SPIRIT OF LIFE
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
WORKSHOP 6: GIVING LIFE THE SHAPE OF JUSTICE: THE SPIRITUALITY OF WORKING FOR CHANGE
REVISED
BY REVEREND BARBARA HAMILTON-HOLWAY
© Copyright 2010 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 9:26:17 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
We covenant to affirm and promote...
... the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.
... respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
The living tradition we share draws from...
... wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life.
... Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves. — Principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association
This workshop helps participants understand and experience connections between spirituality and action for justice. The activities help participants recognize and claim the spiritual aspects of justice work.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Welcoming and Entering | 0 |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: Story — Songwriting as a Prayer | 15 |
Activity 2: Spirituality and Action Panel | 30 |
Activity 3: Justice and Spirit | 30 |
Faith in Action: Interfaith Action and Dialogue | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Creating a Web of Connection | 30 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Reflection. You may wish to set aside some time to reflect on your personal experiences and understanding of the spiritual dimensions of justice work. Either individually or together, co-leaders can use the workshop activities to spark and structure your reflection. Doing so will also prepare you to explain and lead the activities.
Practice. Setting aside some moments to pray, to meditate, or to envision your good intentions for the workshop can help you to center yourself before you begin leading. A centered leader who is present and responsive while facilitating is likely to lead an effective workshop.
Review Workshop 1, Leader Resource 1, Accessibility Guidelines for Workshop Presenters, for general tips to make your workshop welcoming to people with physical disabilities and sensitivities.
WORKSHOP PLAN
WELCOMING AND ENTERING
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
As participants enter, invite them to sign in and create nametags.
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Offer these words of welcome:
Welcome to this program on Unitarian Universalist spirituality as expressed in our lives in the world. The peace, liberty and justice we want is an expression of our spirituality. Our spiritual lives can support us in being who we want to be in the world. Our lives make a difference in shaping justice and love. Unitarian Universalist spirituality calls us to participation and involvement, sustains us for living lives of truth and love, and nourishes our hope and our joy.
Invite a participant to light the chalice as you lead the group in reciting the unison chalice-lighting words.
Distribute Handout 1 and invite participants to read silently along with you as you read aloud the Unitarian Universalist Principle and Source that this workshop highlights.
Invite participants to share their names. Invite them to reflect on the news of the past week and briefly share something that made them think about justice or injustice in the world.
Explain that this workshop focuses on the line "giving life the shape of justice."
Invite participants to rise in body or spirit and sing "Spirit of Life" by Carolyn McDade, Hymn 123 in Singing the Living Tradition.
ACTIVITY 1: STORY — SONGWRITING AS A PRAYER (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to sit comfortably and listen to the story as you read it aloud.
Offer a minute for silent reflection after completing the story. Then, invite discussion with these questions:
ACTIVITY 2: SPIRITUALITY AND ACTION PANEL (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce the panelists to the group by name, then offer two minutes each for panelists to introduce themselves further.
Guide the panelists' sharing with your own questions or these:
Solicit participants' questions for the panelists. When twenty-five minutes have passed, thank the panelists for their participation and invite them to share any final thoughts with participants.
ACTIVITY 3: JUSTICE AND SPIRIT (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce this time of reflection and discussion by asking participants to share the names of people they know, famous or otherwise, who bring a strong sense of spirituality to their work for justice. Names might include luminaries such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Mohandas Gandhi, The Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa, Daniel Berrigan, and others. When a name is shared, ask those who have shared it if they can say a few words about how this person connected spirituality with justice. Allow five minutes for this part of the activity.
Now, invite participants to reflect on how justice work can be, or already is, an expression of their own spirituality. Pose these questions for reflection:
Tell participants:
A bell will lead you in and out of a quiet in which you can contemplate these questions. You are invited to come forward as you feel moved to gather supplies for drawing or writing.
Allow ten minutes for reflection, drawing, and writing and ring the bell when the time is up.
Invite participants to form pairs for discussion. Encourage participants to pair with a new partner or with someone they don't know well. If you have an odd number of participants, form one triad.
Offer these instructions:
In pairs, I invite one of you to share while the other listens attentively, openly. After the first speaker finishes, let there be a moment of silence between you. Then switch roles. Each person will have five minutes to share. A bell will ring when it's time to shift roles and to end the time of sharing.
Ring the bell at five minutes and at ten minutes. If you have a triad, watch the clock and signal this group verbally at two minutes and four minutes to help participants share their time equally.
Re-gather the whole group and say: "We have a few minutes for sharing in the larger group. What did you discover? What did you say or hear that you want to share with the larger group?"
Allow as many responses as time permits. Thank each person who speaks.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather participants around the altar or centering table. Affirm the good work that participants have done in this workshop.
Hand out the Taking It Home section you have prepared. Invite participants to "take the workshop home" and explain the activities, as needed. Be sure to be inclusive of people with a variety of living situations—living alone, with a significant other, in a family, with housemates, etc.—in the way you explain the Taking It Home activities.
Offer these or similar words:
In closing, I invite you to rise in body or spirit and join hands. We join hands with one another to remind ourselves of the truth that we are all connected, that we are one body, and that we depend upon one another more than we know.
As you feel moved, I invite you to call out a word or phrase for how you are feeling right now.
After participants call out words and phrases, offer this benediction to close the workshop:
Spirit of Life, we give thanks for this time together,
for our caring and sharing.
May we respect and love our selves and respect and love others.
May we trust that the intention we bring and the action we take matter.
Our good intention and respectful actions shape justice
and ripple out beyond our knowing.
May we bring joy to our living and to our loving.
May we be supported in our commitments,
by our spiritual practices, by one another,
by community, and by the Spirit of Life.
Amen.
Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: INTERFAITH ACTION AND DIALOGUE
Description of Activity
Find out if there is another faith community in your area that is involved in justice work in some way. Offer to work alongside them, invite them to participate in a project you are planning, or suggest that you work together on a new project. Take this opportunity to engage in dialogue with members of another faith about how your spirituality informs your work for justice or your justice work informs your spirituality.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
After the workshop, co-facilitators should make a time to get together to evaluate this workshop and plan future workshops. Use these questions to guide your shared reflection and planning:
TAKING IT HOME
We covenant to affirm and promote...
... the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.
... respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
The living tradition we share draws from...
... wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life.
... Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves. — Principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association
Talk with people you know who work for social change. Ask them about how their spirituality relates to the work that they do.
Reflect on "giving life the shape of justice," a line from the song "Spirit of Life" by Carolyn McDade. Include it in prayer, meditation, and journaling. Do you see the spirit of life as moving the world toward justice? Do you see yourself as moving the world toward justice? How, or how not? How might you participate in giving life the shape of justice?
Look for ways you can get involved in social justice work in your community. Engage in social action as an expression of your spirituality.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: CREATING A WEB OF CONNECTION (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce the activity with these or similar words:
We will toss this ball of yarn among us. When the ball comes to you, hold it and speak briefly to the essence of your response to: What would a just world look like? If you would prefer to receive and toss the yarn in silence, you may. When you are finished speaking or holding the yarn in silence, unroll some of it, hold on to the strand and toss the ball to someone else in the circle. We will continue until each person has received the ball of yarn and spoken. Then the last person can toss the ball of yarn back to the one who began the toss.
If you are setting a time limit for each person's sharing, announce it now.
Conduct the yarn toss and sharing, timing participation if necessary. After all participants have spoken, offer closing words for the activity. You may say:
We are part of a web of connections, a community of life. Together we weave a more just, more peaceful world.
Take apart the web using the method you chose in advance: asking participants to drop the web on the floor, tossing the yarn ball among participants in reverse and rolling it up, or passing scissors for each participant to cut their own piece as a reminder of their interconnectedness.
Including All Participants
Some participants may lack agility in catching or throwing the yarn. Explain that it is perfectly acceptable if participants are not expert catchers or throwers, and assure participants that it is all right to ask for help.
SPIRIT OF LIFE: WORKSHOP 6:
STORY: SONGWRITING AS A PRAYER
Excerpted and adapted from "Carolyn McDade's Spirit of Life" by Kimberly French, UU World magazine, Fall 2007. Used with permission.
Carolyn McDade, the author of the song "Spirit of Life", does not identify herself as a songwriter or musician—though she has written hundreds of songs and released fifteen CDs. "Activist, yes, but not a musician," she says.
McDade has given her life to what she calls the movement. By that she certainly means the feminist movement that dramatically changed what was possible for women since she was a girl. But she also means a chain of linked, politically progressive causes: She has actively opposed wars, South African apartheid, U.S. foreign policy, and nuclear power. She has worked for economic justice, environmental protection, and the rights of women migrant workers, prisoners, refugees, and lesbians.
"I'm boringly consistent," she says, with a streak of self-deprecation, sitting on the sun-dappled deck of her modest Cape Cod home, lined with three birdfeeders and a birdbath. "I'm still basically at the same work."
Consistent, yes, but not boring. McDade's life has reached pinnacles of political victory and spiritual insight as well as troughs of personal disappointment and despair with the world. Running through it all has been a strong thread of women's spirituality, which she has woven with Unitarian Universalist and United Church of Canada women, as well as radical Catholic nuns.
McDade still dresses in her signature layers, a dark turtleneck or T-shirt under a white collared shirt, jeans, and squiggly silver earrings. But she now wears her soft gray hair in a short cap of curls. The powerful, deep singing voice on her recordings hardly seems like it could come from this slight, soft-spoken, warm grandmother of eight.
It was the 1960s, when she was working as a Secretary at Boston's Arlington Street Church, that McDade started to write music. The student minister, Marni Harmony, had invited Carolyn to put together music for one of the first women's services. But when she went looking for songs written by women, she was appalled to find so little available.
So late one night she sat at her piano and sang what she wanted to say to her three daughters asleep upstairs, which became the song "Come, Daughter." It was a turning point, the first time she had sung from her own experience, and a searing recognition of what she was meant to do.
"Writing my own song really was the beginning of finding of my own way," she says. "I was a young woman activist, my children were young, and I had totally lost myself. I wouldn't have known what to call it. Social movement was my healing, seeing my life as part of other lives."
She quickly immersed herself in the groups of women activists rising up in Boston and across the country in the mid-1970s. Early on she joined with the Women and Religion groups within the UUA, demanding a place for women's spirituality. McDade and one of that movement's leaders, Lucile Schuck Longview, in 1980 conceived the water ceremony as a way for women who lived far apart to connect the work each was doing locally to the whole. Each woman brought a jar of water from the place she lived, and during the ceremony poured it into a bowl, naming what made it precious to her. Then, dipping her hands into the water they'd combined, each blessed the woman next to her, imparting strength to continue her work.
In the 1980s, McDade became a leader in the movement to oppose U.S. policies in Central America, particularly Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The UU Community Church of Boston invited her to chair its Sanctuary Committee, challenging U.S. government policy by offering illegal shelter to political refugees. She traveled to Nicaragua and helped clear stones from land the revolutionary Sandinista government had given peasants, under constant threat of attack by the U.S.-backed contras. She traveled around the United States, sometimes on speaking tours, sometimes moving with refugees among safe houses or churches. Her life was intense with demonstrations, arrests, threats of legal action and violence, infiltration, and endless meetings.
Like much of McDade's music, the genesis of the song "Spirit of Life" was a very personal one. Late one night in the early 1980s, she was driving her close friend Pat Simon home from an activists' meeting for Central American solidarity.
What she remembers most clearly was the feeling she had. "When I got to Pat's house, I told her, 'I feel like a piece of dried cardboard that has lain in the attic for years. Just open wide the door, and I'll be dust.' I was tired, not with my community but with the world. She just sat with me, and I loved her for sitting with me."
McDade then drove to her own home. "I walked through my house in the dark, found my piano, and that was my prayer: May I not drop out. It was not written, but prayed. I knew more than anything that I wanted to continue in faith with the movement."
Thus the song was born—a prayer for infusing work for justice with spirituality; a prayer for change in the heart leading to change in the world.
Spirit of Life, come unto me.
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea;
Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close; wings set me free;
Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.
SPIRIT OF LIFE: WORKSHOP 6:
HANDOUT 1: GIVING LIFE THE SHAPE OF JUSTICE
UNISON CHALICE LIGHTING
We light this chalice for the Spirit of Life.
We light this chalice in affirmation of the goal of world community
with peace, liberty and justice for all.
We give thanks for the wisdom from the world's religions
which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual lives.
May our time together renew our spirits, deepen our community,
and inspire us to lead lives of justice and joy.
PRINCIPLE AND SOURCE
This workshop is grounded in the following Principles and Sources from the Purposes and Principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association:
Principles: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.... Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
Sources: ... Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life.... Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.
FIND OUT MORE
"Justice Making as a Spiritual Path (at www.uua.org/leaders/leaderslibrary/leaderslibrary/56279.shtml)," a resource on the UUA's website, offers ideas for bringing justice and spirituality together in your congregation.
The Unitarian Universalist Association's social justice resources and programs (at www.uua.org/socialjustice/) can help congregations carry forward the energy of this workshop to "give life the shape of justice."
Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=547)by the Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, Unitarian Universalist theologian and president of Starr King School for the Ministry, presents a series of essays connecting theology, spirituality, and social justice.
How Much Do We Deserve? An Inquiry Into Distributive Justice (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=611)by Unitarian Universalist minister Richard S. Gilbert explores the idea of economic justice.