Contemplative in the Kootenays is a monthly in-person gathering for the purpose of meditation, study, and community. We meet monthly on a Saturday from 10 am to 3 pm. In February 2026, we’ll be meeting on Saturday the 28th, in New Denver. For information about how to get here, contact Therese descamp@widespot.ca. We start the …
Her daughter had terminal cancer. “I’m grieving,” she said. Then she said, “I’m also savoring.” There are a lot of conversations about grief and loss lately. The child losing her struggle with mental illness; the limp suddenly revealed as bone cancer; the partner just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. These are personal places of powerlessness and sorrow: …
There were twenty-odd women and one man, dressed in black, standing by the side of the highway in silence. In our hands or around our necks were signs detailing the numbers dead in Gaza, in Israel, in the Ukraine, Syria, Sudan. Signs about starvation. Signs about war in general. Signs about what religions say about …
Saturday, June 28, we will meet from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the little barn at 1305 Denver Siding Road. Our schedule for the day? Meditation, sacred reading and discussion, walking meditation, reflection, open communion. Please wear comfy clothes, bring a journal and your lunch, and if you need special sitting gear, bring that …
The Contemplative Society presents “Writing as Three Centered Practice, with Therese DesCamp Saturday 31 May 2025 10am to 11:30am PACIFIC TIME. Join Therese DesCamp for a 90-minute conversation focused on the implications, obligations and revelations experienced by contemplatives who write. DesCamp, who’s been meditating and writing for 35 years, will speak about the role of …
Every night at 8 p.m., after the war began, Pope Francis called Holy Family Church in Gaza. Every night until he drew his last breath, Francis faithfully picked up the phone and checked in. I haven’t been able to get this picture out of my head. Actually, what I haven’t been able to get out …
On Wednesday, April 23, I’ll be launching (and selling!) Hands Like Roots: Notes on an Entangled Contemplative Life. Yahoo! Join me, with Tom Wayman as host, at 7 p.m. in New Denver at Knox Hall. Books are also available at Raven’s Nest in New Denver and Silverton General Store in Silverton. Within the week they …
Many of my friends put some pithy quotation across the bottom of their emails. The extracts vary from “I have a photographic memory; unfortunately it was never fully developed” to a definition of liminal space. But one quote occurs repeatedly. Originating with medieval mystic Julian of Norwich, it reads, “All shall be well, and all …
For me, it starts in the gut: it registers that I’m feeling anxious or even nauseous since reading that news article. For someone else, it starts in the head: noticing there is an endless loop of some distressing event playing in their mind. For yet another, it is felt in the heart: a weight on …
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Canadians can send an e-transfer to descamp@widespot.ca. Everyone else, I take cheques of all nationalities.
Box 452, New Denver, BC, V0G 1S0, Canada