Contemplatio
Welcome to this website. These beautiful words from Julian of Norwich that invite us to behold, say so much to me about how I hope that this website will support our contemplation. I will offer meditations, writings, schola contemplatio and opportunities to enter into the depths of mystical texts, to behold and relate them to our prayer and to our lives. Echoing Julian’s invitation to behold, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, invites to behold with “the mind of good God only,” to be touched by the stirrings of love and drawn into ever fuller oneness with God in love. His words are so full of invitation:
“And then we can do nothing more than behold God and enjoy God,
with the most wonderful desire to be all one-ed in God and enter
God’s dwelling, attend to the wooing, enjoy the loving,
and delight in God’s goodness …”
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love.
“We need no more, than the mind of good God only, with a reverent stirring of lasting love; so that means you get nothing but God. If you keep whole the stirring of love that you feel by grace in your heart, and do not scatter from your beholding, then the stirring will tell you when you should speak and when you should be still. This stirring of love will govern you discreetly in all your living, and teach you mistily.”
The Cloud of Unknowing Seer, The Discretion of Stirrings.
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May we follow these stirrings of love together.
Our Jesus
Lenten Reflection 2025
Dear Spiritual Friends in God,
The Beloved and the loved one searching for each other, longing for union, is the centripetal theme in the Song of Songs that sings the pathos of its melody through the centuries, into this Holy Week. This eternal love song calls us to enter still deeper into the sacred rhythm of the paschal mystery. The veil between time and eternity becomes intensely fine as we live each moment of the wounding of our Beloved Jesus in the passion, dying, time in the tomb and resurrection.
This year, the eternal wound of divine-human loving feels very raw and open. Our Loved One is inviting us anew, to enter into the ever-loving infusing of our oneing, in this wound. He is showing us how to enter into the depths of our shared pain, in a way that dissolves, metamorphizes and makes us intensely and densely one.
Recently, I was in the Royal Library of Belgium, spending time with the early manuscripts of mystic’s texts. These exquisite sacred pages have a presence that touches us at the depths of our being and awakens our eternal knowing of love. As we gaze and behold the sacred pages, we are drawn into the same sense and ground of loving from which the words on the page flowed. One of the texts I opened, was an early hand-written copy of some of Bonaventure’s writings that lovingly recorded the medieval prayer Membra Christi, a sevenfold litany of lament meditating on the feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and face of the wounded Jesus. Each prayer draws us to compassionately enter into the wound of Jesus, the one we love, who is wounded for love.
As I gazed and beheld, the affectionately scribed words, oozing with tenderness, touched my soul. They quivered within me and became part of me. Absorbed in love, I found myself tangibly feeling how these words on the page, were words that arise from the wounded Word. They took, and continue to take me, and all of us, into the wound they portrait. They wrap us in silence and unknowing, and leave us there weeping, until in the yielding, releasing, and loving in our oneing in tears, with all the pain of the universe, we know irrevocably, we are one in love.
This wound litany is powerfully expressed in the beautiful Membra Jesu Nostri composed by Dietrich Buxtehude (1680) where he created a cycle of seven cantatas, one for each wound. The original text of the prayer is thought to be composed by the 13th-century poet, Arnulf of Louvain (d. ca. 1250). It is interesting though, that it is in the selection of prayers for the preparation for Eucharist by Bonaventure (1221-1274), who was alive at the same time as Arnulf. I had the delight of attending a sublime performance of Membra Jesu Nostri by Pinchgut Opera in Sydney a few Easters ago. Pinchgut have generously given me permission to use their recording of Cantata IV, Ad Cor: To the Heart.
On this video, Our Jesus, which goes for about ten minutes, I offer you a version of this Latin cantata, with my English translations, which have been inspired by my prayer with the manuscripts. This is a very ancient prayer, that feels so ripe for our time. It receives us wherever we are. The prayer begins with the sacred O enfolding the pieta, radiant with total self-giving love, intoning our eternal longing and weeping, to be one with our wounded Beloved, who holds the wounds of the universe. We then enter into the dissolving flow of Membra Jesus Nostri, as we are placed on the mountain, in the footprints of the one who brings good news and announces peace. (Is 52:7; Nah 1:15). We are grounded in earth and embodied as we are drawn to the wounded feet of our crucified Beloved, moving through to the knees and hands.
Gradually, delicately, we sense a crescendo rising, as we are drawn into the side, the breast and the heart of crucified love. The heart centres us and preparers us to enter into the flowering radiance of the wounded face. Face to face unfolds into face in face, into only one face of love transforming all suffering into resurrection radiance. The pathos, the suffering, the music, the beauty, the love, lead us into the divine silence, where only love can go.
You may like to pray with this reflection during this Holy Week, if you feel moved to do so.
May entering into the wound of our Beloved Jesus this Easter in oneing love, open into a beautiful awareness of our oneness in suffering, love and joy, in a way that enables us to awaken in resurrection light.
One in our wounding, our loving and our rising, Kerrie Hide.
Link to Membra Jesu Nostri, by Pinchgut Opera, City Recital Hall, Sydney:
https://athome.pinchgutopera.com.au/membra-jesu-nostri/details/
Mystic Heart Formation Course for Spiritual Directors and Contemplatives, 2025
Pregnant with God: Apophatic Prayer
9-10th August 2025
Santa Casa Queenscliff Victoria and Online
When the soul is unified and there enters into total self-abnegation,
then she finds God as in Nothing.
It appeared to a man as in a dream – it was a waking dream –
that he became pregnant with Nothing
like a woman with child, and in that Nothing God was born…
Meister Eckhart, Mystical Sermon 19.
Overview
In this Mystic Heart formation offering, we will delve into the Christian tradition of apophatic prayer. We will continue to develop a hermeneutic of beholding for interpreting mystical texts by authors such as Denys the Areopagite, Meister Eckhart, Marguerite Porete, the Helfta Mystics, Jan van Ruusbroec, the Cloud of Unknowing author, John of the Cross and many others. Our focus will be on the language of apophatic prayer such as nothing, nada, cloud of unknowing, darkness, abyss and emptiness. Also, we will ponder the nature of the “apophatic self”, “apophatic knowing” and its meaning for an evolutionary world. Through beholding communally, we will enter into the depthless depths of apophatic metaphors, into the evolutionary flow of how the prayer of the author, the writing, the reading, and the prayer of the reader, one together, unfold and awaken ever revealing apophatic wisdom.
Attention will be given to how spiritual directors may be naturally at home with apophatic language and create an atmosphere in the spiritual direction encounter that enables apophatic knowing to arise into conscious awareness without limiting its ongoing revelatory power. We will continue to awaken new sensitivities to the endless possibilities how the Spirit opens us to unitive participatory love knowing. Emphasis is on claiming the ontological space of contemplation and nurturing the oneing heart awareness that arises in stillness and silence.
The presentations and processes will assist participants to sensitively go deeper into their own inner journey, so they can lovingly companion themselves and others into the depthless depths of divine-human intimacy encountered apophatically.
In the light of contemplation, we will cultivate a confidential, trustworthy, and sacred spaciousness, which includes enhancing contemplative presence to each other and fostering communion consciousness.
It is essential that participants have a routine of contemplative prayer, are in spiritual direction, and participate in regular retreats.
For further information, please feel free to contact Robyn Fitzgerald (robfitz65@gmail.com)
Upcoming Silent Retreats, 2025
The Song of Songs
May 28th - June 4th 2025
Santa Casa Retreat Centre, Queenscliff, Victoria
Now is the time of the nightingale
In every meadow you hear
The sound of the turtledove. Sg 2:12
Quietened by the beauty of Santa Casa, in this silent retreat we will enter into the garden of the Song of Songs, into the garden of our hearts. We will listen to the song of the Beloved inviting us to bathe in contemplation. Drawing on the Song of Songs and the reflections of mystics on the Song, we will hear in the silence the song of our soul creating a new harmony with the song of the soul of the earth.
For further information and to register, contact Sister Lizzie at Santa Casa Retreat Centre at santacasa@ismapng.org.au
Silent Loving
A Silent Directed Retreat
St. Joseph’s Kincumber
July 7-13, 2025
NI come into my garden, my Beloved my promised spouse;
I gather my myrrh and my balsam,
I eat my honey and my honeycomb,
I drink my wine and my milk.
Eat friends, and drink,
Drink deep, my dearest friends.
Song of Songs 5:1.
Inspired by the silent beauty of the gardens of St Joseph’s, Kincumber, in this silent directed retreat, we will drink deeply, enjoy, imbibe Love’s presence, and focus on the stirrings of love in our heart. Personal spiritual direction will be offered each day to support us in the art of contemplation.
For further information and to register, contact St Joseph’s Kincumber directly.
Love's Oneing: A Heart Dialogue with Andrew Harvey
What a delight it is to be in heart dialogue with the contemporary, passionate, mystic-visionary Andrew Harvey about my most recent book, Loves Oneing: A Book About Contemplation. Andrew is a trustworthy guide who is grounded in a life-time of being a lover of the divine and enunciations from the wisdom traditions of world spiritualities that sing of this love. Speaking revolutionary words of wisdom with the language of a true lover, he inspires and invites what this world desperately needs now – communion in mystical love.
This interview was part of the release of the course Sublime Love, which I recently taught with Andrew. In it, we opened our hearts into the evolving wisdom of Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hadewijch of Brabant, Teilhard de Chardin and Bede Griffiths. Yielding ever further into the divine mystery, we plunged into the ever-revelatory depthless-ness of sublime love. Andrew writes of the course:
“I have never taught more openly and richly as I did that weekend, knowing Kerrie and the people she had so humbly shepherded for many years would be profoundly receptive to what I had to offer. Kerrie felt exactly the same way and told me that her own teaching that weekend blossomed fearlessly in the atmosphere of our mutual love. Such collaborations of souls mirror the sacred marriage of the divine masculine and the divine feminine and I am so honored and thrilled that the grace of what arose within us and between us can now be available to all of you who want it.
Kerrie Hide and I chose for the title of our first retreat together Sublime Love: Becoming One with the One for three interlinked reasons. As seasoned seekers and mystic guides we both know that the unconditional, passionate and compassionate love of the Divine for humanity and its boundless possibilities can only be described as sublime. We both know too that experiencing this love directly awakens its sublime passion and compassion and hunger for justice and harmony in us.”
If you would like to purchase the course, please click on the tab Schola Contemplatio and scroll down to Sublime Love
Recent Teachings
Contemplation and Compassion: Transformative Capacities for our World
An Inter-Contemplative Dialogue
with Dr Eva Natanya
In this dialogue, two contemplatives, Dr Eva Natanya and Dr Kerrie Hide, will meet in the ground of their hearts and reflect upon the spiritual, theological, philosophical, social and ecological insights that evolve from the contemplative wisdom streams of Christianity and Buddhism. Arising from the ground of contemplation, this inter-contemplative dialogue will inspire and invite a shared awareness of how contemplation, by its very nature, arouses compassion. Eva and Kerrie will model how this inter-contemplative dialogue, that flows from the ground of being, draws listeners into this same ground, inviting oneness in compassion. The illumination of this wisdom, and the transformative capacities it nurtures, will be expounded in relation to the healing of the world.
After exploring what is meant by “contemplation”, the conversation will highlight the spiritual traditions and practices that have shaped the contemplative lives of both women. The nuances of the awakening of what Kerrie describes as “oneing heart awareness” and Eva, “the awareness of awareness”, will be delved into sensitively and deeply. How to nurture and cultivate this awareness, and the ways such language can be applied across orthodoxies and disciplines will be addressed. Eva and Kerrie will reflect together on how a life of contemplation, evokes compassion and a capacity to be with the deepest traumas of our time, in ways that bring deep and lasting healing. They will expand on how contemplation awakens a communal, evolutionary, unitive consciousness, releasing the creativity to dynamically participate in the transformation, transfiguration and transubstantiation of the world.
A profound dimension of this conversation will be the witness of both women to dialogue as contemplation. Enacting the deep meaning of dialogue, from the Greek word dialogos, logos meaning “the word”, and dia meaning “through”, participants will taste the wisdom that emerges when dialogue takes place through the Word that flows from the ground of contemplation. In this way, dialogue moves beyond comparison into communion. The dialogue begins with a guided meditation and was facilitated by Dr Robyn Fitzgerald.
A teaching on the wisdom of Beatrice Bruteau
…we (in our true self, our deepest root) are at the centre, with Absolute Being itself; we are united with the Infinite Being which tends to be, to be more, to be in every possible way. We are not merely an expressed; we are also the expressor.
Beatrice Bruteau, Radical Optimism, 131
I invite you to enjoy this recent teaching on the luminous thought of the late contemplative and philosopher Beatrice Bruteau whose wisdom on contemplation is especially poignant for this season of the Ascension. Contemplation, for Beatrice, is being so united within the energy field of intimate creative union in God, that we live the divine life. We are an expression of oneing. Beatrice affirms that whilst initially, contemplation was thought of as a movement of consciousness from the world to God, now we recognize that contemplation is a manifestation of God in the world. Contemplation is, “a movement of consciousness from God, with God, in God, as God, out into the world, a movement in which the divine consciousness and my consciousness, flowing together, stream out in love and in creative, healing, beautifying energy to create the world and make it even better.” (Bruteau, Radical Optimism, 132.) This teaching is part of a five-day silent retreat, Oneness in Luminous Presence, offered in 2021. Two meditations accompany this teaching. For a guided meditation before the meditation, click here. For a guided meditation to follow on from the teaching click here. This teaching formed part of a five-day retreat Oneness in Luminous Presence which is available for purchase by clicking here.
Retreats and Spiritual Direction
I invite you to join me in the shared ground of Love’s silence…
Writings
Composed in silence, these writings invite you to enter more deeply into the Word…..
Schola Contemplatio
These meditations seek to awaken communion consciousness in the light of contemplation…