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.
Learn to Pray: An Advent Series
This Advent take some time to explore prayer with Saint Mark’s. Whether you are a brand-new beginner or a lifelong practitioner, talking about prayer in community can reveal something new to you about your relationship with God. Our series will be based on a book called Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone by James Martin, SJ. You won’t have to read the book to join us, but by all means pick up or borrow a copy if you can. It’s a practical and down-to-earth guidebook, and we’ll be mining it for insights and practices that help to build a stable, lively, open relationship with God: one in which we are (mostly) cooperating with grace and (mostly) accepting God’s reality as deeply as we can.
This series has both in-person and online sessions. You are welcome to join everything or drop in for a single session as you are able.
Sunday Forum: Learning to Pray
These sessions are in-person only, not recorded. We meet at 10 a.m. in the Parish Hall, with coffee
Sunday, November 30: You Can Pray
In this class we’ll talk about how prayer really is for everyone, and about how God builds on our experiences and strengths and weaknesses in prayer. We’ll talk about how to let go of beliefs and attitudes that get in our way.
Sunday, December 7: What Prayer Is (and isn’t)
This class will help us to think about what we are actually doing when we pray. Sometimes trying on definitions of prayer can open doors for us in our lives with God. Sometimes understanding the various definitions of prayer can help us work with others and have respect for their choices.
Sunday, December 14: What Happens in Prayer
New things are always happening when people pray, but it can still be helpful to hear more about what the experience of prayer might be like. This class will aim to help us let go of rigid expectations, fears, and misunderstandings.
Sunday, December 21: Ups and Downs
Famously, prayer can be both consoling and difficult, sometimes all at once. We’ll use this session to talk about why people stop praying, how to work with boredom and distraction, and what the gift of a lifetime of prayer might be.
Online series: Forms of Prayer
These sessions are held on Thursday nights from 8-9 p.m., on Zoom. Please complete the online form for the meeting link. Online sessions are not recorded.
This online series is meant to work with the Sunday Forum meetings in Advent, but you are welcome to attend even if you can’t be there on Sunday. Each week we will be introduced to a different form of prayer. After an introduction to a particular style of prayer we’ll spend ten or fifteen minutes praying together. Our sessions will close with time for conversation and questions. Come and benefit from the company of others as you pray this Advent.
Thursday, December 4: Centering prayer
We’ll make a simple effort to follow the breath in the presence of God, with some guidance. We’ll talk about resources for sustaining this practice, and ways to understand the relationship between prayer and meditation.
Thursday, December 11: The Rosary
This traditional practice has recently begun again in our parish, on Wednesdays after the 12:10 Mass. Come and learn more about how to engage this form of prayer and why it has been so powerful for so many Christians for so long.
Thursday, December 18. The Examen
This is a practice of reviewing the past day in the presence of God. The point is not to grade ourselves or feel guilty for what we’ve done, but to find and review the moments in which God may have been calling to us, and to learn more about responding.
Our Artistic Heritage and Its Care
November 9 - Up Close & Personal
Most of the time, we participate in the liturgy with many of the objects supporting the Celebration at a considerable distance from us. Our noses are in the hymnal when the processional cross passes by - most of us see only its reverse up close. We catch the glint of polished metal on the altar, the occasional sparkle of a gem in our ciborium.
This Sunday, Deborah Walberg will talk about a selection of metal objects used in our celebration of the liturgy - their history and manufacture, and the benefactors who offered them to the greater glory of God. The talk will be accompanied by photos of the fine details in our high altar crucifix, processional crosses, and other select objects from our sacristy.
November 16 - Preserving & Maintaining
This week Deb Walberg will discuss the materials and methods used to preserve and restore our artistic wonders to the Beauty of Holiness. Learn about best practice for cleaning and polishing the wrought iron, wood, silver and gold in our church, and the preservation and conservation standards maintained here. The lecture will be accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation showing before and after photos of some of the work that has been accomplished over the last nine months. You may even learn some tricks for polishing your own silver and brass!
Building Our Shared Ministry
This fall the Adult Forum will begin with a joyful celebration of the multiple forms of ministry practiced here at Saint Mark's. You may have met people who were serving coffee, or rejoiced in our music program, or experienced the prayerful work of altar servers at Mass. But have you gotten to hear about how they view the work they do? Do you know how to join any of these dedicated groups of servers? Do you have a deep sense of the importance of lay ministry in our parish and in the Anglo-Catholic tradition? This is your chance to find out more, share your own experiences and insights, and get to know the parish, again or for the first time. This series is brought to you by the Adult Forum in collaboration with the Stewardship Committee, who will present to welcome you at Coffee Hour after both the 9 a.m. and the 11 a.m. Masses throughout the season, and to help you connect to the rich life of this parish.
September 7 - Homecoming Sunday
Join the parish in our Ministry Fair, a celebration of all the ways you can reach out, sign on, pitch in, and help build up the good work that God has begun in this place. Tables will be set up and representatives will be waiting to greet you and answer questions you might have about joining in ministry with us.
September 14 - Fellowship in the Parish: Fellowship Groups Initiative
Join clergy and members to talk about a special fellowship initiative that we're offering this season. You'll have a chance to get to know others in a deeper way over shared food and conversation in the Fellowship Groups. You'll also hear at this session about our parish's thriving 20's/30's ministry and the various forms of hospitality that we extend all year.
September 21 - Outreach Ministries at Saint Mark's
Come learn about the Oxford Movement and its special focus on outreach as expressed in the Saturday Soup Bowl and other outreach ministries in our parish. What does the work of feeding the hungry have to do with worshipping God "in the beauty of holiness?"
September 28 - Children’s Formation
In this session we will learn more about the various ministries for children at Saint Mark's. This is a great place for parents and prospective parents to come ask questions, and also an opportunity for others in the parish to learn about the wonderful work done here and our exciting plans for this year.
October 5 - Liturgical Ministries
Every Sunday, and every day, actually, you can see lay people serving at the altar and reading from the scriptures here at Saint Mark's. Would you like to know more about what these volunteers do and hear about the theological underpinnings of their participation? This is a great chance to learn about liturgical service and also about the crucial and beautiful forms of service that the altar guild and others undertake behind the scenes.
October 12 - Music at Saint Mark's
Hear all about our Parish Choir, our Choristers, and the Saint Mark’s Singers. Staff from the music program will be present to talk about what they do, how you might get involved, and how our music program is expanding and developing this year.
October 19 - Welcome at Saint Mark’s
Have you ever wanted to be an usher, or to work to make newcomers to the parish feel better included? You can learn about the Ushers Guild and the Newcomer Committee at Saint Mark's in this session.
October 26 - Stewardship Sunday, no forum
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 6: 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.