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Should My Furnace Fan Continously Run

Many homeowners become concerned when they hear their furnace fan running all day, every day. In reality, this is not necessarily a bad thing, and it does not always indicate that something is wrong with your heating and cooling system. Here’s a quick look at why your fan might be running all the time and why that might actually be good.

Why Is Your Furnace Fan Always Running?

Usually, the furnace fan in your home will run continuously because of the setting on your thermostat. Most thermostats have two fan settings: “Auto” and “On.” The “Auto” setting means your system will turn the fan on when it needs to circulate heated air, and “On” will force your fan to run nonstop.

However, a furnace fan that won’t stop running can also be a byproduct of a faulty fan limit switch or one that is set to manual override. For a technical problem of this nature, you should call a team of HVAC professionals like those at Comfort Pro, Inc., Heating & Air Conditioning in Reading, PA. We provide a full menu of furnace services.

Benefits of Always Running Your Furnace Fan

Running your home’s furnace fan all the time is not a bad thing. You won’t have to worry about the fan wearing out or breaking. It’s actually designed to run continuously.

Running the fan will provide for better air circulation throughout the entire home, which can be especially beneficial for larger houses. This will more effectively eliminate lingering cold spots. If you have an air purifier installed, running your furnace fan continuously also creates cleaner air, which is crucial for those who suffer from allergies or asthma.

Are There Any Drawbacks?

By running your furnace fan all the time, you will be expending more energy, which equates to slightly higher energy bills. Also, if you have ducts that are close to the outside of your home, the air inside those ducts can cool down. Consequently, the fan will push out colder air.

Be Proactive About Your Home’s Furnace

In Reading, Comfort Pro, Inc., Heating & Air Conditioning has a team of licensed HVAC professionals who can tend to your residential or commercial heating and cooling needs. This includes furnace and air conditioner installation, repair and maintenance as well as air duct cleaning, geothermal services and more. It’s important to be proactive when it comes to your heating and cooling system so that it will be ready when you need it most. Give us a call today to discuss any of your heating and cooling needs.


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by The Archivist

In 1957, King Features launched a funny strip about a lovable millionaire who acted like a carefree boy in a man’s body — sort of an American equivalent of THE LITTLE KING, though this time a confirmed bachelor. The strip was MR. ABERNATHY by Ralston Jones and Frank Ridgeway, which premiered on 14 October 1957. A Sunday strip was later added from 1959 to 1986.

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Mr. Abernathy owned a large company and had an office, but most of his time was spent in pursuit of pleasure. Games, pets and parties took up a lot of his time, but above all else, pretty girls were his obsession. He was very short, and being  bald and white- mustached might indicate age, but not always wisdom. Though his fabulous wealth permitted him to maintain the lifestyle of a young playboy-about-town, he wasn’t that much of a catch to the girls. Often, the gags center on his rejections. Most notably, the brunette beauty, Yum Yum O’Day, who rebuffed him at every turn, though Abernathy never stopped trying.

There were many characters in the strip. Some of the most memorable were Dudley, the long-suffering butler; Admiral Asterbloom, the pompous bore who hangs out with Abernathy; Jonathan C. Profile, a conceited ham actor; his whiney nephew Rodney; Lady Veronica, a high society matron with weight problems; a notoriously bad driver, Van Dabbler; a beatnik painter, Jeremiah; an ineffective ghost; and beautiful but dumb Flossie, the world’s worst secretary.

His pets included: Monty the dog, Polly the parrot, Marsha the goldfish, and of course, Cuddles the elephant.

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Frank Ridgeway (pictured left) and Ralston Jones (pictured right) encounter the real Mr. Abernathy and Flossie some time circa 1963. I have no further information as to what’s going on, or what their badges read. It’s tough when the snipe comes off an old news photo. (Author’s collection)

Abernathy’s creators parted ways in 1979. The artist, Ralston Jones, left eventually to do a short-lived effort over at NAS (North American Syndicate). called FULL HOUSE. Frank Ridgeway, until then the only writer, took over the cartooning duties too, with lesser aplomb. The strip, I think, suffered for it, and the client lists dwindled. At his death in 1994, KFS comics editor Jay Kennedy decided to keep it going in reruns. In 2003, the strip was retired for good.

Now on to reader comments:

To Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Fisher,

I’ll do a page on THE AMBASSADOR next month. I would have here, but I have all the material for December already lined up. I will get  to it.

To abwx,

Actually you’re right in that both this year and 1923 had 12 September and 31 October fall on Wednesdays, and most of the rest of the two years correspond as well, but 2012’s leap year status changes January and February. The calendar that was used in 1923 was last used in 2007, and will be again in 2018. The calendar used in 2012  is infrequently deployed, only three times in the twentieth century, and won’t be recycled in this one until 2040.  Provided the Mayans and their calendar are wrong, of course.

To Mr. Whoopee,

We try to give you a look at some of the lesser known titles here. In more than a century of Hearst comics, there’s lots to see.

To Steve Hathaway,

Well, no, we don’t have any of the Boston-only efforts of Schmidt and Sullivan. I’ll ask some of our collectors if they might help us out on that, because I think that would be a fine blog topic. Incidentally, they didn’t work on the Boston American, in 1934 they were with another Hearst weekday paper , the Boston Daily Record, a tabloid that many years later was merged with the American.

Next week, the oldest thing I’ve posted yet.

And it’ll have nothing to do with Mayans.

The Archivist

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How To Become a Fearless Public Speaker

Dave Aizer

Okay, so you hate public speaking. The thought of it sends shivers down your spine, produces a lump in your throat and makes your hands clammy. You’d rather do almost anything than give a speech or appear on TV to promote your business or brand. However, there’s one big problem: from a publicity and marketing standpoint, speaking in public is crucial to your growth and success.

Get Uncomfortable

Once you leave your comfort zone, albeit painfully, there are three main techniques you can learn to help you become a dynamic and captivating public speaker: (1) establish your key differentiators, (2) rehearse, and (3) work on vocal inflection and storytelling. However, those techniques are for another article because if you don’t prioritize changing the way you feel about public speaking, no amount of training will make you great at it.

Many clients who reach out to me begin our conversations by saying they are forced to give a speech or their colleague is making them go on TV to talk about their company. They’ll say things like, “I’m dreading this,” or “I just want to get it over with.” Whether it’s participating in sports, creating art or speaking in public, it’s impossible to succeed if you frame it negatively.

There’s no way Michael Jordan approached a game-winning free throw telling himself he was going to miss. I can’t imagine The Beatles gathered together before taking the stage and said, “Okay, mates, let’s go out there and mess it up!” There’s nothing wrong with being nervous (in fact, you can use nervous energy to your advantage), but negative self-talk is crippling when it comes to performance. In order to be a powerful communicator, you must own your words and gestures, and truly believe in your message — and you can’t do that if you’re doubting yourself.

Spin The Negative Into A Positive

Try this: instead of describing public speaking as a problem, or something you have to do, reframe it as an opportunity you get to do. Treat it as a venture you’re excited to conquer, not afraid to try. Every time you speak on behalf of your business, it’s an opportunity to raise awareness, build your brand and grow your revenue. You get to deliver the talking points you want your listeners and viewers to hear. You get to shape the message and control the narrative. That’s pretty cool! You have a platform that is unavailable to most of your competitors. And, even if they also have it, you’ll work harder and prepare better than they will.

Play Mind Games with Yourself

Taking it a step further, don’t just envision the experience going well; think about where you’ll celebrate after you’ve nailed it. Picture yourself having dinner at your favorite restaurant and smiling ear-to-ear because you just went on national television and crushed it, or gave an amazing speech to a packed house and got a standing ovation. Those are empowering visuals. Think about the elation and relief you’ll feel after the job is done. After your hard work and countless hours of preparation and rehearsing have paid off, you’ve successfully created an enormously positive outcome. The mind is incredibly powerful and you need your brain to be on your team.

That said, your brain may initially fight you. In fact, it probably will. It’s unrealistic to expect positive self-talk will immediately replace years of dread about public speaking. You may need to seize a “fake it ‘til you make it” mentality. In other words, even if you don’t necessarily believe what you’re telling yourself, just keep thinking it and saying it aloud, over and over, until it rings true. Keep putting it out there in the universe. The more often you position public speaking as a positive experience, the more eager you’ll be to embrace it and, ultimately, the better you’ll be at it.

Focus On Progress, Not Perfection

Don’t worry about being perfect. Don’t beat yourself up for saying “um” or tripping on a word when you give a speech. Nobody cares about that nearly as much as you do. Learn from and try and improve on every single opportunity, and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a confident and compelling speaker. And mentally, start with being your own biggest fan in the audience.

About the Author: Dave Aizer is a motivational speaker, Emmy Award-winning television host, and best-selling author, as well as the founder and head media coach of Elite Media Coaching. To watch Dave in action, visit, and follow him on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.


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Mark Noyes President and CEO

Mark Noyes is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Con Edison Clean Energy Businesses that include Con Edison Development, Con Edison Energy and Con Edison Solutions. Responsible for the overall profitability of these businesses, Mark structured the companies to meet the renewable energy strategy developed by parent company, Consolidated Edison Inc., which included exiting the Retail Commodities business and developing a robust Energy Services group that today operates profitability and with an extensive backlog of contracts.

Prior to his role as President and CEO, Mark was President of Con Edison Development and Con Edison Energy. In this role, he developed the Utility Scale portfolio of the company from the ground up, rapidly becoming the 5th largest owner/operator of PV renewable energy assets nationwide.

Previously Mr. Noyes was Principal and Managing Partner for B4U Services, a firm providing consulting services to clients in the energy sector with a focus on power quality, technology development, acquisitions, renewable energy, strategic development, energy efficiency and revenue growth via business development.

Prior to establishing B4U Services in 2006, he was the President and CEO of WebGen Systems, an enterprise energy-management company providing complete energy services to commercial and industrial customers. These services included distributed generation, renewable energy, energy efficiency, demand response, energy purchasing and "green" building/LEEDS certification. At WebGen, Mr. Noyes gained comprehensive experience in all phases of new business development, including profit and loss responsibility, operations management, technology development, finance, strategic planning, marketing, and sales.

Before WebGen, Mr. Noyes spent over 15 years with Con Edison, gaining experience in all aspects of the power sector on both the regulated and non-regulated side. He served as Vice President of Asset Management and Acquisition for Con Edison Development. His responsibilities included asset acquisition, profit and loss responsibility, asset management, brownfield/greenfield development, strategic planning, operations and environmental compliance of 1,700 MW of generation.

Mr. Noyes holds a Master of Business Administration degree and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering; and is a Certified Energy Manager and Certified Sustainable Development Professional with the Association of Energy Engineers. He has served as Chairman of the Board of Web Gen and is listed by Crain's New York Business as one of the “Top 40 under 40,“ an honor given to those who are recognized as “rising stars“ in their industries.

James J. Dixon Senior Vice President & Chief Operating Officer

Jim Dixon Senior Vice President & Chief Operating Officer Jim Dixon is the Senior Vice President & Chief Operating Officer for Con Edison Development headquartered just north of New York City in Valhalla, New York. In addition he is Vice President – Legal Services for Con Edison Energy and Compliance Officer for all of Con Edison's Competitive Energy Businesses. He assumed his present responsibilities in July 2011.

Immediately prior to his present position, Mr. Dixon served as Vice President of Energy Services for Con Edison Solutions. During his 4½ year tenure in this position he led a team of 100 energy efficiency experts located throughout the United States that delivers demand-side energy-efficiency projects and services for a wide variety of customers. Mr. Dixon also served three years as Con Edison Solutions' General Counsel responsible for all its legal services. Before joining Con Edison Solutions in 2004, Mr. Dixon had over ten years experience in the Consolidated Edison Company of New York (CECONY) law department's Nuclear Regulatory and Commercial Litigation sections. He also served as legal counsel for Con Edison Solutions from January 1998 until August 2002 and as Assistant Corporate Secretary for Consolidated Edison Company of New York (CECONY) from August 2002 until joining Con Edison Solutions as its General Counsel in January 2004. While pursuing his legal studies at night he also held various technical positions in CECONY's Construction, Engineering and System Operations departments and is a 1984 graduate of Con Edison's rigorous Management Intern Program (now called the GOLD Program).

He is currently Chairman of the National Association of Energy Services Companies (NAESCO) which is the leading energy-services industry trade organization that promotes energy efficiency nationwide with over 70 member companies. He is also an active member of the Association of Corporate Counsel, the world's largest community of in-house counsel, with more than 29,000 members in over 75 countries, serving as the Resources Chairman for its Energy Committee, a member of the Compliance & Ethics and Small Law Department Committees, a faculty member at its 2010 and 2012 Annual Meetings and co-author of the "Top Ten Challenges Facing Alternative Energy Sources." In addition, he is a member of the Ethics and Compliance Officers Association and Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics.

In addition, Mr. Dixon is retired from the United States Army Reserve with the rank of Major. During his service in the Army Reserve, he commanded a Combat Heavy Engineer Company, was Executive Officer for an Engineer Battalion and is an honors graduate of both the basic and advanced officer courses at the United States Army Engineer School. He is very active in his local community, having served as President of the Ardsley Little League and co-founder of a local CYO basketball program as well as coach and manager of numerous athletic teams. His community service was recognized in 2009 by the Ardsley PTA with its prestigious Jenkins Award.

Mr. Dixon received his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from Manhattan College and his J.D. from New York Law School. He is admitted to practice in the local bar and federal courts of New York and Washington D.C. Mr. Dixon is also a registered professional engineer in New York State.

Paul F. Mapelli Vice President and General Counsel, CEBs

Paul F. Mapelli - Vice President and General Counsel of Con Edison Clean Energy Businesses, IncPaul F. Mapelli is the Vice President and General Counsel of Con Edison Clean Energy Businesses, Inc. (CEB) and its subsidiaries, including Con Edison Development, Con Edison Energy, and Con Edison Solutions.  Prior to his current position, Mr. Mapelli was the Vice President and General Counsel of Con Edison Solutions.  Mr. Mapelli has been the corporate Secretary for each of the CEBs since July 2002.

Mr. Mapelli was previously an Assistant General Counsel in the Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. (CECONY) Law Department, where he was primarily responsible for providing legal services to CECONY’s affiliate, Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc. (O&R).

Mr. Mapelli received a Bachelor of Science degree from Herbert H. Lehman College and is a NYS Registered Nurse.  He received his J.D. from Columbia University School of Law and is admitted to practice in New York.

Tom DiCapua Managing Director, Wholesale Energy Services

Tom DiCapua is the Managing Director of Asset Optimization and Business Development. In this role Tom is responsible for overseeing the day to day Power and Natural Gas activities related to Con Edison’s Competitive Energy Businesses’ Leased Asset and Energy Management lines of business. Since joining Con Edison Energy in 2008 Tom has overseen operations of energy management agreements and successfully developed new services tailored for individual clients and sought to coordinate the various capabilities of the Con Edison Competitive Energy Businesses to better suit the energy management needs of the marketplace. Tom continues to develop strategies to build robust, client centered services.

Prior to joining CEE in 2008, Tom worked at National Grid/KeySpan, first as Automation Engineer in their generating fleet and later as a lead Electric Trader for Keyspan’s Energy Transaction Services group. Tom has Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Siena College and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has a daughter and lives in Hawthorne New York.

Karl Hofer Director, Trading

Karl Hofer is currently Director of Trading and Energy Management at Consolidated Edison Energy, Inc. (CEE). Karl is responsible for CEEs power trading, client based energy management services, and wholesale activities related to Consolidated Edison Solutions (CES) northeast power portfolio.

Karl has over 13 years of experience in the energy industry. Prior to his current role Karl worked with increasing responsibility in various roles with Con Ed Energy and Con Ed Solutions. While with CES Karl started as a Financial Analyst in 2002 in commercial finance and then worked as a Sr. Commodity Analyst where he analyzed state and utility regulatory and competitive retail power environments. During this time CES expanded from offering retail electric supply in two states and four utilities to serving customers in nine states and over 25 utilities. In 2007 Mr. Hofer moved over to CEE, and held roles of Energy Trader, Asset Manager and Sr. portfolio Manager prior to becoming Director. At CEE Karl’s responsibilities included cash and term power trading, generation asset optimization, retail load portfolio management and optimization, and REC procurement and optimization. Prior to joining Con Ed Mr. Hofer worked as a Financial Analyst for Seneca Financial Group, Inc. At Seneca he analyzed third party company financial performance involved in troubled-debt restructuring and M&A opportunities.

Mr. Hofer graduated Magna Cum Laude from Syracuse University in 2001 with a double Bachelor of Science degree in Finance and Accounting. Additionally, he received a Masters of Business Administration in Financial Management in 2006 from Pace University’s Lubin School of Business. He is married with two kids and lives in Norwalk, CT.

Eric Newell Director, Trading & Energy Management

Eric Newell is the Director of Trading & Energy Management at Con Ed Energy in Valhalla New York. In his current role he is responsible for managing all of Con Ed Energy’s PJM and ERCOT activities. These activities include all trading in these regions including Power, Capacity, and RECs, both Physical and Financial, offering generators into the ISO, load bidding and scheduling, and optimizing asset profitability. Eric currently manages a fleet of Natural Gas and Renewable Generators throughout PJM and Manages ConEd Solutions Retail load book in PJM and ERCOT.

Eric has been with Con Ed Energy since 2000 and has held several roles throughout company including Operations Analyst, Trader, Asset Manager, and Portfolio Manager.

Eric Graduated from SUNY Plattsburgh with a BA in Economics. He is married with 3 children and lives in Orange County New York.

Nancy Lee Director, Settlements

Ms. Lee is responsible for ISO/RTO settlements validation and settlements on behalf of clients taking energy management services from CEE. In that capacity she is responsible for interfacing with accounting to ensure accruals are timely and accurately recorded; providing data and reports for analysis of generating asset revenue optimization, portfolio performance, and feedback to Operations regarding bidding practices; and ensuring ISO/RTO invoices are paid timely and managing disputes. Prior to this, she was Director of Commodity Accounting.

Ms. Lee has extensive energy industry experience. She worked for Con Edison Company of New York where she held various positions in Operations, Fossil Power and Generation Services.

Ms. Lee is a graduate of New York University with a Master of Business Administration. She also has a Bachelor of Engineering in Civil Engineering from The Cooper Union.

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text:
Workshops include:

All in a System: The Power of Church and Family

Moving From Anxious to Grounded Leadership

Healthy Communication: Conflict Resolution Basics

Healthy Communication: The Benefits and Drawbacks of Emotional Triangles

Healthy Communication: Levels of Listening

Taking Care of Mind, Body and Spirit

Managing Mental Health Issues in the Congregation

Pastoral Care Basics for Lay Pastoral Care Givers

Pastoral Care Skill Building Groups for Clergy

Leading Through Grief

The Present Through New Eyes, creative self-reflection on the strengths and challenges facing your congregation

Taking Care of Mind, Body and Spirit

Other topics can be prepared to meet the needs of your group.

To schedule call Rev. Dr. Lynn at 585-330-1340 or email [email protected]

Contact Me


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ICDS Recruitment
24 Upper Fitzwilliam St, Dublin 2

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Client Side Project Manager

Location: South Dublin, County Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Entered: 24 Feb 2020
Salary: Negotiable
Duration: Permanent

Project Manager / PM / Residential / Consultancy / Client Side

Our client are a group of companies who self deliver Residential Projects in the Dublin and Leinster region. They now seek a Client Side Project Manager on a permanent basis.

They are seeking a Project Manager to run the project post planning, through tender stage to management of contractor on site.

The ideal candidate will have;

  • 7-10 years’ experience in construction management/ project management
  • Experience in high rise concrete frame construction
  • Residential apartment experience essential
  • Ability to work to programme and budget essential
  • Strong commercial acumen
  • Strong reporting and report writing skills.
  • Ability to design and commercial team’s pretender to ensure high quality documentation is produced for tender
  • Ability to lead tender process, including due diligence on tier 1 contractors.
  • Ability to drive main contractor to achieve, quality, programme, budget while always ensuring health & safety performance is exemplary

If you are a Project Manager looking to explore your options, please apply online or contact Stephen at ICDS

0208 861 7847 /

Project Manager / PM / Residential / Consultancy / Client Side

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The Birth of Aliya Mariam by Seemi Bushra Ghazi

Cowichan Lake, BC, Canada, September 2019

Recently I had the great pleasure of teaching with Reverend Matthew Wright in a retreat on the Divine Feminine wisdom expressed through Mary and Sophia. Much of my teaching felt deeply intimate for myself and the community present, and we have not included it in the weekend recordings. I did wish however to share this piece which I performed that weekend. It is simultaneously a feminist birth narrative, an embodied exegesis of the Qur’anic story of Mary’s birthing Jesus, and an immigrant arrival story. I hope you will listen for the drumming, chanting and singing I offered in performance and the whirling of my dervish sister, Anna, in our midst. May the rustle of her swirling skirts reach you. May the light breath of the Compassionate Rahman animate and illuminate this season. If you have any responses to this piece or any of the retreat, I am glad to receive them at  I give gratitude for you all, especially Cynthia and Matthew who have so generously nurtured our Christian- Muslim- Sufi contemplative collaborations over so many years.

The Birth of Aliya Mariam
Seemi Bushra Ghazi

Gracious are the gardens in which in winter
New fruits ripen for every Mary
(Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi)

My lineage goes back to Adam (upon him be peace). In this respect, I am no different than anyone. I read once in a family manuscript, flowing in rivulets of elegant nastaliq script, the threads of imputed origin, Prophets, scholars, pilgrims and holy men, who moved from Yemen to Yathrib (present-day Medina) before the coming of Islam, who hosted the Prophet at their table in Medina, and arrived in India soon after the first Arab merchants. There they dispersed, taught, and preached, and established religious schools or madrasas. When I think of these men in my father’s family as I encountered them in visits to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, they bore no resemblance to the wildeyed mullahs of CNN with their hateful small-time religion. My “uncles” seemed powerful and delicate, majestic and fluid, with features of perfect Chinese brushwork and the poise of the blue heron on our shoreline at low tide.

The shoreline where my family and I live is the coast of British Columbia, where a renegade tropical current moderates the frigid Pacific as it narrows into the Burrard Inlet entering the city of Vancouver. It is a long way from the steppes of my Central Asian forbears, the dry riverbeds of Yemen, the mustard fields of Haryana. It is far even from the London of my birth, and the Boston and Chicago of my childhood. Mostly it is far from the cities that had always seized my imagination— Damascus, Cairo, Istanbul. I arrived here nine years ago wondering how it came to be that this ancient soul had been flung out onto the furthest rim of the newest world.

Click here to continue reading The Birth of Aliyah Mariam by Seemi Ghazi, 2019

A Reflection From The Heart by Charlotte Futcher

Charlotte Futcher participated in Holy Wisdom, the Mother of God with Matthew Wright in September, 2019 at the Cowichan Lake Research Station on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. She generously shared her experience.

During that crisp and sunny week spent at the Lake Cowichan Forest Research Station, with the lake lapping and greens transforming to reds all around us, I went through a reintroduction to and transformation in the relationships with both myself and the Divine Feminine. I was held in warm smiles, the notes of Mary’s harp, the protection of the forest, the beauty of the beach’s pebbles, and the quiet-ness of shared silence. I was held by Sophia.

It was the kind of embrace with a secureness that doesn’t restrict you, but makes you feel loved and limitless. Matthew and Seemi’s teachings lulled me into a peace that I didn’t know I was so hungry for. I couldn’t have anticipated any of what I would take out of 2019’s retreat with The Contemplative Society, yet I feel like it was so crucial to my growth at this time of my life. I am so grateful for the opportunity to have attended that week. I felt surrounded by wisdom, curiosity, and inspiration.

On the last morning of the retreat, I walked into Lake Mesachie and rested into the coolness. Floating at the surface, the sun warmed my face and the front of my body while the brisk water lifted me up. It was an interesting kind of balance. I swam down into the vastness of the lake, deeper and deeper and deeper. The water was a deep and alluring turquoise. Turning and looking up towards the surface, the sun crept through the ripples and turned a strip of that turquoise colour into a pure and piercing white. I wished I could’ve stayed there forever. Everything below the surface felt so perfect. I felt so weightless. So held. But I returned to the surface to immediately feel the warmth of the sun on my face and to see the rolling hills that hug the lake, in a gold cloak of light.

“Hello, Sophia.”

Lake Mesachie, Vancouver Island, BC

What is the Christian Wisdom Lineage?

by Heather Page, St Philip, OB. June 2019

In April 2019 I attended a unique “retreat”, known as a Wisdom School (WS). This five-day event led by The Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, PhD and sponsored by The Contemplative Society ( was held at the Lake Cowichan Education Centre and filled to capacity. Although it rained for four of the five days and I was sleeping in a tent, the WS was filled with a light and joy, carried in many radiant hearts.

In her teaching Cynthia clarified and expanded on eight points she had drafted defining the particular branch of Christian Wisdom in which she teaches. Her blend of Wisdom teaching was formulated over 20 years ago in her early work with The Contemplative Society on Vancouver Island and Salt Spring Island. During this time these contemplative teachings and practices began to take root among a dedicated group of people, particularly within the Anglican community. Under the leadership of Bishop Barry Jenks, The Contemplative Society received a generous annual donation of seed money for three years to help establish this teaching and life practice within the Diocese of BC.

This Wisdom teaching has roots in both mystical and monastic traditions particularly the Benedictine emphasis on a daily rhythm of work and prayer and in the teaching of G.I Gurdjieff which blends Orthodox Christianity, Sufism, and middle eastern influences. Central to the Gurdjieff teaching is work with attention, self-observation, and non-identification combined with inner practices which aim to support work on the stuck places where we are asleep to the subtle ways our unconscious and automatic self manifests, obvious to others but frequently hidden to us. At the heart of the Wisdom teaching is a daily meditation practice particularly Centering Prayer as developed by Father Thomas Keating and his work with Contemplative Outreach. Centering Prayer emphasizes the kenotic gesture of surrender, a dying to self and letting go.

Now twenty years later, it had become clear that it was important to clarify and articulate the particular flavour of the Christian Wisdom lineage Cynthia teaches from. Thus she drew up eight Wisdom verticil which she expanded upon during the April WS. I have abbreviated these points below; for the full version see:

  1. We are founded on a daily practice of sitting meditation, predominantly but not exclusively Centering Prayer, anchored within the overall daily rhythm of “ora et labora”, as set forth in the Rule of St. Benedict.
  2. We are rooted in the Christian mystical and visionary tradition… In service to this luminous seeing, we affirm the primacy of the language of silence and its life-giving connection with the subtle realms, without which spiritual inquiry tends to become overly cognitive and contentious.
  3. We incorporate a major emphasis…on mindfulness and conscious awakening, informed here particularly by the inner teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff and by their parallels and antecedents in the great sacred traditions, particularly in Sufism.
  4. We are an esoteric or “gnostic” school…through which the radically consciousness-transforming teachings of Jesus have been most powerfully transmitted and engaged. But we eschew esotericism as simply mental or metaphysical speculation, and we affirm the primacy of the scripture and tradition as the cornerstones of Christian life.
  5. Also in contrast to many branches of the Wisdom tradition based on Perennial or Traditionalist metaphysics (with its inherently binary and anti-material slant), we are emphatically a Teilhardian, Trinitarian lineage, embracing asymmetry (threeness), evolution, and incarnation in all their material fullness and messiness.
  6. We are moving steadily in the direction of revisioning contemplation no longer in terms of monastic, otherworldly models prioritizing silence and repose but, rather, as a way of honing consciousness and compassion so as to be able to fully engage the world and become active participants in its transition to the higher collectivity, the next evolutionary unfolding.
  7. We are an integral school, not a pluralistic one… Our work concentrates not at the level of healing the false-self, woundedness and recovery, substance abuse, equal rights, restorative justice, or political correctness (although we acknowledge the importance of all of these initiatives), but rather at the level of guiding the transition from identity based primarily in the narrative or egoic self to identity stabilized at the level of witnessing presence…
  8. Our most important teachers and teachings are Jesus, St. Benedict, the canonical and Wisdom gospels, The Cloud of Unknowing, the greater Christian mystical and visionary tradition…the Desert and Hesychastic traditions, Bede Griffiths and the Christian Advaitic traditions,…Rumi, Sufism, G.I. Gurdjieff, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. And, of course, my own teacher, Br. Raphael Robin.

Each of these points is vital to this unique heritage. But I would like to focus on two.

In point five, Cynthia contends that “Christianity has never looked at why the material world is so important”. Within this dense and constricted realm kenotic self-surrender, a laying down of one’s life becomes the activation and beginning of the spiritual path. It is easy to be tempted to view this dense and coarse realm as inferior and to desire an escape to “climb out of the pit” in Cynthia’s words. This view is in conflict with incarnation and results in a “static binariness”. God is fully available and realized at all connection points at all levels, even the most dense says Cynthia. “God is this unity. You can’t say God is responsible for this unity, as he is the unity.” The aim is not self-realization but love. “There is no self-realization apart from love.”

Cynthia writes in her book The Wisdom Jesus,

               Could it be that this earthly realm, not in spite of but because of its very density and jagged edges, offers precisely the conditions for the expression of certain aspects of divine love that could become real in no other way? This world does indeed show forth what love is like in a particularly intense and costly way. But  when we look at this process more deeply, we can see that those sharp edges we experience as constriction at the same time call forth some of the most exquisite dimensions of love, which require the condition of finitude in order to make sense – qualities such as steadfastness, tenderness, commitment, forbearance, fidelity, and forgiveness. These mature and subtle flavors of love have no real context in a realm where there are no edges and boundaries, where all just flows. But when you run up against the hard edges and have to stand true to love anyway, what emerges is a most precious taste of pure divine love. God has spoken his most intimate name. (100)

Point six explores a shift which has occurred over the years in the contemplative community. When I first began attending contemplative retreats the emphasis was on creating a monastic hermitage type experience. Retreats ranged from weekends to ten days, typically in full silence except for teaching and minimal communication during Benedictine work periods. There were a number of silent sits some as long as one and a half hours with only a couple of short breaks for meditative walking. Custody of the eyes was practiced (no eye contact) and held throughout the retreat.

Over the years the format of the WS has shifted. Meditation remains important but with encouragement beyond the WS to participate in regular private practice or peer led intensive meditation retreats. The emphasis of the teaching shifted to the question of how I as a contemplative will manifest outwardly bringing the fruit of my practice into daily living. Are the fruits of the Spiritgentleness, patience, forbearance, humility etc.finding their way into how I relate to my family and my neighbour? How does the contemplative stance express itself in my interactions in the world? And how might this contemplative stance affect world consciousness and find its identity in the cosmic Christ? This is an important development that is still being processed by the contemplative community. Meditation is a daily practice in the art of laying down identification with our personal agenda, letting go of one’s ever-demanding wants and needs. It is only through deepening surrender that genuine altruistic outpouring becomes possible. How can the fruits of sustained contemplative practice, the regular act of letting go become a vehicle for compassionate expression in the world?

We are blessed to have such wise teaching on the island. This teaching offers hope to the world and a possible way forward in the church that at times may appear to resemble the orchestra on the Titanic. All generations long for authentic expression and practice, as well as guidance in living integrated and fully embodied lives. I see the Christian Wisdom teaching in part, as the way forward.

I am extremely grateful to the Educational Trust Boards for their generous grant toward my participation in this Wisdom School.

NOTE: An edited version of this post was published in the October 2019 edition of the Diocesan Post.  Thank you to Heather for sharing her knowledge and wisdom.

Excerpts from The Monk’s Cell Chapter 8:

The Porous Self: Community and Intersubjectivity from the Inner Room

This is the eighth and final post from an 8-week cycle drawing excerpts from my book, The Monk’s Cell: Ritual and Knowledge in American Contemplative Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2018). Gratitude to all at The Contemplative Society for inviting me to participate.

The eighth chapter, Cell, is a narrative of the illness and death of Helen Eberle Daly, one who was dear to many of us in the Wisdom community. Beginning with our pilgrimage together to Assisi, Helen’s story beautifully illustrates how solitude and silence are profoundly communicative acts, and how devoted practitioners have the potential to courageously work towards contemplative maturity regardless of life’s jagged edges.

That first afternoon, Helen and I walked out of the towering eastern gate of the medieval walled town of Assisi and headed toward San Damiano. I was sketchy about the story of Francis, but this much I knew: San Damiano was the little church that Francis had rebuilt from ruins when he first felt the call to a religious life. The story goes that in the rubble of a chapel ruin that was ancient in his own time, Francis was praying before the dilapidated altar when the crucifix hanging above said to him, “Repair my house.” Francis took the imperative literally and restored San Damiano stone by stone, then later turned it into a convent for Clare and the women who followed her.

The cobbled path took Helen and me down a hillside covered in gnarled olive trees. Some were so old that their trunks were nothing more than perforated husks barely capable of supporting their leathery silver-green leaves, so old that some might have been there when Francis himself walked that road 800 years ago. We passed a few trinket stalls, modest stone farmhouses with hand-lettered signs advertising “Olio di oliva in vendita,” a fourteenth-century iron-gated shrine displaying its candlelit fresco of the Madonna and Child, and shiny outdoor escalators rising from a sizable parking lot for some of the many air-conditioned coaches that brought tourists and pilgrims to Assisi every day.

During the forty-minute walk, Helen stopped several times. Her back was really bothering her, she said, probably due to the many hours of wandering around Rome for three days when they first arrived in Italy, after being relatively inactive at home in Vermont during a particularly harsh winter.

Notices requesting “Silenzio per favore— tenere in riverenza” told us we were getting closer. San Damiano appeared around the bend of a curving monastery wall and a line of cypress trees. It was tiny and simple, with a finely worked rose window, terracotta roof tiles, sheltering cloister arches, and a small stone piazza with banks of votive candles. Two bronze statues depicted Francis, one walking barefoot with staff in hand toward the church’s portico and another meditating cross-legged on the hillcrest before an expansive view of the rural landscape below. How different from the magnificent thirteenth-century basilica, adorned by the likes of Giotto, Cimabue, and Martini, that was built later on the other side of town in reverence for (and also in spite of) Francis’s simplicity and radical poverty.

Threading our way through a scrum of photo-snapping visitors and past a young black-bearded friar who was sweeping the outer courtyard’s stone pavements, we entered through a side chapel, which featured a gruesome, life-sized Baroque crucifix, then made our way into the nave of San Damiano proper. Helen and I stopped in our tracks: the sanctuary’s low plaster vault was so organically irregular, the dusky filtered light so pensive, the early medieval starry-night frescoes so intimately drawn, the rickety wooden choir stalls so clearly made by the hands of those who used them centuries ago. The floor tiles were worn glossy from the thousands upon thousands who had stepped through, and the plaster walls were seasoned with the touch of so many who had remained there in prayer. Above the diminutive altar was the painted, iconic Syrian-Christian crucifix that people all around the world, including those in my research, hold in special reverence.

It seemed more than the evocative minimalist charm of early medieval Umbrian aesthetics that moved Helen and me, however. Wide-eyed, I turned to my companion to find her in tears. She was also shaking, then I realized the same was true of me. We stood at length in the middle of the chapel with people moving all around us until we finally eased our way through the throng to a place in the narrow wooden pews. A few of the visitors stayed in the chapel, but more surged by in a steady stream, first looking about, then heading on past the altar for a self-guided tour of the cloister where Clare and her adherents once lived. Meanwhile, my entire body shook, not a little but rather violently. I felt as though I were on fire. I placed my hands and forehead against the cool plaster wall to try to steady myself. This was rather unexpected.

We stayed there a long time, but finally got our bearings. Moving out of the chapel toward Saint Clare’s cloister, I felt some return of composure. We stepped through the nuns’ private brightly frescoed choir, where they would have performed their daily offices and received communion, and climbed narrow, turning stairs to an upper dormitory cell with low slanted ceilings and a wall of arched windows opening onto an enclosed courtyard below. There, sunny geranium-filled balconies had a settling effect on me. But Helen responded differently. One corner of the dormitory was cordoned off with silk rope. On the floor was a ceramic hand-painted plaque telling us that this was the place of Chiara’s (Clare’s) death. Helen’s breath caught. She stopped and knelt there, gazing with bowed head and parted lips.

A group of Bolivian nuns came through, led by a priest who gave them tidbits of history in Spanish. The breach of silence annoyed me, but Helen told me later how moved she was by their devotion. A few of the nuns rubbed their rosaries over the place where Chiara had died, a gesture of sanctification that I saw many times at sacred sites in Assisi. When the black-habited women had moved on, Helen stretched her torso and arms forward until her forehead touched the ground in the Islamic-style posture of half-prone prostration. I went to sit in the window arch and wondered about the severity of sensation that had overtaken me when we first entered the chapel of San Damiano. It wasn’t as if I had a devotion to Francis, or any other saint, for that matter. I knew very little about them. Below in the enclosed cloister garden, tourists milled about a stone well and flower beds. Helen remained some time in prayer.

Both of us left San Damiano feeling a little shattered. We spoke with astonishment about the strange, visceral, and unexpected response. Helen said she deeply felt the presence of Francis and Clare, but that an especially strong sensation of connectedness came over her in Clare’s cell. “It was like Chiara had her arms around me in sanctuary,” she said. “Something big happened here,” said Helen, looking out at the Umbrian plain. “And it’s still happening.”

For those who are interested in purchasing a copy of The Monk’s Cell, you can receive a 30% discount by ordering online at with promotion code AAFLYG6.

Excerpts from The Monk’s Cell Chapter 7:

The Person as Icon: American Contemplative Christian Ways of Knowing

      Continuing with the series of excerpts from The Monk’s Cell: Ritual and Knowledge in American Contemplative Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2018), the seventh chapter, Sanctuary, looks at the dynamics of unitive being, the intersubjective knowledge that rises from training in intentionality and attentiveness through formal ritual and conscious labour.  Using the example of Wisdom Schools and Gurdjieff’s Movements, the chapter also describes how certain individuals and groups develop a capacity to act as icons, that is, conduits of the divine for the greater community.

Sufi practitioners praying and turning.

Transfiguration of the Turkey Carcass:

In the West Virginia Wisdom School in November 2013, Cynthia Bourgeault had set tasks about paying attention to sensations in the body, like identifying and using only the muscles necessary for particular work. She also layered in questions about the relationship of attention and prayer. She qualified her instructions with the comment, “if it interests you,” thus emphasizing the central role of individual will and personal responsibility in undertaking the work with seriousness. Prompted by these tasks and questions, I began experimenting with ridding myself of extraneous sound and movement as a practical way to hone attention. This manifested as a simplification of movement and sound, not as dilution, but rather its opposite: a concentration of movement and sound that inspired feelings of increasing energy in my body. This conscious action resulted in sensations of a densification of energy that nevertheless felt spacious, light, and expansive. I sensed a fluidity and connectedness in my movements, which made them feel as though they extended out past the boundaries of my physical body, connecting with other entities, including other Wisdom School participants. This variety of attention had the sensation of radiating outward, while simultaneously feeling receptive of energies coming from other sources. If I consciously kept attention and presence, these sensations not only continued through any activity I was doing— washing windows, performing Movements, listening or speaking at seminars, eating meals— but also seemed to build in intensity.

By Thursday evening, when I was on clean-up duty after an excellent Thanksgiving dinner that the residential community had prepared for us, I could not only feel “energy” but could actually see colour and light shimmering around me. As I removed a serving platter from the buffet table, the turkey carcass was vivified with heightened, bouncing colour; strong tingling sensations coursed up my arms and into my chest and torso, seeming to pass back and forth between me and the remains of the bird. I also felt vibrations in my lips and forehead, down my arms to the palms of my hands, through my torso, and down my legs to the soles of my feet and past them. These sensations felt like being on fire with energy, creative potential, and alertness, and seemed to extend past turkey carcass into the space beyond, like an expansion of self into the world, a physical connectedness that was simultaneously emanating and receptive. It was as though my body had become porous to other entities and, as one person in my research had said, it almost had a quality of “sexual aliveness.”

Learning about and communicating the ephemeral, like these experiences that transfigured the turkey carcass, are a tricky undertaking for anthropologists. One way of confirming the accuracy of our hermeneutics— our interpretations of what others know and experience— is to listen to what one’s research community has to say about one’s own descriptions. I conveyed these incidents as best I could at discussion periods over a few evenings, describing the sensorial phenomena and changing quality of being through my experiments, and received confirmation that this was within the realm of what contemplatives experienced as conscious presence and unitive being. Using these observations, I answered Cynthia’s Friday morning question, “Where is the intersection of attention and prayer?” I told the group that, if keeping attention was understood as being in concentrated conscious, phenomenological relationship with the divine and all creation, then there was no difference. Cynthia said, “I was hoping someone would take up that task. That’s right. There is no difference between attention and prayer.”

After returning to New England, I met with Br. Gabriel at the Society of Saint John the Evangelist and told him about my experiments with concentrating energy in the body by being highly attentive and by eliminating extraneous movement and sound. I asked him to reflect on my experience in relation to how the monks enacted formalized ritual gestures in their liturgies. Did it make a difference how one physically executed silence, stillness, movement, and sound in the chapel? Did moving with attention make a difference to one’s awakening to the divine? Br. Gabriel pondered a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I think it does. I think attention to movement makes all the difference,” he said.

Ritual is not magic—that is, formulaic actions that elicit set effects. There are no predetermined outcomes to ritualized gesture or sound, yet attentiveness in ritualization encourages certain possibilities. Minimizing action through highly focused sound and concentrated movements is one way that can create bodily environments for the intensification of energy and attentiveness. The standardization of formalized movements of the priest during the Eucharistic prayer in the sanctuary, for example, offers the option of engaging attentively by using one’s performative knowledge and capacity for unknowing to “keep presence,” which contemplatives understand as a way to evoke intimacy with the divine, both for oneself and for the community on whose behalf one acts.

Reflections on Luminous Wisdom with Cynthia Bourgeault

By Carmie Verdone

I have been a seeker/yearner since I was a teenager looking for a spiritual path that really spoke to me. I was raised Roman Catholic and left the church when I was 17. And although I tried a few times to renew my faith and understanding of Catholicism, for most of my adult life, I have called myself a recovering Catholic. I became very involved with Buddhism for many years and found a lot of it very helpful but it was missing something important—mysticism. In the last 3 years, I came to find myself drawn slowly, steadily and surprisingly to St. Philip Anglican Church and to the Contemplative Society. I started reading a lot of Cynthia Bourgeault’s books and practicing Centering Prayer as guided by her in her book and I became determined to be a participant in her 5-day retreat, Luminous Wisdom, held at Cowichan Lake April 2-5, 2019. The Contemplative Society’s Margaret Haines’ Scholarship was a very generous assistance in making that a reality and I am so grateful to the Society for this gift.

Part of the offer of receiving a scholarship was that I would write something of my experience afterwards to go on the Society’s blog. Knowing that, I started feeling some anxiety—a very familiar behaviour pattern—even before I left home for the retreat, wondering how I’d ever be able to do the retreat justice with my writing. After our first supper together as a group at the retreat and then our first teaching from Cynthia that evening, I felt my body tension start to ease as some of Cynthia’s words landed deep inside me, like a deep gentle vibration when sounding OM or the sound of the space between the a and m in Amen, the mmm sound. The next morning, a new sacred word, the touchstone of Centering Prayer, came to me—trust. I had previously tried out a few different words and hadn’t found any of them to really resonate with me and now I had trust and trust had me. I had a felt sense that it was the sacred word I needed. Cynthia said that “centering prayer grows an inner ground of receptivity, a place to rest and assimilate”. With trust, I felt my heart turning towards the unknown, the cosmic heart. I will speak more about turning farther along.

As I was experienced in the daily routine of Buddhist retreats, I found the routine at this Wisdom retreat similar in some aspects but I was surprised that there wasn’t more silence, perhaps during lunch and supper times. We did morning sits before breakfast and afternoon sits before Cynthia’s teaching and the energy in the meditation hall was always so full and deep. I treasured those times of silent communion with all of us sitting together. We also did some chanting at each sit which always stirred my heart.

Each day there was conscious outdoor work—moving chopped wood to another location and stacking it or preparing garden beds for planting, as examples. Work was to be done with mindfulness and attention to our body felt senses, trying to be present in the moment. I was not able to participate in that because of back pain but I incorporated the practice into the daily walks that I took during that time. I noticed that as I focused my attention on the soles of my feet and the sensations there, as one foot landed and the other foot lifted to take another step, I felt a spaciousness around me and in me and then I’d let go of that sense and bring my focus back to my feet trying not to get caught up in any of it but just observe it. Cynthia spoke of the three key points of practice: Attention, Self-Observation and Non-Identification.

I found throughout the retreat days that the anxiety about writing about my experience of the retreat would pop up again and again and I sometimes was able to catch it, be aware of it without falling into the pattern of judging it and pushing it away. If I caught it when it appeared, I sometimes said, “Welcome”, to it as Cynthia suggested and sometimes said, “And this too”, as a Buddhist teacher had suggested once. By saying one or the other of these phrases, I was able to take a step away from the anxiety, look at it more objectively and see that anxiety wasn’t who I was but it was an old behaviour pattern from childhood conditioning. This step away gave me space to breathe, to hold the anxiety with compassion and then let it go, to be able to find some equanimity, at least for a while. This is the practice of self-observation. It can be done alone or while in the company of others, as in conscious conversation. Cynthia encouraged us to expand our attention while listening to someone talk, to what is around us, the noise level, other single people or groups of people.

Cynthia talked about the influence of Sufism in her teachings, about seeing with the eye of the heart, entraining the mind in the heart. She invited 2 women in our retreat group who were experienced in turning—the Sufi meditative movement of turning or whirling in one spot, turning toward the heart—to guide us through the chanting and turning practice. And it all began first by sweeping the floor clean in a conscious slow manner which was so touching to watch. It was Holy Work to me. I had the opportunity to sweep the floor the next evening before we did more turning and I felt so humble and present in the moment. I was very grateful for that experience. After the sweeping, we started chanting, La illaha ilallah, and then we slowly added turning. I thought that I wouldn’t be able to do the turning because of lingering vertigo symptoms but I was so happy to find that if I kept turning slowly, I was fine. I’ve always loved the beauty, devotion, and sacredness of the turning. Deeply moving to have my own experience of it.

There are so many more teachings and experiences during the retreat to mention but I think I’ve written enough—well, almost. I need to say that with Cynthia’s teachings about Jesus and his path of consciousness—bringing the rising tide of consciousness to the world, we are all one—cracked open my heart and filled it up. For me to hear of Jesus in that way throughout the retreat, lifted me out of my experience of teachings of sin, shame blame and guilt into the spacious, sacred practices of consciousness, Centering prayer, Lectio Divina, chanting, devotional rituals and turning, to name a few.

Oh and one more thing—the Contemplative Eucharist after our last morning sit was devoted to Mary Magdalene and I wept with the depth of spirit and love with which Cynthia acknowledged and honoured her.

Well, another one more thing—I know that a significant part of how I was able to dive deep down inside during the retreat beside Cynthia, her presence, wisdom, humility, breathtaking speaking ability and humour, was because of the devoted group of seekers/participants from experienced to inexperienced that filled the room. It became apparent to me in the first full day of the retreat that we were a cohesive group with energy waves, love waves going out to each other, co-mingling, supporting each other, loving our neighbour as ourselves.

By the way, when it was time for me to write about my experience, I had a strong bout of anxiety and judgement that stopped me in my tracks. And then I remembered to take a step back and do the practice and after 2 days of practice and letting go, I felt a possibility, an opening. Hallelujah!

Excerpts from The Monk’s Cell Chapter 6:

Prayer without Ceasing: The Ritualization of Everyday Life

Continuing with the series of excerpts from The Monk’s Cell: Ritual and Knowledge in American Contemplative Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2018), the sixth chapter, Sacristy, looks at how contemplative Christians use conscious work – the labora of Benedictine ora et labora – to cultivate contemplative attentiveness in all aspects of life.

    At the House of Prayer Wisdom School in August 2011, Brigid had learned her lessons on keeping attention particularly well. Teachers and students alike recognized her as having an unusual capacity to employ ritualized postures as a way of attuning herself to the ambiguous flow of the divine. After a long day of silent meditation, liturgies, sohbet seminars, and work periods, Brigid sat a little off to the side of the Common Room’s haphazard circle of chairs and sofas during the evening discussion period. A small woman in her forties, Brigid was soft-spoken and gave the impression of being shy. However, when she found an opening in the conversation to convey her experience of kitchen duty, she spoke so deliberately and with such focus that the whole room listened with uniform stillness. Brigid compelled the attention of others by carefully selecting each word, unafraid of lengthy pauses as she sought the right way to relay her observations. There appeared to be a concentration of meaning in each precise word, as though she were reliving the moments she had experienced earlier in the day. Her way of speaking itself seemed to be an act of attention and staying present.

  Brigid told us that she had been assigned to kitchen duty for the week’s experimental work periods. That morning Ward Bauman, the retreat house director, had asked her to chop vegetables for a dish to be served at the evening meal. Brigid described the cucumber, the wood grain of the cutting board, the weight and feel of the cleaver, the pressure of hand against knife and the positioning of fingers; she described the intensity of the cucumber’s colors meeting in concentric circles of deep green skin, near-white inner flesh, and translucent innermost seeds: how the blade bit through resisting skin, then sank through the firm but giving inner flesh, its varied densities and leniencies. “Not the green or the white,” she said pausing again and visibly shaking now, eyes bright with the immediacy of her recollection, “but in their meeting place – where they came together – was their place of surrender.”

   Brigid sat silently for a few moments but had something more to add. Because of the noisy kitchen bustle at the beginning of the work period, she had been unable to hear exactly how Ward wanted the cucumber to be sliced. Ward had passed by her side-counter station in the middle of the work period, had taken a quick look, and said, “Smaller.” But Brigid had not wanted to cut the pieces smaller. She said, “I’d cut these perfect circles and stacked them three pieces high in perfectly aligned rows at the edge of the cutting board.” Recalling a Sufi poem that praised seeds at the center, she had resisted Ward’s request to cut through the seed circle. Yet Brigid had sliced into them anyway, letting go of the desire to preserve a form that had meaning for her.

As she cut, her board had become wet with cucumber juice and the slices wouldn’t stay put. “The cucumbers were slippery and the pieces went everywhere!” she said. In the midst of ineffectually trying to corral them, she had stopped with sudden realization: “Abundance!” exclaimed Brigid, “a gravitational outpouring of abundance everywhere around us!” She then returned to her measured, concentrated way, saying, “I could see the beauty in the cucumber, but if I had kept to what I knew and what I thought I wanted, I would not have understood the abundance.”

  No one made a sound. All motion seemed to have been arrested by the intensity with which Brigid had conveyed her experiments with intentional kitchen work. The way she spoke and the intensity of her listeners’ focus together profoundly changed the atmosphere of the room. Brigid’s ritualized act of deliberate speech seemed to offer a glimpse of the divine that bound the community, even more than the details of her observations. The air itself seemed to shimmer. After a while, Cynthia said in almost a whisper, “Someone’s paying attention, wow.” Helen then glanced over to me and quietly said, “Our very own T.S. Eliot.”

The Monk’s Cell: Ritual and Knowledge in American Contemplative Christianity by Paula Pryce (Part 5 of 8)

Excerpts from The Monk’s Cell Chapter 5:

Ritual, Attention, and Refinement of the Senses

This is the fifth post from an 8-week cycle drawing excerpts from my book, The Monk’s Cell: Ritual and Knowledge in American Contemplative Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2018).  Chapters five, six, and seven work together as a kind of Triduum (the three-day rite of Easter, beginning with Maundy Thursday, following with Good Friday, and concluding with the Easter Vigil).  They together describe the relationship of formal ritual, conscious work, and knowledge (especially the phenomenon of interconnectedness that contemplatives call “unitive being”). The fifth chapter, Choir, looks particularly at the ora of Benedictine ora et labora:  how contemplative Christianity uses cycles of formal ritual – silence, stillness, movement, sound – to hone attention and contemplative senses.

Keenly aware that scripture describes the human body itself as a temple and sacred space, Christian contemplatives with whom I worked considered ritual practices and attunement exercises to be ways of establishing and sharpening their capacity to perceive divine presence through the senses. People engaged in formal ritual and the ritualization of everyday life in an effort to become more aware of an immanent divine in both their individual bodies and the collective body, that is, the practicing, observant community that the apostle Paul called ‘The Body of Christ.’ In contemplative Christianity, the idea of incarnation and the development of contemplative senses thus underlay the importance of formal practice and aesthetics at the sites of ritual action. Chapel, person, and community were symbolically and phenomenologically linked.

Under the sheltering solidity of stone arches, the choir became a vessel that stirred contemplative senses by marking the shifting tone of liturgical seasons and by giving form to the ephemeral in sound, gestures, and objects. It was the place where monks created a ground of silence into which they sowed chant and spoken word. The choir offered the pungent aroma of frankincense, rising high in paisley helixes from simple bronze dishes, or in voluptuous billows from ornate silver censers as a priest blessed the altar for the Eucharist. It was the place where one felt the shock of cold on face and hands when the Abbot made the rounds of the choir stalls at the end of Compline, showering the people with holy water, and where sharp wine helped dissolve a crumbly, sweet, oversized piece of unleavened bread. There in the choir, shifting medallions of color cast down from stained-glass windows to a checkerboard marble floor, and a monk’s warm touch combined with cool, slick oil or gritty soot as he placed the sign of the cross on people’s foreheads; candles, few or many, towered on the altar in silver, laid low on the floor in ceramic, flickered in jewel-toned glass high on granite ledges, or moved like a river of light in the hands of processing congregants. There one also felt the weighty Daily Office book, held in both hands and braced against torso, or set upon the smooth oak of a well-worn choir desk. Flowers added notes of color and scent: a handful of mauve lilacs at the statue of Mary in Ordinary Time, bowers of red peonies at the choir’s center at Pentecost, or nothing, only their absence, in the depths of Lent. Add to this aesthetic world the sometimes wrenching physical effort of waking at dawn or earlier, then sitting, standing, bowing, and kneeling with the community’s ceaseless tide of liturgy, ever moving regardless of one’s energy, lethargy, engagement, or indifference.

Reminder: For those who are interested in purchasing a copy of The Monk’s Cell, you can receivea 30% discount by ordering online at with promotion code AAFLYG6.

The Monk’s Cell: Ritual and Knowledge in American Contemplative Christianity by Paula Pryce (Part 4 of 8)

Excerpts from The Monk’s Cell Chapter 4:

Stabilities, Innovations, Diversities

– photo by Robbin Brent Whittington

Continuing with the series of excerpts from The Monk’s Cell: Ritual and Knowledge in American Contemplative Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2018), the fourth chapter, Gate, describes the charismatic appeal of teachers and diversity within the American contemplative Christianity movement. Exploring the limits of variability in this dynamic, open-minded movement, the chapter compares the distinctive ethos – penitence and eros – of monastic and Wisdom rites for Holy Week.

Apparent in their liturgy for the Wednesday of Holy Week, Wisdom Christianity’s approach to the re-enactment of the events leading to Jesus’ death and resurrection differed significantly from the Society of Saint John the Evangelist’s more standard Tenebrae service. Both described the crucifixion of Jesus as “the Passion of Christ,” but the tones of that passion – eros and despair – had quite different connotations.

These differences were clear in distinct liturgical ‘bookends’ in each group’s rites. SSJE began Holy Week with a ritual diminishment of light in Wednesday’s Tenebrae, the Service of Shadows, and concluded it with increasing light at the Easter Vigil when, in pre-dawn darkness, the monks kindled the sacramental fire from which the great Paschal candle was lit. People then spread the flame from taper to taper until the chapel became a universe of stars. By the time the priest had proclaimed ‘Christ is risen!’ some hours later, every light in the chapel had been turned on and daylight of the newly risen sun streamed through the clerestory windows. The entire three-day Triduum was thus ritually bracketed with Wednesday’s light to darkness and the Easter Vigil’s darkness to light. The light and darkness symbolized the people’s journey through Holy Week as a passage of cosmic scale, in some way well beyond the imaginings and experience of ordinary human beings, despite the centrality of its very human story of betrayal and death.

While the Wisdom community also included this ancient ‘light out of darkness’ rite with the lighting of the sacred fire and Paschal candle at the Easter Vigil, Cynthia Bourgeault, Ward Bauman, and Darlene Franz emphasized another kind of ritual bookending. The Anointing Ceremony on Wednesday in Holy Week was paired with Easter morning’s gospel story of Mary Magdalene and another woman approaching the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body. These ritual brackets are not the meaningful yet impersonal cosmic symbols of light and darkness, but the personal and intimate actions of sacramental touch at the hand of a devoted disciple, ritualized as gestures of cosmic significance. Focusing on alternative historical references (the scriptural accounts of loyal women anointing Jesus as well as anointing rites in general), the Wisdom liturgists hoped to reframe the Easter story from one of abandonment and betrayal to one of stalwart, attentive, and fearless passion. By highlighting different historical passages and using standard liturgical elements like sacred drama, anointing, and chanting in alternative ways, Cynthia Bourgeault hoped to shift ‘the emotional epicenter of Holy Week from blame and guilt to freely offered transfiguring love.’

Thus, while American contemplative Christianity had strong unifying points, the movement also had internal diversity. With their ‘orthodox’ tone, monasteries had the advantage of implicit authenticity in the weighty imagery of a substantial historical lineage, despite the reality of periodic stability, rupture, and renewal that has brought contemporary monastic communities into being. More overtly innovative, Christian Wisdom teachers like Cynthia Bourgeault worked at the grassroots level to encourage their versions of history by writing books, teaching online, and offering workshops, retreats, and Wisdom Schools all over the United States and abroad. One long-time practitioner of contemplative Christianity in my research marveled at how their determined efforts, practical skill, and ‘phenomenal knowledge’ had ‘sown seeds all over the place to get the Wisdom network to grow and flourish.’”


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Wisdom Ingathering at Stonington with Cynthia Bourgeault

Date 5 Jun 2016 - 12 Jun 2016

Location Unnamed venue

This event is now fully, but they are maintaining a waitlist. Please visit Northeast Wisdom’s event page for more information.

Northeast Wisdom invites you to participate in this special wisdom event.

The first part of the week will feature the usual blend of daily teaching (by Cynthia Bourgeault), meditation, chanting, and conscious practical work, as well as some unprogrammed time for exploring the natural paradise at Stonington, ME and reconnecting with old friends. Darlene Franz will be in attendance to lead chanting and offer harmonium teaching, and we look forward to a day and a half of guest teaching with spiritual teacher and musician Amir Vahab. On the weekend, Cynthia will lead a more formal seminar on Teilhard de Chardin’s great masterwork, The Human Phenomenon.

Cost: Program fee of $150 per person (or $200 per family unit), which includes daily lunch, for the entire week or weekend alone. A $50 nonrefundable deposit is required to hold your space upon registration. A limited number of scholarships are available – contact Wendy at christpath77@yahoo.com, or by phone at 207-348-3093 (home) or 717-926-6912 (mobile).

Accommodations: various price ranges – Stonington is a picturesque Maine fishing village with many rental and motel options, as well as NEW-managed accommodations available. See the Wisdom Ingathering page for more details.

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Wednesday, May 6, 2009

ST Develops Ultra-thin Lithium Batteries for Micropower Devices

STMicroelectronics has signed a commercial agreement with Front-Edge Technology (FET), a California-based developer of next-generation rechargeable batteries, enabling ST to bring FET's NanoEnergy ultra-thin lithium battery technology to a wide range of new markets and applications.

The new devices leverage solid-state thin-film technology to store energy for "micro-power" devices, such as high-end 'One-Time-Password' smartcards; battery-assisted RFID (Radio-Frequency ID) tags; wireless sensor networks; real-time clock (RTC) back-up batteries; and multiple medical applications, including hearing aids, automatic insulin pumps and wearable health monitoring systems.

The companies said a key advantage of the ultra-thin solid-state battery technology is its physical flexibility, enabling different sizes and shapes of "bendable" batteries, as thin as 200 microns. Additionally, the battery's solid electrolyte is Lithium Phosphorus Oxynitride (LiPON), a material originally developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratories. This enables the thin-film FET technology, in comparison with a device with equivalent energy storage capacity, to deliver in the range of 10 to 20 times more power than existing state-of-the-art coin-cell batteries.

See also


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Kid Rock Destroyed by Beyhive After Insulting Their Queen

How many times must these men be warned before they learn their lesson?
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Not long after Oasis's Noel Gallagher threw caution to the wind and insulted Beyoncé, Kid Rock has aired his true feelings on Queen Bey. As you would expect from a man who's still that into fedoras, his opinion was less than complimentary. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he said he was "flabbergasted" by her massive success and doesn't understand why so many people worship her. His full comments are below:

Beyoncé, to me, doesn't have a fucking "Purple Rain," but she's the biggest thing on Earth. How can you be that big without at least one "Sweet Home Alabama" or "Old Time Rock and Roll"? People are like, "Beyoncé's hot. Got a nice fucking ass." I'm like, "Cool, I like skinny white chicks with big tits." Doesn't really fucking do much for me.

Leaving aside the gross stuff about tits and ass, you have to wonder what world is Kid Rock living in that he thinks Beyoncé has no "Purple Rain." Has he never seen the club go up when "Single Ladies" comes on? Witnessed grown women cry when Beyoncé sings "Halo?" Or noticed that it is literally impossible to say "to the left" without launching into an impromptu rendition of "Irreplaceable?" Apparently not.

As you can imagine, the Beyhive's punishment was swift and brutal. Kid Rock's Instagram is currently full of bee emojis and Beyhive hashtags, while other users went for the jugular by calling him names like "Dirty trashy strangy haired crypt keeper looking bastard." Bullying is not OK, people! But keep going with the bee emojis, because that's funny.

A small sample of the destruction.

[via Stereogum

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Wir Sind Nicht Alle Österreicher

Throughout the global north governments are falling to technocratic coups d’etat in service of finance capital.  In the United States, there was no need for such unpleasantries as both state political parties are clients of Wall Street and their counterparties and offered up no significant resistance to popular austerity and debt hysteria to keep the banks flush and the wars going.

The Occupy movement gives the left of center a hope of breaking out of that trap, but offers up no indication that we will see near or mid term achievements.  Then again, nobody thought in 1988 that the Soviet Union and Berlin Wall would crumble within a year   Anything can happen but often doesn’t.

To hedge our bets, moderates, liberals and progressives should consider thinking outside the box and supporting Ron Paul for President.  Ron Paul would advance more of our values further than most of our self-proclaimed allies.  Paul would end the military and drug wars, end malevolent interventionism as foreign and military policy, end special treatment for Israeli crimes and reclaim control of the currency within the Congress.   These are big-ticket items that Paul and a majority of Americans support but which the elites strongly oppose and invariably veto.

Ron Paul, for his part, must realize that his electoral prospects are currently slim to none, even with any latent appeal.  While critically important planks in his platform broaden his appeal widely, other aspects of his program are very unpopular and drive folks away.  With the majority of Americans who are not libertarian capitalists of the Austrian School cool to Pauls’ laissez-faire economic sharia, Paul should consider focusing his campaign on those big issues where the American people are with him.

American domestic electoral politics has been a metronome spectacle of cartoonish caricatures, scary shibboleths trotted out by each side like clockwork, to make us fear “The Other” so that the elites can continue to rule unimpeded.  The spooks generally arise from the culture wars and from extreme misrepresentations of left and right economics.  Together they effectively scare and tribally divide Americans to our mutual detriment but to the benefit of banksters and those who benefit from the military industrial complex that drains resources from the productive economy and distributes death on an industrial scale.

The only way that Paul has a hope of replacing the American Empire with a constitutional democratic republic is for both him and folks left of center to put aside, for the time being, our hot button, wedge issues, those hobby horses that we all trot out on cue every election cycle to demonize and unify ourselves which only deflect our attention from the political heist.

If both the left and right can declare a cease-fire on contested issues, social, women’s, immigrant and gay rights, economic, entitlements and government regulation and most importantly, the environment—all held at the status quo for four years, then the basis for unity to challenge Empire can be established.

We have all been trained throughout the past 30 years to instinctively and ritualistically hate the other tribe.  MSNBC and FoxNEWS both prefer segments that are little more than Orwell’s “Two  Minutes Hate,” in the form of “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad.”

But as Americans we’ve all seen how this kind of politics only further empowers our  mutual opponents, those who are driving us all down.  And as folks to the left of center, we know that we must take responsibility for the consequences of the criminal military and economic actions of our government, prosecuted with our tax dollars that hold billions of global southerners in brutal squalor for our mere relative comfort and convenience.

We must take some risks ourselves to absolve ourselves of complicity to ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Civil rights at home are important, but the right to life for people with the temerity to be living between global northerners and cheap raw materials in the global south are frankly more important to me than being denied access to a job or a home for being a gay man in the US.

A grand populist coalition to restore the democratic republic is just what the US and by consequence of interventionist military empire, the world, needs right now.  Ron Paul is the only candidate for the presidency who is with us on these crucial issues and has successfully deployed presidential campaign level organizing skills.  That makes him a contender worth consideration.

What Paul lacks, though is enough support to put him over the top even though dismantling the US Empire in favor of a democratic republic unites left, center and much of the populist right.

What is needed to solve that is not for anyone to compromise their principles or values.  No, instead of compromise, we must all take stock of our predicament and prioritize what problems we’re going to tackle first to chart a path out.  Then we must identify the best, most practical way to accomplish this given immutable constraints.   How about left and right agree to identify where the American people are on key issues and to work their way down the list starting from those with highest levels of support that the elites oppose?

That is a worthy enough cause with enough of a chance of success that we should all consider putting aside for the time being our important yet relatively minor priorities in favor of reclaiming America from the manipulative financial, Zionist and military oligarchs who spread death and destruction in their wake, antagonize populations into resentment and thus instigate violent retaliation against American civilians, suck the US dry of all surplus and run roughshod over the environment.

Only with some semblance of popular sovereignty restored can left and right contest the hot button issues with any degree of democratic legitimacy.  Until then, we’re being played, shadow boxing against one another for the benefit of the elites who are able to ignore popular opinion when it clashes with their rent seeking.  Didn’t you ever wonder why for all the hue and cry, the parties don’t really deliver anything of substance on those eternally smoldering hot button wedge issues?  It is time to break that deceptive and manipulative cycle, and an opportunity is presenting itself.  Aren’t you tired of this sick game?

Can the left of center put aside our own immediate best interests, social and economic justice, in favor of ending the wars?  Are any of us willing to put our ill-gotten comfort and convenience on the line, to sacrifice ourselves so that innocent others in far-off resource rich-lands might not be killed in our name, with our money, ultimately for our pleasure?

Can Paul put aside his libertarian capitalist economics in favor of restoring honest and accountable constitutional government?   What do you say, Congressman?

Marc Salomon can be reached at: marcsalomon@gmail.com.

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In the fall of 2015, global spirits producer Heaven Hill was on its way to becoming a corporate villain in Louisville's poverty-stricken California community.

The family-owned company had been linked to a proposed methane plant that had west Louisville residents outraged. And though the project ultimately folded, a wedge had been driven between the distillery and its neighbors.

In the past two years, however, Heaven Hill has quietly shifted its image from enemy to hero.

West Louisville leaders now praise the company for its participation in community services and events. They say they wouldn't be able to assist as many people without Heaven Hill donations. And they wish more corporations would follow suit.

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How did this change take place?

First, Heaven Hill admitted its mistake.

The company — known for producing Evan Williams and other bourbons — has operated a distillery on Breckinridge Street in the California neighborhood since 1999.

When it first moved in, owner Max Shapira and his family members promised then Metro Councilman George Unseld that the distillery would serve as a good neighbor by getting involved with the surrounding community, said Larry Kass, director of trade relations.

But over the years, Heaven Hill failed to become a strong player in the neighborhood's revitalization efforts — something made evident to the Shapira family during the methane plant protests, Kass said.

"It is one of those things where, at the end of the day, our relationship with the community was strengthened by that experience," Kass said. "... It did force us to talk to a lot of people. Today, a lot of people that were very much opposed to that project are people that support what we're doing."

Now, Heaven Hill runs a charitable giving program that's donated thousands of dollars to nonprofits doing work in California and other west Louisville neighborhoods.

Projects funded through the program include turkey giveaways with Community Connections in Portland; cold food storage for Dare to Care Food Bank; and the restoration of vacant homes through Jesus and a Job.

The donations have enabled leaders of the assisted nonprofits to stretch their operations and better address residents' needs.

But more than the money, the leaders say they appreciate Heaven Hill's desire to spend time with nonprofits' participants.

"They show up at every event, they want to know how they can help behind the scenes," said James Linton, co-founder of Community Connections. "That's a great partnership. I was shocked how much they worked and work with us on putting these events together."

Rev. Charles Elliott, the pastor at King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church, said Heaven Hill has supported the California church's Jesus and a Job program, which puts unemployed men to work renovating vacant homes.

Last year, the distillery also provided a free ride on the Belle of Louisville for 50 families who'd experienced homicides.

"When I got acquainted with Heaven Hill, they had not been involved as much as they should have been involved, and they admitted that," Elliott said. "Some of the reason was they didn't know who to get involved with.

"I can say a lot of good things about them. But they put their money and their heart in it. That's what counts."

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Heaven Hill has facilities and offices in downtown Louisville, St. Matthews and Bardstown, Kentucky, as well. But Kass said a disproportionate amount of the company's charitable funds go toward educational, health and cultural enrichment efforts in the west end.

In fall 2017, the company completed a $25-million expansion of its California distillery. And this year, it plans to use momentum from that project to continue its work with west Louisville organizations.

"I want to stress that we are fairly quiet in what we do," Kass said. "We do it because it's the right thing to do. ... We're happy to be now looked at as really a kind of very positive force in Louisville in general and the West End."

Bailey Loosemore: 502-582-4646;; Twitter: @bloosemore. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today:

Within the past two years, the spirits production company has stepped up donations of time and money to community services in west Louisville.

Projects include:

  • Donation of $10,260 to Dare to Care Food Bank, which was used to support a mobile pantry unit and purchase six freezers to store fresh foods at partner agencies across west Louisville.
  • Donation of $30,000 to Simmons College, which was used to sponsor two scholarships and to support a West Louisville Forum.
  • Donation of $10,000 to Portland Elementary as part of an employee-driven fundraiser.
  • Support of King Solomon's Jesus and a Job program, which puts unemployed men to work renovating vacant homes.
  • Support for Community Connections, a Portland nonprofit that provides turkey and food giveaways to people in need.
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