The Connections residential weekend is at Purley Chase Centre, a retreat and conference centre surrounded by beautiful Warwickshire countryside. It is from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, 8th-10th February.
The course will look at gender differences, origin of the sexes, heterosexual relationships and other sexual behaviour all in the light of Swedenborg’s spiritual teaching on Conjugial Love.
The weekend is mainly aimed at people sympathetic to religion who have questions like:
- Isn’t the fact that we have two sexes merely due to past evolutionary factors?
- Isn’t sex a basic drive that needs to be satisfied, just like hunger and thirst?
- Are we to be blamed for having impure thoughts?
- Doesn’t talking about the ideal heterosexual exclusive relationship amount to being discriminatory about any other kind of relationship?
- Why is a successful marriage spiritually important?
- What is the spiritual benefit of a man and a woman in partnership?
- Do married partners continue their marriage after death?
Leaders are David Gaffney and Stephen Russell-Lacy.
Rev. David Gaffney is the Programme Director at Purley Chase Centre and has been making music since he learnt to play the guitar at 17. Having had careers both in the construction industry and as a teacher he now takes immense pleasure from sharing his understanding of universal spiritual ideas with others, particularly those gems found in the writings of Swedenborg.
Stephen Russell-Lacy is a psychologist who has worked for many years as a psychotherapist for the National Heath Service. He is also an experienced worship leader, recognised by the New Church. With both of these hats on, he is interested in applying his experience and in-depth knowledge of Swedenborg to resolve issues that most of us face in our daily lives.
Booking here