The Night School for Deeper Learning: Series 11 (Fall 2022)
The Night School for Deeper Learning with Homer
September 20, 2022 • Rick Ganz
Rick Ganz introduces us to special guest Homer and his epic work The Odyssey. From the Britannica Online Encyclopedia: "little is known of [Homer] beyond the fact that his was the name attached in antiquity by the Greeks themselves to the poems [the Iliad and the Odyssey]. That there was an epic poet called Homer and that he played the primary part in shaping the Iliad and the Odyssey—so much may be said to be probable. If this assumption is accepted, then Homer must assuredly be one of the greatest of the world’s literary artists."
The Night School for Deeper Learning with Marcus Aurelius
October 18, 2022 • Travis Pickell
https://faberinstitute.cmail19.com/t/i-l-qtjuddd-flrdrdkdy-r/ of George Fox University introduces us to special guest Marcus Aurelius, the last of the Five Good Emperors of Rome. We specifically focus on the work Meditations in which Aurelius gives a philosophy of finding happiness and maintaining good character whether faced with hardships as a slave or vast power and wealth as an Emperor. “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”
The Night School for Deeper Learning with Simone Weil
November 15, 2022 • Rick Ganz
In Simone Adolphine Weil (1909-1943), we encounter a person who had an abiding skepticism of (worldly) authority - of that supposed “leadership.” Or perhaps better, Simone Weil challenges worldly authority precisely because, and when, it has ignored God’s sovereignty. True leadership meant for her to have learned to lead as God does (this has nothing to do with establishing a Theocracy, but everything to do with learning how to be a human being in the way God means that - “who did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at”). Her leadership, if you will, is to dedicate her life - as a mystic comes to see so clearly (and she was certainly at that level of spirituality) - to compelling our attention to God’s leadership. Ideas most famously associated with her are: “de-creation”, “up-rootedness”, “attention” and “affliction”.
The Night School for Deeper Learning with the Infancy Narratives
December 13, 2022 • Rick Ganz
In the last class of this series, we will learn from God how God chooses to lead - what Jesus called the “Kingdom of God” - by paying particular attention to all that appeared for us to ponder in the first “moments” of the arrival of the Second Divine Person into our world - the so-called Infancy Narratives. Our Guests are the Evangelists Matthew and Luke (1st century CE).