Agapé vs. “The Knowledge of Good and Evil”

In the book A General Theory of Love, by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, I found a reworking of the evolutionary development of the human brain. They described the primitive ancient base of the brain, popularly called the “reptile brain,” as the seat of those physical drives that get people into so much trouble.

When I read about that, I remembered once reading an interpretation of Genesis 3:1-7. In that ancient story of the origin of “the knowledge of good and evil,” such ‘knowledge’ happened by being tempted by a lie coming from a reptile. The interpretation was given in terms of the human brain: the false dualism of “good and evil” coming from our “reptile brain.”

Such dualism is portrayed as originating from the great deception caused by listening to our “reptile brain” instead of to the advanced brain of the neocortex. That false way of perceiving life makes humans think that they can take into themselves (“eat the fruit”) some way of knowing that there can be such opposition of “good” and “evil.” It’s a false way of seeing life split up, such that life can be separated into “good” and “evil.” Such a deceptive way of seeing builds up the possibly for life to be no longer a unified whole (where whatever happens just happens), but can be somehow thought of as divided into something that is good and something that is evil.

So what is portrayed, in that ancient story of anthropological origins, enters historically as the deception that developed near the origin of civilization is based on turning away from the unifying force of Life in order to start believing in the separation of good and evil. (In other words, the Great Lie, that there somehow is good and evil, is where evil entered history and human consciousness.)

Albert Einstein once wrote: “We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for few persons nearest us. …Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature.”

The more I thought about those theories, the more I reflected on the origin of human turning away from agape. When we realize agape as the unifying spiritual power, then we can fully comprehend what happened when too many people let fear block them from receiving agape into their lives. It is the spiritual power of agape that helps people overcome the false dualism of “good and evil.” Building a worldview based on fear leads to the dualism of “good and evil,” but building a worldview based on agape leads to the unity of life and ultimate peace.

When I read Marianne Williamson quote in her book, A Return to Love, the great passage from the New Testament book, 1 John, that reads “God is agape,” I understood that she was meaning ‘agape’ whenever she used ‘love’ in a spiritual way. So I went thru her book and copied down quotes changing ‘love’ to ‘agape.’ For example, “Once we get to the point where we realize that God is agape, we understand that following God simply means following the dictates of agape. By affirming that agape is our priority in a situation, we actualize the power of God.”

There has developed tremendous pressure for people to think that they have to perceive life from fear. Such perceiving usually gets interpreted to mean we perceive without agape. So we have to unlearn all of that in order to perceive life thru the power of agape instead of perceiving life from fear. Most of us spend the developmental years of life having our brains wired to perceive ourselves as separate from all other beings, and so we have a great deal of difficulty accepting the unifying power of agape. But agape is powerful enough to overcome that “optical delusion of consciousness” if we will only open up and let it happen for us.

But that is precisely our task in life — our purpose in being.

Agapé and Suffering

In the movie, “The Fault in Our Stars,” the proposition is made that pain demands to be felt. And because the movie is about people dying of cancer, there is a lot of pain being felt on the screen. Many spiritual leaders throughout history have made a distinction between pain and suffering. Pain is a biological function, and suffering is the human response to feeling pain.

So the spiritual teaching has always been that pain must be acknowledged and fully felt. Of course there is a temporary period of suffering as a response to experiencing pain. But there is a much worse, more intense, longer lasting period of suffering if the effort is made out of fear to try to avoid or deaden the experience of pain.
One of the first spiritual leaders to talk about that profound truth, around 2,500 years ago in India, was the Buddha. He tried to warn the human race that even though pain is inevitable, suffering can be limited to only the temporary period of pain. But the limiting can only be accomplished if people first acknowledge that pain is actually inevitable. Then there can’t be any extraordinary attempts to avoid pain and suffering. Pain has to be faced and fully felt in order to get beyond the pain. Of course, at first, that may seem to go against our greatest fears.

Of course, we don’t want to be masochists and bring on more pain than we have to. And there have been helpful developments in anesthesia to aid in certain medical procedures such as surgery. So the point is to find a way to creatively deal with pain when it cannot be avoided instead of trying to pretend our way out of ever having to feel pain.

Just as the crucifixion of Jesus (and the persecution, beatings, and murder of so many of his followers during the centuries that followed) should have been all the evidence needed to prove to Christians that it is not the point of religion to escape suffering, so people should look to spiritual teaching to find the way to deal with pain and suffering. And that of course leads us to agape meditation.

In one of the many periodical articles about meditation, studies were reported showing that pain and inflammation can be managed with intense, prolonged meditation because it leads to changes in genes that play a role in pain. Research has shown also that meditation is effective with cardiac disorders, depression, anxiety, and immune function. Agape meditation is one type that helps more effectively connecting with all that is around us, so that we can deeply understand our ‘natural’ reactions. And that helps us deal with suffering as a reaction.

That seems to be why Paul started his great teaching about agape in Romans by pointing out that the pain and suffering from the troubles that come with life produce endurance, and “endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” That is the hope that comes from meditating with God’s agape “that has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.”  Through thus meditating with God’s agape within and around us, we are given the deep understanding of the way pain is merely an integral aspect of life. In this way we lose the fear of pain. Being free of the fear is crucial point necessary for creatively dealing with pain in life.

The Agapé way of seeing

In an amazing survey of mysticism in the world religions, entitled The Inner Eye of Love, there is a brief reference to agapé. The author, Fr. William Johnston (an Irish Jesuit who served in Japan directing the Institute of Oriental Religions), discussed how the early Christians used the word, agapé, to refer to something so completely different from what then was ordinarily thought of as love.

Johnston explained that today, also, there needed to be a new word other than ‘love’ to express the journey of mysticism. It’s needed because every step of such a journey is “enlighten and guided by a living flame, a blind stirring, a love which has no reservations or restrictions.” Such a kind of love is not what is ordinarily meant by that word. This kind of love “burns at a very deep level of consciousness.” And so today, too, we need to use that ancient Greek word, ‘agapé.’ But all the time, Johnston acknowledges that whatever word we try to use, with the limited vocabularies we humans have at our disposal, what we are trying to express is deeper and more powerful and more wondrous and more mysterious than any of our attempts to express it.

Also he speaks of every stage of the journey requiring a new way of seeing. We might call that the agape way of seeing. When we relate to another person with agape, we discover that agape helps us see to the very core of the other, in order to be able to relate to the inner Essence of the other. Also agape helps us see the basis of our own true essence, and so helps us see the difference between the ego and the Essence within us.

In The Way to Love by Fr. Anthony De Mello (a Jesuit from India) he talked about “the art of looking.” This is how you do it: Every time you find yourself irritated or angry with someone, the one to look at is not that person but yourself. The question to ask is not, “What’s wrong with this person?” but “What does this irritation tell me about myself ?” By looking with agape in this way, the other person will help you see not only a self-revelation but more importantly also a Self-revelation. You will see more clearly the eternal Essence that is your true identity. And that way of looking will help you understand more deeply that you are not an ego-identity. 

We don’t like to face this aspect of agape seeing, but De Mello pointed out in harsh detail that agape can help us to ruthlessly flash the light of awareness on our own motives, and to see the emotions and needs of our egos. And so agape can help us face our dishonesty, our self-seeking, and our tendency to control and manipulate. This way of seeing ourselves is necessary to help us see how to free ourselves from identifying with our ego.
He concluded that we cannot truly love other people in the way agape helps us love until we can see them in the full reality of the moment, no longer relying on ideas, conceptions and conditioning, perceptions, prejudices and projections that have been constructed by our egos. But if you are to love the agape way you must learn to truly see. When you look at people this way, you see them in their inner beauty and goodness; then you transform and create.

Agape and ways to pray

The Rev. Samuel Wells of London wrote about praying in the April 30, 2014 Christian Century.  That article came from a conversation after worship in the church he serves. After some ‘coffee hour chit-chat,’ the parishioner took hold of his forearm, and her tone changed. “Say a prayer for my dad, will you? He's not himself, the dementia's really kicking in.”

He gave his standard answer: “Of course I'll pray for your dad. And I'll pray for you, too.”  Later he wondered deeply: How exactly do you pray for a person in such a situation? When he later reflected on that question, he came up with this summary of 3 ways to pray.

The 1st he calls resurrection — a call for a miracle. That would be a prayer for healing of mind and body. Wells admits that this kind of prayer is tempting, but he wondered about the times when he honestly feels that healing just isn't going to happen.

The 2nd he labels incarnation — asking that the Holy Spirit to be with the person and family ... give them patience to endure what lies ahead ... and companions to show them agape. He saw a dramatic difference between these two kinds of prayer: "while the resurrection prayer expects God to do all the work, this (2nd) prayer stirs us into action ourselves." Who is better placed to show God's agape than the person praying? Also he felt that her request for prayer was partly a plea that she not feel alone in what she was facing.

A 3rd option (beyond miracles or a comforting presence) is a prayer of transfiguration — looking for something spiritually new. "Show my friend and her father your glory, that they may find a deeper truth to their lives than they ever knew, make firmer friends than they ever had, discover reasons for living beyond what they'd ever imagined." And this kind of prayer can bring the person praying to awareness of fresh insights of meaning and purpose.

After reading that article, I began reflecting on those insights in relation to agape.

The 1st and 3rd ways are opening to the spiritual power of agape as it already flows — to bring “transfiguration” in the life of the person praying as well as holding in prayer another’s life and its possibility of deeper spiritual reality; and “resurrection” thru the power of agape. Because there is always a healing aspect involved in the power of agape, and we have no control over how that healing works, we can actually never do any more than pray for agape to work in another’s life in whatever way agape can work. The outcomes in life are never in our control anyway, so in agape meditation we must always relinquish control whenever we enter agape meditation. The initial part of the 3rd way to pray (“Show my friend and her father your glory, that they may find a deeper truth to their lives than they ever knew”), is the main reason that agape continues to be poured into our hearts thru the Holy Spirit.

The 2nd way is how we let agape work thru the actions of our lives, so that we share God’s agape with the relationships of our lives. So not only do we pray for the person to find more ways to open to agape power, but when we actually are physically with that person, we take the action of sharing agape with her or him. In that way we participate in the flow of spiritual power of agape between persons.

Agapé group meditation in a Denver church

A church in Denver contacted me, because of my book on Agapé Prayer, and asked me to lead a 5-part series of group meditation sessions. The weekly agapé prayer meetings continued on Wednesday evenings over the 5 weeks in the middle of Lent. So I had to find a way to squeeze the 7 steps outlined in my book into only 5. This and the following 5 postings describe what we did during those sessions.

The whole series turned out to be a very good training for applying my book’s ideas into a practical setting. At first I felt very strange doing agapé meditation with a group. I prepared for the beginning session during the 2 weeks prior, including meditating twice that first day, seeking guidance. One inspiration originally seemed very strange because, even though I’d led group meditations years before, I’d never even attended or heard of trying to hold hands while meditating. But that was the vision I received, so I decided I should go with the guidance.

After introductions and a brief description of what the 5 weeks would cover, I tried to summarize my years of research about agapé into a few sentences. That attempt proved more difficult to communicate than I thought. I explained that you need to sense agapé flowing within yourself before you can do the additional steps of projecting your awareness of agapé flowing beyond yourself. But we need to keep in mind throughout all these steps that the purpose of this meditation practice is to become aware of a process that has already been going on, so we just need to develop a way to sense it. When I tried describing agapé as a spiritual power, a man interrupted and asked, “What do you mean by spiritual power?” I had used those 2 words because I thought they would be most easily understood. Finally, I ended up talking about the way Martin Luther King used agapé to organize demonstrations during the Civil Rights Movement.

Finally, I shifted the discussion to meditation preparation. When I asked about participant’s experiences with meditating, I was relieved to discover they all were meditators. That way when I began the meditation process with a little stress-relieving focus on breath, each person was familiar with that method of preparation. I had us hold hands in a circle, then invited them to feel the flowing of air down deep into their lungs and then out again.

As our awareness moved deeper and deeper we became aware of resting in our heart-center, where we found a power -- a special presence. We relaxed completely into a profound realization of agapé spreading from deep within the heart-center, flowing throughout and permeating our being, bringing a sense of well-being and a deep sense of joy.

As the deep spiritual sensation of agapé continued flowing throughout our being, we let agapé open us up spiritually. I invited them to experience agapé as a spiritual gift to awaken them to divine Presence. After allowing several minutes for them to experience the power of agapé for themselves, we slowly ended the meditation.

Agape for a person important to spiritual development

I led the 2nd step of the group agape prayer with the church’s evening sessions. We focused on someone who was important to each participant’s spiritual life.

The time of meditating began by repeating the previous week’s journey inward. It is important to connect with the spiritual power of agape that everyone can find deep in the heart-center. We need to find agape within in order to sense agape flowing for another person. First we used awareness of our breathing to release the tensions and distractions of the day.

Then we prayed for agape to flow in the life of the special person who was the focus of the evening’s meditation. Each of us prayerfully held this person with our attention, visualizing participating with this person in the spiritual flowing of agape. We thought that person’s name 3 times. Each participant prayed until he or she was able to find the spiritual concern that the special person would find personal well-being and deep sense of peace. We visualized the special person sitting next to us as we shared agape with them.

Afterwards the discussion centered on the need to keep practicing that meditation during the following week until they gained a sensation of spiritually sharing with that person. I reminded them that it can happen whether they were geographically near that person or far away. Being in ‘agape contact’ isn’t effected in any way by distance or time. The meditation was to be practiced until they were able to experience the power of agape flowing into the center of that person’s being. They could imagine that person being drawn close to and opening up to both God’s Presence intimately and the vastness of God’s Presence spreading throughout all Creation.

The most important point to keep remembering was that whatever is happening does not originate with us. The spiritual experience is deepened by becoming aware that the divine power of human relations is not only already pouring into your heart, but it is already pouring into the heart of the other person, and it is already flowing between the two of you. Our major spiritual need is to develop the awareness of that flowing agape process, in all its many manifestations.

Agape meditation and spiritual power

Dan Harris’ new book, 10% Happier, was discussed to start the 3rd week of the group meditation sessions at the church. Harris is an ABC news anchor, who at one time was considered the ‘religion reporter.’

In the church group were people with differing experiences with meditation. So I thought they’d be interested in this book that covers how he became interested in meditation after he had an anxiety attack during a news broadcast. His book reported on scientific research on meditators, including MRI scans that demonstrated how meditation can essentially rewire the brain. Among the studies of different types of meditation was a description of the Buddhist “metta meditation,” which is very similar to what I outline in my book.

When we got into a discussion of how I came to the outline and conclusions in my book, I realized there was a problem with merely giving conclusions throughout my book. I hadn’t explained enough about how I wrote the book after many years of research, meditation, and inter-religious study to reach those conclusions. I talked about the years of research I did about that weird old Greek word, ‘agape.’ And if we think it’s a weird word today, what I discovered is that the Greeks 2,000 years ago thought it was just as weird a word back then. 'Agape' was not a commonly used word. In fact, when the Christians started using it, the only place most people would have heard the word was from a few Jewish-Christians, who had found it in the Greek translation of the Torah (the 1st 5 books of the Bible).

My research was really helped when the 1 Corinthians volume of the Anchor Yale Bible was finally published in 2008. (The Anchor Bible is this amazing undertaking of re-translation that takes you through the Bible verse by verse, giving extensive scholarly notes explaining how each verse is retranslated.) So I was excited to see what was done with that very difficult 13th chapt., where ‘agape’ is usually mistranslated as ‘love.’ Well, the Anchor Bible has 17 pages of notes about 1 Cor. 13. These notes point out how rare a word ‘agape’ is. But the conclusion is that no matter what agape meant, “agape remains the supreme quality of Christian existence.” [p. 490] When I read that I thought, ‘Oh, that’s why I’ve spent all these years researching about agape — it’s the “supreme quality of Christian existence.”’

Also we discussed a page I had given them containing excerpts from Martin Luther King’s sermon on loving enemies (from his book The Strength to Love). He made the important point, “When Jesus bids us to love our enemies, he is speaking neither of ‘eros’ nor ‘philia’; he is speaking of ‘agape.’” [p. 44] When he mentioned ‘eros’ and ‘philia’ he was referring to the Greek words that mean almost everything most Americans mean by the word ‘love.’ And of this agape for our enemies, Dr. King says it’s “far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer,” but is “an absolute necessity for our survival,” and is “the key to the solution of the problem of our world.” And of course, Dr. King went on to prove how it could be put into action when he mobilized masses of people and changed history.

So in looking back I hope our discussions were helpful for giving added meaning to our meditation.

Agape for friends, family, and strangers

The 4th step of agape prayer needed to be combined with the 3rd step during the 3rd week of the group meditation at church. This squeezing of steps had to be done in order to cover 5 weeks in the middle of Lent. I had asked each participant to choose a friend and a family member for the evening’s focus. Then they were to think of a mere acquaintance for whom there was no emotional connection.

Even though the 2 steps would focus on the spiritual power of agape going beyond ourselves, we started the meditation by focusing on ourselves, because it's deep within ourselves that we find, and slowly become aware of agape. That’s why each step of the agape meditation process begins by going within. You need to sense agape flowing within yourself so you can imagine projecting your awareness of agape flowing beyond yourself to others (radiating out to others).

We prepared by disengaging from all of the distractions and concerns of the past week. As always this was done by focusing on our breath. First we released the tensions of the day by taking a deep breath and sighing it away, then slowly focusing on our natural rhythm of breathing. Then we let our attention follow the flowing of air down deep into our lungs.

As we let our awareness move deeper and deeper into our heart-center we focused on a special presence. We relaxed completely into a profound realization of agape spreading from deep within our heart-center, permeating our being, bringing to each person a sense of what it is to fulfill our well-being and have a deep sense of joy.

And so we took a few minutes to experience agape as a spiritual gift, opening us up spiritually and eventually awakening us to divine Presence.

Then we began thinking of a friend. We thought that person’s name 3 times, then formed an image of that person. We prayed about what it means, in specific, personal detail, for agape to work in that person’s life, to open her or his heart-sense to greater experience of happiness. While we held that friend in prayer, we imagined agape flowing in that life in such a way that a sense of well-being came to that person. As we did this, we began to realize that we were teaching ourselves about agape.

Finally we wished that friend well and moved on to holding a family member in agape prayer. We went thru the same meditation as with the friend. Then we moved on to holding an acquaintance in prayer. Finally we wished that person well, and came back to our
normal state of wakefulness.

We followed up the meditation by again discussing how this was a process that has already been going on, so we just need to develop a way to sense it.

Agape for enemies

Enemies were the focus for the group agape meditation at a Denver church. This 5th step in agape prayer was part of 5 sessions for the evening Lent study.

Before we could start the meditation, a couple of the participants started a discussion about the dangerous, violent world we must survive in. One of them had been in Kosovo during the time of the mass killings. He was concerned about how people could protect themselves against such enemies if we were supposed to be holding enemies in agape.

I asked, “What’s the alternative? Do we just keep practicing the old pattern of violence that has caused such destruction for thousands of years, or can we catch a vision of ourselves called to work out a more creative approach? Do we truly believe that Jesus was calling his followers to a new way to live?” I was finally able to steer us into meditation time by pointing out that the purpose of agape meditation was to respond to our calling to pray for a new way to live.

So we began meditating with the usual concentration on our breathing to release tensions and distractions in order to calm ourselves; then we let our awareness move deeper and deeper into the center of our being. From our heart-center we prayed to gain a spiritual sense of the flow of agape.

And slowly we relaxed completely into a profound realization of agape. As we slowly sensed agape flowing, permeating our being, we let agape bring an awareness of what it is to fulfill our well-being and have a deep sense of joy. And slowly we allowed ourselves to awaken to divine Presence as agape opened each of us up spiritually. We let agape draw us into the intimacy of divine Presence.

They had been invited to hold in agape prayer a person who they found a little difficult (maybe a person who in some way is irritating). They began forming an understanding of what spiritual well-being is for that person’s life. Then we took a few minutes to let that sense of well-being develop. (This forced us to realize that agape does not involve our emotions, so we needed to release the emotional attachment connected with the person in this step so that such emotion no longer interferes in this moment of agape awareness.) We thought that person’s name 3 times, then formed a visual image of that person, and prayerfully held that person with our attention. We prayed for agape to work in that person’s life, and we imagined that person standing in front of us.

That meditation forced us to recognize that the person wants to find happiness as all people want to be happy, and think about what it means in personal detail for agape to work in that person’s life to open their heart-sense to greater experience of true happiness. And slowly we faced the difference between the way we felt toward that person and the way we felt about the friend from Step 4. Agape helped us release the emotions that get in the way when we relate to the person who irritates us.

That meditation helped us move on to a more difficult person: an enemy of our nation. In the same way as before, we prayerfully held such a person with our attention as we let that person’s awareness form and also opened up to agape flowing into that moment. We prayed for agape to work in that enemy’s life, and so we were forced to recognize that such a person wants to find happiness as all people want to be happy.

After we let our attention slowly come back to our normal state of wakefulness, we followed up the meditation by again discussing overcoming violence. As most of the great spiritual giants throughout history have suggested: we need to develop a different awareness and approach to our relationship with what is around us.

Agape for all Creation

The group agape meditation for the final evening session that I led at a Denver church went very well. Because of the need to squeeze the 7 steps into 5 sessions, we did steps 6 and 7.

After we did the usual concentration on our breathing to release tensions and the distractions of the previous week, we then let our awareness move deeper and deeper into the center of our being. There in our heart-center we began to gain a spiritual sense of a special presence.

And slowly we relaxed completely into a profound realization of agape.  Then spreading from deep within we slowly sensed agape flowing, permeating our being, bringing an awareness of what it is to fulfill our well-being and have a deep sense of joy. And slowly we allowed ourselves to awaken to divine Presence as agape opened each of us up spiritually. We let agape draw us into the intimacy of divine Presence.

Each person in the group was invited to begin forming an understanding of what spiritual well-being is for that person’s life. Then we took a few minutes to let that sense of well-being develop.

As we moved into Step 6, each of us held in agape prayer a group who were important to us. We began by forming a visual image of that group. As we let that group’s awareness form in our meditation, also we opened up to agape flowing in that moment. We prayed for agape to work in that group’s life together.

After a few minutes of that meditation, we moved our attention back into the room and each of us held in agape prayer each of the other persons meditating in that circle. We did that for a few minutes, then we spread our attention to hold in agape prayer the whole congregation. We sensed agape flowing among the members then out into the various service projects of the church.

Finally, we moved into Step 7. We imagined the expansion of the flowing of agape. First, we prayed for agape flowing out to the neighborhood around us, praying for the well-being of that neighborhood. Then we sensed the expansion of agape, ‘following’ the flowing farther and farther — throughout the whole city — praying for the well-being of every part of the city. Slowly we sensed the flowing of agape out in ever-widening circles — expanding out to the whole State of Colorado — east throughout the farm region, south through the cities and suburbs and the church camp, down to Raton Pass, west over the mountains, north to Ft. Collins and beyond.

We prayed for the flow of agape among all of America. Then, expanded our agape awareness out farther; first, to Canada, then to Mexico, and finally beyond. We continued holding more and more people in agape prayer until we held all the people of the world in agape prayer. Then we realized that the spiritual quality of agape has no boundaries — God’s agape goes where it will, not controlled by humans and not limited to humans — and so it flows beyond humans to all beings, including animals of the ground and birds of the air. Slowly we let our attention follow God’s agape as it spread throughout all of Creation.

After we let our attention slowly come back to our normal state of wakefulness, we followed up the meditation by discussing how the design of the 7 steps is meant to be a way to help deal with the false ‘myth of separation.’ We realized that most people spend their lives trying to formulate an identity based on being separate from all that is around them — and yet the reality of Life is we are connected with all that is around us. But as most of the great spiritual giants throughout history have suggested: we need to develop a different understanding of our relationship with what is around us.

Agape meditation in a group setting

So many months have gone by since I last posted because I was publishing my book based on this blog (Seven Steps of Agape Prayer). Also I wasted a few months in the almost futile attempt to sell copies (only 19 sold so far). Finally, I recently completed for a local church in Denver leading a 5-week series of evening group meditations based on Agape Prayer.

So now I can concentrate once again on posting to this blog. More than 4 years have gone by since I started this blog. And exactly a year ago yesterday I posted here my report about the amazing ‘coincidence’ that happened in a church worship service leading me to decide to submit my manuscript to a self-publishing company. So looking back over the year, I find it has been an exhilarating experience.

Leading the group meditations, using the steps outlined in my book, proved to be an amazing time of the book seeming to come to life.

Because the church’s pastor wanted the sessions to be Wednesday evenings but not on Ash Wed. nor on the day before Maundy Thur., I had to squeeze the 7 steps into only 5 evenings. I don’t recommend trying to do that. But even with that truncated schedule, the participants responded very well. After meditating, we had some lively discussions. I’ll describe these sessions in more detail in the next several postings.