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Sunday Gathering
June 11, 2023 @ 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Join us!
Sunday’s Schedule:
Sunday’s Program and Reading:
Sunday, June 11, 2023
We Have Questions: Are We Separate, Are We One?
Speaker: Kent Dobson has been the lead teacher at C3 since 2017. He’s also in the guide-in-training program at Animas Valley Institute in Colorado, an organization specializing in wilderness intensives. Kent leads Israel study tours, wilderness retreats, and has his own podcast called Hints and Guesses. He’s the author of Bitten by a Camel, a memoir about his time living in Israel and his departure from the Evangelical church he was pastoring.
Musician: Emilee Petersmark has a central, semi-secret motivation: she’s always angry. That doesn’t mean she’s not friendly or pleasant; it means she burns with compassion for the wronged and contempt for the wrongers. And she spares no wrath for herself, looking inward with razor sharp clarity, since only by exposing our uglier emotions can we come to terms with them, and move on to a healthier outlook. Though the Crane Wives are still very much a thing, Emilee will be stepping forward soon with a stunning set of solo songs, and this is your chance to hear them before most of the world. Come take a peek into the soul of a fierce and restless heart.
Music: Emilee Petersmark
Gathering Host: Rod Van Abbema
Music: Emilee Petersmark
Meditation: David Dean
Moment of Silence
Reading/Teaching: Kent Dobson
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . . This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift. Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Music: Emilee Petersmark
Gathering Host: Rod Van Abbema
Music: Emilee Petersmark
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