Opening
Activity time: 10 minutes
Materials for Activity
- Chalice, candle, and lighter or an LED/battery-operated candle
- A chime or a small bell
- Newsprint, markers, and tape
- Sign-in sheet and pens
- Name tags and markers
- Music player, and three or more songs for gathering
- Optional: video player, if you choose to show music videos
- Optional: An object to pass from speaker to speaker during discussion
- Optional: Refreshments
Preparation for Activity
- Obtain recordings of three or more songs from the list that follows to provide music for gathering, or create your own collection of money-themed songs. Set up music player and queue the songs. Possible songs:
- For the Love of Money, by the O’Jays
- Rich Girl, by Gwen Stefani
- She Works Hard for the Money, by Donna Summer
- Money, Money, Money, by ABBA
- Money (That’s What I Want), by Barrett Strong
- I Need a Dollar, by Aloe Blacc
- I Get Money, by 50 Cents
- It’s All About the Benjamins, by Puff Daddy
- We Need Some Money, by Chuck Brown
- I’m So Paid, by Akon
- Money Honey, by the Drifters
- If I Had $1,000,000 Dollars, by Barenaked Ladies
- Place chairs in a circle.
- Set a small center table with chalice and lighter.
- Write on newsprint, and post, an agenda for this workshop.
- Begin playing the music prior to the first participant’s arrival.
- Optional: Set out refreshments.
Description of Activity
Greet each participant at the door and welcome them to the workshop. Invite each person to sign in, prepare a name tag, and find a place to sit in the circle.
When everyone has arrived, stop the music and welcome participants. Sound the chime. Invite participants into quiet reflection as you prepare to enter into a time of centering and sharing. Emphasize that your purpose in being together is to support one another in spiritual and faith development in a way that is both challenging and joyful!
Invite a participant to light the chalice, as you share these words by Kathleen McTigue, published in Lifting our Voices:
Into this home we bring our hunger for awakening.
We bring compassionate hearts and a will toward justice.
Into this home we bring the courage to walk on after hard losses.
Into this home we bring our joy, and gratitude for ordinary blessings.
By our gathering we bless this place.
In its shelter we know ourselves blessed.
If you have chosen to use an object to pass from speaker to speaker during discussion, introduce it now. Explain that it will be passed to the one who is speaker as a reminder to focus on the one speaking rather than engaging in side conversations, interrupting, or planning one’s own next words. Go around the circle (passing the object, if you are using one) and give all participants a chance to introduce themselves with their name, the name of their favorite song about money, and why that song resonates with them.
Sound the chime to signal the end of this centering time.