EMAIL ChrisGlaserMDiv@aol.com

SAMPLE TOPICS FOR RETREATS, WORKSHOPS, OR PRESENTATIONS

These may be adapted for various audiences, time frameworks, and formats. They can include presentations, spiritual exercises, "monastic moments," small group dialogue, plenary dialogue, and simple worship.
Copyright © 2010 by Chris R. Glaser. All Rights Reserved.

CULTIVATING THE INNER VOICE OF LOVE: BE STILL! BE LOVED! BE GRATEFUL!
Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
"Be still and know that I am God," God tells us through the Psalmist. In a world full of distractions and illusions, busyness and violence, it is challenging to find a time and place to rest in God. Glaser’s spiritual mentor, Henri Nouwen, believed that the transformative moment in Jesus' life was when he heard God's voice in his baptism, "You are my beloved, with whom I am well pleased." We respond to God's love in gratitude with our ministry and our service to the world, being grateful for all that we have received, both good and bad, recalling events that have shaped our souls.

COME HOME!
Reclaiming Spirituality and Spiritual Community
Many of us never quite felt at home in the church. But the family of faith that Jesus created welcomed those who “didn’t quite fit” religious and moral expectations of his era. Jesus dined with the spiritually abused of his time, and saved his harshest rhetoric for the self righteous. This interactive retreat will assist participants in understanding that we, too, are God’s beloved sons and daughters, heirs with Christ of a spiritual inheritance and a spiritual commonwealth.

OUR LIVES AS SACRED TEXTS: Autobiography as Theology
Our own lives may also serve as Gospel, as good news! Telling our stories is key to transforming individuals and reforming the church. Discern moments of spiritual awe or spiritual growth in your life. Develop skills for writing and speaking your spiritual truths and insights in a participant friendly workshop.

THE BLESSING OF SAME-GENDER MARRIAGE
The history of marriage in the Bible and the Western tradition gives many footholds for understanding the flexibility of marriage as it applies to same-gender couples and the current debate on same-gender marriage, a conversation that serves as a blessing for the church and our society as it helps us discuss the meaning of marriage and even discover marriage as a spiritual vocation.

COMING OUT AS SACRAMENT
Chris Glaser persuasively argues that coming out as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and their advocates has biblical precedence and sacramental dimensions. A sacrament is an act that reveals God’s presence or the sacred in our midst. Coming out may be understood as an act of vulnerability, much like a sacrificial offering of times past, which invokes God’s presence and effects atonement, or reconciliation. In coming out, we reveal what is sacred in our experience: our ability to love, our beloved, our community, as well as a God who loves us all more than the church has imagined. (May also be titled: Coming Out as Sacred.)

CLAIM THE GOD IN YOU
The Sacred Gifts of LGBT People
In our wariness and weariness of traditional Christianity, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people have been given sacred gifts that we offer one another as well as the church. We are able to offer these gifts as we claim ourselves as God’s beloved children, created in the image of God.