Do you know who Teresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi, and Julian of Norwich named as their “mystical mother”?

It was the same woman who was honored as the “Master (Magistra) of the Apostles” in early Christanity - but who was later maligned in the West.

Mary Magdalene is our resilient mother, an example of fierce love and radical acceptance. It was she who stayed by Jesus’ side during the most harrowing time of his life. It was she who was chosen to be the first witness of his resurrection - named in all four Canonical Gospels.

How do we stay faithful and courageous in the face of fear and suffering? How can we endure loss without losing the capacity for hope? How can we bring healing to the world? Since the beginning of Christianity, Mary Magdalene has been a role model for all of these things.

In this masterclass, you will be treated to sumptuous visual imagery with music, text and legend, from cultural historian Kayleen Asbo, Ph.D. She will trace the history of contemplative practices of the mystics to the influence of Mary Magdalene and discuss The Gospel of Mary, an early Christian text recovered during the past century, in which Mary Magdalene's wisdom teachings reveal a powerful and inspiring message deeply needed in our time.

Learn more about this intriguing woman who was so influential for the first half of Christian history– and is now making a rousing comeback.

That haunting, that restlessness led her through a wildly complex life: she was a journalist, socialist, suffragist, Greenwich village Bohemian, Red Cross Nurse, scandalous novelist, Hollywood script writer—all these things and more before she even turned thirty-five.

As a single-mother and struggling writer, she converted to Catholicism, a decision that led eventually to her founding the Catholic Worker Movement at the height of the Great Depression. Originally a newspaper exploring Catholic social teaching, Dorothy realized she could not simply speak about the implications of the Gospel. She needed to live it.

Her newspaper exploded in popularity in the midst of the Great Depression. Facing millions of New Yorkers who were homeless, hungry, and despairing, Dorothy began opening soup lines, and buying apartments for the poor.

What few people know about her is the depth of her spiritual life. Echoing some of her favorite mystics - Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, and Therese of Lisieux - Dorothy would speak of the divine as a lover. All the more poignant from her earlier life of “free love,” Dorothy fully embraced eros in both the spiritual and the sensual realm.

This masterclass will share the story of Dorothy Day’s life and work, while examining the fundamentals of her rich spirituality and the ways her religious life was completely bound up with political activism. We will delve into her writing, from her early novels to her spiritual memoirs, particularly The Long Loneliness. We will consider Dorothy as a radical and original mystic, one moored to her contemporary social currents but with wisdom to offer for all time.

On March 9th, 1941 in enemy occupied Holland, a young Dutch Jewish student began a diary that was to become one of the most remarkable documents to emerge from the Nazi Holocaust. The diary – and the letters she subsequently wrote from the transit camp of Westerbork where all the Dutch Jews were sent on their way to the death camps – tells the story of a life being transformed from insecurity and chaos to beauty and self-giving.

Yet it has taken a long time for Etty’s writings to receive the popular attention it deserves. Why?

Because Etty doesn’t fit in boxes.

Born a Jew, Etty would later become fascinated with the Christian contemplative tradition. Because she flirted with so many spiritualities, neither the Jews nor the Christians really “claimed” her.

Her life was tumultuous. Her family was the opposite of orderly (her brothers were bipolar and schizophrenic), her young adult years transient (she could never quite settle anywhere), and her love life passionate. In truth, her path to mysticism did not take any traditional religious route. She discovered that spiritual wilderness through Jungian psychology and the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke.

Through her contemplative inner life, Etty found the astonishing hope she needed to survive in a terror- ridden outer world. Further: her divine union was of such depth and power that in the transit camp she became a luminous figure, alive and hopeful and, amidst so much despair and death, able to see clearly.

Julian’s teachings begin and end in joy.

Julian of Norwich’s popularity has skyrocketed over the past century. Yet she spent most of her life literally entombed in her church-side cell. What has made her so compelling, that nearly every modern contemplative teacher speaks of her?

Julian’s teachings begin and end in joy. She knew that this was our origin, and this was our destiny. Yet she lived in the middle of incredible suffering and instability:

• The Black Plague killed 50% of Europe
• The Hundred Years War killed even more
• Heretics were regularly burned at the stake (and her cell was within smelling distance of her town’s stake!)
• The economy was in depression and there were huge labor strikes and riots

Yet unlike many who panicked in her time and either blamed the plague on their sins (and set up flagellation clubs to beat themselves for their sins) or scapegoated the Jews or "heretics," Julian stayed deeply grounded in her intimacy with God.

Rather than a fierce, judgmental God, Julian knew the Divine Mother was tender and loving. (Her theology of the motherhood of God more richly developed than any writer’s up to the late 20th century!) Her spirituality revolved around the concept of one-ing: “Prayer oneth the soul to God,” she said. Rather than needing a fix for every ill (they are too many), Julian invites us to rest in the mystery of life.

Come learn from the woman whose teachings are taking the world by storm!

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The Beguine women were rare birds.

Unlikely, mystical, and powerful before being snuffed out far too soon.

During a time when the only paths open to women were being a wife and mother or being a nun, the Beguines were this strange third thing: single.

These independent women formed a lay movement before lay movements were really a “thing.” In the Middle Ages, it was popular to believe that sanctity was for the monks, not so much for ordinary lay people.

This made the Beguines some of the “first adopters” of an alternative lifestyle, setting the trend for lay movements to follow.

What made their lifestyle so unique?

• These were unmarried lay women who lived in self-sustaining communities. They grew their own food, spun their own clothes, and created their own industries–without the help of men.
• Beguines were proto social workers, dedicating their lives to caring for the poor.
• These communities were independent of Church authorities - and therefore highly suspect. They grew in power and influence, making several men in the hierarchy nervous. (“Where did these women get the nerve?”)
• Their spirituality was marked by divine intimacy. Several of them became mystics, writing (which women daren’t do in the Middle Ages!) erotic love poetry about their relationship with God.
• Most were highly educated, reading and studying and copying books (it was considered a waste of time to educate women in those days)

What gave them such audacity?

What was so powerful about their writings that Meister Eckhart took inspiration from them to write his own monumental works?

Were they feminists before their times?

Join us as we explore these questions through the mystical writings of the more famous Beguines like Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete (who was burned as a heretic!).

Through their spousal mysticism, love of their bodies, acceptance of suffering, and fierce defense of the poor, we can learn what it looks like to be in union with the Sacred.

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St. Teresa was a woman first, a woman of passion, who not only felt strong emotion but expressed it freely in her life and writings. Teresa was earthy and in touch with her body, not only writing about spiritual matters but down-to-earth human matters: good food and books, illnesses and home remedies, fields and flowers, even comparing prayer to watering a garden.

She was close to both men and women and models strong male-female friendships. She was a remarkable leader who stands out as the only woman in the Roman Catholic Church to reform an order of men. She’s honest about her fears, her vulnerabilities and her mistakes, and offers sage advice about how to keep going when we mess up because she had a sense of humor and often laughed at herself. Her mystical life was ecstatic, but she is known as the “saint of common sense,” who teaches us about the spiritual path and then the importance of walking under the sky, the danger of overwork, the value of celebration, and God “among the pots and pans.”

If it weren’t for this Russian woman, we might not be sitting here together today.

If you are at all interested in the contemplative life or Christian meditation, Catherine is partially to thank!

Not only did she help re-introduce the contemplative life to the West (yes, this was before Thomas Keating or John Main), but she also was a fierce antiracist, back to the land advocate, and renowned national speaker.

Even the young Thomas Merton was taken by her, describing himself as “nearly knocked down the stairs” by her powerful preaching.

Who was this dynamite of a woman?

Come steep yourself in the rich spirituality of the East, where Christ is revered in the beggar and the fool, where silence (or poustinia) is the place to meet God, and where theosis (or divine union) is the goal of all religion.

Join Fr. Robert Wild, a friend of Catherine’s who lived and worked alongside her for 17 years. A long time hermit, Fr. Robert will share with us the vibrant intertwining of Eastern and Western spiritualities that Catherine bestowed upon us.

Rowan Williams describes Ruth Burrows as “one of the most challenging and deep exponents in our time of the Carmelite tradition –and indeed of the fundamental Gospel perspective.” After having his life changed by her Guidelines on Mystical Prayer 40 years ago, he pleaded with her to write another book.

Sister Wendy–the beloved BBC art nun–was a huge fan of Ruth’s as well, ranking her writings alongside the mystical greats Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, and Therese of Lisieux.

What makes this contemporary nun receive such rave reviews?

One might argue that what makes Ruth so extraordinary is how normal she is.

• She struggled with deep depression:

“It is impossible to understand my life unless it is seen all the time against the background of black depression. I was left shrieking with loneliness and pain.”

• God has always seemed absent her whole life

“My own lot seemed utterly bitter. Nothing, nothing, nothing, bleak, cheerless, lonely. And yet I found myself turning in the darkness to him.”

• When she entered the convent, she felt like a sham

“I lacked a natural religious sense and feared I was an agnostic if not an atheist at heart.“

• She was utterly aware of her failings

“I seemed to have just the same bad propensities as when I entered. I was ambitious. I wanted to be Number One always. My thoughts were often critical and unkind. Such things were incompatible with progress in the spiritual life, I thought. As far as I was aware, there was not a spark of love for God in my heart. I was weary and sick of spiritual things.”

Yet what sets Ruth apart is her refusal to evade this painful inner reality.

On the contrary: following in the tradition of Therese of Lisieux, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross, Ruth realized that her powerlessness was a gift.

That precisely there, in our weakness and our poverty, lie our greatest riches.

For it is not in our spiritual insights, our daily meditations, or even our mystical encounters that divine union is found.

It is in being like Jesus: powerless, emptied out, allowing the Father to love him in the most mysterious of ways.

Ruth writes:

“There is a ruling insight that covers and controls my life… It runs through everything I have written: God offers himself in total love to each one of us. Our part is to open our hearts to receive the gift.“

This is the heart of Christianity. That we allow ourselves to be loved.

And to do so, we have to let go of our egos, our expectations, our hopes for a “beautifully spiritual” life.

Ruth writes:

Sooner or later we must take the narrow path and leave behind all our spiritual riches. We have to go to God with empty hands. We have to let him be wholly and totally God. How hard this is. We want to feel good, want to feel we have something to offer him of our own. We want to be spiritually beautiful, to have an interesting, beautiful spiritual life. In his mercy he deprived me of all this from the beginning.

We must let go of everything so that we have space to receive God’s Self, who is always poised, mid-air, waiting for room to give.

For contrary to much spiritual writing, the mystical life is not about ascending to glorious heights, but descending into our imperfections and poverty with an audacious, empty-handed trust.

That is how we make space for divine union.

Join the world-renowned author, speaker, and retreat leader Ronald Rolheiser as he guides us through Ruth’s mysticism, and what it looks like for us to make room for the divine.

Therese is, by many accounts, the most famous saint of modern times. (Some say she is tied with Francis of Assisi.) Her autobiography became an instant bestseller - they could not print them fast enough. She was named one of the 4 women doctors of the church, as someone who best incarnates the heart of Christianity.

Yet Therese hardly left her provincial town in France, and died in an obscure convent at the age of 24. When she died, one of her sister nuns was at a loss how to write her obituary, so ordinary did her life seem.

How did she rocket to the top of the modern imagination?

With the simplicity and candor of a 5 year old, she revealed the tenderness of God.

When Maya Angelou was seven years old, she learned that words were powerful enough to take someone's life. Faced with the gravity of that truth, she remained mute for six years, deep in contemplation on the power of the human voice. The woman who emerged from that internal pilgrimage was unlike any other of the 20th century: singer, dancer, Civil Rights activist, lover, healer, and one of the most profoundly wise people of her generation. Few people in the American tradition of letters have ever understood the power of words more fully.

Join Benjamin Mertz - musician, storyteller, and Black History educator - on a journey through the life and sacred wisdom of Maya Angelou.

Evelyn Underhill was both a lover of the mystics and a very practical person. That is what has always drawn me to her. Largely self-educated, a prolific and successful writer in the early twentieth century, she lived in many ways a quite conventional life, as a London matron, attorney’s wife, gardener, hostess and cat-lover. But beneath this surface, in letters of direction and retreat work, she displayed a depth of experience with the mystery of love at the heart of our lives, and an uncannily wise ability to guide others on the path. She often insisted that the experience of the great mystics of the church - and indeed across religious traditions -- is available to everyone; it differs from our usual experience "in degree, but not in kind." That is because the love of God is available to, beckons to all, is indeed the most interesting and compelling reality running through our daily lives.

One of her earliest books is entitled Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People. Her own journey, from an eclectic seeker's spirituality before the first World War, to an increasingly public role as retreat leader, spiritual guide and public voice for the spiritual life, reflects a sense of vocation I find inspiring: where there was no role in the church of her time for a lay woman guiding both laity and clergy, she invented and inhabited new roles for herself. In so doing she has re-energized generations who have found and read her work and discovered in it the invitation to embark on a spiritual path.

For her the spiritual life is exciting, creative, and engages everything about us - body, spirit, imagination, artistry. Rooted in the Christian tradition, especially in her awareness of the ways that the journey leads through suffering to new life, her teaching resonates across spiritual traditions and offers illumination and guidance for all of us, wherever we are on the journey.

Hildegard’s life reads like a Marvel comic book. She was a special little girl: by age 3 she was already receiving divine visions. At age 7, the young Hildegard was given to the church to become an anchoress.

Anchoresses weren’t normal nuns–they were walled up in a solitary cell for their entire life, “dead to the world” so they could dedicate their lives to God.

As such, their entrance ceremony included their funeral rites. Imagine how confusing this must have been for a seven year old. Thrown in the dirt while your family sang death dirges over you. Many of her family members she would never see again.

For 30 years she lived under the tutelage of the older anchoress, Jutta von Sponheim, seeing only the walls of her quarters and through the window into the church.Then, when she was 40, something changed.Hildegard underwent a kind of awakening. Her visions returned. In them, God commanded her to write down what she saw. However, fearing the reactions of her male contemporaries, Hildegard resisted. She immediately fell ill. Paralyzed, death-like. The sisters could not move her.

Hildegard took this as her sign. She must share what she had been shown. As she wrote and studied she blossomed. In the years ahead, Hildegard would become nothing short of a marvel. She founded religious communities. Became an expert in medicine. Anatomy. Plants and herbs. Music, poetry, art. She wrote the first morality play. She boldly called out clergy for their corruption. She traveled Europe, preached, and was consulted by popes and kings. She broke the medieval female mold like few others have done. But perhaps what is most striking is Hildegard's depth of insight. She uniquely saw the union of all things. She knew every creature to be an expression of the cosmic Christ, “emerging from God like the rays of the sun." For Hildegard, wholeness is found through viriditas, the greening power of God. This viriditas is growth; it is creativity; it is the fecundity of the divine feminine.

Thus, when we explore our own creativity - powers of creation and fecundity - we bring to life the divine feminine within each of us.

In the Hildegard masterclass, you’ll meet this marvel of a woman through image, song, and spiritual practice. You’ll learn not only of her magnificent visions, but her audacity, her depth of wisdom–and how we can allow the flow of viriditas in our own lives.