| Spiritual Journey
Program
United
Theological Seminary’s Spiritual Journey Program promotes:
| • |
the spiritual formation of students by providing opportunities
for deepening one’s spiritual journey, practice, and
reflection during their educational experience. The program
provides vehicles for experiencing this through workshops,
programs, and A Spiritual Chronicle, with a focus on the
integration of mind, body, and spirit; and
|
| • |
spiritual growth and spiritually rooted leadership for the
wider community by providing experiential and educational
offerings for religious leaders and spiritual seekers to
encourage spiritual formation and deepening, along with
support for one’s ongoing spiritual journey, with a
focus on the integration of mind, body, and spirit. |
The
Spiritual Journey Program is made possible by a grant from
the George Family Foundation to support programming and educational
events around the topic of spirituality.
Spiritual
Journey Program Workshops
Continuing
Education Workshops
Registration
Join Our Mailing List
Spring
Lumen/Community Programming brochure
2008
Spring Workshops and Events
Spiritual
Enrichment
 AGING
AND SPIRITUALITY
TUESDAY, MAY 6, 1:30-4:00 PM
Older
persons engage in a rich spiritual life as they integrate
a lifetime of joys and tragedies. They continue to find meaning
and usefulness in the face of limits and overshadowing sense
of the finite. Explore with one another how this population
engages intensely with spirituality as they tell the stories
of their lives. Learn the 14 major spiritual tasks this population
needs to accomplish before death and how these tasks may manifest
to those who listen deeply.
Kay
Provine, a United alum, is the director of spiritual
life at Episcopal Homes and an ordained Episcopal priest. She attended seminary in New York and trained as a chaplain
at the University of Minnesota hospital in Minneapolis. Before
attending seminary she worked as senior trainer at Hazelden
Foundation where she specialized in resiliency and youth,
parenting, and alcohol issues.
Fee:
$25.00
Event
location: Strobel Room –
McMillan 209
*
* *
EVENINGS
AT THE BIGELOW: ART AND SOUL
The
Bigelow Chapel at United embodies in wood, glass,
and stone the deep connection between the arts and spirituality.
This series explores that link, showcasing the arts as
sacred expression through music, literature, visual arts, and
performance. Join us for these evenings filled with art and
soul as we look at the arts as seen through the lens of spirituality.
MARY BOHMAN
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 7:30 PM
“Prayers
and Songs for the Earth”
In
anticipation of Earth Day, we invite
you to spend an evening with Mary Bohman and friends on a
musical journey that celebrates the earth and our interconnectedness
with all creation. Allow the power of music to open you to
the awe and mystery of the world and answer the call to a
spiritual re-membering of our place as stewards. Bohman is
known for her skill in building community through song; the
audience will be invited to add their voices to the tapestry
of sound.
Mary
Bohman has worked for more than 20 years as a voice
teacher, choir director, music therapist, and performer. She
is children’s music coordinator at First Universalist
Church in Minneapolis and a Master of Divinity student at
United. Her a cappella trio, Oasis, performs in hospitals
and sacred settings around the region.
Fee:
$20.00
Students: $10.00
Registration deadline:
Wednesday, April 9
Registration required
KEVIN KLING
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 7:30 PM
“Readings
and Reflections on Love”
Kevin
Kling, playwright, storyteller, and actor, is best
known for his popular commentaries on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and his hilarious and tender stories
about life, family, and living in Minnesota. Kling’s
autobiographical tales are as enchanting as they are true
to life: hopping freight trains, getting hit by lightning,
growing up in Minnesota, and eating things before knowing
what they are. Kling continues to write plays and stories
in a rigorous fashion. He has released a number of compact
disc collections of his stories, and his first book, The
Dog Says How, was published in October.
With special guest Simone Perrin. Perrin is a local theater artist who has had the privilege to share the stage with Kevin many times. Her singing and accordion playing have been featured on other stages as well, including Bryant Lake Bowl, Mixed Blood, The Ordway, The Fitzgerald, and the Monday night theater-meets-bar called Thirst. Look for her next on February 23, when she will be making her Praire Home Companion debut.
Read Star Tribune article about Kling
Fee: $20.00
Students: $10.00
Registration deadline: Tuesday, February 5
Registration required
This
program is partially funded by a gift to the Wilson Yates
Religion and the Arts Endowment in honor of Eugene Jaberg
’54, emeritus professor of communication, for his contributions
to religion and the arts.
*
* *
 FIRST
DIVINITY
FRIDAYS, 9:30 AM-12:00 NOON
APRIL 18 & 25; MAY 2, 9, & 16
Long
before the patriarchal religions developed, and for many more
centuries, humans worshipped the Goddess, a female figure
thought to be the source of all life and the mother to which
we return in death. Who is she? What does she look like? What
are her attributes, her endeavors? Of what help was she to
those who were devoted to her? What happened to her? Why do
we as Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists in the 21st
century know so little of her? What would happen to our inner
lives, our self-understanding, our individual and communal
decision making if we esteemed her even half as much as our
forebears did?
In this workshop, we will become acquainted through art and
artifacts, architecture, and poetry with the Neolithic Goddess
as she emerged in the cultures of Crete, Greece, Asia Minor,
Ireland, and Northern Europe. Through art making and writing
of our own we will work and play at making a connection with
her. How might she live within us? How might she be trying
to make herself known in our world? How might she guide us
in caring for one another and our imperiled planet?
Susan
Deborah (Sam) King is the author of three collections
of poetry, One Breasted Woman, Tabernacle: Poems
of an Island, and Coven. She has led a similar
trip as well as one to Japan focusing on Japan’s arts
and indigenous religion. Formerly a Presbyterian minister
and psychotherapist, King leads retreats on creativity and
spirituality and is founding director of the Literary Witnesses
Reading Series at Plymouth Congregational Church.
Fee:
$100.00
Students: $50.00
Registration deadline:
Friday, April 11
Event
location: Strobel Room –
McMillan 209
Registration
required
*
* *
 T’AI
JI
THURSDAYS, 4:50-5:50 PM
FEBRUARY 14, 21, 28; MARCH 6, 27; APRIL 3, 10 17; MAY 1, 8
T’ai
Ji is an ancient Chinese moving-meditation that can:
lower blood pressure, increase flexibility, reduce stress,
strengthen the immune system, improve balance, calm the spirit,
and heighten cognitive lucidity. This gentle form of exercise
offers an opportunity for meaningful reflection and joyful
expression.
Laila
Hollenbeck (Laila Vera) is an instructor at The Marsh
in Minnetonka and the composer and flutist of the CD Soaring
Spirit: A T’ai Ji Serenade.
Fee:
$100.00
Students: $40.00
Registration deadline:
Thursday, February 7
Event
location: Bigelow Chapel
Registration required
*
* *
 VISUAL
PRAYER JOURNALS
TUESDAYS, 4:50-5:50 PM
FEBRUARY 26; MARCH 4, 18; APRIL 1, 15, 29
The
arts often invite us to travel more deeply into the holy spaces
where the Spirit moves. In this series participants will be
invited to connect the Word and the arts as a form of spiritual
practice. Weaving together contemplation and simple art forms,
we will engage the Lectionary reading for the week, creating
a visual prayer journal made with simple art forms. Listening
together, we will invite God to be revealed to us in the expressions
of our prayer and creativity. No artistic experience is necessary.
Cindi
Beth Johnson is the director of community programming
in the arts, religion and spirituality at United and an ordained
member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She
is passionate about how the arts can add to the vitality of
congregational life and how they help us to know and experience
God more deeply.
Fee:
$50.00
Students: $20.00
Registration deadline: Tuesday,
February 19
Event
location: Strobel Room –
McMillan 209
Registration required
*
* *
WRITER’S
SERIES:
THE SPIRITUALITY OF WRITING
“In
the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the
Word was God” (The Gospel of John). Ever since, writers
and poets have sought to find and be found by this sacred
mystery. In this series we invite gifted writers to share
the spiritual nature of their craft. Join us as we listen
to writers describe the writing process as spiritual, a process
that often invokes voices beyond their own.
BARBARA
J. ROGERS AND PAM WYNN
RUTH: POET AND COMPOSER CREATE AN OPERA TOGETHER
THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 7:30 PM
We
are drawn to the biblical story of Ruth for its dramatic content
and continuing relevance to cultural situations of today.
The contemporary poetic language of Pam Wynn gives the story
new vibrancy, exploring the deep humanity of all the characters.
Mindful that words set to music enter more deeply the core
of one’s being than words merely spoken, heard, or read,
Barbara J. Rogers has recast the story as told by Wynn in
a three-act opera. In this Writer’s Series event, Rogers
and Wynn reflect upon the process of writing and collaboration
as an expression of their spirituality.
The
world premiere performances of Ruth takes place at
Northwestern College in St. Paul on April 25, 26, and 27.
For more information, go to www.nwc.edu/display/6038.
 Barbara
J. Rogers came to composing by way of her work as
a church musician in New York, California, and New Jersey.
Several of her most recent works have premiered at Northwestern
College in St. Paul, where she has served on the piano faculty
since 2000. Branching out from choral and solo vocal genres,
she has written works for organ solo, small chamber ensembles,
symphonic band, and orchestra. Her works are published by
Boosey and Hawkes, Choristers Guild, and Frog Music Press.
 Pam
Wynn, significantly shaped by her childhood in the
Piedmont and Atlantic Coastal regions of North Carolina, seeks
to integrate her life with her faith in her poems. Author
of A Good Soul and Diamonds on the Back of a
Snake, she serves as adjunct faculty at United. Her work
appears in a variety of regional and national publications
and has received support from the Dayton Hudson, Jerome, and
General Mills Foundations, COMPAS, Minnesota State Arts Board,
Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, and Walker
Art Center.
Fee:
$15.00 $20.00 at the door
Students: No
charge
Registration deadline:
Thursday, February 28
Event
location: Bigelow Chapel
Registration
required
Registration
Online
Registration
(requires Visa or MasterCard)
OR
Printable
Registration Form
(requires
Adobe Acrobat Reader)
Would
you like to be on a mailing list for the Spiritual Journey
Program at United Theological Seminary? Click
here to send us your name and address. |
