RADICAL OPTIMISM

Practical Spirituality in an Uncertain World

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Dear Wisdom students,

“When we first started the Schola Contemplationis, I didn’t know what the word schola really meant. I thought of it only as a school. We were forming a correspondence network for contemplatives - mostly laypeople, some religious; mostly Christian, but not all - who wanted to be in touch with others like themselves, to share their insights, to be reassured about their experiences, to feel the fellowship. […] But the Latin word schola comes from the Greek scholē which means “leisure.” What an interesting discovery! Before you can teach, you must learn, and in order to learn, you must stop your busyness for a while. You must give yourself leisure to learn.”

- Beatrice Bruteau

Bruteau’s words remind me of a logion from the Gospel of Thomas we wrestled with last Spring: “Yeshua says - If they ask what is the sign of the Father within you, say: It is movement and it is repose.” Before we teach, we learn. And before we learn, we rest. I hope you’ve had some leisure this summer. Welcome (almost) back.

The leading quote comes from Beatrice Bruteau’s book, Radical Optimism: Practical Spirituality in an Uncertain World, that we will be exploring as a correspondence network for contemplatives for 8 weeks this fall as we seek “to feel the fellowship” of what optimism looks like in its arduousness, rigor, and radicality. Radicality meaning the state of what is fundamentally necessary to be awake in this world. Knowing deeply that nothing good and true comes to us without constriction and payment.

“Our model for this is Jesus,” Bruteau writes. Words that could only be written from a consolidated place of being that Jesus embodied when he said in the Gospel According to John, “I and the Father are one.” This is the truth we hope to see in the heart’s eye of a contemplative school. And this is the what we hope to be in the cave of our own hearts.

Bruteau was a true polymath. Through her theological seeing, she integrated Vedanta with Catholicism, physics, mathematics, philosophy, and religion - and was a pioneer in interspiritual mysticism via the spiritual practice of her own being.

This 8-week class will meet via Zoom every Wednesday evening at 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm EST from September 13 - November 1, 2023.