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:
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.
If you would like to receive information about upcoming silent retreats, meditations, or teachings, please subscribe to my mailing list below.
May we follow these stirrings of love together.
Upcoming Formation Courses, 2027
Transparent to Wisdom Contemplation, Divinization and the Transformation of Violence
Thursday 29th and Friday 30th July 2027
Online
Love’s intent was that now
the multi-splendoured Wisdom of God
( polypoikilos sophia tou theou)
should be made known…
Ephesians 3:10
I greatly commend this listy wise work
which in itself is the radiant wisdom of the Godhead,
graciously pouring into humanity’s soul,
knitting and oneing us to God’s self
in spiritual wisdom and prudence of spirit…
The Book of Privy Counselling
…whoever, by the exercise of wisdom,
enables God to become incarnate within him or her and,
in fulfilment of this mystery,
undergoes deification by grace,
is truly blessed,
because that deification has no end.
Maximus the Confessor, Ad Thalassium 22
Awakening the heart-awareness of our apophatic self opens us to the ground of Love at the depths of our being, where we are transparent to the many-coloured, multi-splendoured and ever-unitive presence of Wisdom. This year’s Mystic Heart will create an atmosphere, offer contemplative practices, and enable us to enter deeply into the writings of mystics who invite us become increasingly transparent to divine Wisdom.
Together, in communion, we will explore how contemplative consciousness awakens us to the participation of all being in the Trinity. Drawing on the sacred scriptures and a variety of mystics who have a rich theology of divine Wisdom divinizing human beings and creation — such as Maximus the Confessor, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, Simone Weil, Sergius Bulgakov, Thomas Merton — as well as contemporary theologies of violence, we will open a spaciousness for new theologies of unitive, participatory, divinizing love-knowing to emerge. As we enter more fully into Wisdom’s creative radiance we will explore how Wisdom transforms the movements of fear, violence, domination and exclusion, opening us into ways of being that make peace and communion possible.
Through Heart Dialogue, we will continue to awaken new sensitivities to the divine Silence that speaks the Word so that words spoken from the ground of our heart are filled with Sophianic wisdom and become icons of presence. Emphasis is on claiming the ontological space of contemplation and nurturing the oneing heart awareness that arises in stillness and silence.
In the light of contemplation, we will cultivate a confidential, trustworthy, and sacred spaciousness,
which includes deepening contemplative presence to one another and fostering communion consciousness.
While it will be helpful if participants have participated in previous Mystic Heart offerings, this offering can also be engaged with in its own right. However, it is essential that participants have a routine of contemplative prayer, are in spiritual direction, and participate in regular silent retreats.
Upcoming Silent Retreats, 2027
Loving in Abiding Silence
A Five-Day Online Directed Silent Retreat
In the Spirit of John’s Gospel
Monday 5 July - Friday 9 July 2027
or
Monday 13 September - Friday 17 September 2027
This intimate silent retreat invites us into a loving that opens into sheer silence.
Each morning, we will gather online for contemplative prayer, gently immersed in the luminous poetry of John’s Gospel. Together, we will create a communion of hearts, listening into Jesus’ desire:
“May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you.”
(John 17:21)
Grounded in this abiding oneing, we will enter the silence of the divine heart—the hidden womb of Love from whom all life is born.
You may make the retreat in your own home or withdraw to a beautiful, quiet place that nourishes your prayer. Apart from our morning gathering and individual spiritual direction, the days will be held in contemplative silence.
The retreat is for those who desire to deepen contemplative life and feel drawn to enter several days of sustained silence. Each person will be gently accompanied in listening and responding to the movement of Love within.
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Retreat Rhythm
We will gather each morning from 9.00 to 9.30 am (Sydney time) for meditation and prayer grounded in the contemplative wisdom of John’s Gospel.
Each retreatant will also be offered 45 minutes of individual spiritual direction each day at a mutually arranged time. To preserve the intimacy and contemplative depth of the retreat, each retreat will be limited to four participants.
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Retreat Details
The retreat will be offered through Zoom.
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Cost: AUD $400
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To enquire or request a place
Please contact:
Dr Kerrie Hide
kerriehide@icloud.com
Payment details will be provided once your place has been confirmed.
The Fragrance of Love’s Wisdom
Entering the Heart of Loving Contemplation
Silent Retreat
Santa Casa Retreat Centre, Queenscliff, Victoria
May 30th - June 6th, 2027.
“I pondered all these things inwardly, and contemplated in my heart…”
Wisdom 8:17
And the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother,
in whom we are all enclosed.
Julian of Norwich
In this silent retreat, we will breathe the perfume of Sophia Wisdom as we journey together into the depths of the heart. In silence, prayer, contemplation and gentle communion we will discover anew that we are enclosed in divine love and continually
being awakened from within by Wisdom herself.
Guided by the Wisdom tradition of Scripture, Julian of Norwich’s Showings, Sergii Bulgakov’s vision of Sophia, Thomas Merton’s Hagia Sophia, Teilhard de Chardin’s mystical vision of creation, and other contemplative voices, we will cultivate an atmosphere of receptive silence, opening ourselves to the divine fecundity that awakens us ever more deeply into loving presence.
As we rest together in silence, we awaken to the Wisdom already dwelling within and among us.
For inquiries and to register for this retreat please contact Sister Lizzie at Santa Casa: santacasa@ismapng.org.au
There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and joy.
It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being,
welcoming me tenderly, saluting me with indescribable humility.
This is at once my own being, my own nature,
and the Gift of my Creator’s Thought and Art within me,
speaking as Hagia Sophia, speaking as my sister, Wisdom.
I am awakened, I am born again at the voice of this my Sister,
sent to me from the depths of the divine fecundity.
Thomas Merton
Recent Teachings
Recently I was invited to speak to women seeking the renewal of women deacons in the Catholic Church. The gathering was offered on the feast of St Phoebe, so I drew on Phoebe’s wisdom, along with Hadewijch, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Julian of Norwich who continue to ground us in divine love. At the same time, they open us into a new evolutionary movement as we seek to be faithful to the spiritual depths of our tradition while nurturing those seeking to discern and follow the movement of the Spirit in their lives now in their call to the deaconate.
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…