Centering (5 minutes)

This is a time to make the transition from the busy world to the group experience. 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 George Odell:

We need one another when we mourn and would be comforted.
We need one another when we are in trouble and afraid.
We need one another when we are in despair, in temptation, and need to be recalled to our best selves again.
We need one another when we would accomplish some great purpose, and cannot do it alone.
We need one another in the hour of success, when we look for someone to share our triumphs.
We need one another in the hour of defeat, when with encouragement we might endure, and stand again.
We need one another when we come to die, and would have gentle hands prepare us for the journey.
All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us.

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 Humility. The presence of humility in our personality may allow us to request and receive help more easily, to consider the beliefs and ideas of others more easily, and to avoid despair by recognizing that our efforts on behalf of justice and human rights are part of a larger effort that stretches across many generations. On the other hand, we do not want to be “humiliated” against our will. Yet we may need to learn to acknowledge our limitations.

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 think of humility as a virtue? What happens when you do not have enough humility? What happens when you have too much humility?

2. Margaret Wheatley wrote, “As we work together to restore hope to the future, we need to include a new and strange ally – our willingness to be disturbed. Our willingness to have our beliefs and ideas challenged by what others think. No one person or perspective can give us the answers we need to the problems of today. Paradoxically, we can only find those answers by admitting we don’t know. We have to be willing to let go of our certainty and expect ourselves to be confused for a time… . It is very difficult to give up our certainties – our positions, our beliefs, our explanations. These help define us; they live at the heart of our personal identity. Yet I believe we will succeed in changing this world only if we can think and work together in new ways. Curiosity is what we need. We don’t have to let go of what we believe, but we do need to be curious about what someone else believes. We do need to acknowledge that their way of interpreting the world might be essential to our survival.”

Can you recall a time when your beliefs and ideas were challenged by an encounter with the beliefs and ideas of someone else? At first, did you find this to be uncomfortable? Later, did you find this to be helpful? Can you acknowledge that someone else’s way of interpreting the world might be essential to your survival?

3. An anonymous poet has written this prayer:

Dear God,

So far today, I’ve done all right.
I haven’t lost my temper.
I haven’t been greedy, grumpy,
nasty, selfish, or overindulgent.

I’m very thankful for that.

But in a few minutes, God,
I’m going to get out of bed;
and from then on, I’m probably
going to need a lot more help.

Amen.

On a scale from one to ten, with one being “never” and ten being “always,” how often do you need help? Do you find it easy or difficult to ask for help?

4. Psychologist Frank Pittman wrote that “the critical function of religion [is] to remind people that, whether there is a God or not, you and I aren’t it.”

Would you agree?

5. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.”

Do you find one of these statements particularly helpful? Can you put the meaning of that statement into your own words?

6. Pittsburgh native Annie Dillard wrote, “Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.”

Are you comfortable with this assessment?

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 the twentieth-century British writer J. R. R. Tolkein:

Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after us may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.