The Tuesday Study Group will soon be starting its eleventh year together. A brief history of who we are is HERE and an outline of our lessons over the years is HERE. My anticipated studies for this year through the summer are below.
Beginning on Tuesday, January 10 we will begin our study of Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep. The book is a meditation on the final prayer in Compline. 1979 BCP 134. The book relates how we can continue to walk in the way of faith without denying the darkness in our lives. It is about the terrible yet common suffering we each shoulder, and what trusting in God might mean in the midst of it. The book is written by Tish Harrison Warren. She is a priest in the Anglican Church of North America. She writes a weekly New York Times column and is a contributor to Christianity Today. The book relates her experience of passing through a dark night of the soul and how our liturgy prayed for her during this time.
For Easter, we will continue our tradition of reading a contemplative work. This year, we will be studying Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another by Archbishop Rowan Williams. In his book, Abp. Williams walks us through the Sayings of the Desert Fathers to allow us to better see that the place where God happens is in relationship with one another. The Desert Fathers were the first Christian monastics and were those who sought martyrdom from the world by going into the desert. They spent most of their lives in prayer and isolation. However, their isolated existence made their times of gathering for worship or otherwise, that more precious. For them, a relationship with eternal truth and love required a relationship with others and an intentional cultivation and mending of those relationships. In tending these human relationships, God is made more fully known.
This summer, we will be studying Peter’s letters. Like most of the New Testament epistles, these two letters were written to churches undergoing external persecution and internal turmoil. The letters encourage those suffering through these troubles by reminding them that we have all been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection (1 Peter 1:3) so that we may become partakers of the divine nature itself (2 Pet. 1:4). These letters give us a great opportunity to dive deep into nature of baptism and Christ’s harrowing of hell on Good Saturday. All you will need for this study is a bible. I will be using Ben Worthington’s book Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians, Vol. II as background.
During the year, we will be celebrating Mardi Gras on February 21 (Ash Wednesday is on February 22) and having our Seder Meal on April 4 (Good Friday is April 7). RSVPs are appreciated.
Tuesday night is intended to be a time of fellowship, a place to explore our faith, and a means of walking with one another in Christ. Guests are always invited and you are also encouraged to forward these emails or share the blog posts. Our format for our studies next year will remain the same. A home-cooked dinner will be served at 6. Our discussions will begin with a psalm around 6:45. And we will end our time together with the praying of Compline about 8.
He also said, “Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we gain our brother, we have gained God, but if we scandalize our brother, we have sinned against Christ.”
Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Anthony the Great (251-356), saying #9.