New Church Life November/ December 2015 | Page 74

new church life: november/december 2015 matter what denomination or belief system each person has we come together in the spirit of friendship and shared love of connection, which is both comforting and uplifting. It feels as though we are able to share a little taste of heaven with each other. Even in such a short time we make friends very quickly, and reconnect with those we’ve known before. For those women who have not experienced this connectedness please come and sample it for yourself. high-tech outreach at the swedenborg foundation The Swedenborg Foundation reports that in June its offThe Left Eye YouTube channel passed a huge milestone with 1 million minutes watched in a single month. “The rest of the summer showed that this was not a fluke.” In July the number of minutes watched and the number of times people watched the videos jumped 20 percent to more than 1,287,000 minutes watched and 177,000 views. There were also a record number of comments. “This trend,” the Foundation states, “is a result of the phenomenal growth of Swedenborg and Life, our weekly webcast series. In each episode host Curtis Childs explores some aspect of Swedenborg’s thought. For example, the mostwatched new episode in June, called 8 Strange Places in the Afterlife, illustrates principles of the spiritual world by describing some of the unusual sights Swedenborg saw there. “We know from YouTube statistics that the show’s audience consists of people of all ages – distributed pretty evenly from age 18 to 64 – and is also almost evenly divided between men and women. Geographically, the channel is most popular in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the Philippines, India and South Africa, so we are drawing viewers from all over the globe.” You can tune in Mondays at 8 p.m. Eastern time – www.youtube.co/ offTheLeftEye -- for the current offering or watch previous episodes. (Curtis Childs will be one of the presenters at the Boynton Beach Retreat in January.) Among some of the comments received about these videos: • What you are accomplishing here through devotion to the dissemination of knowledge about Emanuel Swedenborg is inspiring and expansive for the soul. Am now a true fan. Thank you. • Thanks for another great show. I really look forward to them each week. I am new to Swedenborg and these shows are so helpful and illuminating. • Without Curtis’s explanations I would have given up on Swedenborg long ago. 620