Season: Lent - We Need to Feel It

Speaker: Rachel Sensenig

Location: 2212 S. Broad St.

About Talk: In the Bible, Martha learned that God would rather have us relate to him and be with him and humbly learn from him than anything else. Our capable acts of service are good and important, but not as crucial as actually relating to God and receiving his love for us. Centering prayer is a way to receive God’s love and wisdom. It is a way for our false selves to be transformed. Lent is a great time to try some new ways of relating to God. We end up learning that we are intrinsically beloved, that we completely belong in God’s family beyond anything we do to try to please him.

Season: Lent - We Need to Feel it

Speaker: Wes Willison

Location: 2007 Frankford Ave.

About Talk: How does God meet us in our minds? This week, we talked about attention and imagination, God’s wisdom working against our foolishness. What we think about matters to God, and God gives us the mind of Christ through the Spirit.

Season: Lent - We Need to Feel It

Speaker: Rachel Sensenig

Location: 2212 S. Broad St.

About Talk: We’ve all been trained to “go through the motions” in order to get by. That might be useful for earning a paycheck or getting your laundry done, but there’s no need to perform with God. Jesus came so we could know God and be united with him in love. Lent is an opportunity to know God with our whole hearts, bodies, minds, and souls; to sink into the reality that he is with us and on our side. Centering prayer is a tool to live in that reality of deep belonging and connectedness. It helps us cut through the fears and desires of our egoic minds and get to the untouchable hope at the center of us through Christ.

Season: Lent - We Need to Feel It

Speaker: Ben White

Location: 3800 Marlton Pike

About Talk: We are layered and we want all the layers to get the light in Lent. If we let the light into all of us, we can love and be loved on so many levels. We are not limited to one mode or way of being human. Reason and logic have risen to the top of the pyramid of what it means to be a human for whatever reason, but we need to feel it in all our parts. This week, we need to feel it in our hearts. What do we do when our hearts are overwhelmed? How do we set our hearts at rest in God’s presence? Ben has a few ideas to help you considering 1 John 3:16-20.

Season: Lent - We Need to Feel It

Speaker: Gwen White

Location: 5720 Ridge Ave

About Talk: This message on forgiving points us to Jesus’ disguised invitation to growth embedded in all our hurts. When we are hurt by someone, we can use it to learn more about our unconscious selves: what we value, what we fear, etc. Although not easy, reflecting on our impulses to attack or to withdraw, while seek God’s help to forgive, can bring new growth and turn our sorrow into joy. Abusive relationship are a very different thing and those who are caught in an abusive relationship should seek help in order to change relationship patterns before any forgiving is attempted. The research of Everett Worthington was used to help us practically apply Jesus’ words to Peter to forgive seventy times seven (Matthew 18).

Season: Lent - We Need to Feel It

Speaker: Ben White

Location: 3800 Marlton Pike

About Talk: There are other means of knowing that we do not pay as much attention to as whatever is at the very tippy-top of our consciousness. Our thoughts are often just the froth of our human experience yet we can easily begin to believe that we must draw our sustenance form that froth. Am I happy now? Am I happy now? Lent is an invitation to feel it deeper than that. We need to feel it. All of it. And the painful comes with the sublime. Jesus invites us into being fully human and Lent is our communal season for practicing that. Lent is human practice. Let’s give it a try.

Season: Lent - We Need to Feel It

Speaker: Jonny Rashid

Location: 2007 Frankford Ave.

About Talk: Our faith needs to offer tangible results, even physical results. It's maybe why we love stories of miraculous healing, provision, why at Circle of Hope we're into social justice and personal transformation. Our lives should change and the world should get better. Tangible results count.

Season: Lent - We Need to Feel It

Speaker: Rod White

Location: 2212 S. Broad St.

About Talk: In the WATER stage of our spiritual development, it is a mistake to despise the fragments. A good example of how we should grow is to watch a whale feeding on krill. We are like spiritual whales feeding on the bits of grace reproducing in the ocean of grace in which we live. Like in Psalm 42: Deep calls to deep / at the thunder of your cataracts; / all your waves and your billows / have gone over me. It is an image—could you say the same thing using another animal or another picture?

Season: Lent - We Need to Feel It

Speaker: Ben White

Location: 3800 Marlton Pike

About Talk: Our experience is way more complicated than we can express. The different parts of ourselves do not always add up, shape up or make sense (not to us or anyone else). Jesus is aware of this, when he exhorts us (quoting Deuteronomy) to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. We have many layers, modes, ways of being human. Lent is an opportunity to practice paying attention to all those different parts. All of our knees need to bow. All of our corners need light.

Season: Lent - We Need to Feel It

Speaker: Julie Hoke

Location: 5720 Ridge Ave.

About Talk: For being our primary vehicle to move through this world, we often have a hard time listening to our bodies. The point of the pain is to get our attention. If we listen to it, it will tell us something about the source of our pain. Our bodies are powerful communicators. They tell us a lot about what is going on. Lent is a chance to pay attention; to stop moving so quickly that we miss the signals that would direct us to the source of our need. A little suffering during this season can launch us on a journey to get to the source of our weakness, our sin, our lack, so that we can be strengthened in our innermost being with what we really need.