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 Luke:

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” … Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all their authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” … Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

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 Lent. Lent extends from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Like Advent, Lent is a season rather than a specific occasion. The forty days of Lent recall the forty days that Jesus lived in the wilderness. Spiritual practices associated with Lent include fasting, prayer, and giving to those less fortunate, reflecting a spiritual mood of relinquishment, self-discipline, resisting temptation, and a sharper focus on what is most important. Historically, Unitarian Universalism emerged from the so-called “Radical Reformation” which tended to avoid sacramental practices. Nevertheless, we may find meanings of our own in the reflective season of Lent.

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. Lent turns relinquishment, self-discipline, resisting temptation, and a sharper focus on what is most important into a spiritual discipline. What are your experiences with this season? Does Lent hold a worthwhile spiritual message or point toward a worthwhile spiritual path for you? Do you observe Lent in any way?

2. In your personal life, what would you like to relinquish? Would you like to strengthen your capacity for self-discipline? Are there temptations that you struggle to avoid? Are you seeking to develop a sharper focus on what is most important to you? Would the season of Lent be a good time to work on these things?

3. Unitarian Universalist minister Rebecca Parker wrote, “In 1976 I began a cross-country road trip, on my way to seminary. I traveled with a friend. We had time, so we decided to take back roads. One afternoon the road passed through rural western Pennsylvania. Late in the day, we came down through hill country into a valley. It had been raining hard, and as we neared a small town, we noticed blinking yellow lights warning of danger. We saw fields covered in standing water and passed several side roads blocked off with signs saying: Road Closed. ‘Looks like they’ve had a flood here,’ we said. Coming into town, we crossed a bridge over a wide river. The water was high, muddy, flowing fast. Sandbags lined the roadway. ‘Gosh,’ we said, ‘They must have had quite a bit of high water to contend with out here. Looks like it was a major flood!’ We headed out of town, following a winding country road, captivated by the evidence all around us that there had been a dramatic flood. Then we rounded a bend, and in front of us, a sheet of water covered the roadway. The water was rising fast, like a huge silver balloon being inflated before our eyes. We stopped and started to turn the car around. The water was rising behind us as well. Suddenly we realized the flood hadn’t happened yesterday or last week. It was happening here and now. Dry ground was disappearing fast. We hurriedly clambered out of the car and scrambled to higher ground. Soaked to the bone, we huddled under a fir tree. No longer were we lodged in our familiar vehicle; the cold water of the storm poured down on us, baptizing us into the present – a present from which we had been insulated by both our car and our misjudgments about the country we were traveling through. This is what it is like to be white in America. It is to travel well ensconced in a secure vehicle; to see signs of what is happening in the world outside the compartment one is traveling in and not realize that these signs have any contemporary meaning. It is to be dislocated – to misjudge your location and to believe that you are uninvolved and unaffected by what is happening in your world… . The struggle for racial justice in America is a struggle to inhabit my own country, a struggle to become a participant in the actual history and social reality of the land in which I have been born and to which I belong. The struggle for racial justice is a struggle to overcome the numbness, alienation, splitting, and absence of consciousness that characterize my life as a white and that enable me to unwittingly, even against my will, continue to replicate life-destroying activities of my society… . The struggle is imperative. Racial injustice is not only a tragedy that happened yesterday, whose aftereffects can be safely viewed from behind the glass windows of one’s high-powered vehicle; racial injustice is currently mutating and re-creating itself… . The habit of living somewhere else rather than here, in a constructed ‘reality’ that minimizes my country’s history of both violence and beauty and ignores the present facts, keeps me from engaging in the actual world. I have the sensation of being a disembodied spectator as structures of racism are re-created before my eyes… . I step out of an insular shell and come into immediate contact with the full texture of our present reality. I feel the rain on my face and breathe the fresh air. I wade in the waters that spirit has troubled and stirred. The water drenching me baptizes me into a new life. I become a citizen not of somewhere else, but of here. The struggle for racial justice in America calls those of us who are white to make this journey.”

What is your response to this story? To what extent are you insulated and isolated from the story of racial injustice in American history?  To what extent are you insulated and isolated from the reality of racial injustice in present-day America? How might you step out from your safe vehicle and come into more immediate contact with the story of racial injustice in American history and the reality of racial injustice in present-day America? In the spirit of Lent, can you imagine following a spiritual path whereby you would intentionally relinquish your insulation and isolation regarding racial injustice? What do you think would happen as you followed this path?

4. With regard to ending oppression, Native American scholar and activist George Tinker wrote, “We start by beginning to distance ourselves from the language of the center and learning the language of the periphery.”

Would you be willing to relinquish some of your identification with the political, economic, and cultural center of our society? Would you be willing to learn more about the lives, thoughts, artistic expressions, aspirations, and problems of those at the margins of our society? How would you do this? Do you think this process might help you regard people at the margins of society as familiar rather than other?

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 Hosea:

The wilderness will lead you to your heart where I will speak.