Thurber Conversation Archives

Heart-Work of Love: Meister Eckhart’s Vision of Wholeness in a Time of Fragmentation
Wednesday 24 January in the Thurber Room – Meal at 19h; Presentation 19h45-21h15

“The eye with which I see God is exactly the same eye with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowledge, one love.” One seeing: this is the key to faithful living. One knowledge: this is a theme central to the writings of Meister Eckhart (d. 1328), which speaks prophetically to a hurried culture like ours, riddled with brokenness and burdened with anxiety. One love: if we could find a way to live into this, personally and as a society, we would be healthier and happier. The challenge is putting such a depth-vision into practice. This talk offers the opportunity to do just this: to drink deeply from the wellspring of a vision like Eckhart’s that invites us to “make all things new,” beginning with our own lives. Courageous and even audacious, Eckhart’s language was well ahead of his times, offering us the kind of wisdom we need to live into the “new” life that faith promises. Such a vision, anticipating the reformers’ later emphasis on radical grace, embodies Jesus’ sense that “eternal life” invites us to live into ever deeper love—here and now. Come to taste the fruit of this bold visionary. Expect the stirrings of transformation.

Prof. Mark Burrows, Ph.D. is well-known internationally for his writings and as a lecturer and retreat leader. A published poet with a doctorate in historical theology, he has devoted his energies as teacher and scholar to the intersection of theology and the arts, above all as mediated by the mystics. These offer us what he describes as “the most practical and life-changing sources” in our tradition. Currently professor of theology and literature at the University of Applied Sciences in Bochum, Germany, he is the author (with Jon Sweeney) of a recent book of poems inspired by Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart. Meditations for the Restless Soul (Hampton House, 2017), a title one reviewer recently described as “brimming with passion, originality, and depth”.

 Thurber Lectures is an adult community gathering and growth time that is open to all.

C.S. Lewis and New Creation
Tuesday 5 December in the Thurber Room – Meal at 19h; Presentation 19h45-21h15

Many of C.S. Lewis's stories – Narnia, Perelandra, The Great Divorce, Till We Have Faces -- are inspired by images of new creation. We will be discussing what makes these images so rich and vibrant, and how they shape C.S. Lewis's Christian outlook. We will discuss the ideas – both religious and literary – that Lewis draws upon in crafting these images of new creation, and how they can inspire us, too, as we seek to shape our life and our world according to God's promise.

Dr. Judith Wolfe is Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. She studied literature and philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and first literature and then philosophical theology at Oxford. Before moving to St Andrews, she taught at Bard College Berlin and at St John's College, Oxford. Her work is on Christian eschatology and on the interfaces between philosophy, theology and literature. She has a particular love for C.S. Lewis and the Inklings, on whom she has co-edited three books (C.S. Lewis and the Church, C.S. Lewis's Perelandra: Reshaping the Image of the Cosmos, and C.S. Lewis and his Circle) and edits an academic journal, The Journal of Inklings Studies.

 Thurber Lectures is an adult community gathering and growth time that is open to all.

Astrobiology
Thursday 16 November in the Thurber Room – Meal at 19h; Presentation 19h45-21h15

Astrobiology is the quest for life in the Universe and the study of life from a planetary perspective; it is a new scientific field based on the collaboration between different 'hard sciences' such as astronomy, geology, and biology. When it raises questions of meaning and purpose, the confrontation with theology becomes indispensable and stimulating. We will discuss the new meaning of the ancient theme of the plurality of inhabited worlds. Finally, we will ask: What do we mean by the question " Are we alone in the universe?"

 Anne Marie Reijnen (b.1957 in Utrecht) is a Protestant theologian. In 2015-2016, she was in residence at the Centre for Theological Inquiry in Princeton (New Jersey) to participate in the "Inquiry on the Societal Implications of Astrobiology " funded by NASA. She currently holds the Kairos Chair for Ecumenical theology at the Catholic University in Paris, after several years of ministry in the parish and of teaching as the professor for Systematic theology at the FUTP in Brussels. Dr. Reijnen is the past President of the French-speaking Paul Tillich Society and has been a commissioner of Faith and Order (WCC). Since 2011 she is a member of the Groupe des Dombes.

 Thurber Lectures is an adult community gathering and growth time that is open to all.

Modern Cosmology and Jesus
Thursday 21 September in the Thurber Room – Meal at 19h; Presentation 19h45-21h15

Prof. Keith Ward (Emeritus Professor of Divinity, Oxford University; Professorial Research Fellow, Heythrop College)

Since 1922 our view of the universe has changed completely. Before then we knew nothing of other galaxies, of the 'Big Bang', or of the age of the universe. Does this affect the Gospel of Jesus. Dr. Ward thinks it does, and that it calls for a new Reformation, in which the cosmic status of Christ is fully affirmed, and in which the Gospel becomes relevant in new and unexpected ways.