Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe

Book Discussion

Book Discussion: August 13, 2023 -The expanding universe from the big bang to the development of our consciousness has been the human creation story for millennia. Humans are not only physical beings, but cosmological beings. In Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe, Brian Swimme describes how his research led him to disassemble and then reassemble his understanding of this story. Join us for a lively discussion with the Guild’s Evolutionary Cosmology Cultivator, Bernice Marie-Daly, Ph.D. We will be opening much of the evening to your questions regarding this fascinating topic and book, Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe, written by Brian Swimme, Ph.D.

Presenter: Bernice Marie-Daly, Ph.D.


Bernice Marie-Daly, Ph.D., is an educator, author, retreat facilitator, and spiritual guide across wisdom traditions, focusing on the Universe Story and Sacred Activism. She has facilitated in-depth programming in women’s spirituality, justice-making, and the arts and is the Evolutionary Cosmology Cultivator with the Guild for Spiritual Guidance. Bernice holds degrees in Spirituality and Psychology, Counseling, and Philosophy and is a certified Core Energetics Instructor and Practitioner. Author of “Ecofeminism: Sacred Matter/Sacred Mother” (The American Teilhard Association) and co-author of Created in Her Image: Models of the Feminine Divine, Bernice taught interdisciplinary courses in Environmental Studies, Women’s Studies, and World Religions and is co-creator of Cosmic Entanglement Podcast.


Teilhard Revisited

photo of Teilhard de Chardin

Join us as we explore Teilhard’s vision of the evolution of consciousness through the lens of our everyday lives.  How do we ‘connect the dots’ between Teilhard’s vision and what we are experiencing in the wider culture?   How do you find hope for a future that instills meaning and purpose?  How do you deal with the myriad feelings this upheaval provokes?  What can we offer our children and grandchildren as they encounter the realities of climate change? 

June 27, July 4, July 11, July 18
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm EST
via Zoom

Presenter: Dr. Bernice Marie-Daly • Evolutionary Cosmology Cultivator

Bernice Marie-Daly, Ph.D., is an educator, author, retreat facilitator and spiritual guide across wisdom traditions, focusing on the Universe Story and Sacred Activism. She has facilitated in-depth programming in women’s spirituality, justice-making, and the arts and is the Evolutionary Cosmology Cultivator with the Guild for Spiritual Guidance. Bernice holds degrees in Spirituality and Psychology, Counseling, and Philosophy and is a certified Core Energetics Instructor and Practitioner. Author of “Ecofeminism: Sacred Matter/Sacred Mother” (The American Teilhard Association) and co-author of Created in Her Image: Models of the Feminine Divine, Bernice taught interdisciplinary courses in Environmental Studies, Women’s Studies, and World Religions and is co-creator of
Cosmic Entanglement Podcast.


Pilgrimage to Assisi:
In the Footsteps of Francis & Clare

May 2023

photo of Assisi Italy, clouds and mountains

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF FRANCIS & CLARE is an immersion experience in Assisi, Italy — a unique opportunity to contemplate your own spiritual path in companionship with beloved Saints Francis and Clare.

The retreat highlights their life events, spirituality, and writings, explored through talks, meditations, and practices, including questions for contemplation. These help encourage the kind of listening that prompts deeper understanding of your personal story and the ways in which it is woven into the universal story; the ways in which your being touches and impacts all other being and matter; and the ways in which all things are in relationship with each other.

On this pilgrimage, you are invited to nurture body, mind, and spirit by living into the wise ways of Francis and Clare. In doing so, you can call forth what is deepest within you and begin to express that outwardly, within and around the medieval city of Assisi.

This event is closed.


Book Discussion on Race and the Cosmos, January 22, 2023 at 6 pm EST. 

All Guild graduates are invited to discuss theologian Barbara A. Holmes’ book, Race and the Cosmos: An Invitation to View the World Differently, on Sunday January 22, 2023 at 6 pm EST. This fascinating book explores the question of what it means to be human through the intersecting lenses of the cosmos, indigenous wisdom, unfolding scientific learning, and divine love. It offers ideas that help dismantle old racial constructs and give hope for new ways of embracing anti-racism in our cultural context.  

This event is closed.


Carol Kilby, author of Evolutionary Dancer: Out, In, and on the Fringe of the Church, will present this first Engaged Wisdom course of the new year. 

Carol notes that this evolutionary moment calls for the rewilding of our story! The stories of nationhood, religion, and culture have separated us from our larger selves and our relationship to the universe and the earth.

In this time of planetary crisis, it is time for an exodus, time for a new story. Inspired by Sadie Allen Moon’s observation that Jung saw the source of every society’s renewal in individuals whenever they navigate beyond the walls of their culture and bring back to it some novel insight for the collective’s development, the course will investigate how evolutionary rituals, personal practices, and rites of passages can ground our story in the ways of cosmos and nature empowering us to consciously and positively step into the earth’s dance of transformation. 

In addition, participants will discover evolutionary rituals that draw on climate science, new cosmology, ecology, and an evolutionary spirituality that re-member our wild and wonder-full selves. Through rewilding our stories, rituals, and selves in the dance of becoming, individuals who contribute to the evolution of the collective.

The course is open to all, both Guild members and non-members. The fee is $30.

This course is now closed.

PRACTICING THE PAUSE — HOLY CURIOSITY

Pilgrimage to Iona. August 12-21, 2022
This Pilgrimage to Iona

       This Pandemic year challenged all of us to change our routines and expectations.  For some, that meant isolation and more time for reading, movies, house organizing, hobbies, walking.  For some that meant, days of being ill and/or dealing with the fear and anxiety of becoming ill, or caring for a loved one who was ill or newly isolated in an elder care facility.  For some that meant learning to work alone from home or navigating an on-site job with new rules, regulations and protective gear.  For some it meant learning a lot of new technology in order to stay connected to worshipping communities, book groups, family and friends.   For all us, some change in what was once considered the routine day-to-day activity of life, needed to be re-negotiated and re-navigated.  For many of us there was little time to ponder the changes that were swirling around us as individuals, a nation, and a global community.  

     Pondering the changes, losses and revelations of this past year will be essential to our growth and well-being.  Paying attention to all that emerged in these months will help to guide us into new ways of being in community together.  This is not a time to long for a “return to normal” but a challenging opportunity to imagine moving into “a new normal.”    This call to new imagining, is a process that will take more than the next few months.  Just as it will take scientists years to gather the data that will lead to greater understanding of how viruses function, it will take the human psyche time as well, to process the changes being called forth.  

       You are invited to a time of pilgrimage; to a time of processing, holding and listening to all that bubbled up during this pandemic year and to what is yet to emerge.  You are invited to a place of pilgrimage; to a place that has been receptive to the human spiritual, meaning making quest for centuries; a place that invites the intention and attention needed to reveal where we are being called to extend ourselves and our thinking out into the world.   You are invited to an act of pilgrimage; to lay aside a need for answers, and allow curiosity, yes, even holy curiosity, to nurture and nourish your spirit.  Please plan to set aside time to join us on a Pilgrimage to Iona in the summer of 2022.  The hospitality of this wee island community will care for your physical needs, and the gifts of sea, sky, stone, and sun will nurture your spirit.  

This program is now closed.

Join Guild members and others at the Mountain Retreat Center in Highlands, North Carolina, for a three-day, in-person workshop this June on Aging as a Spiritual Practice. Guild member Paulette Robinson will lead the workshop, which is co-sponsored by Wholeness of the Heart, Sage-ing International, and the Guild for Spiritual Guidance.

Aging is a time of harvesting and bringing the sacred into life. It is a time when the external forces of life make way for an internal focus on life’s purpose and mining life experiences for meaning. Life itself becomes a reflective space. When lived purposefully, aging becomes a spiritual practice. In this course, participants will explore tools for internal and external spiritual practice that can serve this internal movement. They will create meaning-making rituals, deepen meditative states, make intentional sacred spaces, and more.

About the presenter:

Paulette Robinson is a certified Sage-ing Leader, graduate of the Guild for Spiritual Guidance, and experienced retreat and workshop facilitator. For the past 20 years, Paulette has facilitated healing as a shamanic practitioner using multiple energy modalities and practices.  She has certifications in spiritual and elder coaching, family constellations and ancestral trauma,  alchemical alignment (somatic trauma release), past-life regressions, and mediumship.

Four days: June 23, 2022, 1:00 p.m. to June 26, 2022 (1PM)