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 the nineteenth century Unitarian minister Edward Everett Hale:
I am only one.
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything.
But still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
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 Finitude. Finitude, Transience, and Mortality are three challenging existential realities we all face as human beings. We will explore the spiritual theme of Finitude by asking questions such as these: How might we come to terms with the reality that our knowledge is incomplete, that our influence is limited, that our years of living come to an end? What saves us from despair or deep dismay about our finitude? Can we participate wholeheartedly in struggles for justice even though those struggles may be incomplete in our own lifetime?
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.
- Can you give one example of how you experience finitude in your life? To what degree is this experience of finitude a source of frustration or anxiety or discouragement for you?
- Perfectionism is difficult to reconcile with Finitude. You may have limited time, or limited energy, or limited financial resources, or limited space, to complete some project that is important to you. For example, you may never have enough time to write down the name of every person who appears in every photograph in that big box of family photographs. How does it feel to bump up against limits of this kind? Is Finitude a source of chronic anxiety for you? What strategies have you used to reconcile your desire to meet your high personal standards with the reality of limited time or limited resources?
- Marion Wright Edelman wrote: “The spiritual life begins with an acknowledgement of purposes larger than can be contained in one’s own life.”
What purposes are important to you that are larger than the limits of your own life? Despite your finite ability, how are you able to serve or contribute toward these purposes?
- Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture and former member of First Unitarian Church, wrote, “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
The statement that we cannot change the cards we are dealt is an acknowledgment of finitude. How might this statement be helpful to you? What unchangeable cards have been dealt to you that have been major challenges in your life? How have you worked through these challenges?
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 Robert Weston:
Autumn, we know,
Is life en route to death.
The asters are but harbingers of frost.
The trees, flaunting their colors at the sky,
In other times will follow where the leaves have fallen,
And so shall we.
Yet other lives will come.
So may we know, accept, embrace,
The mystery of life we hold a while
Nor mourn that it outgrows each separate self,
But still rejoice that we may have our day.
Lift high our colors to the sky! And give,
In our time, fresh glory to the earth.