Activity time: 5 minutes

Materials for Activity

• Chalice, candle, and lighter or an LED/battery-operated candle
• A chime or a small bell
• Newsprint, markers, and tape
• Copies of Singing the Living Tradition, the Unitarian Universalist hymnbook
• Optional: Refreshments

Preparation for Activity

• Place chairs in a circle. Set copies of Singing the Living Tradition on chairs.
• Set a small center table with chalice and lighter.
• Write the agenda for this workshop on newsprint, and post.
• Title a piece of newsprint “The Functions of Money,” then write these terms and post:
  • ECONOMIC – to gain, reallocate, or transfer things of value
  • SOCIOLOGICAL – to exercise of power or influence between you and others
  • PSYCHOLOGICAL – as a vehicle for individual meaning making and deeper understanding
  • SPIRITUAL – [leave blank]
• Optional: Recruit a song leader to help teach and lead “Tis a Gift to Be Simple,” Hymn 16 in the Unitarian Universalist hymnbook, Singing the Living Tradition.
• Optional: Set out refreshments.

Description of Activity

Welcome people into the circle. Sound the chime and invite participants into quiet reflection as you prepare to enter into a time of centering and sharing.

Ask a volunteer to light the chalice as you share these words by William Henry Channing, a Unitarian minister and a nephew of William Ellery Channing:

To live content with small means;

To seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion;

To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;

To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;

To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;

To bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.

To let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.

This is to be my symphony.

Introduce the workshop topic. Invite people to recall the functions of money explored in Workshop 1. Call attention to the newsprint you have posted, and note that you have added a category, “Spiritual,” which will be explored in this workshop.

To close the centering time, lead or have a volunteer lead “Tis a Gift to Be Simple.”

Sound the chime again to signal the end of the centering time.

Including All Participants

If you or a song leader invites participants to rise and sing, ensure that the option to rise in body or spirit is communicated.