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.
Silent Retreats in 2027
“I Thirst” Praying the Spiritual Exercises of Gertrude of Helfta
Seven Day Silent Retreat Online
19th – 25th March 2027
Lo! My heart already burns for the kiss of your love.
Open for me the private bed chamber of your beautiful cherishing love
Lo! My soul thirsts for the embrace of intimate union with you.
Gertrude of Helfta, Spiritual Exercises, V. 100 – 104.
In this seven-day silent retreat we will pray the Spiritual Exercises of Gertrude of Helfta as she shows us how our insatiable desire – desiderium – for union with God is God’s desiring for us to be endlessly drawn into the kiss and embrace of beautiful cherishing love. Each Exercise illuminates the fruition of desire in contemplation from a different perspective: rebirth of the soul in the ground of the heart, becoming a monastery (minneclositer) of love, awakening of desire, fruition, living in joy, transfiguration and mystical dying.
Gertrude’s Spiritual Exercises teach us to remaining in desire as they draw us into the endless depths of our being in God. Gertrude offers us profound mystical wisdom for our time. For by its very nature, desire for union with God unifies and heals our fragmented self, our relationships with each other and with our earth. Here, all the division and separation that gives rise to so much suffering and violence in our lives dissolve in the intimacy of the kiss of divine Love.
Over the seven days, we will create a communion of loving silence and contemplation. We will begin each day with morning meditation, a brief reading and reflection from Gertrude’s text as we taste and enjoy God in contemplation. Spiritual direction will be offered every day. Cost for the retreat is $460.00.
To resister your interest please contact Robyn at robyn@conversationsoftheheart.com.au
To Behold is to Give Life
Five Day Silent Retreat Online
17-21 May, 2027
With thee, to behold is to give life; ‘tis unceasingly to impart sweetest love of Thee;
’tis to inflame me to love of Thee by love’s imparting,
and to feed me by inflaming,
and by feeding to kindle my yearnings,
and by kindling to make me drink of the dew of gladness,
and by drinking to infuse me in a fountain of life,
and by infusing to make it increase and endure.
Nicolas of Cusa (De Visione Dei, ch. IV)
With these beautiful words, Nicholas of Cusa invites us into the beholding that gives birth to all life, and which itself imparts the sweetest Love. Drawing on the mystical wisdom of John Scotus Eriugena, Nicholas of Cusa and Beatrice Bruteau, we will enjoy being drawn into the loving beholding of God through which all creation is continually brought to life including, most intimately, in ourselves. In the theophany of creation, we will open our hearts to the divine invitation to live fully in our world, here and now, amidst the suffering, agony and joy. And we will hear and enjoy our communal “yes” to Beatrice’s incarnational mysticism reverberating through creation as we “see the God we love present in, even as the world, and we feel the union and rejoice in that” (God’s Ecstasy, 179).
Each day will begin with morning meditation and reflection on the mystics above and conclude with afternoon meditation. Spiritual direction will be offered every day. The cost of the retreat will be $400.00
Beloved Art Thou Cherishing Mary, Mother of God and Living Icon for our Time
Six Day Silent Retreat
Santa Casa Retreat Centre, Queenscliff, Victoria
1-8 December 2027
And the angel, having come in, said unto her:
Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee:
Beloved are thou amongst women
— Gospel of Luke 1:28
O Love, O Love,
In your beautiful cherishing love
Prepare my way to you…
— Gertrude of Helfta, Spiritual Exercises, III, 379
Something extraordinary is going on in our time: we are living a metamorphosis, giving birth to a new field of consciousness that is radically original, beautiful and new. At the heart of this metamorphosis is the living presence of Mary. Her way of receiving God within herself, within her own womb, becoming Theotokosis – God bearer – allures.
Guided by Scripture and by mystics across the centuries whose lives and writings have been illumined by Mary, we will enjoy the gift of undisturbed Mary silence and spaciousness in communal contemplation. From the poetic and cosmic vision of the early Church, through the intimate feminine mysticism of the medieval women, to contemporary contemplative and evolutionary voices, we will behold Mary as the eternal living icon of Mother of God in beautiful cherishing Love, as she prepares our hearts anew.
Formation Offerings in 2027
Transparent to Wisdom Contemplation, Divinization and the Transformation of Violence
Presented by Dr Kerrie Hide
29th and 30th July, 2027
Online
This offering is part of Mystic Heart: A spiritual direction formation program for spiritual directors and people interested in contemplation
Love’s intent was that now
the multi-splendoured Wisdom of God
ἡ πολυποίκιλος σοφία τοῦ θεοῦ — hē polypoikilos sophia tou theou
should be made known
Ephesians 3:10
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.
For more information and to register, please click on the link here