Class Description: Are you curious about the spiritual life?  Do you wonder about Jesus and whether or not you can have any relationship with Him?  Is there a simple way to enrich one’s prayer life?  Come and explore the basics of Ignatian Spirituality with the Rev. Hannah Anderson, artist-priest at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.  Hannah completed a forty-day retreat at the Ignatian Spirituality Centre in Guelph, Ontario during her Sabbatical last year and is delighted to share what she has learned in accessible and creative ways.  Please bring a journal and Holy Bible to each class.

Class Description: We are God’s beloved.  This simple statement is one of the hardest concepts for us to comprehend.   In a culture that tells us that we must always be something more than what we are it is often hard for us to conceptualize a God that loves us thoroughly.  This course, using Henri Nouwen’s, Life of the Beloved as well as other resources, will explore what it means to know ourselves fully as God’s beloved.  The first ten weeks of this two part class will focus on the opening chapters ofLife of the Beloved, “Taken” and “Blessed”.  Part II of this class will focus on the later chapters, “Broken” and “Given”.

“I was at a crossroad in my life when I first experienced Servant Leadership. I used the course’s spiritual tools to deepen my relationship with God. Active listening to that “still small voice” helped me to discern the path I would walk. By meeting God in that deep interior space of the heart has made it possible for me to explore deep yearnings that had been locked away for many years. I now go forward with a clearer sense of purpose. I have been able to reclaim the fullness of my life. The ultimate objective of the Servant Leadership course work in my life has been the empowerment to take this rich clarity and share it with others.”

“For me, Servant Leadership was nothing short of transformational. If you are anything like me and millions of other people, you may feel spiritually depleted, living in a world where we are faced with working long hours to just simply survive. Well, just as we must work to earn a paycheck, we must work also to feed the soul. If we can actually apply the ideals of servant leadership, or at least some of them, then we are truly creating a better world. Servant leadership is the only form of leadership that the world should accept. This course will enrich your life and the lives of those you share it with.”

Cost:  Free

“Many of us face a series of difficult dilemmas when we are trying to deal with a personal problem, question we are holding or decision.  On the one hand, we know that the issue is ours alone to resolve and that we have the inner resources to solve it, but those resources are often hidden from us by layers of inner “stuff.”  On the other hand, we know that other people might help us discover our inner resources and find our way, but by exposing our problem to others we run the risk of being “invaded” by their judgment and assumptions and advice, a common painful experience.  As a result, we too often privatize these vital questions in our lives.  At the very moment when we need all the resources we can get, we find ourselves cut off from our own resources and from the resources of the community.”  

-Parker Palmer,  The Clearness Committee:  A Communal Approach to Discernment

The clearness committee helps us do exactly what it says in its name sake:  find clarity.  Gathered with a group of individuals a person facing a decision, personal problem or question comes to a small group community of three or four individuals who help one listen for clarity, for God’s voice, as they listen to the presenting question, decision or problem.  The group does not advice give, try to fix or remedy the situation but trusts the God-given inner resources of the person they are listening with and into being.  The process brings guidance and clarity in a loving, supportive, non-threatening environment.

One Person Writes:

“I found the experience of the clearness committee to be very moving. Finding and listening to God in the silence I was filled with this wonderful, peaceful presence that created a space to ask questions of the young man we worked with and to mindfully listen to him and reflect upon what he was saying. It was a very powerful and profound form of communion where the speaker and the listener became one and felt as if we were being held together in the hand of God.” 

If you are interested in having a clearness committee set up, contact Center’s Director, Rev. Jennifer Gregg.