Contemplative in the Kootenays meets (mostly!) monthly in New Denver. This day-long event (10 am to 3 pm) is open to contemplatives across the Kootenays; most of us practice Centering Prayer, but not everyone. Most of us are Christian, but not everyone. Most of us come regularly, but not everyone! This month we’ll be exploring …
One predictable result of a good retreat is the scramble at the end when people start asking, “How can we keep this great community going?” Then follows a frenzied exchange of emails and phone numbers. Equally predictable is that any community formed simply for its own continuance inevitably falls apart. I find this depressing. I …
I am blind. This is legally true—without glasses, my eyes are so bad that I should only be behind the wheel if I have a guide dog on my lap who has a driving license. Fog exacerbates my vision problems. Driving Highway 6 in the dark and the fog is hard enough; when another car …
“Our fingers imbibe like roots,” begins a prayer by Francis of Assisi, “So I place them on what is beautiful in this world.” Beauty may feel like a shaky reed these days, nothing much to hang our hat on. Most of us are more inclined to attend to what’s ugly: environmental degradation, wars, famines, loss …
I remember looking up at Goat Mountain from the Kohan Garden that evening. We’d had a lightning storm about an hour earlier and now the trees were candling, just up the mountainside from our house. Close enough that if the wind kept up, we’d be evacuated before the night was out. I sprinted home and …
Watch this site for more information about the Zoom book launch of James Finley’s remarkable book, The Healing Path: A Memoir and an Invitation. The Contemplative Society is working with an Episcopal church in Southern California to get live stream of this event to its members and friends. Save the date: October 7, 2023, from …
She was getting out of her van by the beach, clearly unnerved by the thick smoke in the air. “Did you hear that they’re evacuating all of Yellowknife?” I blinked; I didn’t know her from Adam, but she sure needed to talk. “Yes,” I said. I felt anxious too. But I know how to listen …
I had a list a mile long, I did, of plans for July. Not only family visits, but writing space, study time, a week-end board planning meeting, a personal retreat week. My overall longing for this month was for big blocks of quiet reflection time, something that’s felt sorely lacking during the last six months. …
Last year, my revered teacher made some unconsidered remarks to a board on which I serve. Part of the problem was that she didn’t recognize the competence of the people in front of her; that stung us. Another board member pointed out her misconception, and the group went on to vote in favor of the …
When I was a kid, sacred was about church. It was the Lord’s Prayer repeated each Sunday; it was the consecration, the communion cup, the baptismal fountain, the ashes on the forehead. In Braiding Sweetgrass, the indigenous biologist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer recounts an observance enacted daily during the summer months that her family camped …
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