Potential Offerings
Joy Andrews Hayter, Ph.D. is a spiritual director whose retreat and workshop offerings include Centering Prayer and other contemplative practices including chanting, sacred movement, and other expressive arts. Overall these practices can encourage us to lean into the Love that is constantly being offered within a relational web of Sacred Unity. Joy is the author of The Cosmic Web: Hope For Our World Through Spirituality and Science, with foreword by Cynthia Bourgeault. A short excerpt from The Cosmic Web is found below these potential retreat topics.
Joy’s retreats and wisdom circles can focus, for example, on:
· The Wonders of the Comic Web, and the intimate interconnections written into the very structure of our universe, that can encourage us as human beings to come together to offer the fruits of the spirit to nurture our world.
· Stepping Out of Our Boxes – Living Into Our Beloved, Whole Nature. This can also include opening up some of Jesus’ words in Aramaic, and/or other paths to explore our deeper being.
· How the Aramaic Jesus can Inspire Our Contemplative Practice. So many of Jesus’ words affirm the wholeness of our nature and encourage us to uncover ourselves from the things that obscure it, and to come together in service of the One.
· You Are the Light of the World: Everything that we can see and touch is made of light at the core. Jesus refers to this in many contexts, and when we explore his words in Aramaic, the language he spoke, a sense of freedom and encouragement of our unfettered Being can open up.
What ideas do these inspire in you? You can contact Joy here.
Here is a passage from The Cosmic Web: (page 144 -145)
The mystical Body of Christ: Abide in my love
As the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love. —John 15:9
When I read the phrase, “As the Father has Loved me” in Aramaic, the word used for love is so completely unconditional, not dependent on anything we might do to try to earn it. The root also means to kindle (the same root is used in Luke 12:49: “I have come to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already burning/kindled”). It also means to incite to love. This invokes a very active, vibrant love: the human desire for Wholeness, for the Source, is inspired by the desire of the One for us. This Source, this Oneness has loved us, flourished us, and blown on us, like kindling a fire. Then Jesus says, “so I have loved you”: he too has blown, kindled this love in humans.
If you feel open to it, take a moment in your body, your being, to notice your breath. Imagine receiving a vast lovingkindness as you breathe in, and blowing, kindling within every cell of your body, as you breathe out. As you do this two or three times, where do you feel this kindling most in your being? Some feel it as a warmth in the chest, others have described it as a glow over their skin, or tingling within the limbs. If you don't feel anything, see if you can connect with your desire to feel it: this too is real.
Jesus then says, “Abide in my love.” That can be seen as the practice of Centering Prayer, or other contemplative practice―whether it be a form of sitting meditation, or a daily prayer practice that can be done walking about in the day or sleeping at night, we are invited to abide, or rest deeply, in Love. The word “abide” in Aramaic, qevah, can also mean to wait, hope for, or expect, and even to continue, to endure. But in typical Aramaic fashion where multiple levels of meaning can be found in one word or phrase, it also means to collect, to bind together. This collection can be done in our own being, binding together as an integrated person, to use Teilhard’s word. Alive in all three centers and willing to remain present within, bearing with whatever state we find ourselves in, with whatever is before us, fully present in an embodied way. This affects the whole, as we continue, endure, as one coherent diamond jewel in the integrated net of the cosmos, reflecting all other jewels. That is part of the practice of abiding: as this integrated being we open up, let go to the greater Whole, radiating the fruits of the spirit, as nourishing food for the cosmos. The connection begins within our integrated, collected being, and extends to coming together in a single Wholeness: still unique, yet gathered as One.
In the Aramaic Peshitta New Testament the word that is often translated as love in “Abide in my love” is one we have seen before, rachma. This is the mercy that surrounds, nurtures, encompasses. The Semitic root for this word is “womb,” like a mother loving completely and encompassingly. So, we are invited to abide, endure, collect together in that generative compassion. Abide in my love, my mercy, my encompassing compassion; love one another.
