Centering (5 minutes)

This is a time to make the transition from the busy world to the group experience. A member of the group may read these words from Unitarian Universalist minister Rebecca Parker:

Your gifts
whatever you discover them to be
can be used to bless or curse the world.
The mind’s power,
The strength of the hands,
The reaches of the heart,
the gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing, waiting.
Any of these can serve to feed the hungry
bind up wounds,
welcome the stranger,
praise what is sacred,
do the work of justice
or offer love.
Any of these can draw down the prison door
hoard bread,
abandon the poor,
obscure what is holy,
comply with injustice
or withhold love.

You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?

Choose to bless the world.

The choice to bless the world is more than an act of will
a moving forward into the world
with the intention to do good.
It is an act of recognition,
a confession of surprise,
a grateful acknowledgment
that in the midst of a broken world
unspeakable beauty, grace, and mystery abide.
There is an embrace of kindness,
that encompasses all life,
even yours.
And while there is injustice,
anesthetization, or evil
there moves
a holy disturbance,
a benevolent rage,
a revolutionary love
protesting, urging, insisting
that which is sacred will not be defiled.
Those who bless the world live their life
as a gesture of thanks
for this beauty
and this rage.

The choice to bless the world
can take you into solitude
to search for the sources
of power and grace
native wisdom, healing, and liberation.
More, the choice will draw you into community,
the endeavor shared,
the heritage passed on,
the companionship of struggle,
the importance of keeping faith,
the life of ritual and praise,
the comfort of human friendship,
the company of earth
its chorus of life
welcoming you.
None of us alone can save the world.
Together – that is another possibility,
Waiting.

Check-in (10 to 25 minutes)

Each person in the group has the opportunity to share something about his or her life. What significant events have taken place recently in your life? Have you accomplished something meaningful to you? Have you experienced any losses or setbacks? Have you had any insights or new ideas?

Group Discussion (45 to 70 minutes)

Our spiritual theme for this month is Calling. Ministers can usually identify a moment when they felt a “call” to ministry. For some ministers, this comes unexpectedly; for others, it follows a long journey of intentional discernment. But the sense of being “called” to religious work is not limited to professional religious leaders. Any of us can sense within us some persistent urge to serve others or to make the world a better place. Any of us can sense within us some inward need to express our wonder and awe about the world through music or painting, through writing or dance. In what ways do you feel a “calling” that animates and sustains your religious life?

For group discussion, please consider the questions associated with one or more of the following numbered sections. You need not address all of these sections, and you need not address them in this order.

1. Do you sense within yourself a persistent urge to serve others or to make the world a better place? Do you sense within yourself an inward need to express your wonder and awe about the world through music, painting, writing, or dance? Do you experience your work as a calling?

2. In the opening words by Rebecca Parker, is there one sentence or phrase that you find particularly meaningful?

3. Howard Thurman wrote, “Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive … then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

What makes you come alive?

4. The nineteenth century Unitarian writer Henry David Thoreau wrote, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

Sometimes creative work can be awkward: you may have worked with devotion and diligence to create a beautiful castle, for example, but it has no foundation to hold it up. Thoreau offers a word of reassurance when he affirms that a castle in the air is in the right place. But then he offers a word of sage advice about the necessity of having a foundation. Have you ever experienced the awkward challenge of being highly visionary and highly practical at the same time?

5. The Unitarian poet e. e. cummings wrote: “To be nobody-but-myself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.”

Do you find it challenging to stay true to yourself? To what extent must this be a solitary battle?

Conclusion (5 to 10 minutes)

What will you take away from this discussion? What would have made this time together more meaningful or satisfying to you? What did you enjoy? A member of the group may read these words from the British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead:

Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within the passing flux of immediate things: something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.