Adult Forum

On Sundays at 10 a.m., our parish gathers for discussion and teaching on topics that matter to us as Christians. Usually our talks are energetic and fulfilling, with lots of great ideas in the air. Come by for a good cup of coffee, stay for a great class and a rousing discussion! All classes meet in-person in the Parish Hall, ending in time for the 11 a.m. Mass. Contact Mother Nora Johnson if you have questions or would like to hear more.

Worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness

The Adult Forum during Lent

This Lent, the clergy of Saint Mark’s will offer a series on how we worship during the Sunday Forum.  Sessions will explore worship from many perspectives, from the role of beauty to the physical actions we undertake in receiving the Eucharist. We will look at worship as sanctification and as sacrifice.  We will pay careful attention to the Anglican tradition of worship that nurtures us here at Saint Mark’s. Sessions will be free-standing—you don’t need to come to one to understand the next—but linked by the sense that we have a deep need to celebrate the fundamental joy of worshiping God in this time of change and uncertainty.   

“Worship, in all its grades and kinds, is the response of the creature to the Eternal: nor need we limit this definition to the human sphere. There is a sense in which we may think of the whole life of the Universe, seen and unseen, conscious and unconscious, as an act of worship, glorifying its Origin, Sustainer, and End”. - Evelyn Underhill, Worship

March 9: Worship and Beauty
Mother Johnson will offer this look at the way beauty might work in our lives.  Are there moral aspects to beauty?  Does beauty teach us something in the context of worship that is useful in our lives more broadly?  

March 16: Worship: The Eucharist
Father Cobb will lead a conversation placing our participation in the Eucharist within the three-fold pattern of prayer- Daily Office, Private Prayer, and Eucharist.  The session will include reflections on habits and prayers that leave us ready to receive the Sacrament with a fuller sense of preparation and intention.  

March 23: Worship as Sacrifice
According to Evelyn Underhill, “the most significant development in human religion has been the movement of the idea of sacrifice from propitiation to love.”  With Mother Dure we will look closely at what she means. 

March 30: Worship: The Sanctification of Life
How does our regular practice of worship change our lives?  How does worship help us to live holy lives?  Mother Johnson will explore the notion of “sanctification” and its relationship to the practices we follow in corporate prayer. 

April 5: Worship: The Anglican Tradition
The final session will look at the ways in which the particular habits and customs of Saint Mark’s reflect the larger history and traditions of the Anglo-Catholic movement as a particular stream within the larger Anglican Tradition.  Father Cobb will explore some of the theological and cultural shifts that have shaped the traditions of which we are a part.

January at the Forum: The poems of R. S. Thomas 

R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest. His austerely beautiful writing captures something distinctly modern about faith, even as it evokes the presence of God in unlikely and unpromising landscapes. We have been enjoying his poems about Christmas and the Epiphany, and will continue to look at his works through the month of January.

January 12: R. S. Thomas on prayer
Thomas often speaks bluntly about prayer, and about the discouraging sense of God's absence. But his poems often manifest a paradoxical sense of the divine presence. This session will focus on the poems "Kneeling," and "In a Country Church" among others.

January 19: R. S. Thomas on ministry
Thomas seems in some ways to have been an unlikely priest, and his poems sometimes sound almost disparaging about his rural congregation. Join this session for a look at the striking way Thomas imagines the role of the priest and of the church more broadly.

January 26, R. S. Thomas on the environment
Many of Thomas's poems talk about the (broken) relationship between science, technology, and God's earth. We'll look at a series of poems that are candid about environmental decay even as they allow us to see God in action in the physical world.