Monthly Archives: December 2012

Of Course 12/31/12 by Resta Burnham

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At last! This week’s Course in Miracles class will delve into the long-promised (threatened) subject of SEX. Possible titles:
The Birds and the Be’s
     How to Lose Your Soul Mate and Find Your Mind Mate
     You Breathe, Don’t You?

Thursday, January 3, 2013, 7 p.m. at The Church Within

We will start off the year with Dinner and disCourse at Milano Inn, 231 S. College Ave., 5:30 p.m. If you plan to be at dinner please email me: restasmusic@mac.com.

On Sunday, January 6, 2013 immediately following the service (about 11:30), we will take our food from First Sunday Brunch into the celebration room and I will offer a class on INTRO TO A COURSE IN MIRACLES. I invite any who have been on the ACIM path for any length of time to describe how it has been part of your everyday life and practice.

On Tuesday, January 8 I will be flying to Temecula for a Kenneth Wapnick Academy class.

The ACIM class Thursday, January 10 will be lead by Barb Ireland – probably your last chance to be blessed by her wisdom and humor as she and Bev will be moving to Michigan at the end of the month.

I will be back for the class on January 17.

…from Yvonne

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. . . .from Yvonne

Paul McCartney wrote his song, ‘It’s A Fine Line’, that got embedded in the part of me that views life. I didn’t exactly want it to, but I notice it is, in fact, a fine line lots of places I look. McCartney’s lyrics point out it is a fine line between chaos and creation. And it is. In fact, it’s even finer than a line. With a dab of distance it is little more than a shift of perception, a change of perspective. What’s previously viewed as chaos, we look back on and often see it was, after all, creation in process. It is life–yours and mine–becoming even more My guess is you won’t have to look long to find examples of that in your own life. I know it is there repeatedly in mine. Change the dates and the details, and creation is there again emerging out of what surely seemed chaos to me at the time.

Then I begin seeing how fine the line can be in so many other paces. It can be a fine line between a breakdown and a breakthrough. It might even be a fine line between tragedy and triumph depending on the glance you give it and the eyes you use.

Then there it is again as the calendar is about to turn that last page into a new year. It is a fine line between endings and beginnings. We’ll be thinking about that on Sunday with a little help from the McCartney song and a little more help from you as together we think about it all.

Come for the 10:00 service and then dip yourself a bowl of soup and join me back in the Celebration Room from 11:30-12:30 as we look at endings and beginnings. This New Year’s Eve’s Eve Day will invite our ritual of transition from chaos, breakdown, tragedy, and endings into creation, breakthrough, triumph, and beginnings! Hope to see you there!

Blessing and Peace, Yvonne

…from Yvonne

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It has been said, ‘Advent is like listening for footsteps–you can’t hear footsteps when you’re running.’ Advent is to Christians what Hanukkah, Kwanza, Ramadan, Solstice Ritual, Festival of the Ancestors, and a myriad of other kinds of times are. They are all times of waiting, listening, and editing–when it comes to life. For there is that within us ‘budding’ and as ready to ‘become’ as is what is happening within the earth right now and that which we will see renewed again in the months ahead. We are people of such renewal. That second part of the quote and of these festival times, sacred to so many of us, knows that ‘you can’t hear footsteps when you’re running.’

Running comes to all of us in many ways. There are those for whom the intentionality of a ‘good run’ is actually a ‘sorting out, allowing, becoming’ kind of time. For most of us, though, there is a ‘running’ that has a kind of frantic ‘getting to and from’ that inhibits us from what is available and happening ‘now.’ May we use these last days of 2012 to become a happening, available and guaranteed within us. And may it effect the action we take and the words we use. May it truly be ‘lifemass’ of our spirit and soul.

It is my hope that you make available some of the times on The Church Within’s calendar these days ahead:
1. Sunday, December 23, 10:00, What To Do When Your Puzzler Gets Sore or Clearing Your Field of Vision
2. Monday, December 24, 7:00, Keeping a Star in Sight
3. Sunday, December 30, 10:00, Not Living Life Sideways
4. Sunday, December 30, 11:30-12:30, Endings and Beginnings, with Yvonne
5. Sunday, January 6, 10:00, It’s A Fine Line
6. Sunday, January 6, 11:30, Intro to A Course in Miracles, with Resta Burnham

Blessings– as you live the peace you seek,
Yvonne

Tai Chi Tuesday at The Church Within

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For some months now, The Church Within has been host to Barbara Kanzanjian’s teaching of William C. C. Chen’s style of Tai Chi Chuan. This came about because I attended Barbara’s class at another venue that proved to be less than consistent in their ability to offer space and, being who I am, I invited the class to our space for practice and to meet our community. What I hoped was that folks from the church would find a home in a martial arts practice as I have done over the last decade.

While tai chi is markedly different in many ways from the karate I have studied over the years at Broad Ripple Martial Arts, it still offers a nearly identical list of benefits for body, mind, and spirit. In the course of our time in tai chi class, we have silent meditation, teachings on movements and their applications, time for practice, and one-on-one assistance from Barbara. We also end in silence followed by a reading of Taoist poetry that Barbara has chosen. Our work with the form, besides the benefits of health and self defense, is a way of moving into silence. Much as the forms in karate, there is a way of moving and practicing that brings the mind spiraling in from the busy-ness and chaos of the world-at-large into the center of being and a quieting of the mind. We move into the quiet.

As I shared above, I invited Barbara and the class to The Church Within so that we could continue our practice and so that the class could meet the community of the church . Something beautiful has happened that I hadn’t expected. We have several folks who have started tai chi with us for the first time and who are not regular attenders of our church. They have, though, become part of our church family.

Every year we get a collection of paper stockings that have a child’s name, age, and gift wishes printed on them. Folks from the seats on Sunday mornings get a stocking or two and do some extra shopping for these kids. Once they’ve gotten the gifts gathered, they wrap them and attach those name tags to the gifts so they can be given to the Concord Center and then to the families for whom they were purchased. When the members of the tai chi class walked in and saw the holiday decorations and the little stockings hanging up, they immediately started grabbing a stocking of their own and had the gifts bought, wrapped, and back to church the very next week.

It was so beautiful to see this kind of outside group that I had gotten to move into the church shift from being something that we hosted to being something that is just another amazing part of who we are. We are a different kind of place and the way we engage the community around us is growing all the time.

I would love for more folks to engage this tai chi practice as part of their experience of The Church Within. We meet in 6-week sessions with a one week break in between. Barbara teaches beginning students on Tuesday nights from 6:30-7:30. Advanced students meet from 7-8 and beginning students are welcome to watch the last 30 minutes of the advanced class. More information is available on facebook.

OF COURSE 12/12/12 by Resta Burnham

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[Resta leads the class on A Course in Miracles (ACIM) which meets every Thursday at 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at The Church Within]

ACIM class will meet every Thursday throughout December
Thursday, December 13: Science Fiction and True Myths
Thursday, December 20: SPECIAL EVENT – END OF THE WORLD PITCH-IN AT 6 P.M. AT TCW; class will also be about the “end of the world”.
Thursday, December 27: Sex!!

If anyone is interested in learning more about ACIM as a spiritual path and practice, Resta will conduct a 45-minute session of Introduction to ACIM on Sunday, January 6, 2013 following First Sunday Brunch at TCW. Current students will comment on their experiences with the Course.

Of Course 12/3/12 by Resta Burnham

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[Resta leads the class on A Course in Miracles which meets every Thursday at 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at The Church Within]

Looking back: Last Thursday we explored “path” – the 8-fold path of Buddhism, an 8-fold path of A Course in Miracles, and the moment-by-moment path of daily life. From ACIM:
    “This course was sent to open up the path of light to us, and teach us, step by step, how to return to the eternal Self we thought we lost.” [W-pI.rV.in.5.]

Looking ahead: The topic for Thursday, December 6, 2012 will be
“Playing the Death Card”
[I have in mind some thoughts on the manger, the cross, and the X-Factor.]

Looking way ahead: I will offer a short session on Introduction to A Course in Miracles following First Sunday Brunch on January 6, 2013. I am hoping that a number of you who have made the Course your path will share your experience of what this has meant in daily life.

If anyone wants the class notes, send me an email request: restasmusic@mac.com.