Starting a Local Wisdom Circle with Marcella Kraybill-Greggo

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 Member Marcella Kraybill-Greggo who is the Director of Spirituality Programs and the Spiritual Direction Training Program at Moravian Seminary.

EVENT DETAILS

When: Friday, February 6, 11:00am-12:30pm ET Friday, February 20, 1:00pm-3:00pm ET Friday, March 6, 11:00am-12:30 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: Marcella Kraybill-Greggo

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The Mindful Enneagram Series with Rob Creekmore

Mindfulness practice is a powerful way to awaken to our deepest potential for fulfillment, creativity, and relationship. But it is not a “one size fits all” approach. The Buddha offered many approaches depending on each person’s unique form of dukkha – unnecessary suffering – and how their particular mental, emotional, and physical conditioning contributed to this. For mindfulness to be effective it must work with our particular form of dukkha. This is where the Enneagram can help.

The Enneagram is a powerful map of nine different ways that dukkha arises for different people and the nine paths to liberation from those nine types of unnecessary suffering. Together mindfulness and the Enneagram can free you from your particular form of dukkha and awaken your unique and deepest potential for happiness and fulfillment.

If you’ve worked with mindfulness meditation – or tried to – and you feel it hasn’t worked, or you feel stuck and need to get to a deeper level, it may be because you’ve not found the particular approach to mindfulness practice that actually works best for you. This course will introduce you to how both mindfulness and the Enneagram, when used together, can be a powerful way to find an approach to mindfulness that truly awakens your particular deeper capacities of body, heart, and mind.

In each session we will explore the Foundations of Mindfulness at the core of Buddhist practice – how to cultivate mindfulness of body, feeling, and mind. Each session will also use the Enneagram to explore each of the nine types of dukkha and the nine particular ways that mindfulness practice can be tailored, based on your type, to free you from your particular dukkha “blind spot.”

You can find additional details on the Mindful Enneagram at Rob’s website here. If you have any further questions, contact Rob here.

<<<Register Here>>>

Event Details

When: Wednesdays, February 4-April 8, 2026, 8:00 PM – 9:30 PM ET (Total of 10 Wednesdays)

Where: Online, via Zoom

Cost: $200, Scholarships Available

Registration: https://imcw.org/event/?eventId=1688

The Wisdom Way of Knowing | Wisdom Practice Book Circle 2026

We welcome you into this timely invitation to work with Cynthia Bourgeault’s book, The Wisdom Way of Knowing. In this time of planetary upheaval, Cynthia opens a door for us: “I want to introduce you to the Wisdom tradition itself, not cloaked in metaphors and theologies but as its own clear vision of human purpose and the practical technologies for getting there… to show you how to use the teachings of Wisdom to transform your life” (p xix). As we turn toward a new year, let us begin again by strengthening our Wisdom foundation to become stable, sustainable vessels of service for a world in need.

In our 4-month Wisdom Practice Book Circle we will intentionally cultivate a Wisdom Way of Knowing through:

-Grounding in the practice of a Wisdom Circle

-Supportive group discussion facilitated by season Wisdom practitioners examining a few chapters each month

-Mindful attentional practices and inner tasks

-Meditation

-Body movements and sacred gestures

This Wisdom Practice Book Circle is designed for seekers who want to cultivate a deeper connection with the Wisdom tradition which lies at the headwaters of all sacred paths. As we come together in community, seeking inspiration and practices for our awakening, we will leave with a felt sense of our deepening presence and how we can be of service in the world

Event Details

When: Tuesdays, January 27, February 24, March 31, April 28, May 26

Where: Online via Zoom. A Zoom link will be sent directly from your circle leader a few days before the first meeting.

Book: The Wisdom Way of Knowing can be purchased here.

Cost: There is a suggested contribution of $75. We never want cost to be a barrier to participation, therefore, please pay an amount which is sustainable within your means. A credit card option is provided below, but you can also use our mail-in form if you prefer to send a check.

Registration

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

<<< Registration and More Information Here >>>

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.

<<< More Information and Registration Here >>>

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

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

Tuesdays from 10:00am-11:15am ET with Laura Copeland and Liz Whitehurst. Dates: January 6, February 17, March 17, April 7, and May 5. This group is now full.

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

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

Tuesdays 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.

Thursdays from 11:30am-12:30pm ET with Henry Schoenfield. Email Henry for more information and to register.

Wisdom Introductory Frame Drum Zoom Circle with Laura Copeland

This event is now full. Please stay tuned for our next drumming circle event.

“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: This event is now full. Please stay tuned for our next drumming circle.

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.