Welcome to Conversations of the Heart

A thousand miles would you run to speak with another who you knew really felt it and yet when you got there, find yourself speechless!
And yet your only joy would be to speak of it….words fruitful, and filled with fire.

– Unknown Author, Cloud of Unknowing

The Author of the Cloud of Unknowing knew of our desire for spiritual conversation and of our joy in finding such a person with whom we can speak of the Divine Beloved dwelling in the silence in the ground of our own  heart. Conversations of the Heart has been established by Robyn Fitzgerald to provide a contemplative space to embrace and deepen into these such beautiful conversations, through spiritual direction and silent retreat. 

 

Offerings in 2024

Sublime Love

An Online Silent With Andrew Harvey and Kerrie Hide
Heart Dialogue Facilitated by Robyn Fitzgerald

Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st April, 2024, 9.00 am - 4.00 pm (Sydney AEST) Friday, 19th and Saturday 20th April, 2024, 6.00 pm - 1.00am (Chicago, CDT)

Come to mirror Love’s sublime nature

Who is so tender that at every hour

She drowns in Love what people do to her

Be it pleasure or pain, good or evil.


Hadewijch of Antwerp, Love is Everything, 

trans. Andrew Harvey

 

O you pouring God in your Gift!

O you flowing God in your Minne!

O you burning God in your Yearning!

O you melting God in union with your Beloved!

O you resting God in my Breast! 

We cannot live without You.

Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Divine,
trans. Kerrie Hide

We, Andrew Harvey and Kerrie Hide invite you into a birthing process, into the ever-deeper experience of the oneing of sublime Love.  Andrew will turn to one of the midwives of this process, Hadewijch of Antwerp and speak of her vast realization.  Kerrie will draw us into the flowing light of embodied love through the illuminations of Mechthild of Magdeburg.  Both Andrew and Kerrie will then harness the energies of Love through the writings of Teilhard de Chardin who reminds us:

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity,

we shall harness for God the energies of love,

and then, for a second time in the history of the world, 

humanity will have discovered fire.

Teilhard de Chardin, Towards the Future 

Let us as a community discover this fire together, as a communion of souls pouring out our hearts in love. We will intentionally enter into the fiery flow of amorizing love and contribute to creating more intense union and communion in the noosphere. 

Heart dialogue between Andrew and Kerrie, facilitated by Robyn Fitzgerald, will create a safe and spaciously ecstatic field that can deepen and expand into a communal heart dialogue, centered in and flowing from within Omega. In harmony, as a community of lovers, we will surrender into the evolutionary holocaust of amorizing love that is fashioning a new, profound potential for communal healing, transformation and peace. 

Please feel free to invite your friends to join us in our desire to strengthen and refresh you in your journey into love and into being a birthing field yourself, of Christ consciousness in the noosphere. 

 

Mystic Heart: Desiring Love Sensual, Spiritual and Apophatic Knowing
Formation Course taught by Dr Kerrie Hide

For I saw fully and surely that our substance is in God.

And also, I saw that in our sensuality God is

For in the same point that our souls is made sensual

in that very same point is the city of God. ..

For God dwells blissfully in the soul without end

Julian of Norwich.  

In this Mystic Heart formation offering we will explore the Christian tradition of desiderium (divine-human desire) and enter into the wisdom ways of knowing that our eternal yearning for intimacy and oneness with divine love initiates.  We will focus on the nuances of the transformation of consciousness that occur through contemplation, by exploring the intricacies of the inter-relationship between the sensual knowing of the bodily senses, the sexual energies of eros, the spiritual vivaciousness of the mystical senses, the ecstasy of mystical union and the apophatic intuition that arises from yielding into the unknown in God in the oneing of Love, in a desire without end.  

Attention will be given to how spiritual directors may facilitate, in the spiritual direction encounter, the dissolving of binary thought patterns that compartmentalize ways of knowing, awaken new sensitivities to the touchings of Spirit and expediate the one praying into an ever deepening and expanding, evolving, oneing in Love.  

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. 

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.  

The offering will be either face to face at the beautiful Santa Casa Retreat Centre, Queenscliff, Victoria, or online.  

Pearl of my Heart Praying with Gertrud of Helfta

6th – 13th September 2024 Hartzer Park, Bowral, NSW

O heart that diffuses gentleness. O heart that runs with loving kindness. O heart that overflows with charity. O heart that distills pleasantness. O heart full of compassion. Ah, make me die of love and cherishing-love for you. O dearest heart, I pray from my heart, absorb my heart totally in you. Dearest pearl of my heart, invite me to your life sustaining banquet.

Gertrude of Helfta, Spiritual Exercises, VII: 380-385

 

In this six-day silent retreat, we will awaken pearl eyes to participate in the life sustaining banquet that is the heart of Jesus. We will do this by immersing ourselves in the spirituality and teachings of Gertrud of Helfta. Through the paschal movement of her Spiritual Exercises – Rebirth, Spiritual Conversion, Dedication of the Self, Following Christ, Mystical Union, Jubilus and Life in Death – we will be drawn ever more deeply into the heart awareness that she celebrates in her beautiful prayer above.  Gertrud’s recently discovered text, The Memorial of the Abundance of the Divine Sweetness, which offers wise teachings about mystical dialogue taking place within and between our hearts  so critical to the birthing of the Christ heart in this evolutionary time, will also guide us in this movement.   For more information and register, contact Cathy at Hartzer Park Bowral

 

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