Just Launched: Praying with Visual Art with Roger Hutchison

We just launched Praying with Visual Art with Roger Hutchison For Individuals and For Groups.

Vincent Van Gogh’s Pine Trees at Sunset (1889), one of the works Roger discusses.

Visual art enriches our secular lives. We go to museums, purchase and create art, filling halls and homes with pieces that move us. But how might we use visual art as a prayer tool? Artist, author, and Christian formation director Roger Hutchison paints regularly with his hands as a prayer practice. He also takes time in his prayer life to engage with paintings by other artists.

In this course, Roger takes us on a tour of key pieces that have influenced him and deepened his spiritual journey — focusing on quiet time with God, conversation with God, and exploring the imagination. He invites us to find our own journey through praying with visual art.

Roger will guide you through the journeys of artists as they created their pieces and learn to how to inform your own journey through exploring their work. You’ll also learn key steps and questions to ask to tune into your heart and mind when praying with art.

This course is ideal for anyone who is interested in new kinds of prayer and for any Christians who are interested in visual art. For a preview of the course, please click below.

 

Just Launched: Praying with African-American Spirituals with Mark Bozzuti-Jones

We have just launched Praying with African-American Spirituals with Mark Bozzuti-Jones For Individuals and For Groups.

 

From Face to the Rising Sun: Reflections on Spirituals and Justice by Mark Bozzuti-Jones:

In the sacrament of Holy Eucharist as we share in the Body and Blood of Christ, we always say words akin to these: “do this in memory of me.” To sing Spirituals is to sing in memory of the Slaves and their faith, to recall these songs sung for centuries and handed down to us today as part of the legacy of the African American culture.

In the Christian tradition, prayer and remembering are always a call to action, always a call to repentance, and always a call to redemptive living. When we sing the Spirituals today, we commit to living a life of prayer that ensures justice for all, a life that calls us to make amends for the evil of slavery, and a life that calls us to work against the forces of racism and discrimination still present in our societies today.

In this course, priest, author, and public speaker Mark Bozzuti-Jones asks us to consider spirituals in the light of psalms of suffering created by people who never lost their faith that God was with them, was one of them, and wanted them to be free. He discusses spirituals as cries of suffering, as statements of powerful faith in the face of the worst kind of oppression, and as calls to action.

This course is ideal for anyone interested in African-American spirituals, racial justice, or theology related to human suffering.

Just Launched: How Pets Connect Us with God with Emily Mellott

We just launched How Pets Connect Us with God with Emily Mellott For Individuals and For Groups.

Humanity’s relationship with pets goes back a long way. Humans were still hunter-gatherers when we first domesticated dogs around 11,000 years ago. Cats were pickier about aligning with humans, waiting until about 8000 years ago to be domesticated (though in their case, evidence suggests we didn’t so much domesticate them as accept their decision to live with us.)

The nature of human relationships with pets has developed over thousands of years. Today, it differs across the world. In western culture, many pets offer humans companionship, amusement, distraction, and even exercise. When we are sad, troubled, or tired, snuggling with that kind of pet can bring comfort and peace, and they give us opportunities to offer love and care for them. Other animals with whom we might have less affectionate relationships offer endless opportunities for wonder, curiosity, and surprise.

Bringing an animal into our home as a pet bring us out of our human-focused mindset and into direct relationship with an element of God’s created world. When we observe a cat stretching, wonder at the graceful movements of tropical fish in a tank, try to discern how our pet bird thinks when it sees the world so differently from how we see it, we are taking opportunities to connect with creation in all its diverse glory. The fact that we often seek out these opportunities — that, in a culture where many of us no longer need pets for practical reasons, so many of us take on the expense and responsibility of caring for animals — suggests that some quality deep in human nature longs for this connection with the created world.

In this class, the Rev. Emily Mellott discusses ways in which our connection with animals brings humans, ultimately, into relationship with God, and ways in which mindful animal care can help bring us closer to God. Click below for a preview.

Just Launched: Introducing Benedictine Spirituality

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Today, we launched Introducing Benedictine Spirituality with Laurel Dahill. St. Benedict of Nursia was born in the fifth century and had such a strong and lasting influence on monastic life that he became known to history as the Father of Monasticism. One reason for his widespread influence was his Rule: regulations guiding day-to-day living which he used to guide the abbeys that he founded so that they could live according to his precepts in his absence.

In this class, the Rev. Laurel Dahill, a priest who lives her life according to Benedict’s Rule, shows modern Christians how we might adapt Benedict’s Rule to guide our day-to-day lives and help us live according to our values. Benedict’s Rule emphasizes stability and rhythm and a wise use of our time, so that we may nourish our minds, bodies, and souls. In our rushed lives, bombarded with news, videos, entertainment, and advertisements as well as many responsibilities, it can be helpful to commit ourselves to living mindfully, to acting purposefully, and to being deliberate in our daily activities.

If you are interested in incorporating prayer into your life, in living mindfully, or in utilizing spiritual practices on a regular basis, you should consider taking Introducing Benedictine Spirituality with Laurel Dahill. Prayer groups, devotional groups, and adult Christian formation groups might profit from investigating Introducing Benedictine Spirituality with Laurel Dahill for Groups.

If you are interested in this course, check out this preview and learn more about it.

Daily Spirituality

Spiritual practices draw us backto attentiveness (1)

In the Everyday Spiritual Practices class that we launched this past Sunday, the Reverend Keith Anderson suggested a variety of spiritual exercises that we might employ during our busy days. Which practices we choose to use depends on which activities resonate with each of us at different times in our lives – even at different times of the day. Such practices can be any activities that call our attention to God or help us love and serve our neighbors.

I find that everyday activities, even odd ones, can become spiritually rewarding. For a while, I found spiritual value in the act of putting on my children’s shoes; the act resembled foot washing enough that it became holy to me. Then the days got busier, and now I am usually in a hurry when I put on my son’s shoes, so the act has lost its spiritual significance, but others have come to take its place.

Right now, one of my spiritually rewarding daily activities is the act of putting my older son to bed. He prefers to say his prayers silently. Next to him, in the quiet room, I naturally find myself praying silently alongside him, especially for him and his brother and my husband.

When the children were younger, a spiritual practice that came naturally was just walking to and from a pond near our house while holding them in slings or other baby-wearing devices.  There was something about the beauty of the pond and the warm baby snuggled against me that naturally drew me toward mindfulness and gratitude.  It can be easy to engage in spiritual activity if we just go with the acts that seem to draw us in that direction anyway.

Deliberately engaging formal, spiritual disciplines also helps many people. The Rev. Anderson suggested journaling and gratitude journals. My mother gets great spiritual satisfaction from religious journaling; she makes time each day to write in her journal and deals with life’s difficulties by asking God to be with her and then journaling her problems out with God.

Some people make time every day to sew or knit their prayers into quilts and blankets. We received a prayer blanket that someone had crocheted for my son when he was a baby that soothed me greatly during those first anxious, sleepless weeks with a newborn. Some people make time during the day to draw or paint the things and people they love in a spirit of mindfulness. I know a woman who swims laps mindfully each day; she finds spiritual benefit in the repetitive act of swimming and the relative peace of just moving back and forth across the pool.

What spiritual disciplines do you find help you in your daily lives? What daily activities have become imbued with spiritual meaning for you? Please comment! We would love to read about them!