Published: April 8, 2021

Thursdays starting April 22, 7-8:30 pm, Zoom, zoom.us/j/8347173468

Enrich your Eastertide/Springtime by joining Rev. Kathy Thiel and me, Claude Adair, in an insight practice group that will explore the book The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See by Fr. Richard Rohr. We're calling it an 'insight practice group' because our time together will be a mixture of discussion and contemplative practices all geared to building a safe community and opening our hearts and minds to new insights about the word so central to our faith and to reality itself; Christ.

Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (cac.org), teacher, internationally recognized author, and spiritual leader. Of his many books, The Universal Christ, which came out in 2019, is thought to be his most important. Fr. Richard teaches primarily on incarnational mysticism, nondual consciousness, and contemplation, with a particular emphasis on how these affect the social justice issues of our time.

In the foreword to the book Rohr asks, "What if Christ is a name for the transcendent within of every “thing” in the universe? What if Christ is a name for the immense spaciousness of all true Love? What if Christ refers to an infinite horizon that pulls us from within and pulls us forward too? What if Christ is another name for everything—in its fullness." No doubt there will plenty of challenging ideas and associated feelings that come up to give us all a chance to stretch and grow together.

This weekly, 90 minute session on Thursday evenings at 7 pm will run for eight weeks starting April 22 via Zoom. The book is available to order on Amazon, and if you need a copy, please contact Kathy at (585) 271-1050 x106, or kthiel@asburyfirst.org. Please do your best to read the Introduction and the first two chapters for our first session.