Reverend Nancy requested this post regarding the Wedding of Andrea Bongardt and Raphael.
To the OSC friends of Andrea Bongardt….
You are invited to a wedding reception on Saturday, December 4th, 2010 at the Unity Church Unitarian from 10 am to 1:30 pm. 732 Holly Ave, St. Paul, MN 55104
Reverend Nancy came across this article from ODE Magazine in the “A Place to Stand” e-mails and wanted to share it. She will be referring to it in her Sunday Message on 11-21-10:
The best is yet to come
Predicting the future is hard, but it’s impossible if you’re too pessimistic
Humankind continuously exceeds its own expectations when it comes to the development of new technology. However, we are really bad at one thing—predicting that development. And that’s a problem that leads to a lot of unnecessary pessimism. For example, in almost all future scenarios of climate change, clean and renewable energy advances little by little. As a result, the earth keeps getting warmer and warmer. But these kinds of scenarios are always based on known facts. Yet, as history shows, it is the unknown that revolutionizes the world again and again.
Humanity has a lifetime subscription to defeatism. Every era has had its own preachers of doom and impending doom scenarios. Around 1880, a group of entrepreneurs and scientists gathered in Paris to discuss the future. The question was what the French capital would look like in 50 years. The conclusion was dark: With continued growth of the population and the economy, these French visionaries foresaw that the Parisian avenues would be buried under several feet of horse manure. A dozen years later at the Chicago World Fair of 1893, visitors were asked which invention would define the coming new century. Nobody answered: the car. But in 1903, Henry Ford began building his car plant and in 1908 he launched the Model T. And Paris has never experienced the horrific horse manure scenario.
The horse carriages were not replaced little by little by the automobile. And the advances of television, the Internet, and mobile phones were never gradual. You do not have to be a prophet to predict that the clean energy revolution will surprise the world in the same way.
The following list of quotes should silence the widespread pessimism about the future: [Read more →]
The TAPPING OUR ROOTS presentation celebrating OSC’s 4th birthday was a
joyful success on 10-10-10!
Where does this spiritual philosophy for living life called The Science of Mind
come from? Religious belief is always evolving along with the rest of human
thought, for we humans are constantly becoming more and more aware of life.
Certainly, early man wondered and was awed by Life even before the four or five
thousand recent years of recorded spiritual thought. This presentation is a
recognition and an honoring of the influences to the thought of Ernest Holmes,
founder of this philosophy. This is not meant to be an overview of religion in
general. It, rather, honors our roots and honors all of us who are extending the
exploration of the workings of thought and its expressions.
Holmes defined the Science of Mind as “a correlation of the laws of science, the
opinions of philosophy and the revelations of religion, applied to the needs and
aspirations of man.” We are exploring the roots of this ongoing correlation.
You can view and read the text of the presentation here.
This video will be shown as a part of the Sunday gathering on July 18th, at 11 AM. It is from a conference in Toronto with students for search for meaning.
Here is a link to a delightful commentary on Life from the Science of Mind perspective. I laughed out loud!
Rev. Glenn Chaffin introduced me to the Science of Mind 33 years ago, and has been a dear friend and mentor ever since.
Check out his ministry at www.NewThoughtStudy.org as well as the June journal entry!
The Practical Mysticism class took place between March 4 and May 6, 2010. Joanne Biewald facilitated the class with the help from assistant, Carla McKim. There were ten enthusiastic students.
It was an enriching class with a good workbook. The texts used were: Carolyn Myss’ Entering the Castle: Finding the Inner Path to God and Your Souls Purpose and Joel Goldsmith’s The Foundations of Mysticism
We explored our individual mysticism by getting in touch with the mystic which indwells each of us. One highlight of the class was when each student gave a report on a mystic or mystical group. The reports introduced subjects from Toaism and I Ching to Reverend Ike !
Here are a couple comments from students:
“Well, it was great fun and now I know we have a lot of practicing to do. Looking forward to the next class. Joanne is a great teacher and has very few dropouts. I am aware that the general public is not quite aware of this, so nice to have our group to discuss things freely and openly. A great support group.” Dee Ray
“Another interesting OSC Class. Joanne puts a lot of thought and care into her classes.”
Melodie is bringing out the best in the children on Sunday morning. Here’s a sample of their creativity.
A car drawn by Blaize McClatchey, son of Raven, May 2010.
Flower created out of Playdough by Phoenix McClatchey, sister to Blaize, daughter of Raven, in May 2010.
This video on YouTube was shown on a recent Sunday at Our Spiritual Center. It is enlightening about what is possible in the healing realm.
Enjoy and encourage.
At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world’s energy future, describing the need for “miracles” to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he’s backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor. The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.
The world’s most successful businessperson and most powerful philanthropist did something outstandingly bold, that went almost unremarked: Bill Gates announced that his top priority is getting the world to zero climate emissions.
Gates spoke about his commitment to using his massive philanthropic resources (the Gates Foundation is the world’s largest) to make life better for people through public health and poverty alleviation (“vaccines and seeds” as he put it). Then he said something he’s never said before: because he’s committed to improving life for the world’s vulnerable people, he now believes that climate change is the most important challenge on the planet.
Read more commentary about his speech here: World Changing: Change Your Thinking And you can view this directly on the TED website.
