The Virtues Reconsidered
What I learned at Wisdom School
This past week, I had the privilege of attending Holding the Planet: A Wisdom School with Cynthia Bourgeault. Bourgeault is an Episcopal priest and wisdom teacher, who offers five-day intensive wisdom schools periodically. These wisdom schools are a kind of spiritual bootcamp, combining teaching sessions, centering prayer, Gurdjieff exercises (guided meditations to train the attention), sacred movement (think of Christian tai chi), chanting, and conscious labor (physical work) all wrapped up within a very Benedictine frame of ora et labora.
There is a lot I could say about the experience, but one aspect of her teaching that particularly struck me was her discussion of the virtues.[i] The cultivation of the virtues is a foundational practice in the spiritual life. St. Paul writes about what became known as the theological virtues (faith, hope, and love)[ii] and the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.[iii]
Our tendency is to interpret these virtues as admirable qualities of a person. They are character traits. The various virtues are descriptive of a “good” person, and their cultivation is in the service of self-improvement. Note here that the focus is on the individual.
Bourgeault argues that the virtues are not so much qualities as they are energies that affect the relational field in which they operate. Virtues are actions within a dynamic process of relationships, and their effects are, on another level, subtle spiritual substances that actually provide nutrients necessary for human, planetary and even cosmic well-being. They bring coherence, order, and aliveness to the systems in which they operate: from the nervous system to the solar system. Virtues are counter-entropic forces.
This is actually how St. Paul describes the virtues: not as the property of individuals but as spiritual energies that heal, transform and enliven communities (relational fields). We collectively transmit these energies, but we are not the source of them. They come through us and between, in the dynamic of giving and receiving within a relational field. This is how Jesus understood and practiced the virtues. How often he said, “Your faith has made you well.” Here, faith is not belief but an operative force that transforms those who participate in its exchange.
Virtues are not the properties of individuals; they manifest as energetic forces in relationships. This is the meaning of the teaching that there is no salvation outside of the church, or that one must take refuge in the sangha. No gets saved or enlightened outside of a relational field.
Each virtue is a distinctive expression of energetic force that reconfigures the world that we experience. Courage, gentleness, kindness, etc. has a particular tincture that adds to the color palette of our aliveness. Faith heals, forgiveness liberates, gentleness subdues, self-control orders, etc. We know what it feels like to participate in a relational field imbued with these energies. We see the effects of their absence in our failing institutions and the violence, polarization, and disintegration of our common life.
These energies flow from the divine source, and we can choose to consciously participate in them. In fact, we are created to receive, metabolize and transmit these energies. The Eastern Church describes this as “divinization.” This is our purpose in the cosmic scheme of things. It is the small but important role played by the human being in the great chain of being.
The virtues don’t come naturally. They have to be learned; or, better, we have to learn how to receive them so that we can transmit them. Traditionally, these energies are in some sense absorbed through osmosis, by visiting sacred places where these energies are collected and radiate within a well-formed, stable atmosphere. You can tell when a place has been “well prayed in.” But this osmosis requires conscious attention and an inner stillness and emptiness ready to receive. We have to prepare the container.
Additionally, the virtues are cultivated through conscious imitation of their exemplars. We apprentice ourselves to those who radiate particular virtues within the well-formed atmosphere of the relational fields in which they operate. You can smell the virtues like a fragrance. Conscious imitation is not simply mimicking behaviors, but breathing in the fragrance so as to be transformed from the inside out. It begins with examination of conscience. What has to shift in my own atmosphere, the way in which I participate in the relational fields in which I exist, to create space for this energy to flow?
Sacred ritual, in which we consciously participate, also is a relational field in which the virtues are transmitted through gesture, movement, and sacrament. The sacred liturgy is a school for the cultivation of the virtues, an invitation to open our hearts to the divine energies running through everything. We worship not to feel good, much less appear good; not to improve ourselves, or prove ourselves to God; we worship to learn how to let the divine energies flow through us.
“I am one with the source insofar as I too act as a source by making everything which I have received flow again – just like Jesus.”[iv] The virtues, the divine energies, are freely given. They are not given because we deserve them or because we’ve earned them. They are given because they are needed. They are proactive forces and do not wait upon the right conditions or circumstances.
Our world is desperately in need of these nutrients to rebalance, heal, and cohere. We are called to act proactively – not to wait until it is safe or reasonable to do so – in freely transmitting all that we have received from the source: forgiveness, mercy, peace, joy, love. We must learn to let it flow.
[i] What follows is based largely on my notes from the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault’s lectures at Mercy Center, Burlingame, CA, May 28 and 29, 2024.
[ii] I Corinthians 13.
[iii] Galatians 5:22-23.
[iv] Raimon Panikkar, Christophany: The Fullness of Man (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1984), p. 116.
Loved your sermon on this, too! Thanks for sharing your learnings with Cynthia with us!
Amen. It's all the energy of relationship, not individual qualities. Many of us are awakening to that truth. Thank you for being part of it.