Living from a Deeper Place Within: A Journey into Presence, Discernment, Embodiment: Sundays in January at 9:30 am in 310
During the first four Sundays of the new year, the classes offered by Winston Charles will invite us to journey together into deeper communion with the Holy One and with our full selves. The path to be taken will wind through ancient traditions of contemplative faith long forgotten or ignored by most of the Western Christian church, through deeper presence with the Holy Presence, the life-giving core of prayer. By learning to turn more to this deeper place within, where our attention focuses on the invitation of God, we discern more clearly what is ours to do and not to do in order to become more fully the persons and the communities we are created to be and called to become. From this deep spring of living water arise joy and gratitude, compassion and courage, creativity and generativity as we embody the very presence of the Beloved into the world, whether that be in our families and friendships or in actions to confront and heal the pain and injustices of our society. By such living, we follow in the way of Jesus, the very embodiment of the Holy into the world. This is the journey of our faith that calls us so dearly and graciously into fullness of life and love.
Winston B. Charles grew up attending St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Bennettsville, a small town in South Carolina. He graduated from the University of the South (Sewanee) and Virginia Theological Seminary. Ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1974, Winston served parishes in the Dioceses of South Carolina, New York, and North Carolina before retiring from parish ministry in 2008 after fifteen years as rector of Christ Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. In midcourse, he earned a Ph.D. in Church History from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. For more than a decade, he has been involved in many ways with the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, which for fifty years has been reclaiming the Christian tradition of contemplative prayer and spirituality, teaching how to live and lead from the Spiritual Heart. Winston, Judy, and their daughter Julia all live in the Triangle, enjoying the beauty of the Carolinas.
Contact: Nancy Petty