NEWSLETTER # 3. May 2008
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EVENTS
"The
Universe as Blessing"
Learn about keynote speaker Nancy Abrams
July 31-
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ARTICLES
A
Call to the Creation Spirituality Communities’ Music Circle, by Netti
Garner
An invitation to join in the transformative
work, by joining a circle of clarity and consensus-building.
Spiritwind Community, Auburn, California, by Rick Kuykendall
A community within a community.
Originally Blessed: Book Update, by Matt Henry
The emerging
Creation Spirituality book, a tribute to the 25th Anniversary of Matthew Fox's
Original Blessing.
Creation
Spirituality as a post-apocolyptic paradigm, by Tom Baugh
“Perhaps
as the Creation Spirituality communities develop they might focus on their role
in safeguarding the essential elements of reason, spirituality, and wisdom from
our age and preceding ages so that these might be passed on to the coming age.” Read
more.
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EVENTS
"The Universe as Blessing"
July 31-August 3, 2008
Walden Inn and
Meet Nancy Abrams,
one of our keynote speakers at The Universe as Blessing gathering
this summer.
Nancy
Ellen Abrams is a lawyer,
writer, and former Fulbright scholar, with a long-term interest in the history,
philosophy, and politics of science.
While working on the staff of the U.S. Congress, she co-created a novel
method by which government agencies can make wise policy decisions in cases
involving scientific uncertainty, and she has consulted on this for the Swedish
government, several state governments, and various corporations. Her articles
have appeared in journals, magazines, and books. She has also released three
albums of her songs and performed in eighteen countries.
Her
book, written with her husband, Joel R. Primack, THE
VIEW FROM THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE proposes a radical
new view of the cosmos and our place in it, and suggests that
taking our newly discovered place
seriously will change our view of earth and even
ourselves. The result is revolutionary: a
science-based cosmology that can guide critical decisions
here on earth.
The following links will take you to some
more resources where you can meet
- Nancy Abrams /
Joel Primack website http://viewfromthecenter.com/index.html
- Connie Barlow
Interviews Nancy Abrams (video)
http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1281316380&channel=1274177270
- Berkeley Groks Science Radio Show (audio) http://www.trumix.com/podshows/784076
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You're
Invited to Participate in Creation.... of the
Netti Garner has volunteered to lead the dreaming
of a music circle to support the growing Creation Spirituality Communities
effort. Netti imagines a group of people coming
together to identify the Circle's purpose, as well as ideass
for service through music that support CSC. Through email, conference calls or
a website like Open Space World or World Cafe we'll have virtual meetings to
get started. If you would like to dream along with Netti,
please email her at prioryfarm@cswinet.com.
You can check to see if you know Netti by going to
her website www.prioryfarm.org to see
where she spends her time and energy when she's not teaching nursing students. Netti is a 2006 D. Min grad from the
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First
Congregational
Interview with Rick
Kuykendall
Tell us the background of your
community.
First Congregational Church of Auburn,
California is a part of the United Church of Christ. For the most part,
my church is a fairly traditional congregational church. But when I first
came to the church more than five years ago, I started a spiritual community
that I call, "Spiritwind." Spiritwind meets weekly for an hour every Tuesday evening
from
Could you tells us
some of the things you have dealt with at Spiritwind?
We have done series on the basic teachings
of Creation Spirituality. We have done series on the
mystics, spending an evening with Hildegard, Meister Eckhart, Rumi, and Hafiz. We devoted one month to going
through the 95 theses in Matt Fox's New Reformation, and devoted two
months watching Matt Fox's Stanford Lectures on DVD. We have also done
series that deal with Deep Ecumenism. Besides studying the religions of
the world, we have studied the Kabbalah and Sufism as
well as the Christian mystical tradition. We have even studied the earth-centered spiritualities of Wicca and the Native American
traditions. We have also done a month on the New Cosmology, and we will be
watching Brian Swimme's Canticle to the Cosmos
in the Fall.
Besides Spiritwind
are there other things you do with Creation Spirituality at your church?
Every other year we do a Dream Workshop
based on Jeremy Taylor's dream working method. We also have a dream group
that meets on the first and third Wednesday evenings each month. Besides
this I often work ideas related to Creation Spirituality into my sermons--I
have preached a number of times on panentheism, and have done whole sermons
based on Meister Eckhart's thought.
What do you think makes your community a
Creation Spirituality Community?
I don't really think my church or Spiritwind are actual Creation Spirituality
Communities. Rather I see them as places
where people can come and learn about Creation Spirituality. And I think
that it is important that we bring Creation Spirituality into churches so that
the New Reformation that Matt Fox talks about can slowly become a reality.
What advice do you have for others who would
like to bring Creation Spirituality into the church?
If you are clergy, I would encourage you to
work Creation Spirituality into your sermons when ever you can. I
would also suggest to lay people or clergy to form a
book or study group that meets regularly to deal with Matt Fox's
writings, the writings of the mystics, and Creation Spirituality in
general. If you can't get something going on a regular basis at
least try to do a series on Creation Spirituality themes a couple of times
a year. My advice is not to get discouraged if everyone isn't excited as
you are about Creation Spirituality. Most churches move slow, and change
rarely comes over night.
Rev. Dr. Rick Kuykendall
is a creator of Spiritwind, and a board member of
Creation Spirituality Communities, Inc.
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Originally Blessed: A Book being born
by Matt Henry
Each of the twenty-six
themes in Original Blessing "is an unfinished meditation…
I trust the reader to make connections and applications and to carry on the
theological revisioning that must follow from this new (but ancient)
vision."
- Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, 1983
The celebration of Matthew Fox’s Original
Blessing, which is evolving in the form of a new book, Originally
Blessed, involves over sixty contributors.
To see an almost-complete table of contents for this book (available for
ordering soon), please visit www.originallyblessed.org , where you can also sign up for a weekly
reflection based on the 26 themes.
Matt Henry
is a CSC Board Member, and editor/coordinator of the upcoming book Originally Blessed
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CREATION SPIRITUALITY AS A
POST-APOCALYPTIC PARADIGM
by Tom Baugh
Click
here to read this newly-added article on our website.
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Contributors…
If you have an essay, poetry, art, that
you'd like us to consider for future editions of this newsletter, please email
us: contact[at]creationspirituality.info
