Marcella Kraybill-Greggo

Marcella Kraybill-Greggo is a teacher, Spiritual Director, a Wisdom student of Cynthia Bourgeault and is and dynamic participant in the Wisdom School community. She lives in PA with her husband and  daughter, and spent her early years in Tanzania, East Africa as a child of a Hospital Administrator. Marcella is Director of the Spiritual Direction Graduate Certificate Program and the Spirituality Programs at Moravian Theological Seminary. Marcella holds a Masters in Social Work, a Certificate in Spiritual Direction, is trained as an Ignatian Director, and an InterPlay Body Wisdom group facilitator.

Marcella’s first encounter with the Wisdom Way of Knowing came in the summer of 2013, when she read the first of Cynthia’s books and felt a ‘sensation of uprightness (turn and stand)’ which was immediate, visceral, and ongoing. In November of that year, when hearing Cynthia in person for the first time at Moravian Theological Seminary, she says “the bottom dropped out inside of me. It was as if the Grand Canyon opened up inside of me and everything changed. I had no idea what was happening but I knew that something had just changed my world…that there is more, more to God, more to know, more to be opened up to, more to engage with and bring to the world.” Already steeped in 15+ years of contemplative work as a spiritual director, this continuing Wisdom experience clarified Marcella’s sense of place in the world.

In January 2016, after being a Wisdom intern at the Kanuga Mega Wisdom school, Marcella offered her first seminary course, Spiritual Classics for the Contemplative in Action, in a Wisdom School format. This course involved working with the sayings of the early Desert Fathers and Mothers. The response of the 23 people who participated in this course was ‘electrifying’; students ‘were hooked’, sensing the aliveness in this teaching. Within the next month, Marcella started a once-a-month seminary drop-in gathering which included chanting, centering prayer, sacred gesture, wisdom teaching, and lectio on the Gospel of Thomas. Around this same time, a local spiritual director/retired pastor, who had participated in the January wisdom school class, invited Marcella to prayerfully consider bringing an Urban Wisdom School to his city parish in downtown Allentown, PA. Her Spirituality within Diversity summer course was reconfigured to be an urban wisdom school formatted class, where conscious work occurred while sharing a community meal with homeless individuals, movement with urban youth in an afterschool program, and mindfully walking around the city. Conscious work took on new meaning as participants ‘noticed like and dislike’ in context and were invited to ‘let it go’. Marcella notes, “our days were anchored in chanting, centering prayer, wisdom teachings on ‘three-brained knowing’ and sacred movement.” Marcella’s husband, a Professor of Social Work, also led portions of the wisdom school course ‘inviting participants to actively grapple with issues of social justice and consciousness.’ Both Marcella and her husband recognized that their true teachers were the homeless individuals, the urban youth, and the city, and that they were merely ‘cultivators of their students’ readiness’ (a concept Cynthia named at the Gurdjieff wisdom school, where ‘the movements were our teacher’).

Marcella regularly offers an three - eight month Embodied Training in the Practices of Wisdom. The training focus includes “what it means to be a ‘post holder’ for Wisdom.” The focus of this Training is deepening work with embodied Wisdom Practices, the Gospel of Thomas, the Law of Three, Sacred Gesture, chanting, and centering prayer. Training participants engage a monthly Law of Three Midwife group. 

Marcella additionally offers a one Friday a month community Wisdom Way of Knowing Practice Circle.  This monthly Wisdom offering was something that Marcella’s Wisdom students ‘called out’ of her, when they asked ‘what’s next for us in Wisdom?’ Marcella has also invited other Wisdom colleagues to consider offering a similar Wisdom Practice Circle on the same day in their own area.

Based on Cynthia’s teaching that ‘Third Force is more midwifed than taught,’ in 2015 Marcella started two Law of Three Midwife Groups. Each group consisted of three people. “In working with the Law of Three it somehow felt congruent to work within the dynamism of three people in each group,” Marcella commented. Each group agreed to ‘meet’ for 6 months, and then assess whether to continue. “As the groups met for 2 hours once a month, one group reviewed their entire lives through the lens of the law of three, noting how one triad in their history had birthed the next triad”. The other group, held electronically, discovered that as they shared their lives, and invited wisdom colleagues to ‘hear their sharing through the lens of the Law of Three’, new ideas and new perspectives were offered, evoking a ‘seeing of potential 3rd force/reconciling roles that had not been seen individually’ (again, Cynthia’s teaching that we are 3rd force blind…that 3rd force needs to be midwifed). (If interested in learning more about Law of Three midwife groups, Marcella would be happy to share more).

Spiritual Direction has been a key component of Marcella’s Wisdom unfolding, serving as a critical vehicle for integrating the impact of Wisdom teachings. Having entered spiritual direction at age 22, and now a practitioner for 17 years and a teacher for the past 20 years, Marcella has found that a key cultivator in the development as a Wisdom post holder can be having a ‘Wisdom-infused’ spiritual director. Marcella is actively cultivating in her spiritual direction graduates understandings of Wisdom teachings. Marcella now offers a one year Wisdom infused Spiritual Direction Training program, with weekly zoom classes, and 2 Wisdom School retreats a year.

Gurdjieff’s teaching that ‘Nothing Happens apart from a Group’ is a pivotal principle in Marcella’s experience. She has taught both group dynamics and Group Spiritual Direction. “I find you need a group for yourself, even as you are leading groups for others,” Marcella commented. Three-brained awareness and the movements are other Gurdjieff components to which she’s particularly drawn. “I find I can’t teach a class anymore without incorporating some movement. The teaching, no matter what it is, goes deeper when I involve the movement center,” says Marcella. Centering prayer as a meditation practice is her anchor, with chanting being a key and powerful portal. Surrender is her watchword.

Marcella is an awesome example of both teaching and modeling the Wisdom practices and path, and the generative and overflowing energies and effects of her life and ministry are very evident. A post-holder par excellence!