ENGAGING BEAUTY
In today's world, the average person (including the average American Christian) can easily slip through their life without ever opening their heart to Beauty--and to the life, joy, transcendence, sorrow, intimacy, romance, and pain that Beauty brings. All of us hunger for Beauty, yet few will answer its haunting call. The purpose of this class is to learn to hear that call, to recognize it--wherever it is to be found--and then learn to open vulnerably to that which we desire and fear more than anything, to allow it to transform us forever.
TIME AND PLACE
We will meet for two hours once per week for twelve weeks at Desi and Rose Starr's house on the northeastern edge of downtown Denver. If you are interested in taking Engaging Beauty, please email me a list of all the times during the week that you would be available to meet (my contact information is below). I will try to find a time that can accommodate everyone's schedules, if possible. My earnest hope is to begin this class the last week of January or the first week of February.
COST
The cost will be $25 per class (which is $300 for twelve classes). If you are interested in taking this class but would not be able to because of financial reasons, or if you are someone who would like to help subsidize this class for a needy brother or sister, please let me know.
REQUIREMENTS
You will only be required to buy one book for this class, The Healing Path by Dan Allender. It costs about ten dollars plus shipping on Amazon.com. I'll copy the rest of the readings and place them on Google Documents as PDF files, and you will be able to read them for free or print them off if you want to. The reading for this course should be manageable and engaging, and I will do my best to require only what is necessary, while making additional resources available to those who would find them life giving. Along with the readings, you will be asked to commit to spending at least one hour a week alone with the Romancer, that is, in solitude and contemplative prayer. If this is intimidating to you, don't worry, we will discuss it in depth during our first class and grow in our understanding of it throughout the course. I promise that by the end of the course you will look forward to spending your hour in silence!
MY END OF THE DEAL
In my adult life, I have probably thought about Beauty and intimacy with God more than I have consciously thought about anything else, and I have suffered much in pursuing Romance and the Romancer. I promise to bring all of my passion and desire to teaching this class on the subject I love most. If you are interested in taking this journey with me, please contact me (Alex Malaska) by phone at 330.402.2216 or by email at alexmalaska@gmail.com. And I look forward to seeing God transform our hearts as we engage Beauty together!
Exciting! Jan, I've added this blog to my Google Reader to keep up with what New Wine Community is up to :)
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I don't want to post negative to what seems like a Christian website, but Healing Path offers little by way of substantive reflection or practical remedy. The treatment of redemptive living makes almost no reference to Christ; indeed the entire book could have been written by a conscientious Mormon or moralist, so sparse are any references to Christian theological frameworks or Scripture. Allender attempts to integrate the discontinuous series of chapters by running a few anecdotes across the spans, but this effort largely fails.
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