This insightful day begins at 10 AM with a lecture and messages by Carol Parrish and assistants ($4 donation). From 11:15 to closing, students and others share their personal intuitive skill-astrology, numerology, psychic and Shustah attunements, Reiki, Healing Touch, and others-in 15-minute private appointments ($8 each).
Learn more about Skills Day (pdf)

In my childhood, I expected that church was the place where I would learn about the deep mysteries of existence and have some truly eye-opening, otherworldly experiences. After all, church certainly looked more mystical than my home, my school, or the shopping mall. But the older I got, the more boring and stultified church came to seem. By the time I quit going, in my early teens, I was convinced that religion was little more than hypocrisy and lingering superstition. Still, I always held on to a kind of wistful feeling that there must have been something wonderful hidden away in the recesses of my childhood church - some inner secrets that I had never discovered and that no one in charge had bothered to show me.

Richard Smoley has made a study of the inner secrets of Western religions for most of his adult life. He's written two books, Hidden Wisdom (Penguin Putnam) - which surveys Western esoteric traditions in general - and his latest, Inner Christianity (Shambhala), which focuses on the lesser-known myths, symbols, and metaphors of the West's predominant religious tradition. He also edited the late, lamented GNOSIS magazine, a journal of religious inquiry.

A graduate of Harvard and Oxford in classics and philosophy, Smoley says that his conscious spiritual work began in graduate school in England, when he first delved into the Jewish mystical system known as the Kabbalah. "Its intricate delineation of levels of the visible and invisible universe spoke to my intellect," he recalls. "Its profound understanding of the Bible touched the part of me that was brought up a Christian."
Read more

ORDINATION
Wednesday, November 4, 5:00 p.m.
Light of Christ Community Church
Sparrow Hawk Village - All are welcome!

CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
Friday - Saturday, November 6 - 7
Special Guest Presenter, Richard Smoley
                          Inner Christianity: A Way to Your True Center
Books by Richard Smoley:
     Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism
     Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions
     Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition

CELEBRATION GALA FOR REV. CAROL PARRISH
Saturday, November 7, 7:30 p.m.
Fellowship Hall - All are welcome!

Some of our readers may be familiar with TED, a small non-profit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Their annual conferences in the U.S. and U.K. bring together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. I often go to their Web site to view their recently posted videos from previous conferences. The one I have chosen to share here has been a most popular video since it was posted in March 2008, Jill Bolte Taylor's Powerful Stroke of Insight.

Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist who experienced a stroke in 1996 and observed (as a scientist would) as her brain functions shut down, one by one. In this 19 minute video she shares her amazing spiritual metamorphosis.

Watch the video here

Would you like to share an inspiring article, video, your personal artwork or poem? If so, please contact Amy Upperman, Sancta Sophia Seminary News editor, at SSSnews@sanctasophia.org.