COALESCE: A time of connection in community

Come join us in a sharing time of thoughts, ideas and insights, as we think about ourselves and our church not from our denominational or traditional taglines and mantras, but through the big idea of whom God is calling us to be in the 21st Century. (2019, Olu Brown, 4D Impact One).  The way we are doing this is by reading John Phillip Newell’s, The Rebirthing of God: Christianity’s Struggle for the New Beginnings.  There are still a few books ($12.00) available at church, with the suggestion that it is good if you can read ahead of time, but is certainly not a prerequisite for listening and engaging in the seminar-like environment.  

Newell offers eight features of “new beginnings”, reconnecting us to the earth, compassion, the Light, the journey, spiritual practice, non violence, the unconscious, and love. A primary question we are asking, What does the statement mean to you that we are made of God rather than simply by God? What are the implications of this question for our life perspective and how we live our lives? Participants offered the following thought: “We are all connected.” “All life is sacred.”  “God is to be discovered, encountered and experienced in the midst of life.” God’s Spirit permeates the whole of life, as George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community says, “in every blessed thing.” Briane Swimme, an evolutionary cosmologist, refers to the “Urge to Merge”.  “There is a desire for oneness that was implicit in the universe’s beginnings—everything has a yearning to move in relationship.  What we manifest is a yearning that emerges for the heart of creation.” (Newell, The Rebirthing of God, p. 6)

• We need to move from a spirituality of alienation from the natural world to a spirituality of intimacy
• We need to stop viewing ourselves as separate from the earth, remembering that we as earthlings do not have the capacity in and by ourselves to save the earth
• We do have the capacity to serve the earth and nurture its deep energies for healing to allow the earth to have space and time to renew itself.

COME JOIN US, WHETHER YOU ARE A REGULAR OR JUST A ONCE-IN-AWHILE DROP IN.  WE WOULD LOVE TO SEE YOU!

Reading and discussion for Sunday October 6: Tying up loose ends of the Introduction and Chapter 1 Reconnecting with the Earth and read and discuss Chapter 2 Reconnecting with the Compassion