This Week in Course Companions: The Beginning of Our Daily Offerings

The following is from the weekly message by Circle founder, Robert Perry, delivered each Thursday to Course Companions members. Course Companions is our global community of students and teachers walking through the Course, section-by-section and lesson-by-lesson, together as friends. For access to any classes, handouts, and additional commentaries referenced in these posts, we invite you to join Course Companions by visiting CourseCompanions.com. Please note that partial and full scholarships are available and no one is turned away from Circle of Atonement programming for an inability to pay. 

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July 17, 2020

We have just completed our first week of daily offerings—the legacy of our daily Text Gatherings—and we are off to a wonderful start! Here is what has happened in the last week.

Sunday Gathering: “The Life in All Things.”

For this gathering, I did a talk on how the Course sees aspects of the Sonship in animals, plants, minerals, even wind and waves, Emily read us poems from Helen Schucman about this theme, and I guided us through an exercise of extending love, peace, and blessing to the natural world.

Monday: Prayer Ministry

This was a landmark event, as Dennis and Janet Chandler hosted our very first prayer gathering. Here is what one participant said, “It was beautiful from start to finish!…I could literally and happily do this every morning….The lead-in [from Dennis] of learning how to unwrap the gift was such an effective piece of direction in helping us to enter and move into this new space where God awaits.”

Tuesday: Workbook class

I did a class on Lesson 194: “I place the future in the hands of God.” This lesson emphasizes the power and benefits of practicing this lesson, which allows us in each moment to rest untroubled in God’s hands, “sure that only good can come to us.”

Wednesday: Text class

Emily and I hosted a class on “The Meaning of Love” (T-15.V). This is the very first section on special relationships, which makes clear that the essential meaning of special relationships is to single certain people out for our love, when in fact we should love everyone. As Jesus says early in the Text, “Everybody should love everybody.”

Thursday: Song of Prayer (normally Fridays)

Here Emily and I went through the Introduction to Chapter 1 of The Song of Prayer, which describes prayer’s true nature in Heaven as being not an asking out of need, but as an eternal song of love and celebration, sung by us to God and God to us. That this is prayer’s true form has sweeping implications for the nature of prayer on earth.

Friday: Walking the Path (normally Thursdays)

Mary Anne Buchowski hosted her very first Walking the Path gathering. Here is what she said afterward: “I don’t think I can put in words the wonderful joining we had, the sense that we had already in this one session increased a sense of community and being together in this.” The main part was a visualization in which she took people through the journey away from Heaven and then back again through walking the Course’s path. Based on the enthusiastic feedback, Mary Anne plans to increase the length of these gatherings so that they will be up to one hour.

All of these events were well attended. It was great to see so many on there early chatting with each other, just like in the days of the Text gatherings.

This first week gives me hope that we are making a successful transition from the temporary regime of the Text Gatherings to a permanent daily structure in Course Companions.

With love,

Robert