Registration open for meditation class
Registration is open for a six-week beginning insight-meditation class at Durango Dharma Center.
Classes will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Feb. 10, Feb. 17, Feb. 24, March 17, March 24 and March 31 at the Dharma Center, 208 East Animas Road (County Road 250).
The class, taught by Erin Treat, will focus on the practice of mindfulness, which concentrates on moment-to-moment observation leading to clear, stable and nonjudgmental awareness.
Participants can be trained to live with more self-acceptance, clarity and ease, which helps to calm the mind. Treat will present simple techniques that develop a person’s natural capacity for awareness.
Treat, a leader at the Dharma Center since 2003, is being trained to teach intensive retreats by noted Buddhist teachers Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein.
She also is a co-guiding teacher at Vallecitos Mountain Ranch in New Mexico and leads retreats in the Southwest and nationwide.
The cost for the class is $20, with an opportunity to practice dana (generosity), so the teachings can be sustained over time.
For more information, call Terry Leonard at 799-0084 or email her at tleonard@frontier.net.
A registration form can be downloaded at www.durangodharmacenter.org.
Unitarians to discuss biblical love Sunday
Pete Kinnas will present “A Biblical Perspective on Love” at 10 a.m. Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 419 San Juan Drive.
Participants will explore what love means.
For more information, visit www.durangouu.org.
Church ordains first female bishop
LONDON – The male monopoly in the leadership of the Church of England has ended with Monday’s consecration of the 500-year-old institution’s first female bishop.
The Rev. Libby Lane became the eighth Bishop of Stockport in a service at York Minster. Her consecration comes after the church ended a long and divisive dispute by voting last year to allow women to serve as bishops.
The consecration service was interrupted by a lone protester, the Rev. Paul Williamson. He stepped forward and objected when congregation members were asked if it was their will that Lane be ordained. Williamson said “No!” and asked to speak, arguing there was no precedent in the Bible for women bishops.
The archbishop of York, John Sentamu, answered with a prepared statement and then asked again if the church approved. This time, the response was a thunderous “Yes!”
San Francisco church to phase out altar girls
SAN FRANCISCO – A Roman Catholic church in San Francisco has become one of a handful around the country to prohibit girls from being altar servers, a decision that has disturbed some parishioners.
The Rev. Joseph Illo told KPIX-TV that he decided to train only boys to assist him at Mass when he was assigned to Star of the Sea Church last year because he thinks the primary purpose of altar service is preparation for the priesthood, which women are ineligible to join.
In a statement posted on the church’s website, Illo says boys often lose interest in altar service when the programs are co-ed because “girls generally do a better job.”
Girls and women have been permitted to serve Mass alongside priests since Pope John Paul II approved the practice in 1994. But a mixed-gender altar service is not a requirement, and the decision is usually left to local bishops. San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone authorized Star of the Sea’s move to only having altar boys.
Some churchgoers told KPIX they were unhappy with the change, calling it discriminatory.
New Orleans cemetery bans solo tourists
NEW ORLEANS – A historic New Orleans cemetery that may have started the city’s tradition of above-ground crypts will soon be off-limits to tourists on their own because of repeated tomb vandalism.
Starting in March, entry to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 will be restricted to relatives of those buried there and others accompanied by a tour guide registered with the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, which owns the property.
Spokeswoman Sarah McDonald says some unlicensed guides encourage people to deface tombs. She says other people have littered and camped out there.
And in late 2012, someone covered the reputed tomb of voodoo priestess Marie Laveau with pink paint.
Tour companies will have to show insurance and a city license and pay the archdiocese up to $5,400 a year.
Herald Staff & Associated Press
