Life 101 -- Basics of the Faith for Confirmation -- and A LOT MORE!

Grabbing a great idea from Bill Tully, rector of St. Bart's in NYC, I’ve created a new course, to be tried on a group of, I hope, willing learners and seekers, beginning at St. Thomas the Apostle, Wednesday, February 24th, the Wednesday after Ash Wednesday, and continuing each Wednesday during lent.

It’s called Life 101, and it will:

• Cover the basics of the faith, and prepare people for confirmation or reception (or reaffirmation) in the church; or
• Act as a refresher course; or
• Hopefully be a way to begin an honest appraisal of whether the church is the place for you.

But this will NOT be your routine catechism class!

The class will begin with life as we know it, not catechizing. We’ll ask the kinds of questions that keep us awake at night. We’ll seek the kinds of things we wish we had learned along the way but didn’t.

Questions like:

• How and why did the universe begin?
• What’s the point of living and why are we here?
• Are we alone in the universe, or why do I feel so alone now?
• Are moral values absolute or relative?
• Are all religions the same?
• Should the rich help the poor?
• Should I trust science?
• Can we know what Jesus really said?
• Why do Christians so often act like hypocrites?
• Are worship and prayer for real?

Not every moment of the teaching time is scripted, for the simple reason that I’ve tried to set up Life 101 so that your own questions are heard and wrestled with—and because I want to make room for creativity and fun.

There’s only so much that can be covered, of course. And in each session, having begun with the big wide-open questions, I pledge to get to the connection between the practice of faith and the big questions.

The Schedule will be: 6:30 p.m. Eucharist, 7:00 light repast, 7:30 p.m. class time.

Before then, help me by writing a question or questions which haunts you or which you feel to be urgent and submit them by email to me. We will use them to enliven our time together…for example, this question: “Why are we always striving for a life other than the one we’re living?”

You have yours, share them.