Peace Adult Education for Spring 2012

Friends at Peace, The Adult Ed Team has a dazzling variety of high quality offerings for spring, 2012. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell strangers, and post notices around the town! 1) Starting January 8th, Sunday mornings, at the Adult Ed hour, 11:30-12:30 there will be a Study (8 January - 1 April) led by the Rev. Dr. Richard I. Deibert, MD, MDiv, PhD in New Testament Studies, University of Cambridge titled Approaching The Revelation of Saint John: The End of the Bible, the End of Time, and the Confident Hope of the Church for a New Creation. This study aims to clear a way through the confusion surrounding this mysterious book that completes Holy Scripture. Join us, and invite others, for this journey through John's Apocalypse. Together we'll explore the depth and breadth of this paean of praise to the ultimate power of God. 2) In January, we will introduce a Thursday evening (1/12, 1/19, and 1/26, 7:30-9:00 PM) study led by Bob Cutler, in which he will present on and lead a discussion of Deepak Chopra’s book How to Know God. Dr Chopra combines his medical and psychological practice experience to present a case that the human nervous system has seven biological responses that correspond to seven levels of divine experience relating to knowing God. He believes that “it is not only possible to know this source of existence on an abstract level but to become intimate and at one with it” and he will attempt to describe how that can be achieved. 3) After the Revelation study the morning Lively Learning studies will include a series on “Being at Peace with…” some topics that will be included will be Being at Peace with your family, our polarized culture, and our mortality. 4) The Worship and Sermon reflections will continue, led by our able team of Bill Clough, Grant Lowe, and David Thomas and we could sure use others willing to facilitate reflections on the worship service that morning, resources are provided. Your spiritual education shouldn't stop, come learn and grow with us. Wishing you a blest Christmas season and new year, Bill

Peace Movie Night Friday 7pm - Babette's Feast

Dear Friends,

Friday night Oct. 14 we will have our October Movie Night. Our movie is Babette's Feast. We assemble at church at 7:00 p.m. to socialize. The movie, about an hour and a half long, starts at 7:30. All are welcome. Bring healthy snacks for the group if you care to.

This movie is rated G but it is not a children's movie. Children will probably be bored.

Babette's Feast (1986, Danish, with subtitles in English) took 14 years to make. It is a simple story about a French woman, an outsider to an insulated somber religious Danish community isolated on an island, who wins the lottery and uses the money to prepare a lavish French feast for her neighbors. That's about it for the plot.

The religious symbolism in the movie develops in the characters and their community. You will find it profound though subtle. Bill Cough, our co-host for the evening, has agreed to facilitate our group discussion after we watch it.

Babette's Feast is on the "reading list" of practically every college film class that includes a study of spirituality in cinema. Therefore I thought it is about time that our Peace Faith and Film group should have the opportunity to see it. We've seen light films in our past history like Woody Allen, The Bucket List, etc. We can stand to include a serious film like this once in a while.

Having warned you about the nature of the movie, let me hasten to say that most adults like the movie a lot. Just be aware of what to expect.

Attached find a helful review by Spirituality and Health. Also on my attachment is a link to the Rotten Tomatoes film review site where you can read more of the critical reviews that were 90% positive for this beautiful movie.

See you Friday evening!

Peace,

David

Attachments:

• Faith and Film Babette's Feast.doc

Adult Lively Learning for September 11th, 2011

For the next three weeks the Word for Life: Reflecting on Today’s Worship class will use a variety of sources. On this 10th anniversary of 9/11, Elizabeth will continue her series on the Foundations of Presbyterianism with the Great Ends of the Church. In the Adult class materials, the folk who write the Seasons curriculum have an overall theme in mind for September through November: Living with creation and in the new creation. Until Advent, in what they call Pentecost 2, they take off from the Old Testament readings and the wanderings of the Hebrew people through the wilderness toward a new land and new life and end with Jesus’ encouragement to live in such a way as to reflect God’s vision and reign. Mickey’s Genesis class will take up the subject of Night language, God’s other tongue.The ancients, Hebrews included, took dreams seriously. What they saw, eyes closed in the night, was data for living just as much as what was seen, eyes open, during the day. Like a discovery brought back from a distant land dreams needed to be shared. The language is different. The language of the day is descriptive, factual. In the language of the night snakes talk, slain lambs stand up and have 7 horns and 7 eyes, sheaves bow to sheaves and stars bow to mortals. Unlike day language, which is pretty straightforward, night language is a goldmine of meaning. No wonder Joseph had to share such impolitic information with his brothers. Never stop learning. See you Sunday, Bill Attachments: Genesis 37 What.doc Seasons 2011-09-11.pdf

Adult Education - Sunday Aug. 7th

This Sunday Elizabeth will preach on the story of Jesus going away to pray, then walking across water to calm the fears of the disciples in the rough seas. (Matthew 14:22-33.) The Old Testament passage, which the authors of Seasons of the Spirit pick up on, speaks of a rough patch too -- the Joseph story in Genesis. The story of Jacob’s sons is the longest narrative in Genesis and Joseph is a good example of going through a rough time, ultimately for good reasons. Psalm 105 says he was chained and bruised until what he said proved true and “The king sent and released him, the ruler of peoples set him free. He made him master of his household, ruler over all he possessed, to instruct his princes as he pleased and teach his elders wisdom” (Psalm 105: 20-22).

Certainly belief in God can give one perspective and hope. But there’s another necessary step to get that hope. “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14). You gotta be there to hear it.

See you Sunday,

Bill

Peace Presbyterian Adult Education for July 17, 2011

This coming Sunday the Adult Class will be led by Grant Lowe. The Scriptures are Genesis 28:10–19a; Psalm 139:1–12, 23–24; Romans 8:12–25; and Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43. One of the common themes addressed in all these Scriptures might be, as the Seasons lesson suggests, You can run, but you can’t hide.

That’s certainly the emotion evoked for many by the 139^th Psalm. Even the weeds, in the parable in Matthew, shouldn’t assume that being left alone is a sign of being overlooked.

On the other hand, that’s not the only thing the Scriptures imply. The Providence of God is not fatalism, it is also a great occasion for hope. The Westminster Larger Catechism, question 81, puts it this way:

Q. 81. Are all true believers at all times assured of their present being in the estate of grace, and that they shall be saved?
A. Assurance of grace and salvation not being of the essence of faith, true believers may wait long before they obtain it; and, after the enjoyment thereof, may have it weakened and intermitted, through manifold distempers, sins, temptations, and desertions; yet are they never left without such a presence and support of the Spirit of God, as keeps them from sinking into utter despair.

Or, as St Paul put it more succinctly, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

See you Sunday,
Bill

Attachments:

Seasons 7-17-11.pdf

Peace Adult Ed, Sunday July 10th

Once again the sermon and the Seasons class will be complementary. The sermon will take off on the parable of the soils, Seasons on Jacob and Esau. In the class we can react to the sermon and see what connection there might be between the two.

In the Seasons lesson they take off on families and include a quote I like very much. Frederick Buechner wrote this about families: “A family is a web so delicately woven that it takes almost nothing to set the whole thing shuddering or even to tear it to pieces. Yet the thread it’s woven of is as strong as anything on earth” (Buechner, F. (2004). Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith Harper-SanFrancisco).

Peace,
Bill

Attachments:

Seasons 7-10-11.pdf

Adult Education for Peace for Sunday, June 26th

This coming Sunday we will follow the sermon with a discussion of the scriptures for the day.

Of course the sermon will kick off thoughts and, maybe, the theme for the discussion but, among other things the Gospel passage includes the simple phrase, “if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple”.

I wonder what that meant to a desert dwelling people in the days before refrigeration. It probably brought up really vivid images, much the same as it brings up to the majority of the world today. According to Church World Service, more than a billion people worldwide lack clean water, and more than 2.1 million people – most of them children – die each year from waterborne disease. Outside of the United States there is concern about the shortage of water through large areas of Asia and Africa. After all, we can live, uncomfortably perhaps, without oil indefinitely but only about three days, and very uncomfortably without water.

See you Sunday,
Bill

Attachments:

Seasons 6-26-11.pdf