“Gurdjieff took the map I believe is implicit in the teachings of Jesus and made it explicit.” – Cynthia Bougeault
Who is G.I. Gurdjieff and what does he have to do with Christianity? For students of Cynthia Bourgeault’s arriving from a Centering Prayer practice or the contemplative tradition, this question is a common refrain. The world of Gurdjieff is still relatively unfamiliar to many and his unique lexicon of terms and metaphysical ideas can feel overwhelming, at first.
Yet for over four decades, Cynthia has sought to create a living bridge between Wisdom Christianity and the “singular genius” of G.I. Gurdjieff’s esoteric lineage. Why? Because she truly believes that working with Gurdjieff’s themes and practices can make us better Christians.
This spring, join Wisdom Waypoints in a guided learning opportunity to move through Cynthia’s best-selling course “Gurdjieff for Christians,” which provides an introduction to Gurdjieff’s key topics woven into “dialogue with Jesus’ vision in extraordinarily powerful ways.”
Cohort Flow
Across five cohort sessions, participants will meet for 90-minutes and, after centering with spiritual practices, together we will explore the “Gurdjieff for Christians” course guided by a seasoned Wisdom facilitator. Three additional gatherings will be offered for practice and integration, presenting an opportunity to work with the Gurdjieff Inner Attention Exercises and the Gurdjieff Movements as well as space for cohort-wide questions and reflections.
Cohort Details
Cost: $95
NOTE: Participants also need to purchase the “Gurdjieff for Christians” coursewhich will provide the learning materials for this journey. If you have previously purchased this course, you only need to register for the cohort.
Date & Times:
-Cohort sessions are every other Wednesday: April 29, May 13, May 27, June 10, June 24
-Four session times are available: 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm ET
-Each session will meet for 90-minutes.
-Due to the intimate nature of the cohort gatherings, sessions will not be recorded.
-A special men’s only group will be available at 10am ET to address the historically low
percentage of men in Wisdom offerings.
-Additional practice and integration sessions will be held for all groups on Wednesday: May 6, June 3, June 17 at 7pm ET
Cohort Registration
Sacred Movements Series with Henry Schoenfield
The Gurdjieff Movements are interpretations of temple dances and rituals that Mr. Gurdjieff witnessed and studied during his travels in the search for truth. Through specifically composed music and gesture, they transmit a teaching in language beyond our thinking mind. When we are collected in our three centers, a deeper perception may arise.
Working with the Movements offer a practical approach to inner work. They function as a mirror — offering the possibility of seeing ourselves in action — and revealing the work that is ours to take up — work that is on behalf of ourselves, of each other, and of all that is.
They are constructed in such a way that none of the three centers can do the Movements on their own. There must be a harmony, a coherence. And even though the outer form is not the point of working with the Movements, when the music, form, and presence come together, something altogether new is possible.
The Movements are a powerful practice to help us find Presence — help us to be aware of when we lose Presence, and help us to return — over and over and over again.
When: Wednesdays: April 1, 8, 15, 22, 29; May 6 from 12:30-1:45 PM Eastern Time
Where: Online, via Zoom
Cost: The total suggested donation for the six classes is $110. For those who need to pay less, feel free to offer what you can. If you can help support the work of the group by contributing to the scholarship fund, that would be most welcome
Introduction to the Gurdjieff Movements: Sacred Movements as Medicine for Ourselves, Each Other & The World with Heather Ruce
The Sacred Movements of G.I. Gurdjieff are a powerful embodied spiritual practice rooted in ancient Wisdom traditions and carried forward within the Christian Contemplative lineage taught by Cynthia Bourgeault.
These precise and devotional movements—sometimes called “prayer in motion”—engage body, feeling, and mind simultaneously. They offer a direct experience of presence, self-remembering, and conscious attention, gently revealing our habitual patterns while strengthening our capacity for grounded awareness.
In this introductory workshop, we will explore:
• The historical and spiritual background of the Movements
• Core practices such as presence, self-remembering, self-observation, and non-identification
• How the Movements function as both medicine and prayer—personally and collectively
• Direct experiential practice with several introductory Movements in a supportive environment
• Guided reflection and optional sharing
This workshop is open to those who are completely new to the Movements as well as those who have worked with them previously and wish to deepen their experience. Returning to foundational Movements with fresh attention often reveals new layers of meaning and presence.
No prior experience is necessary. The Movements are not about performance or getting the outer form “right,” but about cultivating three-centered presence in community.
The Movements reveal our fragmentation and gently call us toward wholeness. They teach us to work on ourselves, to work in relationship, and to serve something larger.
If you have been curious about these Movements, or feel called to return to them, this is a beautiful opportunity to experience them directly.
In times of fragmentation and collective uncertainty, this ancient embodied path offers a way of awakening that serves not only personal transformation, but the healing of relationship and the Whole.
Bringing Conscious Attention to Civic Engagement with Meg Salter & Henry Schoenfield
In this time of profound disruption and change, what does it mean to interpret events from an historical vs structural evolutionary perspective? How can wisdom practices help us take our place as fully human in a time between worlds? How can we support each other in developing these universal finer capacities of attention, heart and spontaneous right action, while recognizing the uniqueness of each person’s own situation?
Join us as we hold contemplation and action together in service of civic engagement – building on Cynthia Bourgeault’s work. We will intentionally welcome people from countries around the globe, to enrich the diversity of our collective views. Together, we will utilize foundational Wisdom frameworks to guide our exploration and practices such to ground our experience. While we will each be called to go beyond our edge of comfort, we will endeavor to create a “Brave Space” for each as we do so.
A series of 10, 90-minute sessions, by Zoom, with up to 20 people participating. Each session will consist of periods of contemplative practice, whole group and breakout groups on the topic of the week. Each session will end with a discernment of what each person feels called to do next, which can be followed up during the following session.
Fifty Thin Days of Easter Course 2026 with Marcella Kraybill-Greggo
Join us for a unique daily encounter and transformational Wisdom practice opportunity through the Fifty Thin Days of Easter course, the days between Easter and Pentecost, guided by Marcella Kraybill-Greggo.
For fifty days between Easter (April 5) and Pentecost (May 24) participants in this online course will receive a daily Easter-tide Wisdom Practice, with the opportunity to gather live in community (on zoom) for Wisdom teaching and practice each Monday from 1:00 pm – 2:00pm Eastern. An optional break out discussion group will also be offered each Monday from 2:00 – 2:15pm ET.
Cynthia says in The Wisdom Jesus, “I believe firmly that during these great fifty days of Easter, an 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).
Come join in listening together to this sacred season of deep spiritual transformation in Eastertide. All are welcome!
Event Facilitator: Marcella Kraybill-Greggo, MSW, LSW, AOJN Director of Spirituality Programs and Spiritual Direction Training Program and long term Wisdom Practitioner
A Look at Thomas Keating and Full Contemplative Engagement with Cynthia Bourgeault
This online live seminar recaps Cynthia Bourgeault’s recent work on the evolution of Thomas Keating as a modern-day mystic, and explores how his prophetic last words challenge us as contemplatives to step outside our comfort zones into full engagement with the world.
Cynthia will explore the implications of Keating’s directive to meet the world guided by the truth of silence and science, and filled with creativity and compassion. She will consider the invitation to step outside of religious and political boundaries; and what it might mean that we choose to leave ourselves open to the “inspiration from the heart of God.”
This seminar will build on the evolution of Thomas Keating’s thought, and take a further step into the application of his “last words” to the world in which we live. Cynthia will address the necessary and painful kinds of maturation which the contemplative community needs to undergo in order to hold a collective Wisdom presence for the fracturing world in which we live.
We invite you to participate in this live seminar teaching time as joined together with others in your contemplative community. TCS will be providing a series of reflection questions for small groups to ponder “in real life” after the Zoom presentation.
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?
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.
