Guest speaker: Firoozeh Tuller

My name is Firoozeh Tuller and I am here to speak to you about the
story of my life, my growing years in Iran, my move to this country,
and the challenges and events that led me to adopting the Vippassna
meditation technique as a spiritual practice in my life.
Eight years ago as I was sitting in Bill Kerley’s office for one of
my therapy sessions, he spoke to me about this retreat. I knew
immediately this was something I wanted to do. My life had been
complicated and I was lost and confused. However, I was in no way ready
for such a challenge then. So 8 years later, just as I entered the
fourth decade of my life, I concluded I was ready.

Download 20050130.mp3

Download 20050130.pdf

Dear All,

This Sunday we will be talking a lot about values around the
theme: "Values: Common Ground or Source of Divisiveness?" We
will be discussing what values are and taking a look at our own personal
values and the beliefs and behaviors that support those values.

On Wednesday of this week, when the political news commentators were
analyzing the results of the Presidential election, Jeff Greenfield,
one of the senior political analysts for CNN, make this
statement: "The Democrats did not do a good job of paying
attention to the way people live their everyday lives and their values."

Nations, political parties, corporations, institutions, families,
marriages, individuals, churches, and even church school classes, are
all guided by their values. There are several questions that arise
for all of us: are those values conscious or unconscious? Do the
values we espouse match the way we behave, or the decisions we make?

Our speaker this Sunday will be one of our own class members,
Reverend Tom Daugherty. Tom and his wife, Jerilynn, have been
members of the Ordinary Life Class for several years and are well
known to many of us. Tom is a clergy member of the Texas Annual
Conference of the United Methodist Church, and until his retirement
in June of this year served as Vice President for Spiritual Care and
Values Integration for The Methodist Hospital System. During his
time with Methodist, Tom led the hospital system in a values
integration effort that resulted in that organization having the
highest degree of values alignment out of 800 corporate clients in 26
countries using the Corp Tools Cultural Assessment developed by
Richard Barrett and Associates.

Laura

Download 20041107.pdf
Download 20041107.mp3

This week, Rebecca Rucker, Director of Community Mental
Health Services for IntraCare Hospital will be our guest speaker.
She is also a recent member of St. Paul's. The topic of her
discussion will be...

All Souls -- Remembering Our Loved Ones:

The last day of October marks the beginning in the church of a period
known as Hallowtide or "All Saintside" when Christians remember those
who have died. All Hallows Eve or Halloween, October 31, has Celtic
origins being originally the feast of Sanhain ('sow'inn), the last
night of the Celtic year, when all kinds of spirits were thought to
be active. The Celts believed that this was a time when the boundary
between the spirit world and the earthly world is at its thinnest and
when spirits are most likely to be seen on earth. While this veil
between the two worlds is thin, we will explore what saints in our
modern history offer to teach us.

Laura

Download 20041031.mp3

Hello everyone! I'm filling in for Bill on sending out the previews
while he is vacationing overseas. As he has indicated earlier, we've
got a great line-up of guest speakers while he is away.

Is it possible that Christmas is only..67 days away?!? How does that
make you feel? Do you feel calm? Do you feel stress? Would you like
to create a joyful stress free (could there really be a stress free
Christmas?) Christmas? This Sunday Kelly Sullivan, ministerial
intern at St. Paul's, will present UnPlug the Christmas Machine which
will help you make choices about how you spend your time, what to do
with your time and with whom you spend your time at Christmas.

Laura

Download 20041024.mp3