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 Jesse Owens:

The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself – the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us – that’s where it’s at.

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 Courage. Here are some examples: It took courage for the Hebrew people to leave enslavement in Egypt and enter the wilderness. It took courage for Jesus to challenge the religious understandings and social conditions of his age. It took courage for people such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X to bear prophetic witness against the political and social oppression in their nations. What is the source of this courage? Is this path of spiritual courage limited to just a few special people, or can anyone venture down this path? What does courage look like on a smaller scale such as a family or an institution?

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. Have there been times in your life when you did something that required courage, something that was the morally right thing to do, or simply the wise, prudent, and practical thing to do, but something that nevertheless caused fear or anxiety in you?

2. Mary Anne Radmacher said, “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.”

Have there been times in your life when you demonstrated courage but it took the form of patience or persistence? Perhaps you did not think of yourself as courageous at these times.

3. These are the words of the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things that I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Would you say that to live in accord with the Serenity Prayer is to live courageously?

4. Maya Angelou wrote, “Courage may be the most important of all virtues, because without it one cannot practice any other virtue with consistency.”

Would you agree?

5. In her poem “The Journey,” Mary Oliver wrote:

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.

What is your response to this poem? Does this poem describe a chapter of your life? If so, what happened? Do you think this poem is a description of courage?

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 group member may share these words from Unitarian Universalist minister John Corrado:

Voice still and small, deep inside all, I hear you call, singing.
In storm and rain, sorrow and pain, still we’ll remain, singing.
Calming my fears, quenching my tears, through all the years, singing.