• Chalice and matches

Use the Opening designed by your group or the one provided below.

Gather around the chalice. As a volunteer lights the chalice, ask the group to focus on the word "beauty" in silence. After about fifteen seconds, invite participants to speak freely into the space a word or two that they associate with the word "beauty." When everyone who wishes to speak has had a chance to do so, close by saying, "May the space we create here today be wide enough to hold all our individual ideas and deep enough to allow those ideas to grow, to fruit, and to provide seeds for new beginnings."

To introduce today's workshop, say,

Poetry is often linked with beauty: a poem may be about something beautiful, a poem may be beautiful in and of itself, or perhaps something is so beautiful it inspires poetry. Today we will cultivate our own awareness of beauty; we will pay attention to how poems speak to us about beauty and experience our own observations and thoughts on what is beautiful. Is there one single idea of beauty that everyone in the world might accept? How does experiencing beauty affect your spirit?