Advent Series: Embodying Faith, Week 4
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Advent Series: Embodying Faith, Week 4
December 20, 2023, 5:00 pm–6:30 pm
Led by Kristen Leigh Mitchell, M.Div.
We live in a cultural context where mind & body, sacred & secular, and heaven & earth are perceived as being separate from one another. Old cultural messages we inherited from Western Europe – particularly during the Enlightenment – continue to confuse our ability to experience the inherent connection between our spiritual and our material lives. Advent is a season that invites us to make room for the incarnate Christ, who entered through birth into the messy, complicated world of human life and death, and preached the good news that the Kingdom of God was already in our midst. In this class, we will explore some of the most common inward and outward barriers to experiencing and embracing the fully embodied faith of Jesus within our current cultural context.
Week 4: Christianity & The Body
What does it mean that Christ took on human flesh and was “born from the virgin Mary”? In this last session, we will look at some of the complexities of bodily existence, and notice how Jesus invites us into an even more fully embodied human experience, by challenging the innate human desire to reject the body and “become like gods.” We’ll also take some time to process the discussions from the last four weeks as we consider together what this invitation to Christ-like embodiment might mean for us in our everyday lives.
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Kristen Leigh Mitchell earned her M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University in NYC, where she spent four years researching the relationship between religion, spirituality, psychology, theology, and the arts. Her master’s thesis offered a cultural and historical analysis of how Western churches came to define the relationship between the “sacred” and the “secular.” She has published articles on early Christian music, liturgy, medieval church history, theology and film, artistic vocation, and Biblical interpretation. Kristen spent several years working as resident librarian and later Assistant Director for The Servant Leadership School, a spiritual formation program based in NC that teaches embodied faith through contemplative spiritual practices in the context of ecumenical Christian community. She also just so happens to be Joe’s wife!
You can learn more about Kristen’s writing and other work by visiting her website: www.kristenleighmitchell.com
