Adult Education

Every life includes crucial twists and turns, those moments on which deepest values and meanings hinge. This workshop will work to help writers recognize those moments in writing. Thus, by “spiritual” we mean shifts and turns that define the writer in surprising ways, adding new dimension to his or her life. (These may be overtly “religious” or unconventional.)

Elizabeth Robinson will bring readings from various writers as examples and we will do in-workshop writing to help get your writing going. Assuming that the most important experiences are difficult to tame in language, we’ll use every resource we can conjure, doing writing from multiple genres: conventional prose, poetry, parable, even playwriting! Writers at all levels of experience are welcome; we will generate new writing, but will also gladly consider works-in-progress that class members bring to the table. Mondays, Dec. 12th & 19th and Jan. 9th & 16th, 7pm at Church.

Contact Elizabeth with questions at elzarob@comcast.net or(303) 444-1118.

The Adult Education class this fall will be led by Peter Kleinman starting October 3rd at 7PM at CUCC and meeting 6 weeks until Thanksgiving.  This fall’s studies will be a tour-de-force of Old Testament stories as taught by Vanderbilt University professor Amy-Jill Levine from “The Great Courses” lecture series DVD’s.

These lectures span all the great OT stories as understood by our contemporary Biblical scholars: “The Old Testament prophets’ poetic calls for personal and social justice continue to urge people and nations to reform their lives, even as biblical wisdom literature challenges our views of God, and the Psalms enrich the prayer lives of millions.  Studded with genres ranging from myth and saga to law and proverb, from military history to love poetry, informed by world-views radically different from yet still fundamental to our own, the Old Testament tells a people’s sacred story. It is a narrative of divine action in history that is holy writ to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike.

See the Great Courses website for more details http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=653

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On Monday evenings, the Adult Ed Committee is planning to present “From Jesus to Christ”, a series of videos for discussion that will take us through the formative period of the Early Church. Scholars such as Amy Levine, Marcus Borg and John Crossan will lead us from the Jesus movement to how the early church interpreted those events and formed a Christian Church around Christ. We will be meeting at Peter and Judi Kleinman’s home in the Meadows neighborhood (off Baseline Rd west of the Foothills Parkway): at 310 Hopi Dr, on Mondays from 7-9 pm. Pete Terpenning and other members of Adult Ed. will help in leading the discussions following the video presentations. We are planning a six week course.
 
For more information on this video series, please visit: 
 
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/

 If you enjoyed the Pluralism series, this movie is especially for you!

Join Paul Griego and others for a movie night (with popcorn!) on Saturday, April 9. The movie will start at 7:00 pm in the sanctuary, with time for discussion afterward. 

 

Promises: (2001) Documentary Time: 1 hr 46 min
See: http://www.promisesproject.org/

Several Jewish and Palestinian children are followed for three years and put in touch with each other, in this alternative look at the Jewish-Palestinian conflict. The three filmmakers followed a group of seven local children between 1995 and 1998. They all have a totally different background. These seven children tell their own story about growing up in Jerusalem. Through this portrait of their generation, we see how deep rooted and almost insoluble the problems of the Middle East have become. When the protagonists speak out in an epilogue a couple of years later, it becomes apparent that all have lost their childlike innocence.

No Pluralism class on March 7.

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Here are some of the resources I drew from in the Pluralism Series class last week:

Origins and Nature of the Sufis http://www.sufiway.org/history/texts/origins_and_nature.php

Unity and Uniformity (one of the readings from last week) is online: http://www.hazrat-inayat-khan.org/php/views.php?h1=31&h2=1

Hazrat Inayat Khan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s76lsNntsIE

Interview with Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auPrLx3gCRI

Sufi Stories, collections from Idries Shah are available on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Idries-Shah/e/B000APG9O6/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

Books by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan and Hazrat Inayat Khan are available at Omega Publishing http://store.omegapub.com or on Amazon

Additional books, including poetry by Rumi, are available through Shambala http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/results.cfm?keyword=sufi&x=0&y=0

Contemporary issues, NY Time editorial: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/opinion/17dalrymple.html

In yesterday’s paper: “Conductor Makes Philharmonic Debut With Sufi Poetry and Celestial Yearnings”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/arts/music/05harding.html

Resources about Sufis

Pete Terpenning is leading a weekly Centering Prayer/Meditation time on Friday mornings at 9:30 am at the church.

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We will meet on Monday evenings at the home of John and Vicky Graham. For more information, please call the church office at 303-499-9119.

1/17 – Pete Terpenning will lead a discussion of Primal Religions: Aboriginal, Animism, and Celtic traditions
 
1/24 – Erika Webb will lead a discussion on Hinduism
 
1/31 – TBA - Judaism
 
2/7 – Tom Silva will lead a discussion on Buddhism
 
2/14 – Peter Kleinman will lead a discussion on American Transcendentalism/ Unitarian- Universalism
 
2/21 – Lu Walters will lead a discussion on Islam
 
2/28 – Janet Salmons will lead a discussion on traditional and contemporary Sufism
 
3/7 -  Pete Terpenning will lead a discussion on Christian Pluralism

The Pluralism Series

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World Inter-faith Harmony Week: First Week of February
 
In 2010, the idea for a World Interfaith Harmony Week was adopted unanimously as a UN Observance Event, an event to include people of all beliefs. The UN General Assembly unanimously passed the resolution to recognize the World Interfaith Harmony Week annually during the first week of February.

This week is a call for all religions to unite around the basic principles that people of all beliefs agree upon, and to understand that harmony can only come if we build upon a solid foundation of dialogue that has “love of God and love of the neighbor” at its core principle for engagement. Events will take place across the globe. More Information: World Inter-faith Harmony Week http://worldinterfaithharmonyweek.com/

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Doug Burger will be making two presentations about fantasy literature and Christianity. He is an expert on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and other writers. He will be talking about spiritual themes in literature and leading a discussion on Feb. 6th and 13th after church in the Sanctuary.

Professor Douglas Burger from the University of Colorado English Department, will be making a presentation about spirituality and ethical themes in fantasy literature; particularly C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He will be leading a discussion on Feb. 6th and 13th in the Sanctuary after church and coffee hour – around noon.  Doug suggests that fantasy and science fiction literature uniquely allow the exploration of spiritual and ethical themes in an almost pure form.  In some other worldly environment the reader is separated from all the emotional baggage and preconceived bias that comes with other forms of fiction based on our “real” day to day experience, such as racism or religious stereotypes.  The approach that two contemporary giants of fantasy, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, took in their writing provides a unique contrast of modern Christian spiritual and ethical philosophies, which Doug will explore with us.  Please see Jim Gilbert with questions.

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