CREDO Connection

A Resource for Wellness in the Episcopal Church

In This Issue

CREDO Lenten Series now a podcast

CREDO Bloggers explore Lent

March 2012

Greetings!

CREDO Faculty Development

& Convocation held in Memphis

CREDO Faculty

CREDO held its biennial Faculty Convocation February 14-18, preceded by the two-day Faculty Development. More than 175 people attended including Episcopal faculty, Presbyterian faculty, CREDO researchers, and invited speakers.

CREDO Lenten Series

Download as podcast series, too

Seeking First the Kingdom of God

Encountering Others as Ourselves

with the Rev. Dr. Michael Battle

Michael Battle

During this Lenten season, CREDO faculty member and author Michael Battle invites us to embark on a Lenten journey--a time of reflection each morning that raises important and sometimes scary questions about identity and relationship.

Michael explains: "Our fright is not so much in God as it is in our insecurities born out of an unexamined life. What tends to scare us is that when we pay better attention to God, our 'self' shows up with better clarity. God's light usually displays what we don't want to see."

But Michael urges us to fear not. "When we do this, scales fall from our eyes. We then see how to make a difference in the world for which Jesus died. God's death is scary (implying our own), but stay tuned in: Lent anxieties transform into joy."

To subscribe to this Lenten series, offered in both text and audio, click HERE and update your CREDO publication profile to include Lent 2012. The several-step process (which is designed to reduce your spam) just takes two minutes and will be well worth the trouble.

The series is now available as a complete podcast download. Subscribe here.

Or if you would prefer, an RSS feed to your email.

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CREDO Blogs
Lent as a season for self-reflection, but not self-absorption

The CREDO Bloggers are re-inking their quills, so ignore the groundhog's foreboding: Spring is just around the corner.

Sam Portaro writes in VENI that the transition from Epiphany to Lent, two liturgical seasons that seem to have nothing in common, is actually quite significant.

"Lent invites us to take a closer look at ourselves," he writes. And "it's by looking within ourselves that we begin to discern the many ways God is manifest in us, to see our way to self-confidence, and into the society of others."

Sam is addressing the shift from "God whom we tend to consider our own personal possession, or at least our own discovery, [to the God that] breaks out of our exclusive circle and embraces others."

That relationship with God is also addressed in today's CREDO Lenten reflection. "The Gospel can neither be abstract nor detached from ourselves," says Michael Battle in today's CREDO Lenten series "Exploring Identity in Relationship with God, with ourselves and with others." In the church of the first century and in that of our own, we must accompany the gospel and not stand apart from it.

Matthew Stockard, CREDO vocational blogger, strikes a similar chord in "Does Compassion Belong at Work?", this week's Transforming Work blog. Matthew poses the question we all ask at one time or another: Can we separate business and work place from the personal emotions and the interior life of those who work there? It seems clear that the answer is no--not without risk to our spiritual health ... and the workplace itself.

Subscribe to the CREDO blogs and receive notice when each is published. Read HERE.

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