Adult Religious Education and Classes
Adult RE Program, 2011-2012
JOIN US EVERY SUNDAY AT 9:00 A.M. Along with Adult RE which is offered on the second and third Sunday of each month, we are now offering classes EVERY SUNDAY!
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Qi Gong
On Sunday, May 20th (9-10am), Elizabeth Scott will guide us through a series of static Qi Gong poses which can be done either standing or seated. Qi Gong means cultivation of life energy. Please wear loose clothing for comfort.
Qigong, chi kung, or chi gung (气功 or 氣功) (pronounced "chee-gung", literally "life energy cultivation") is a practice of aligning breath, movement, and awareness for exercise, healing, and meditation. With roots in Chinese medicine, martial arts, and philosophy, qigong is traditionally viewed as a practice to cultivate and balance qi (chi) or what has been translated as "intrinsic life energy". Typically a qigong practice involves rhythmic breathing coordinated with slow stylized repetition of fluid movement, a calm mindful state, and visualization of guiding qi through the body.Qigong is now practiced throughout China and worldwide, and is considered by some to be exercise, and by others to be a type of alternative medicine or meditative practice. From a philosophical perspective qigong is believed to help develop human potential, allow access to higher realms of awareness, and awaken one's "true nature." ~ from Wikipedia
All are welcome to all or any of our group sessions. It does not matter if you have not participated previously or can only make the occasional meeting.
HUU’s Adult RE is an opportunity for all of us to expand our understanding of various religious/spiritual traditions through focused appreciation, listening, dialogue, practice, and learning. We gather with the intention of using various print and video sources to learn together and enhance our search for personal religious growth and truth.
Our facilitators also help hold the space for our sharing and move the conversations and practices along. We use guidelines for sharing that support honest expression of personal experience and respectful listening, not positioning and debate.
The program launches in September. We start promptly at 9.00 a.m. for an hour or so before the morning service.
Contact: Linda Dove, Adult R.E. Coordinator, ldove@shentel.net.
Living a Compassionate Life
WHEN: 2nd Sundays at 9.a.m.
WHERE: HUU Fellowship Building
Compassion begin with showings of Karen Armstrong’s Ware lecture at the 2011 UU General Assembly on her worldwide Charter for Compassion. Later we discuss what it means to live our lives compassionately using Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, Karen Armstrong, Knopf, 2010, $22.95. (Facilitator: Paul Revell)
Details: Living a Compassionate Life
Meditation and Chanting Practice
WHEN: 3rd Sundays at 9.a.m.
WHERE: HUU Fellowship Building
Exploring spiritual practices from a variety of sources, we will chant and meditate with the intention of direct experience of our inner spiritual lives. Beginning with the Hindu tradition in September, we will continue our inner journey through chanting and meditation practices drawn from a variety of spiritual paths. No experience in chanting and meditation is necessary, and each session can be taken independently. In each session, we'll have a brief overview of the tradition and some basic instructions, followed by 10 minutes of chanting and 20 minutes of meditation, then a short sharing of our experience. (Facilitator: Laura Dent)
Details Meditation and Chanting Practice
Growing Together classes
WHEN: 1st, 4th, 5th Sundays at 9.a.m.
WHERE: HUU Fellowship Building
Sunday, April 22
"I pledge that I will work to maintain right relationship with all members of this congregation, placing Beloved Community (and the mutual trust on which it depends) ahead of more limited views and values.... As members of HUU we offer each other these promises of mutual support freely and without reservation... Connected by these promises, we share responsibility for each other: for the better selves we can become and for the better world whose selves can create." From "Promises of Mutual Support" pledged by all members of the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist congregation.
Every community is a web of relationships. Consciously or not, as individuals, and as members of social groups, we routinely impact our web of relationships, and we are also profoundly affected by them. We often do not appreciate how powerfully our daily interactions affect others in our human communities. This fact is not provocative, but the practice of rendering our relational and social choices visible often offends our sensibilities and burdens us with a new awareness of how what we think, say, and do toward each other matters - materializes - affects our web of relationships in ways we had not seen before. The profound, but basic sociological insight that as members of communities, small and large, we are responsible for all of this implicates us as moral beings. Acknowledging and understanding that how we participate in and organize our communal life in the most subtle, taken-for-granted ways has real consequences, both intended and unintended, for the lives of others and our web of relationships is onerous, as it should be. This awareness, however, can also be liberating, healing, and transformative. Paying attention to - and being mindful of - our thoughts, words, and actions in our web of relationships can teach us much about the health of our community, and how we are implicated, as individuals and as members of social groups, in how we grow together.
This "Growing Together" discussion topic was initially inspired by my dissertation research, a study of the web of relationships among members of a lesbian and bisexual women's community. In many ways, this community was very much like HUU - an intentional community committed to sense-making, caring for one another, and social justice. Even so, a major theme in this study was the ways in which the members of this community (wittingly and not) marginalized other members, in particular, women who identified as or were perceived as bisexual.
We'll start by discussing how members of this women's community impacted their web of relationships in the most taken-for-granted aspects of their daily interactions. The “how” is crucial, because we will quickly recognize many of these same processes in our own web of relationships. Then we will reflect on how we, as individuals, and as members of groups in our HUU community, impact our web of relationships, and in the process, we can become more mindful about how we, as individuals, can become better selves, working toward building and maintaining right relationship with all members of this congregation, placing Beloved Community at the center of how we can grow together better.
To prepare: Christine has placed copies of her book, The Web: Social Control in a Lesbian Community, for up to 30 people who want to attend. Suggest reading either Chapter 3 or 5 (read both if you’re ambitious, but Chapter 1 is extremely boring and should be avoided at all costs) in advance of the discussion on April 22.
AGAIN, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO JOIN US WHETHER OR NOT YOU'VE READ.
