December Bulletin
Thursday 2nd January 2014
Our weekly group has continued to listen to – and be inspired by – Richard Holloway’s recent CD presentation (available through PCN). Although mainly concerned with his book, Leaving Alexandria, he also ranges wider and one of the topics in this week’s offering concerned death, specifically assisted death. That engendered a lively discussion within our group – why do we treat death the way we do in the modern world? In years gone by, dying seemed to be seen as a part of the normal cycle of life. Now it’s something we find difficult to talk about and the emphasis is on extending life by any means, sometimes with the result of causing a ‘bad’ death. For those of us who have moved beyond belief in some kind of after-life, we may feel we have lost the comfort and assurance of our ‘heavenly reward’. But surely that means that it is the ‘now’ that is special and important. As Eckhardt Tolle says, “When you make the present moment, instead of past or future, the focal point of your life, your ability to enjoy what you do, and with it the quality of your life, increases dramatically”. We have also signed up for the new DVD study course called “Painting the Stars”, the latest offering from the Living the Questions folk (and also available through the PCN library). It contains contributions from, among others, Jack Spong and Gretta Vosper, two of our favourite authors. We have found all the previous LTQ study courses extremely interesting and worthwhile and are looking forward to this one with much anticipation. We meet most Thursday afternoons and would invite you to join us on our journey.