Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Greetings everyone,

First off, we want to say thank you to everyone who attended class on Sunday. Liberation theology was a huge undertaking for all of us, and we thought that the class went better than we could have imagined. Already, our group is demonstrating that we are more than up to taking on difficult topics and discussing them with both passion and respect for others. This is exactly what we were hoping for out of the Christians in Conversation class.

For those of you who were unable to stay for the end of the class, we ended with some really good points. We talked about scripture, including the Exodus story, and the ways experience influence our theology. We recognized that poverty and hunger play a role in shaping the theology of the oppressed. One class member closed by remarking that we need to remember the importance of the Holy Spirit, and being led and directed by Him in our daily lives. We could not agree more with this comment - we all need to be sensitive to the movement of the Holy Spirit both in our individual lives and in the life of the body of Christ. Truly, the Holy Spirit moves in mysterious ways. We pondered the need for each of us to be a voice for the voiceless in this world.

We ended class by watching Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. A few of us stayed for the entire speech, and we were touched both by his speech and the comments of a few who stayed to talk about their own experiences. It amazes us how much we have to learn from one another. Thank you to those who stayed and who shared out of their own pain and their own experiences. It meant so very much.

As we were thinking of the next direction to go, we felt pulled to talk about the growing focus in our culture on spirituality, and how we as Methodists and as Christians might think about the increasing focus on spirituality. Some think that spirituality can exist apart from institutionalized religion. This is actually a postmodern trend discussed in the following article which is heavy on philosophy:

http://www.integralworld.net/benedikter1a.html You may have to cut and paste this link into your browser if it doesn't automatically take you there.

As for next Sunday, our focus is not going to be quite so technical. We will start a discussion about spiritual growth. What do you think of when you hear the term "spiritual growth?" What is it that we hope to grow toward? What are the practices which might help us to grow spiritually? We hope that this might be the beginning of a discussion about spirtual practices (prayer, worship, fasting, service, scripture reading) that can be meaningful to us today. How can the traditions of the church root us in our current era of spirituality that sometimes overlooks church tradition? For those of you who are interested in the Wesleyan tradition of spiritual growth through the "means of grace," you might take a look at the following:

http://wesley.nnu.edu/john_wesley/covenant/means.htm

Join us on Sunday for the conversation!

Until then, peace be with you,
Deb and Bryan