Love is the Answer. What is the Question?: Special Edition August 2018 Selected Writings and Talks 2016 ~ 2018

An August 2018 Special Edition of Love is the Answer. What is the Question? with a revised dedication, honoring the birthday of Cynthia’s uniquely beloved partner, John Kontsas. Love is the Answer. What is the Question? is a collection of current works birthed in the immediacy of the moment. Cynthia Bourgeault engages in direct call and response with the reader, the world and these tender and tumultuous times. Setting the stage with Teilhard de Chardin's concept of love as "a geophysical force," and her riveting encounter at Tintern Abbey––where Wisdom revealed guidance and direction from which we can all take heart––Cynthia responds to the questions, needs and opportunities brought to the fore in late 2016 to 2018. In remarkably diverse and myriad approaches, from the practical, personal, and social to the infinitely sublime, she invites all of us to participate in the conversation.

Cynthia Bourgeault is an Episcopal priest, writer and world-wide retreat leader in the Christian Wisdom Tradition living in coastal Maine. She has penetrated to the heart of Christianity, with a gift for bringing the incarnational, relational essence of Wisdom to life in the moment with her signature brilliance, joy and humor. Among numerous collaborations with contemporary spiritual teachers, she currently serves as core faculty with Richard Rohr and James Finley at the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque New Mexico, teaching in the Living School. Cynthia's lineage is a dynamic relationship of Benedictine monasticism, Christian and Sufi mysticism, and the Fourth Way Work of GI Gurdjieff. The fusion of the Christian mystical tradition of theosis—divinization—and the practical training in attention and non-identification of Gurdjieff, "the original accomplishment of my spiritual teacher Br. Raphael Robin," became the basis for the Wisdom Schools Cynthia has been leading since 1999, which now operate on four continents. Held within a Teilhardian, Trinitarian, and deeply transformational vision intimately related to the heart, it is in her words, a lineage "embracing asymmetry (three-ness), evolution, and incarnation in all their material fullness and messiness ... 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." Cynthia continues to penetrate the experience and exploration of the Wisdom stream. Ever deepening and ever articulating the love, truth and beauty inherent within it––she responds to its lifeblood in the immediate––fearlessly and committedly. As a result, there is always new work on the horizon; with opportunities, alive and present, for those wanting and willing to dive in.