November 2018

Peter asked people to try a prayer experiment last week that he called “neurological nesting.” He invited people to a) believe that they are loved, b) rest in that love, and c) try to extend love to others. The idea was to sit and do this for 4 or 5 minutes each day and see what happened. This talk began with a few people sharing thoughts about their experience. Then Peter described what happened to him. On the last day of the week he was overcome with a deep sense of gratitude. From that, he decided to focus this week’s talk on “contentment.” Using ideas from Jesus, various other voices, then Tom Shadyac, and St. Paul, he makes a collage of meaning that relates to this concept, as well as a plan about how to increase it in our lives.

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Peter Fitch takes a look at a story from Luke, ch. 5. It’s about the friends that bring a paralyzed person to Jesus on a stretcher. Peter uses the story as a jumping-off place to discuss the paralyzing sense of defeat that some people experience in life. For this part he quotes Jordan Peterson regarding lobsters and serotonin. But Peter doesn’t feel able to follow Peterson’s advice to “stand up and straighten your shoulders” without a strength that comes from outside of himself. So he next turns to Mike McHargue to discuss the difference between intercessory and contemplative prayer. This leads to a description of 4 different kinds of God, and a prayer experiment that Peter thinks might lead to “neurological nesting”, creating a place for God to meet with us in our brains.

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Walter Thiessen shared some thoughts on finding new (less politically loaded) language to have more conversations about sexuality – especially regarding issues in our own families and communities.

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In this talk, Peter Fitch begins with the story of Jesus sleeping in the boat. He alludes to several classical references to this story from Thérèse de Lisieux and George Herbert, but the main ideas are from a book by Peter Steinke called, Congregational Leadership in Times of Anxiety: Being Calm and Courageous No Matter What. This book uses Bowen Theory to help people see the need for “differentiation”, thoughtful, reflective, principled and self-aware responses in anxious times.
Extra materials…. Hozier – Nina Cried Power and a

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