CHRISTIAN FORMATION

There are various opportunities to enhance your spiritual life coming up in 2023:
 

• Fred Anderson will start his popular Bible Study of the Gospel of Mark. It will start Feb. 2nd, at 11 am and continue until finished,  with both an in-person (Parish Hall) and Zoom option. This will be a traditional Bible Study based more on discussion and group learning (with Fred's excellent scholarship leading the way!). Contact the office for the Zoom link. 
   

• The Centering Prayer group is often reading a book together after our half hour mediation at 11:00am on Tuesdays. Not all who come for Centering Prayer stay for the study, and some come just for the book study, so all are welcome. Next week we start discussing Contemplating Christ: the Gospels and the Interior Life.
  Let Fr. Curtis know if you'd like to join or need help ordering a book.
  Here is a bit about the book from the Amazon wensite:  The incarnation has made mystics of us all. What if we read the gospels as if that were true? In his book Contemplating Christ,Vincent Pizzuto offers an exploration of the interior life for modern contemplatives that is as beautiful as it is compelling. With an emphasis on the gospels and Christian mystical tradition, his book explores ancient themes in new and surprising ways. Drawing on his rich experience as an academic and Episcopal priest, Pizzuto gradually unfolds the Christian mystery of deification to which the whole of biblical revelation and the Christian contemplative life are ordered.
   

• After that, the book study following Centering Prayer will be Falling Upward,
  by Fr. Richard Rohr, for the weeks of Lent.
  From the Amazon webssite about the book: Fr. Richard Rohr seeks to help readers understand the tasks of the two halves of life and to show them that those who have fallen, failed, or "gone down" are the only ones who understand "up." Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly the opposite. What looks like falling down can largely be experienced as "falling upward." In fact, it is not a loss but somehow actually a gain, as we have all seen with elders who have come to their fullness.  Let me know if you want a copy ($20) and would like to join this study.
   

• On the Saturdays in Lent (starting February 25)  Fr. Curtis will offer a Centering Prayer time at 9:30am to be followed at 10:00am by a book club style study of How to be a Climate Optimist: Blueprints for a Better World, by Chris Turner. This is not necessarily a spiritual book, but for those of us who believe God calls us to 'Care for Creation' it has its spiritual ramifications. Let Fr. Curtis now if you want a copy ($27) and would like to join this study. This book study will be offered to other churches in town and to the wider community too--come for Centering Prayer or the book study, or both! 
  
  From the Amazon description: Chris Turner has reported from the places where the sustainable future first emerged--from green islands in Denmark and green office parks in southern India, to solar panel factories in California and idealistic intentional communities from Scotland to New Mexico. Here, he condenses the first quarter century of the global energy transition into bite-sized chunks of optimistic reflection and reportage, telling a story of a planet in peril and a global effort already beginning to save it. This is a book that moves past the despair and futile anger over ecological collapse and harnesses that passion toward the project of building a twenty-first century quality of life that surpasses the twentieth-century version in every way.