Wisdom Waypoints Board 2024

Wisdom Waypoints is governed by a small group of active participants selected from our Wisdom network.

At present our Board includes: Cynthia Bourgeault, Jeanine Siler Jones (Chair), April Hoak, Benjamin Thomas, Bob Sabath, Heather Ruce, Mary Ellen Jernigan, Marcella Kraybill-Greggor, Steve Hoak, and Sissy Stephens.

Cynthia Bourgeault

Cynthia Bourgeault is an Episcopal priest, writer, an internationally acclaimed retreat leader, and our guiding teacher and advisor. She divides her time between solitude in her seaside hermitage in Maine and a demanding schedule traveling globally to spread the recovery of the Christian contemplative and Wisdom paths. She is an emeritus faculty member at the Center for Action and Contemplation, and the founding director of an international network of Wisdom schools, uniting classic Christian mystical and monastic teaching with contemporary practices of mindfulness and embodied presence.

For more about Cynthia go to her Cynthia Bourgeault website.

Jeanine Siler Jones

Jeanine Siler Jones works primarily as a private practice therapist, spiritual director and Enneagram teacher. She lives in the country outside of Asheville, NC with her husband and next door to her parents and brother’s family. She has been an active participant in the Wisdom community since 2009, both as student and teacher, and assisted in facilitating multiple Wisdom Schools in the Southeast. Jeanine’s steady hand has helped co-create a number of Wisdom Waypoints and Wisdom Community projects and ongoing groups, supporting newcomers and leaders. She joined the Wisdom Waypoints Council in 2020.

For more information about Jeanine, see her Wisdom Waypoints Profile and her website: Siler Jones Counseling.

April Hoak

April currently shares in the world work as a food pantry coordinator and yoga teacher. She cherishes her post as wife to Steve, mom to four children: Jordan, Kira, Matthew and Joshua, and curious wisdom student. From 2015- 2017, April studied with The Living School, an offering from the Center of Action and Contemplation. This is where she first encountered Cynthia.

April lives near Cincinnati, Ohio. She and Steve jointly hang out in various wisdom communities, schools, and gatherings. Their depth and intensity of seeking has been born out of the furnace of grieving their daughter’s 2013 death.

Through the teachings and pain of tragedy and loss, April inhales this moment and exhales “just be”. She works to live in a world where the benefit of goodness is freely given, creativity and humanity are empowered to smile and fear of others has vanished into extinction.

Benjamin Thomas

Benjamin is a life-long seeker, Benedictine Oblate, Episcopal Priest & Wisdom Teacher in the Christian Contemplative path and Inter-spiritual Mysticism. Primarily a student of Jesus, G.I. Gurdjieff, and Cynthia Bourgeault, he seeks to facilitate the transformation of others and our planet by living the Fruits of the Spirit through the conscious work of a meditative and surrendered heart. And he believes this work can happen within the Church. Ben takes Wisdom Students through spiritual practices, retreats, and book studies by some of the great spiritual masters. He serves as Associate Rector at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton, Florida with which this Wisdom School is in partnership. He and his wife, Anna, have five beautifully wild children and enjoy laughter and life by the sea. You can find Ben at Benjamin Thomas. Read more about Benjamin in this interview in community forums.

Bob Sabath

Bob initiated Cynthia’s Fourth Way Wisdom Retreats at the Claymont Center in West Virginia in 2010, having been part of a Fourth Way community since 2006. He worked with Richard Rohr to host ongoing wilderness based men’s retreats and is a Convener carrying on that work locally through Illuman. He has lived most of his life in community, as a founding member of Sojourners, Circle Community Church, Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Center and Shepherd Village. Web master at Sojourners, Friends of Silence and Wisdom Waypoints, Bob has brought his technical expertise and experience to bear creating the new Wisdom Waypoints website.

Bob lives in Mt. Rainier Maryland with wife Jackie, and has two children and six grandchildren; being Grandpa is the delight of his life; read more about Bob here in Calling the Helpers.

Heather Ruce

Heather Ruce dedicates her life to the Christian Wisdom and Contemplative path, seeking to wake up and be a conscious servant. She brings the teachings of this path to those in search of living water, offering wisdom spiritual direction, circles, and retreats. She lives in San Diego, CA with her husband Charlie. She has been a life long seeker and an active participant in the Wisdom community since 2012.

You can find more about Heather on her Wisdom Postholder profile here, and her website heatherruce.com

Marcella Kraybill-Greggo

Marcella Kraybill-Greggo offers her time as a Seminary Director of Spirituality Programming, a local Wisdom Community facilitator, a Spiritual Director and a mom. She lives in Bethlehem, PA with her husband, daughter, and their Westie, Kiwi. She has been an active participant in the Wisdom community since 2013, both as student and teacher, assisted in facilitating multiple Wisdom schools, regularly offers an 8 month ‘Training in the Practices of Wisdom’, facilitates Law of Three midwife groups, and loves all things embodied (trained as an InterPlay facilitator). She joined the Wisdom Waypoints Council in 2017.

For more information check out Marcella’s Profile and her website Living Wisdom.

Mary Ellen Jernigan

A committed Catholic laywoman, Mary Ellen has devoted her life to the Jernigan Institute and National Federation of the Blind as Policy Advisor and administrator par excellence for over 35 years. She continues her work at the National Center for the Blind, which was established in 1978 by her beloved, husband Kenneth Jernigan, who blind himself, was for many decades, the principal leader of the organized blind movement until his death in 1998. Mary Ellen has brought her skillful means to the Wisdom Waypoints Council as Treasurer since 2017, serving on the website committee and taking the lead on all things legal and structural. Mary Ellen was an early participant, beginning in 2009 in Cynthia’s Wisdom Schools.

Mary Ellen lives in Baltimore where she and Eileen Clark, also an early Wisdom student, share a home and daily contemplative practices, and have led Wisdom book study and practice groups for many years.

Steve Hoak

Steve Hoak is a corporate director, a corporate leadership trainer, a sports coach, and a curious wisdom student. Steve is a certified Search Inside Yourself senior teacher. A program that unites mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and neuroscience. He lives near Cincinnati. Steve, April, and their children form a family of six. He and April jointly hang out just-inside various wisdom communities and gatherings. Their depth and intensity of seeking has arisen out a parent’s grief.

For more information about Steve https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-hoak-84877218/

Board Emeritus

Laura Ruth

Laura is dedicated to an embodied, practical Wisdom, awake and alive in daily life in her inner life and outer work, whether it is in her one-with-one private practice or with the Wisdom Waypoints Living Wisdom groups and book circles. She is a member of the Wisdom Waypoints Council, and was Community Program Coordination and Publishing staffperson until June 2021 all of which cultivated in her a particular love for the Wisdom community.

Laura lives in Vermont on the land of the Abenaki people, with her dear husband, near their sons, two grandchildren and her mother.

Blessed by the shuffles and knocks of life, a beautiful brook in the woods with a rugged little path, family meals, gardens and animals, Laura is grateful to have life on this good earth under the eye of those who watch over us.