Message to the Wisdom Community from Cynthia and Wisdom Waypoints

The challenges our planet is facing can feel destabilizing. Help us do what Wisdom has always done in stormy times: to be a true waypoint: a star to steer by, a sturdy hand on the helm to keep the ship on course.

With that in mind, I encourage your support for my 'home base’ non-profit organization Wisdom Waypoints as they launch their annual fundraiser. Your contribution will make a difference as their dedicated team serves to expand my teaching reach, and meet the growing interest and need for  resources and practices rooted in our Wisdom lineage. You can find out more in the messages provided below.  Your generosity, with a donation of whatever amount you can offer, will enable our ongoing work and is greatly appreciated!

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A Letter to the Wisdom Community from Cynthia Bourgeault

Dear Wisdom friends:

It’s that time of year again, and I have the pleasure and honor of inviting you to step up to the plate and contribute as generously as you can to Wisdom Waypoint’s annual fundraising campaign.

Last year we took a huge gamble, and encouraged by your support, we drew down our reserves to fund a major upgrade of our website. The hunch was that even as covid receded, our worldwide online community was here to stay, and the website would continue to be our primary tool for delivering the goods to 24 different time zones and a growing number of wisdom seekers in far flung and often isolated locations. We envisioned it as a “virtual Wisdom university,” offering a veritable banquet of resources for both individual practice and community connection.

This year we are reaping the fruits of that gamble as the network has grown exponentially and we are all learning to use these powerful new tools we have created.

Among some of the milestones of this past year we launched three rounds of Wisdom Book Practice Circles lead by 13 seasoned leaders; we now offer daily Wisdom Centering Prayer sits online—one of them in Spanish—as well as a weekly chant group; our community practice day with a Mystical Hope theme had 400 people participating and over 700 participated in the Eastertide Challenge I led. A new Spanish speaking group has formed; our international reach has expanded with hundreds of people around the globe participating in our Equinox and Solstice Wisdom pauses, and finally our own Wisdom Waypoints website has now geared up to offer more of my newer teachings as online courses.

This beehive of activity has also supported another of our core goals at Wisdom Waypoints: to provide a platform for emerging Wisdom teachers within our network. Many of you have now experienced through our various practice circles the wise and clear guiding hand of folks like Heather Ruce, Matthew Wright, Jeanine Siler-Jones, Marcella Kraybill-Greggo, Benjamin Thomas, Elizabeth Combs, Susan Latimer, Andrew Breitenberg, and a growing cohort of the next generation of Wisdom postholders. It is manifestly clear that this is not simply “the Cynthia Bourgeault Circle”; we are truly working collegially to deliver a teaching which the world desperately needs.

All of this costs money, of course, and we have beefed up our budget to provide for regular website updating, the creation of new courses, modest assistance where we can swing it for leadership and teaching, both on the ground and online. And of course, there is the ongoing need for scholarships, so that nobody is deprived of this teaching for financial reasons

.And yes, the on-the-ground work continues. My own teaching schedule this year will feature a brand new course on evil, currently scheduled for both east coast and west coast venues, and clearly a subject very much on the world’s plate this year. Plans are underway to supplement at least one of these on-the-ground retreats with an active Zoom component, and the teaching will eventually make its way into a new online course—again made possible through the depth and dedication of our website team.

Can you help us out generously this year as we continue to build our Wisdom outreach? Last year’s gamble is paying off, and as our courses and practice days begin to generate a modest income stream, we expect to see Wisdom Waypoints regain a dynamic equilibrium at this new level of engagement. For this year, however, we are still working our way out of our “tooling up” crunch, and any additional help you can give us will be not only an immediate help, but a vote of confidence that we are on the right track as we continue to plant this Wisdom lineage deep in the heart of an aching and frightened world. If in addition to your Annual Fund gift, you are in a position to think of offering an ongoing contribution (monthly or seasonal), this would register an even stronger vote! But give as you can, and remember that the first and greatest gift is your loyalty and your prayers.

With blessings and gratitude,

A Letter from the Wisdom Waypoints Council

Dear Ones,It is with a grateful heart that I write this letter to you, and our Beloved Wisdom Community, on behalf of Wisdom Waypoints Council. We have grown and stretched in new ways this year and each of you have participated in this unfolding, this new arising of our growing Wisdom Collective. Thank you for the role that you play in nurturing our community.

Wisdom Waypoints Council

With the image of a well-stocked kitchen with lots of varieties and options for ‘food’, Wisdom Waypoints delights in providing a nourishing context. Some of our greatest joys are assisting people in finding their own Wisdom voice, supporting people in living Wisdom into daily life, and finding new ways to weave Wisdom practice right into our work in the world. As Cynthia says, we are each invited to verify everything that is taught…verify in our own daily life: how is Wisdom transforming me right now, right where I am, and how does it invite me into deeper participation in the world?

Many of you join us for the daily Wisdom sits and the Wisdom Book Practice Circles. Many engaged this year with the Easter Challenge—inspired by Cynthia’s words to cultivate our second body presence in the world. Each simple engagement adds a particular flavor and strengthens who we are as a Wisdom Collective and I am deeply grateful for your participation.

This upcoming year holds excitement as we continue to produce courses from Cynthia’s Wisdom Schools so that more can have access. We invite you to partner with us in getting this Wisdom teaching disseminated in our world. Your participation is key.

As we look ahead to the coming year and the ways we hope to continue to serve, we once again ask for your financial support though your gift to our Annual Fund.

In solidarity and deep gratitude,

Marcella
on behalf of Wisdom Waypoints Council