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 the twentieth-century Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel:

Prayer invites God to be present in our spirits and in our lives. Prayer cannot bring water to parched land, nor mend a broken bridge, nor rebuild a ruined city, but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.

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 Prayer. Is there a place for prayer in Unitarian Universalism? What aspects of prayer do you appreciate? What are your reservations about prayer?

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. Is prayer part of your personal spiritual practice? If so, could you share with the group an example of what you say when you pray?

2. Do you have reservations about prayer? What are they?

3. Unitarian Universalist minister Erik Walker Wikstrom wrote that “you can’t talk about a meal to someone and give them the taste of the food, or describe a symphony and expect them to experience the hearing of it; you can’t explain what it feels like to run on the beach and hope that their muscles will know the feeling, or recite a poem about a rose with the intention that the hearer’s nose will smell it. You can talk, describe, explain, and recite, of course, and doing these things will impart some measure of understanding. But in order for the other person to really know what you’re talking about – deeply, fully – she or he will have to experience it directly. So it is with the spiritual journey. No words can truly describe it; you must experience it for yourself… . If you long to connect with the Sacred, if you desire to live a life that is more in touch with the Holy, stop listening for something and start simply listening. If you have given up on an anthropomorphic deity – the old white guy with the long beard, or any of his stand-ins – yet can’t figure out what to put in its place, stop looking for something and start simply looking around you. Notice those places in your life where you have felt yourself in the presence of the Holy, remember those experiences in which you have heard your connectedness; seek in your own life – your own feelings, your own moments – those places where you have encountered or are encountering, the Sacred. In other words, simply pray. Pray without any preconceived notion of what you’re doing or why. Simply do it, and see what happens. After you pray, then begin to think. Think about what your experiences tell you about the holy. Think what those experiences tell you about the way the world works and the spirit moves. Build your theology on your experience, rather than the other way around. Define the divine for yourself through your own experiences rather than seeking experiences that match someone else’s definition.”

In the first part of this extended quotation, Erik Walker Wikstrom suggests that one must rely on personal experience to understand the spiritual journey. He then suggests that in particular, one must rely on personal experience to understand prayer. He encourages those seeking a deeper spiritual life to approach prayer in a spontaneous way without a preconceived idea of what the experience must be: simply pray. Does this sound promising to you? Before you embrace or dismiss this approach, would you be willing to try it?

4. Anne Lamott suggests that there are just three essential prayers: Help, Thanks, and Wow.

Would you agree? Is this summary helpful to you? Can you recall times when you felt a need to express each of these three sentiments?

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 Dianne Arakawa:

Almighty God,
 in whom and through whom we have our being:

We gather together this day
 to offer our gratitude
 for all thy blessings –
 for the beauty of Nature, even during the bleakest season of the year;
 for the memory of those who have gone before us and shown us the way;
 for the love of our families, who support and encourage us;
 for the compassion of our friends, who hold us in high regard;
 for the support of this community of faith, which stands for peace and justice;
 and for the presence of strangers and those in need, with whom we may share a portion of our bounty.

That we are imperfect, we acknowledge 
 to ourselves 
 and to one another, 
 so that we may forgive and be forgiven.

Give us grace that we may get beyond
 our shortcomings
 and the limitations of our everyday experiences
 to the joy that is promised to us.

Persuade us to love our neighbors as ourselves.

In this way,
 may we grow in the life of the Spirit,
 which excludes no one,
 includes all
 and knows no end. Amen.