Peace, – Leslianne

I think Hari and Anthony are up for leading tonight. We’ll see you there!

-Hari

Thanks Jon!

-Hari

Grace Episcopal Church, 3601 Russell Road, Alexandria, VA 22305

Who can do Saturday the 11th, from 10 to 2?

I’m hoping for a significantly higher turnout than on a weeknight!

-Hari

Thanks, Jan. That sounds great. Sadly, though, Jonathan & I will not be able to join you as it is his birthday and we have dinner plans to celebrate. Enjoy the feast, though.

I wanted to let everyone know that John Perkins is speaking this Sunday at a church my friend started recently in DC. It is a small, relaxed, welcoming community, which meets at a charter school– wear jeans, drink coffee, and maybe even worship a little . This is a great opportunity– please consider going. Check it out at http://www.districtchurch.org. It begins at 10:30am and will probably go until 11:45 or 12ish. I can’t make it– so go (that I might live vicariously through you!).

Take care and have a nice weekend. Please pray for my job search, too, if you think of it. Thanks.

So you are twice blessed.

-Hari

Peace – Jan

BTW, if any of you is comfortable driving one of these pretty-big panel trucks such as ALIVE uses, and you are free Tuesday morning 2/2, I would love to have your skilled company on a computer pickup run for Computer CORE. I’m scheduled to borrow ALIVE’s truck to get 70 CPUs from Chevy Chase, MD, and would like very much to return the truck in same condition as borrowed.

-=Ray

If you drop stuff off at noon, I can take it to Matt’s house for his housemates to deliver to her.
God is good. It was a good day to be with church with and for Bridgett.

John and I might be up for grabbing some food, but I think you know we’re out for he scary movie

-Sarah

I attended your church’s Bible study last nigh with Pastor Jan. A good experience. I will try to make the conversation series this weekend and was sorry to miss it last weekend. I see that you are someone who likes to purchase learning material from the Teaching Company. I also have Dr. Schumacher’s DVD set on Quantum Physics but I have yet to look at it. Indeed a fascinating subject and one with many implications concerning the nature of reality.
Personally as a scientist, I try to keep a very open mind about things. I have come to see that for many people, truth is subjective as Soren Kierkegaard tells us. This is not to say that religious revelation as an ultimate truth is to be dismissed. For me this means that there is often a difference between scientific facts and personal beliefs. For example, quantum mechanics tells us that the world is probabilistic in nature. That is just how the theory is formulated. What a person ‘believes’ about how the world really is ontologically is another matter. I have met more scientists who simply try to keep those two things separate.
I thank you for your comments and insights. I think confronting these issues, which are by nature very difficult, speaks well to your church community.

Sarah

As Matt said, if you’d like to make a contribution and receive a tax credit, please make the check out to FPC and write Joanna’s name in the memo line. You can give it to me (or someone who can get it to me). Thanks everyone!

Last class I introduced quantum entanglement as an example of what physics doesn’t understand, and agree that dark matter/energy are very appropriate additons to that list. Next week I’m planning to discuss where we are on matter, and suggest that it’s not so firm a foundation for materialsists to attack spirituality, as it were. I don’t plan to get into zero-point energy and the quantum vacuum very much, but it may well come up. Fascinating topic well shrouded in limited understanding.
One of my concerns is that science is advancing, but a number of scientists tend to be fairly dismissive of religious belief. I think a number of recent discoveries tend to support religious belief, and want believers to be aware, and use it to advance their own spiritual development.

Thank you for your time.

Nicholas Scott

Sarah

I’m also happy to host. I do try to keep Wednesday as “date night” with the husband (it’s his night off), but I’m generally pretty flexible for scheduling these on weeknights. We live just a few minutes south of Old Town near the Telegraph Road interchange.

I think meeting 1-2 times per month is reasonable, and I think the direction Karen and Jen are suggesting is a good one — let’s get our gatherings started and see where we end up as time goes on.

I’m looking forward to our fellowship time!

Erin

But just to let everyone know, I’ve made it safe to Dubai (Kabul tomorrow), thanks for being awesome and keeping my wife company!

Let me know.

Let’s think about doing it once a month potentially.

Best,
Sarah

1. I think maybe a monthly potluck could be a good idea. I really like to cook, as you may know.
2. As a potential point of focus, I think it follows from Lent (looking inward) to look outward, i.e. think on what our “community” means and how to serve it. What does church mean in an era where we commute to worship and use twitter to communicate? What is our relation to the world and our much poorer brothers and sisters, and how can we build on that relationship? I think if we all pitch topics like these, each of them could be a topic of discussion each week and we could have some great content for worship.
3. I want to use the meeting as a time to pitch once again the idea of a book/bible study jointly with the morning congregation. I think some of the men are doing a potential book study but I personally need some accountability when it comes to getting into the Word. I don’t care if it’s a handful of girls only or coed, although I think the girls only thing would be kind of neat. I also thought it would be a good way to start bridging the gap between the morning and evening worship. I know Lakeisha is very interested. BTW is she coming to this meeting? please make sure she is invited!
4. Finally, please summarize the highlights of the meeting in some way for those of us who won’t be there!

Karen

We really need people who: love creative worship, are pumped about worshipping outside.

One way to explore what this means is to study Acts. I’ve seen our old church do this after easter and it seems to flow naturally, and to fit with the above. What do you all think?

Thanks for linking to this!

I haven’t heard from anyone as far as what they’d want to see, though…

Biscuits/muffins would be great!

I will do a separate posting on this since I’m not sure follow up comments are emailed, but thanks so much!

Oh and to Jen’s comment, we will definitely be praying before we eat…just to taunt people like Karen a little longer

Regarding the Justice to Others, tell me what you think about this: I am personally becoming more convicted about my consumeristic tendencies and probably others feel the same. We could make a conscious effort to take money we would normally spend on X (whatever that is for the person) and contribute it to some agreed-upon cause. I am generally skeptical of one-time service projects because often they give the volunteer a sense of satisfaction that I think is more than the amount contributed in that one instance. Hopefully we will have a project that gets around this.

To do breakfast we don’t have to do the volunteer training.

We would need to provide (we can cook it and bring it or ccok it there) and serve breakfast for about 75. We’d need a minimum of 4 and maximum of 10 people whenever we serve.

I’m thinking about going ahead and scheduling a time in February and then, after doing it once, deciding if it is something we want to continue to do and how many times a month.

Thoughts?