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 Buddhist tradition:

I am of the nature to grow old.
There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health.
There is no way to escape having ill health.
I am of the nature to die.
There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change.
There is no way to escape being separated from them.
I inherit the results of my actions in body, speech, and mind.
My actions are the ground on which I stand.

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 Suffering. Most people experience suffering in one way or another during their lives. People may respond to suffering with resilience, or determination, or artistic creativity, or greater compassion for others. People may also have difficulty finding a positive or life-affirming response to suffering. An important first step can be simply acknowledging that suffering is a significant and perhaps inescapable part of our human experience.

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. When have you experienced suffering in your life? What helped you move through these difficult times? Would you say that you have responded to suffering in your life with resilience, or determination, or artistic creativity, or greater compassion for others?

2. In his book Unspeakable: Facing Up to the Challenge of Evil, Oz Guinness reports that two hundred million people perished in the twentieth century as a result of war, genocide, and political oppression.

What is your emotional response to this report?

3. Twentieth-century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “An adequate faith is always an ultimate optimism that has considered all the facts which lead to pessimism.”

By this test, is Unitarian Universalism an adequate faith? For example, do Unitarian Universalists adequately consider all the suffering that takes place in the world? Are we just superficially optimistic or have we adequately considered facts which lead to pessimism such as the report by Oz Guinness that two hundred million people died in the twentieth century as a result of war, genocide, and political oppression? On the other hand, how could we adequately consider all the facts which lead to pessimism and still have time for joy and celebration and constructive energy? How could we adequately consider all the facts which lead to pessimism and not fall into despair and discouragement?

4. As noted in the opening reading, the Buddhist tradition observes that life inevitably includes suffering.

Would you agree that suffering is an inescapable part of life? Is all suffering inescapable? Could some suffering be reduced or avoided or prevented?

5. In her poem “An Observation,” Unitarian Universalist poet May Sarton wrote:

True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
With a rough sensitivity about
Under the earth, between the rock and the shoot,
Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.
And so I watched my mother’s hands grow scarred,
She who could heal the wounded plant or friend,
With the same vulnerable yet vigorous love;
I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,
But now her truth is given me to live,
As I learn for myself we must be hard
To move among the tender with an open hand,
And to stay sensitive up to the end
Pay with some toughness for a gentle world

Is May Sarton suggesting that if you want to make the world a better place you need to go through a challenging, disillusioning, and perhaps painful process of becoming tougher? Is she suggesting that suffering can be personally beneficial in this limited circumstance?

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 Indian religious teacher Rabindranath Tagore:

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look for allies in life’s battle-field, but to my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved, but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone, but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.