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New Emotionally Healthy Courses Coming Soon!

Our next Emotionally Healhty Spirituality Course is scheduled to run Thursday Evenings (7-8:30 pm) from January 26-March 16. For more information and for the link to register click here.

A daytime course will be starting on Monday morning, March 20th.

A different eight week course - Emotionally Healthy Relationships - will be coming on Thursday Evenings starting on April 27. The EH Relationships course is great for everyone looking to foster healthy interpersonal skills. It would also be an excellent investment for couples looking to improve communication!

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Good Afternoon, Covenant Family.

I used a science object lesson on Sunday morning and I'm excited to share another science image with you today! This week I hope and pray your encouraged by the following thoughts offered by Glenn Robitaille. For those who don't know Glenn, he is many things in our community. Glenn is the founding pastor of Covenant. He is a leader in the areas of spiritual care, ethics, and trauma support at Waypoint. But perhaps most importantly, he is a friend to many of us; and a husband, father, grandfather, son, and brother. Oh, yeah . . . and a Cleveland Browns fan! Thanks, Glenn, for sharing these thoughts with us!

Jon

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Spirituality in the Spaces

It can be argued that spirituality is the part of life that exists in the spaces. In the physical, atomic world, a very small and dense nucleus of protons and neutrons is surrounded by a “cloud” of electrons with an orbit 100,000 times the diameter of the nucleus. That means, in addition to the electrons, there is an awful lot of space in an electron cloud. Even in substances as hard as diamonds, far more empty space exists between the subatomic particles than there is space occupied by those particles. If not for the electrical bonds between electrons and their nuclei, solid matter would not exist.

Spirituality is another realm where space figures largely. Spirituality can be described as a philosophical dance between certainty and expectation. Between the dense nucleus of our confidences and the immense “cloud” of our expectation is a vast frontier of mystery. So vast is this mystery that one must wonder how solid ground ever manages to emerge in the spiritual realm. Were it not for the spiritual bonds between our certainties and our expectation, solid faith would not exist.

In Hebrews 11:1 we are told, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is what adds substance to our hopes and provides confidence in the midst of mystery. It is a formula often forgotten in world where mystery often gets supplanted by bravado.

It is my belief that radical fundamentalists err at this very juncture. For whatever reason, the spaces are replaced by rigidity and compression; imagination is displaced by exactness; and questions become the enemy of devotion. There is a huge difference between truth and truly believing, and when true belief is defended at the expense of tolerance and compassion, the results are often catastrophic.

Francis Bacon once observed, "A prudent question is one-half of wisdom." Questions are not the enemy of faith. Without the leaven of curiosity the joy of discovery is not possible. In all areas of discovery, prudence invites us to “stand on our desk” or “turn the gem” to observe other facets—to be open to the inspiration that comes from knowing that we simply do not know, yet choose to believe. Anthony Robbins said, "Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers."

Spirituality in the spaces honors the question and lives in the answer. While the answer is often held in common with others who share our beliefs, it is always personal and, for those who dare to live in the spaces, imparts the gift of humility.

My regular challenge to the confident is, “I have ten good questions for every answer you’ve got.” Spiritual life does not depend on having answers. It is more a matter of valuing the mystery and having the courage to live confidently within it.

Glenn A. Robitaille, M.Div., D.Min., RP, MPCC