Parish Forums
We invite you to explore our shared faith through Parish Forums throughout the year. On Sundays at 10 a.m. we meet in the Elizabethan Room to discuss a variety of topics.
Oct. 5: A spirituality for a generous life
Stewardship is perhaps an old-fashioned word, and for many it means the Fall Pledge Campaign in our parish. Yet, the greater call is to share in God’s mission as caretakers of all that God gives us. This call is not about shaping a budget, but about shaping our souls. It is an invitation to a life of generosity and to the practice of the spiritual discipline of giving. Join us, as we reflect together on how our giving opens us to gratitude for all of life, how giving connects us to each other and to a world of hurt and hunger and brokenness and beauty.
Facilitator: The Very Rev’d Joy Rogers
Oct. 12: God’s holy light making all divine: Nature as temple in Genesis, Emerson, and Muir
Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the most influential writers in 19th-century America, and John Muir is known as co-founder of the Sierra Club and “Father of the National Parks.” In this forum Jimmy Haring (who did his doctorate in Christian ethics at Notre Dame) will reflect on their views, philosophical or theological, about the sacred quality of the natural world.
Facilitator: Jimmy Haring
Oct. 19: The Camino to Santiago de Compostela as a family experience
Others have done the Camino in groups of various sorts and sizes, but Aron, Pauline, Lucy, and Miranda will tell us and show us what it’s like for a family to walk across northern Spain to the shrine of St James.
Facilitators: The Dunlap/Sachar Family
Oct. 26: Witchcraft in history and in popular imagination
In the 15th through 17th centuries witches were taken seriously enough to be burned at the stake, or in England hanged. But in popular imagination they are complex figures, occupying a zone somewhere between myth and fairy tale, embodiments of evil yet sometimes potentially good, stock figures in Shakespeare, the Brothers Grimm, and Frank Baum. Have conceptions of the witch changed over time, or have they always been marked by complexity and ambiguity?
Facilitator: Richard Kieckhefer
Nov. 9: Poetry of nonsense
Sit in on this forum and hear
how poets like Carroll and Lear
and good Doctor Seuss
all aimed to educe
nonsensical sensical cheer.
Facilitator: Aron Dunlap
Nov. 16: The history of Edgewater: And Atonement’s role in the neighborhood
The neighborhood of Edgewater grew up around the Church of the Atonement. In the early years there were scattered houses, Atonement, and not much else. Bob Remer, who has served as president of the Edgewater Historical Society, will explain how the neighborhood originated, how it developed, and how Atonement played a vital role in its life.
Facilitator: Bob Remer
Nov. 16: Relics
As long as saints have been honored, as far back as the mid-2nd century, their relics have been cherished and venerated. What is it about relics that has aroused the devotion of Christians over the centuries? Father Dennis O’Neill has assembled one of the largest relic collections in America, and he will explain what relics mean to him and to other Christians.
Facilitator: Father Dennis O'Neill, Shrine of All Saints (Morton Grove)