LABYRINTH

YOUTH GROUP AT LABYRINTH

Friday, June 26th 7:00 to 9:00 PM

The youth from Reformation, Atonement, and Christ the Good Shepherd will be joining together to visit a nearby outdoor labyrinth. YOU are welcome to join us!
Come meet new friends and walk a mystical path of embodied prayer at this twilight gathering. We’ll have snacks and time for fellowship and personal sharing.

Walking the Labyrinth
• Many people have walked here and amazing things have happened.
• This is a place where people have felt God's love for the first time.
• This is a place where people have cried out to God in despair and found hope.
• This is a place where people have come to celebrate milestones in life.
• This is a place where people have brought questions to God and found direction.
• This is a place where people have confessed sins and found forgiveness.
• This is a place where people have brought tremendous grief and losses and felt peace.

Walkers of the labyrinth experience the reunification of the whole being which moves together on the meandering paths. Since the path of the labyrinth is unicursal—one path leading into the center and back out again—the walker does not need to concentrate on where to go or which way to turn and is not confronted with any intersections or dead-ends. The mind does not shut down, but finds its rhythm with the rest of the person, so that the wisdom of body and heart might also be mined. That alone is a healing experience. By walking the labyrinth, the whole self is brought to prayer.

WALKING A LABYRINTH

There is no right or wrong way to walk a labyrinth. Everyone’s experience is their own, and each labyrinth walk will be experienced differently. Here are some common helpful reminders.

• Begin when you are ready. Do not walk if you do not wish to.
• Bring your whole self into the labyrinth. Don’t check your mind at the entrance, but do not let it dominate your walk. Let spirit, heart, body, and mind be in balance.
• Find your own rhythm and speed, whatever comes naturally or feels right for you.
• Stop whenever or wherever you wish or have a desire or pull to linger in a spot.
• Since the path is unicursal, if you walk with others, you will encounter others along the way, hopefully walking their own rhythm and speed, stopping where they are drawn. Consideration is appreciated and passing is appropriate.
• Generally folks do not speak or touch on the labyrinth. This illustrates that we are both never alone and always alone. Trust the sacred space to take care of you and others. Attend to your journey in order to minimize distractions from and to others.
• Use the center as a resting and reflecting place. You may stay there as long as you wish. Do not leave until you are nudged.
• Pay attention. All that you notice, experience, and hear are possible entry points into meaning. Use all that occurs as material, but let nothing distract. Do not latch on to anything but rather be present to what is. Be open to find God in all things.
• After your walk you may wish to jot down some notes about your experience in a journal.
• You may walk with something specific, or just be present to whatever Spirit is giving.

WHY DO LABYRINTHS WORK? Labyrinths work because when we intentionally enter sacred space, we often bring a willingness to connect with the Holy, to listen to the Holy, and attend to the wounds, stories, and joys of our lives. We are there because we desire to give a hearing to our journey and, at some level, desire transformation.

Another reason the labyrinth is so effective is that it allows us to bring our whole self to prayer and the processes of healing, celebrating, and discernment. We are free from the tyranny of anxiety which often snares us when we approach the movements of our lives from an intellectual perspective.

Even if a major revelation or transformation does not occur while walking a labyrinth, most people report a sense of calming and centering. Little scientific research has been done on the effects of walking a labyrinth; however, the back and forth meander pattern may calm an individual by balancing his or her energy or the activity of the two hemispheres of the brain.

A six-circuit peace labyrinth is located in the backyard of Labyrinth House and is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You are welcome to come and walk any time a group is not scheduled to use the space. Many folks just stop in and walk on a whim.

For more information, visit the website:
http://lifelistening.com/news/programs/the-labyrinth/


If you'd like to join us, just let us know - either Brother Christopher at yfm@atonementrochester.org or kwr221@aol.com, and meet us at Atonement Lutheran Church at 1900 Westfall Road at 7 PM.

Kingdom Bound

KINGDOM BOUND

Mark your Calendars - Kingdom Bound 2009 is August 2-5!

Western New York's premier Christian music festival at Darien Lake. Kingdom Bound Ministries Inc. exists to present the gospel through a variety of art forms including concerts, outreaches and an annual performing arts festival; to bring people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and to encourage believers in their walk with God.

http://www.kingdombound.org

We’re organizing youth groups around Rochester to attend on Monday, August 3^rd – we’d love to have YOU join us! Get in touch with your youth group and tell them you want to go! We'll coordinate details about meeting up at the park.

Tickets for one days admission (including Darien Lake admission) are $49.00 If you have a Darien Lake season pass, you get a $5.00 discount.

Here are the highlights of Monday’s line-up that we're especially excited to see:

• Relevant Worship
• Casting Crowns
• Justin Lookadoo

You can see more info about the artists and speakers on the Kingdom Bound website.

W hy is youth and family ministry important?

The Five Principles for Youth and Family Ministry, identified by Dr. David Anderson of The Youth & Family Institute.

Faith is always passed on relationally and incarnationally, as God demonstrated in Jesus Christ, God’s ultimate gift to humankind, with the Word made flesh.

Faith is formed by the power of the Holy Spirit through personal, trusted relationships. Virtually all of us can point to adults who were the first voice and hands and face of Jesus in our lives. We can equip all of our adults to become this God-bearer in the lives of children and youth.

The church is a living partnership between the ministry of the congregation and the ministry of the home. The body of Christ is not limited to the building where we worship on Sunday, but is loose in the world, especially evident as we partner congregations and homes to make Christ known.

Where Christ is present in faith, the home is church, too. Home is often the first church for children, where they learn to pray and hear the stories of faith from the people they love most in the world. For those who are not engaged in congregational life, the front door of your congregation may very well be the front doors of the homes of your members. Faith is caught more than it is taught.

Who were the saints who made faith contagious and utterly irresistible to you? How did they do that? Often, it was not by preaching a sermon or having you memorize the Small Catechism, but by loving you, by being the person you wanted to become, by gently sharing that you, too, are beloved of God. If we want Christian children and youth, we need Christian adults and parents. So, we have come full circle. We need to equip adults to be able to have those personal, trusted relationships that the Holy Spirit will use to help children and youth to see Jesus. How will we begin? A friend recently quipped, “Jesus blessed the children and taught the adults. We, in the church, have reversed it.” We need to make sure that we have robust Christian education for all ages and that we connect the generations, so that they will hear one another’s faith stories.

Then, we need to teach all of our adults and youth and children to do the Four Keys for Nurturing Faith, at home, in the congregation, on a walk, in the school cafeteria, in our workplace. These are simple faith practices that can be woven into our everyday life together.

They are:

1. Caring Conversations We need to be available to talk and, especially, to listen to one another. This is the floor under relationships, that allow us to talk about all of the important things in life.

2. Devotions Turn up the faith talk under caring conversations and you have devotions. Help children find themselves in God’s story and
God in their=2 0story. Let Scripture be God’s fresh and living Word for them each day.

3. Rituals and Traditions We all have them; now, just fine tune them to be God-bearing. Light a candle to remind family and friends that we gather around the Light of the World. Make the sign of the cross on each forehead each night, remembering their baptism and God’s love that has claimed them and will not let them go.

4. Service Filled with caring conversation, devotions, rituals and traditions, we are free to pour ourselves out in service, sharing the love of Christ that fills us to overflowing. Make it a part of every day, a natural way of loving God back, not a “got to,” but a “get to.”

God’s in the midst of this shift to Youth and Family Ministry, calling all of us to be about passing on faith in Jesus Christ to all the generations. A friend calls this, “the reformation of our time!”

Picnic in the Park

Picnic in the Park
Tuesday, August 18th, 6 PM until?

A YOUTH AND FAMILY EVENT
Join us at the Canalside Shelter in Genesee Valley Park for a fun get-together. We'll have a potluck picnic, games, biking/walking on the canal path, fellowship and evening devotions.

Watch for more details here and in the GFL Conference Calendar

Drive-In Movie Night

Youth Drive-In Movie Night

Thursday, July 23, 2009 at the Vintage Drive-In in Avon, NY

It wouldn't be summer without a trip to the Vintage Drive-In in Avon!

Join us for one or both movies (double-feature, one price). We'll meet up and park near each other and share fellowship and devotions before the movie starts.

More details to come!

Contact office@atonementrochester for more details.

Rochester Red Wings!

Thrivent Builds Night at the Park

Rochester RedWings vs Lehigh Valley IronPigs

5th Annual Thrivent Lutheran Night at the RedWings.
Picnic 5-6 PM, Gametime 6:05 PM

Adults $13.00 Youth 4-12 $5.00
Game only, no picnic is $2.50 Reservations by July 5th.

This is a fundraiser for the Thrivent Habitat House.
for more info call Frank Dutt 671-2250 or fd516md@rochester.rr.com

Time:5:00PM Saturday, July 11th

Location:Frontier Field