Reflection 2/25

I really enjoyed listening to everyone’s congregation visits this week. It was striking to me how different everyone’s experiences were. While I found some similarities in my visit with others, I felt like there were definitely more differences. I visited the Center for Spiritual Living and so I felt their beliefs were very different from most being presented in class. It made me wonder what brought the attendees at the Center for Spiritual Living to that space, since I assume most were not born into that belief system. It also made me wonder about the congregations other class members visited, and which ones had more people who were born into their religion. Did members at the CSL once attend different services in Redlands? I think each presentation group succeeded in giving a “feel” for the congregation they visited that made it easy for me to differentiate between them. For a long time I thought of churches as all being basically the same, and the different groups helped me to further understand many of the ways they are all different. Since we were all outsiders visiting the congregations, I was really interested to see how our class members were treated during their visits. Some were immediately welcomed and engaged in conversations, while others were not paid much attention to.