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 Robert Francis:

Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you inside and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I’m half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but show me.
You know I’m not too hard persuaded.

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 Spiritual Growth. The belief that the human soul can grow goes all the way back to William Ellery Channing, the leading advocate for Unitarianism in the first half of the nineteenth century. What do we mean by the term “lifespan faith development”? Is it an indication of personal weakness for an adult to be engaged in a process of spiritual growth? What are the characteristics of a spiritually mature person?

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. What has been one significant turning point in your personal spiritual journey?

2. Marian Wright Edelman wrote, “The spiritual life begins with an acknowledgement of purposes larger than can be contained in one’s own life.”

Are you part of a purpose that is larger than your life? Do you consciously work to advance some purpose or vision or dream or hope that is larger than your life? Is being devoted to some purpose larger than your own life part of what it means to be a spiritually mature person?

3. Unitarian Universalist minister Sara Moores Campbell wrote, “Wilderness is a part of every person’s soul-journey, and part of our journey together as human beings who seek to live in community. Time in the wilderness is always a time of struggle. It is also a time of transformation and renewal. In traditional terms, it is a time of purification. The journey into wilderness reminds us that we are alone and not alone. We are neither where we have been nor where we are going. There is danger and possibility, risk and promise. In the wilderness, the spirit may descend like a dove and lift us on its wings of hope, then drive us into the depths of despair; it may affirm us with a gift of grace, then challenge us to change. In the stories and rituals of Eastern as well as Western religions, a journey into the wilderness represents a time when we both pursue and resist the Holy.”

Was there a time when your personal spiritual journey had a wilderness chapter? Has your personal spiritual journey included more than one sojourn in the wilderness? With regard to your personal spiritual journey, are you in the wilderness now? Is living through a spiritual wilderness experience part of what it means to be a spiritually mature person?

4. Kajetan von Schlaggenberg wrote: “Maturity consists in no longer being taken in by oneself.”

Has your personal spiritual journey provided you with opportunities for you to set aside illusions about yourself? Has this been pleasant? Is no longer being taken in by oneself part of what it means to be a spiritually mature person?

5. Unitarian Universalist minister Roy Phillips explained William Ellery Channing’s belief about spiritual growth in this way: “Channing said that the primary goal of religion was not doctrinal. The aim of religion was the development of a person’s spirit, which process Channing called ‘self-culture.’ By self he did not mean the psychological entity we think of today when we hear that word. He meant soul; he meant spirit. And when he used the word culture, he was thinking of horticulture, agriculture – cultivation. Self-culture was the cultivation of the spirit – spiritual development… . When he articulated this as religion’s goal, Channing issued a doubly radical repudiation of the New England Calvinism in which he had been reared. In saying the self should be cultivated, he was thinking of it as worthy and precious – not naturally depraved, as the Calvinists claimed. And in saying the soul can be influenced in its growth, he was rejecting the Calvinist teaching that what happened to the soul was predestined and utterly beyond one’s control. The metaphor Channing used was that of a holy potential already embedded in each person, a potential already unfolding. The image is as good a one as can be imagined, that of a divine seed in every person, a seed that religion can cultivate to help the development take place. The church doesn’t need to stamp out blightedness. The seed is good. The church needn’t give it direction or motivation; it’s already there. The seed is potent, with an inner urge to grow.”

Do you understand yourself as a seed with an inner urge to grow? Do you understand your participation in a covenant group as self-culture, as the cultivation of your spirit, as the unfolding of a holy potential embedded within you, as encouragement to spiritual growth?

6. D. H. Lawrence wrote, “A person has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one’s religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.”

Would you agree? Does this description match your personal experience?

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 Alice Walker:

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.