Divine Exchange” I felt quite lonely, being the only cohort member from Germany. Through the zoom meetings I got to know wonderful people, who are spiritual seekers like me and have become friends with whom I can talk about everything across the ocean. I’m very thankful for this opportunity and the feeling that we, as a group, are growing together.” Christine

What was unexpected was that although we came together for a purpose as Wisdom seekers, we became a relational community in which we were living out the Practice. For the monk, it is the monastery. For us, it is this group. It is the place in which we are able to take Cynthia’s statement “Don’t take my word for it. Experience it for yourself” and do just that. It is the place where we are reminded to find our feet just by being in each other’s presence. It is the place of personal stories held to the light of the Law of Three. It is witnessing the group feel its way through the shock point of the Law of Seven. It is the teachings made personal and intimate and relational in community. It is an ongoing, continual prayer. It is the place in which we can embody the Wisdom way of Knowing in our unique ways. It is the sacred space in which we do the Work that is challenging, sometimes formidable and at other moments recognizable but all very personal. We come together because we reflect each other and the Work of one impacts the Work of all of us.

“I often marvel at the closeness I feel with the group, despite the distances (and time zones) that separate us. Deborah has played a vital role in keeping us connected, coordinated, and growing together in our learning, and Jim still hosts the calls and provides a grounded group structure. Ideally, I would like to spend more time devoted to the study and practice of Wisdom, and I’m considering making changes in my life that might make that possible. I very much hope our group continues to journey together and to bear the rich fruit it has over this past year and a half.” Sandra

“Since July 2024, I have been a part of a small group comprised of seekers from both the old and new worlds. Together, we have been walking our individual spiritual paths, supporting each other as we grow and learn. Our group is dedicated to exchanging personal stories, sharing spiritual practices, and attending courses collectively. Through these experiences, we have worked to expand our awareness and deepen our receptivity, always guided by love and free from judgment. One of the most profound lessons I am gaining from this experience is the ability to truly listen to others. Deep listening has become an essential part of our interactions, allowing us to understand and support one another on a meaningful level.” David

“Our group has a distinct life force, which is hard to describe but I recognize the feel of it when we meet. Though each of us comes with different circumstances and areas of interest within the Wisdom tradition, we meet on shared ground, and a palpable current of Wisdom seems to flow between us. I find it greatly enriching to share my own learning with this group of people whose understanding and love for the Wisdom way of knowing resonates with my own. I also learn from group members who are making forays into areas that are unfamiliar to me. I now feel more rooted in the Divine than at any other time in my life. Where I live, few around me share this Wisdom path of faith, so the group is an oasis.” Sandra

“There is something so special about kindred spirits on a journey who meet to share the essence of their experiences and know that what is offered is heard because everyone in the group is on the same journey. There are many roads but one destination. We are all just walking each other home.” Mary

Cynthia Bourgeault has given us the words and the language, has given us the tools of the Practice and shown us how the Practice could be done. We have lived our way into it. We are told that our mind may not remember everything from the Introductory Wisdom School and The Divine Exchange but over time the teachings become rooted and take hold. We have sensed the truth of that. This past year we studied the Law of Three with Marcella Kraybill-Greggo and uncovered the truth of it within the living dynamism of our group. We listened to the explanation of Ora et Labora and then found that over time we have developed the rhythm of flowing from individual to group and from prayer to work, together. The flow has become more than monthly zoom calls. There is a steady back and forth of emails as we share our individual experiences and practices and share resources that allow for deepening from individual to group and back to individual. It is this flow between quadrants that keeps us connected on whatever level we are able at any given time.

“Our monthly zoom calls have become a place of grounding and community for me. Because of the shared Wisdom path knowledge and approaches to spirituality, we can drop into depth of conversation I can’t find in any other sphere of my life. This both feeds my soul, allows me to feel seen and known, and also provides a touchpoint for the journey, a form of gentle accountability. Our gatherings remind me to continue to press into the Wisdom path, invigorate me with new shared resources, questions to ponder, and ways to support and hold one another. The group has been a divine gift, something I think the spirit created opportunity for and we all said yes to.” Danielle

“The rhythm of the class provided an initial organizing frame for our conversation; over time, the opportunity to share and witness how the Wisdom work showed up for each of us provided the motivation to continue to connect and do the ‘Ora et Labora’ under the umbrella of ‘together.’ I think we have done a good job of meeting each other wherever we are. Just as importantly, our conversations helped me to more clearly see how this work could be applied in my life – engaging with real people with real stories of holding this material in the awareness of what life was bringing them at the time. It was also helpful to see how the material resonated in similar ways for us despite our differences in spiritual paths, place around the globe and stage of life. It has been an opportunity for the hope that this work offers to be brought to life and shared.” Jim

We have recently experienced the Law of Seven as the group has worked its way back to its original formation through our commitment to participate as a full group of ten in the new Introductory Wisdom School offered by Wisdom Waypoints (https://wisdomwaypoints.org/courses/introductory-wisdom-school/). Starting in the new year we will journey together through this Introductory Wisdom School, accompanied by cohort facilitator Marcella Kraybill-Greggo. For the first time all of us will be together for the Introductory Wisdom School, prepared to go deeper and to know with more of ourselves. I think this unexpectedness of what has happened over the past couple of years and continues to happen allows us to know that perhaps, at moments, we connect with the imaginal realm. It is beyond our knowing.

“A cloud of unknowing has no sharp edges. It does not cling. It empties itself. This is an act of hope that God is beyond me and also within me. God is beyond us and also within us. When I choose this faith and this hope, the God within me cannot but love the God that is within everyone and everything.” Marcus

The group is our home base, our monastery so to speak. It is where we both learn and practice the Wisdom way of knowing. It is where our vulnerability is held in trust and love. It is a place to experience the unknowing; to search for that which is hidden. It is where the ten experience Oneness. When we go into the world we carry the Oneness of the ten with us and bring it back when we gather again.

“I have come to believe that in order to do the Wisdom work an individual must be working within a community that is relational and is a committed community to Wisdom work. The Work cannot be done alone. It must have alone time but it needs the balance of community in equal measure. The community needs a relational component that is or can be developed over time. Our zoom group holds that relational community commitment for me. Whatever deeper knowing I have now compared to where I was when I began the Wisdom school is owed as much to the zoom group as to my own knowing.” Deborah

Names in each row starting in the upper left hand corner from left to right: (top row) David (Merrickvile, Ontario, Canada), Jim (Greensboro, North Carolina, USA), Christine (Mainz, Germany), (middle row) Danielle (Lincoln, Nebraska, USA), Deborah (Yorkville, Illinois, USA), Mary (Central Texas, USA), (bottom row) Sara (London, England, UK), Sandra (Norwich, England, UK),Michele (New Jersey, USA),Marcus (Kerrville, Texas, USA).

Special thanks to Deborah for midwifing this article.

The Ray Touches One Life at a Time: How Awakening Moves Through Individuals Long Before It Reaches Systems

Author: Ilka Fischer, born in Germany and now living in Vancouver, Canada, follows the Wisdom path with quiet devotion shaped by a lifetime of spiritual seeking. Her words arise from silence, from years of inner work, and from the deep stream of contemplative presence.

Author’s Note: This reflection grew out of a season of inner tension — a time when I found myself sensing a deeper movement of consciousness while the world around me felt painfully slow to respond. It is written from within the contemplative path, not outside it; from someone who has been shaped by silence, prayer, and the wisdom tradition, yet who also feels the weight of living in a world that often lags behind its own potential. My hope is that these words might speak to others who know this quiet loneliness of seeing more clearly than circumstances allow, and who continue to hold their awakening steady within a resistant environment.

If it resonates, I am grateful. If it opens a conversation, all the better.

There are seasons in a life when one begins to feel slightly out of rhythm with the world. It is not superiority, nor the wish to stand apart. It is simply what happens when an inner clarity begins to grow faster than the structures around us. Something ripens, sometimes quietly, sometimes painfully, and we notice that the world is moving at a different pace than the soul.

This creates a subtle loneliness — not because we are without community, but because we see what others do not yet see. We wait for people in positions of responsibility to grow into their wisdom. We hope systems will learn to act with integrity, transparency, and care. We long for maturity in places where habit and fear still set the tone. A part of us keeps expecting the Ray of Creation, that finer movement of consciousness, to finally anchor itself in collective behaviour.

But it does not happen automatically. Time alone does not teach humanity how to live. A century after Gurdjieff, we still face the same patterns: avoidance, rigidity, reactive fear, smallness of vision. Power structures change very slowly. Institutions awaken more slowly still. It is disheartening to watch the same cycles repeat, especially when one senses that something higher is already pressing toward expression.

And yet, the Ray of Creation has never been a promise of collective enlightenment. It is not a future moment toward which we are all steadily marching. It is a vertical influence that touches individuals long before it ever touches the systems they inhabit. It arrives in the single human being who becomes receptive to it. It arrives in the one whose conscience refuses to go numb. It arrives in those who feel the weight of the world’s immaturity and still choose to remain awake.

When that happens, a tension arises. We find ourselves living with a double vision: seeing the beauty of what could be, and seeing the bewildering slowness of what is. There is a deep wish to bridge that gap — to carry something finer into a world that has not yet learned how to hold it. This is both calling and burden. It asks for a patience that is not passive, a courage that does not harden, a clarity that remains tender.

The truth is that the Ray arrives wherever it finds a human heart that can bear it. Individuals ripen in their own time, and some ripen early. The world may take centuries to grow into the wisdom that a single person already embodies. But this does not make the individual wrong. It does not mean they are out of place. It means they are carrying the next movement before others recognize it.

If there is frustration or sorrow in this, it is only because the vision is real. And perhaps that vision is needed. Perhaps those who see a little further are part of the slow work by which consciousness enters the world — not by waiting for others to catch up, but by holding steady where they already stand.

In this way, the Ray of Creation continues to descend, one life at a time. And even if the world moves slowly, even if systems lag behind, the presence of a single awakened heart already shifts the field. Sometimes that is how it begins. Always, that is how it continues.

Our Innate Goodness

Dear Cynthia,

It is nice to be doing right now your Introductory Wisdom School – 2 or 3 more sessions that are going well.

My question grows out of the integrative inner theological work I am doing today, as I write, about the gospel of John and the particular verse that grounded my evangelical growing up in the South – John 3:16. John is often called “the Quaker gospel” so I am chewing on that in relation to how the chapter functioned in my youth. The issue is the “original sin” that accompanied as a devoted and devout teen upon reciting John 3:16 as a creed for accepting Jesus as personal savior. Now through a rabbi friend with whom I do longtime dialogue, she invited me to join Kol Nidre eve of Yom Kippur – I was so stunned by their mystic humility at having been born with such goodness and yet do wrong so as to need Yom Kippur. Of course, I know Robert Barclay repositions sin as well in his Apology, but the affective practice of seeing 50 people confirm their original goodness at the same time they practive forgiveness of themselves was quite moving. So is there a possible reinterpretation theologically of John 3:16 that can allow for the integrative move from creed to self-care?? I can receive the gift from Judaism, Islam, and Barclay, but I also wonder if there is way to dialogue with evangelicals – ie friends and family – that can be inclusive and caring theologically? I am exploring accepting joining the board of the School of the Spirit after the turn of the new year. Interesting possibility.

Thanks for any teaching/wisdom, Rebecca Mays

Dear Rebecca,

Ah, the journey from the evangelical Southern Christianity of your childhood to the Quakerism of your maturing spiritual adulthood can be a bumpy road indeed, and John 3:16 is notorious for rekindling old associations and projections. The real challenge is to listen to what it’s actually saying, not the sin-marinated and “personal Savior” version you’re familiar with.

To begin with, just start with the first statement, “For God so loved the world.” Period. Stop right there, and don’t move until you can taste that love directly, simply, no associations.

Drink in the love. Then pay attention to “gave” his only Son. Gift, pure gift, not bargain or blackmail.

Then move to “everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” And realize that “believe” doesn’t mean what we nowadays rotuinely impute to it—i.e.,signing on the dotted line to a series of dogmatic statements. In the mystical Wisdom lineage the word “believe in” means to “trust,” To “open to.” To believe in Jesus is to open to the world that he is himself stirring up and evoking in you: the world of “eternal life,” of boundless, infinite divine love, the courage of conscience, the boldness of compassion. The light within. To believe in him is to step across the threshold into that world he is laying before you: to open to it, let it enter you and become you. To claim that light as your own. That is itself the gift of eternal life, enacted right here and now…as it was for George Fox, James Naylor, John Woodman….all those Quaker luminaries in whose footsteps you are now following.

The rest is all projection. Nowhere in this passage is there actually any talk about “saving you from your sins” in return for a commitment of personal fealty. That is all evangelical midrash, and it simply gets in the way. Once you see that none of that is actually in the text, it frees this beautiful, gererous divine gift from its captivity to lower orders of human fear and mean-spiritedness.

I hope this helps, or at least offers a start.

Warmly, Cynthia