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 Kalidasa:
Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities
And realities of existence:
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendor of beauty;
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday
A dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
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 Simplicity. “Simplify, simplify!” urged our Unitarian ancestor Henry David Thoreau, who lived for two years in a one-room cabin on the shore of Walden Pond. One of Thoreau’s great messages was the importance of mindfulness in daily living. What distractions make mindfulness challenging? How might simplicity be practiced in the age of cell phones, email, and social networking websites? What matters most in our lives and how might we focus more of our attention on what is most important to us?
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.
- In his book Walden, published in 1854, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail… . Simplify, simplify! Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion… . We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us… . Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?”
What, if anything, are you seeking to simplify in your life? What obstacles do you encounter as you seek greater simplicity? Are these obstacles internal or external?
- The Buddhist scripture known as the Dhammapada says, “Better than a thousand useless words is one single word that gives peace.”
What is one example of this statement? How might you use this statement as a guide to living a more meaningful life?
- Christin Hadley Snyder, a Quaker, has written: “Simplicity is not so much about what we own, but about what owns us. If we need lots of possessions to maintain our self-esteem and create our self-image and to look good to our neighbors, then we have forgotten or neglected that which is real and inward. If our time, money, and energy are consumed in selecting, acquiring, maintaining, cleaning, moving, improving, replacing, dusting, storing, using, showing off, and talking about our possessions, then there is little time, money, and energy left for our other pursuits such as the work we do to further the Community of God.”
Do you find that your possessions sometimes get in the way, or keep you from devoting yourself to what truly matters to you? What is it that truly matters to you?
- Someone has said, “Live simply, so that others may simply live.”
How does our consumption of resources affect the well-being of other people on our planet? How does our consumption of resources affect the well-being of non-human life on our planet?
- Katharine Fullerton Gerould wrote, “The real drawback to ‘the simple life’ is that it is not simple. If you are living it, you positively can do nothing else. There is not time.”
Does this agree with your 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 Wendell Berry:
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.