Sunday Morning Education Hour has some great offerings for adults to grow, stretch, deepen and ground their faith and practice. Adults of every age and stage are welcome – young adults to senior citizens. Some courses are three or four weeks and some last for several months. We try to address these broad themes: Bible Study, Big Questions, Equipping the Saints, Life and Nurture, Mission, Spirituality, and The Twenty-First Century.
Classes begin promptly at 9:30 a.m., so come and grab your coffee or tea at the Wake-Up Station, and join a conversation! Classes conclude by 10:25 a.m., so that if you are a person who attends the 10:30 a.m. service, you have enough time to gather for worship.
New September classes:
All classes run September 15, 22, and 29 – join at any time!
Finding Peace Through Meditation – led by Carrie Vieira
Deep within each of us, there is a space of stillness, a space of conscious awareness. All religions acknowledge this space, though we call it by different names. Whatever our spiritual practice, we all sense that is from this space that feelings of peace, joy, and well-being spontaneously arise.
Our world, however, is a complex, overstimulating place that overwhelms our senses and often pulls us away from this inner source of peace.
Through conscious meditation practices, we can
• reconnect with that within each of us that resides in stillness.
• liberate ourselves from the interference of the chattering mind.
• rediscover the connection between the body, the mind, and the breath.
Christians have always greeted one another by saying, “Peace be with you.” Please join us to explore various types of meditation that can center us and help us find that place of peace.
Conversations on Race: Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Films – led by Paula Seabright and Erin Reid
September 15 – Tapestry looks at the effects of public violence events in congregations and the communities of which they are a part. It is framed through the lens of PDA National Response Team members who have responded to public violence events and support those communities of faith and their leaders as they walk through the valley of the shadow of trauma and its aftermath and begin the process of healing.
September 22 – Locked in a Box is an award winning short documentary that follows the stories of individuals held in the U.S. Immigration detention system and those who visit them. The film traces the lives of individuals who fled their homelands in search of safety and freedom only to end up in U.S. prisons under a mandatory bed quota system run by Immigration Customs & Enforcement (ICE). Since the 1990s there has been a massive expansion of the immigration detention system up to 34,000 immigrants in detention on any given day in approximately 200 different facilities, many of which are for-profit prisons. Locked in a Box helps strip away the political rhetoric to see the human cost of detention.
September 29 – To Breathe Free follows the 5-year journey of a Syrian family fleeing the war in Homs to the refugee camps in Jordan and starting a new life in Washington, D.C. Using home movies, phone video, family photos and interviews with family members and former refugees, this short documentary gives an intimate and unique perspective not seen in current media reporting on the refugee crisis. To Breathe Free captures the intersection of individual narratives from a family fleeing the Vietnam War in 1970, to the Syrian Conflict in 2017, to the families who help create a new home in our nation’s capital, giving voice to our common humanity and the struggle that binds people together.
Please visit the PDA website for more information about these and other PDA Story Productions. We will be using the study guides on the site for our discussions. We encourage you to save electronic copies on your phone or tablet. We will have a few available in each class as well.
Ongoing classes:
The Bible in Depth: Isaiah – facilitated by Doyle Nichols
This lively conversational study is reading through the literature of the Old Testament. All are invited to jump right in!
Young Adult Games & Conversation – facilitated by Brian & Ann
Out of high school and no idea what to do? Home on break? First job and lots of questions? Come join other post-high-school, college, & post-college young adults for a time of fellowship, conversation, and board games as we navigate the perils of being an adult!