THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
BY PATRICIA HALL INFANTE AND DAVID H. MESSNER; DEVELOPMENTAL EDITOR: GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL
© Copyright 2013 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 11:58:36 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/tapestryoffaith.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Patricia Hall Infante is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist who grew up in a large New York City congregation. Her first career as a contract negotiator was put on hold while she took the job of full-time mother to two wonderful boys (an investment which continues to pay dividends). After a workshop at the 1994 General Assembly about the book Your Money or Your Life, Pat began to act with greater intention to bring her work life and consumption into alignment with her UU values. In 1997 her heart led her to begin a career in religious education and she currently serves the Central East Regional Group as the Faith Development Consultant. She and her partner of 30 years live a life of deep gratitude and rich abundance in New Jersey.
Reverend David H. Messner, born and raised Unitarian Universalist, was ordained by the First Unitarian Church of Rochester in 2012 and now serves as minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah, Georgia.He earned a Master of Divinity from the University of Chicago with an emphasis on theology and religious ethics, a Master of Business Administration from Yale University, and an undergraduate degree in psychology from Reed College. David previously worked in corporate strategic planning and partnership development. David, his wife, Jennifer and their two children live in Savannah, Georgia.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We gratefully acknowledge...
- the generosity of the members of the President's Council, which made this program possible
- the members of the President's Council Task Force whose work shaped the vision for the project:
Dan Boyce, co-chair
The Reverend Makanah Morriss, co-chair
Laurel Amabile
Joan Cudhea
Bob Handy
Todd Hess
John Hooper
The Reverend Ginger Luke
Tom Neel
Les Polgar
Sam Schaal
The Reverend Jim Sherblom
Tom Stapleford
Lowell Steinbrenner
Tom Stites
The Reverend Terry Sweetser
- the UUA Congregational Stewardship Consultants, who reviewed this program and offered helpful suggestions:
Wayne B. Clark, Ph.D, Director, Congregational Stewardship Network
Bill Clontz
Kay Crider
Mark Ewert
Barry Finkelstein
Mary Gleason
The Reverend Tricia Hart
Joan Priest
Larry Wheeler
- the more than forty congregations that have participated in the field test of The Wi$dom Path program.
UUA Tapestry of Faith Core Team
Judith A. Frediani, Curriculum Director, Tapestry Project Director
Adrianne Ross, Project Manager
Susan Dana Lawrence, Managing Editor
Jessica York, Youth Programs Director
Gail Forsyth-Vail, Adult Programs Director
Pat Kahn, Children and Family Programs Director
Alicia LeBlanc, Administrative and Editorial Assistant
We are grateful to these individuals who, as UUA staff, contributed to the conceptualization and launch of Tapestry of Faith:
Tracy L. Hurd
The Reverend Sarah Gibb Millspaugh
Aisha Hauser
Pat Hoertdoerfer
Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley
PREFACE
The Wi$dom Path: Money, Spirit, and Life began as an idea shared by members of the Unitarian Universalist Association President's Council. Council members believe strongly that Unitarian Universalist individuals and congregations are longing for structured opportunities to talk about money and the way it intersects with our spiritual and ethical values. They conceived of a program that would go far beyond "Financial Literacy 101" to include such topics as personal and cultural money stories, economic justice, classism, and the impact of our financial decision-making on our ability to live lives of meaning and purpose. Their hope was that such a program would free congregations, families, and individuals to speak openly about a subject that is often fraught with unstated presumptions and unacknowledged tensions, and would allow the creation of spiritually healthy approaches to money, generosity, economic justice, investment, and stewardship.
Because the President's Council perceived this program as a faith development initiative for adults of all ages and life stages, they partnered with the Faith Development Office of the Unitarian Universalist Association to develop this ground-breaking program as a component of the Tapestry of Faith series of lifespan faith development programs. The program follows the Tapestry of Faith model: It uses narrative to engage participants and provides justice-making and community-building activities every step of the way, while nurturing, supporting, and deepening lived Unitarian Universalist faith among participants. We are thrilled to invite you to experience The Wi$dom Path: Money, Spirit, and Life! May your engagement with this program create opportunities and pathways for spiritually and ethically healthy relationship with money, in all the ways it touches our lives.
THE PROGRAM
I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself. — Aldous Huxley, British author (Brave New World)
Money plays a role in nearly every aspect of our lives. For better or for worse, it connects us to one another. Depending on how we approach and understand it, our relationship with money can enhance or limit our ability to our lives to the fullest. Over time, most of us dedicate a significant part of our lives to earning money. We use significant energy planning and worrying about both the money we have and the money we don't have. We agonize how to plan for the future and how to use money to support what we care most about. We use money to respond with compassion to events in the world, to advance causes we believe in, and to support justice-making efforts. We engage in—or avoid engaging in—money conversations with those close to us and with fellow travelers in the groups and communities of which we are a part.
While money is pervasive in our day-to-day existence, it often receives little attention in our religious lives. It is not easy to talk about money because money is entangled with our sense of self, our wants and aspirations, and our challenges and disappointments. It has complicated social dimensions and dynamics.
In this program, participants join together to give this important aspect of our lives due attention in a religious community. The heart of this program is an exploration of the relationship between money and spiritual values, specifically our Unitarian Universalist values. As religious people, we have much to gain by making money part of an intentional, covenanted, and faithful conversation together. Through the Wi$dom Path program, participants can come to know more fully their own hearts and their own stories and make explicit the values that undergird their financial practices. Participants' investigation of money from many angles and perspectives opens the way for money to become less troublesome in day-to-day life and more useful as a practical, life-giving tool. Participants explore ways to make real, meaningful changes that bring their financial lives into better alignment with spiritual commitments and Unitarian Universalist values. They become better equipped to live into spiritual lives which are more full and are supported, rather than hindered, by financial realities and possibilities. Talking about money in an intentional way, exploring this part of our lives in a faith community, invites participants to become more grounded, skilled, and powerful in negotiating financial challenges and changes, not only in their personal lives, but also in their work for economic health and justice in neighborhoods, communities, our nation, and our world.
GOALS
This program will:
LEADERS
A team of two or more adults, either lay leaders or religious professionals, should facilitate these workshops. Seek facilitators who are:
While financial knowledge is helpful, it is not a requirement for effectively leading this program.
PARTICIPANTS
This program is intended for adults. The workshops are equally suitable for first-time visitors and long-time congregational members. Facilitators should be attentive to the differences in knowledge and life experience participants bring to the group, particularly if the group includes a wide age span.
Workshops can accommodate any number of participants. Workshops of fewer than six participants can do small group activities as a full group, or skip some small group activities. A group with more than 25 participants will need at least three facilitators.
People with obvious and not-so-obvious disabilities may need accommodation in order to participate fully. You are urged to follow these basic Accessibility Guidelines for Workshop Presenters:
The Unitarian Universalist Association website and staff can offer guidance for including people with specific disabilities; consult the "Disability and Accessibility" section (at www.uua.org/leaders/leaderslibrary/accessibility/index.shtml) on the UUA website.
Participants bring a wide range of learning styles and preferences. With this in mind, the workshops offer a variety of activities. Review each workshop's Alternate Activities when preparing to lead. Plan each workshop to best suit your group.
PROGRAM STRUCTURE
The Wi$dom Path, like most adult faith development programs, begins with participants' own stories. It then offers a widening exploration of the ways that money influences our personal lives and relationships, the broader society, and the world. Practical tools are mixed with deep reflection about the impact of our fiscal choices, both as individuals and as congregations. Themes of generosity and stewardship are explored along with questions about class and justice.
The Wi$dom Path comprises 12 90-minute workshops, arranged around three themes, as follows:
Workshops 1-3: Money and Self
Participants build awareness of their own "money story" and explore their own attitudes and experiences with money.
Workshops 4-7: Money and Society
Participants explore the ways in which money connects us with others, including issues of classism and economic justice as well as consideration of money issues in congregational life.
Workshops 8-12: Money, Spirit, and Life
Participants delve into ways to align faith, values, and a sense of a life calling with their financial ways of being.
Workshop 1, Leader Resource 1 lists all 12 workshops by title and provides more detailed descriptions of individual workshops.
It is ideal to offer all 12 workshops in sequence. The workshops have been designed to follow one another and the entire series is intentionally paced to invite deep engagement, faith development, and lasting changes in participants' financial ways of being. However, an abbreviated program, Money and Self, using Workshops 1 and 2 or Workshops 1, 2, and 3 can offer a way to begin structured, covenanted conversations about money in your congregation.
Each workshop follows this structure:
Introduction. The Introduction summarizes the workshop themes and content and offers guidance for implementing the workshop.
Goals. Goals provide the desired outcomes of the workshop. As you plan a workshop, apply your knowledge of your group, the time and space you have available, and your own strengths as a leader to determine the most important and achievable goals for the workshop. Choose the activities that will best serve those goals.
Learning Objectives. Learning Objectives describe specific participant outcomes that the workshop activities are designed to facilitate. They describe what participants may learn and how they may change as a result of experiencing the workshop.
Workshop-at-a-Glance. This useful table lists the core workshop activities in order and provides an estimated time for completing each activity. It also presents the workshop's Faith in Action activity and Alternate Activities.
Workshop-at-a-Glance is not a road map you must follow. Rather, use it as a menu for planning the workshop. Many variables inform the actual completion time for an activity. Consider the time you will need to form small groups or relocate participants to another area of the meeting room.
Spiritual Preparation. Each workshop suggests readings, reflections, and/or other preparation to help facilitators grow spiritually and prepare to facilitate with confidence and depth. You may invite the workshop participants, at the Closing, to engage in the same spiritual practice you will do before the following workshop so that they, too, will arrive at the workshop centered and ready to engage with the material and the group.
WORKSHOP PLAN
The workshop elements are:
Opening. Each workshop begins with a short opening ritual, including a welcome, chalice-lighting, and reading or song. Shape the opening ritual to suit your group and the culture and practices of your congregation.
Activities. To provide a coherent learning experience, present the core activities in the sequence suggested. Activities address different learning styles and include individual, small group, and whole group exploration.
Each activity presents the materials and preparation you will need, followed by a description of the activity and detailed directions for implementing the activity with your group. Accessibility guidance is provided, in an Including All Participants section, for activities that have unusual physical circumstances or for which a reminder about inclusion may benefit facilitators. Please consult the Accessibility Guidelines for Workshop Presenters in the "Integrating All Participants" section of this Introduction for strategies to meet some common accessibility needs.
Faith in Action. Each workshop suggests an activity for the group to do outside the workshop meeting times. This is an opportunity for participants to apply workshop themes to action that can transform our congregations and our world.
Workshop closings suggest that you download the Faith in Action section and combine it with the Taking It Home section as a handout. (Note: You can customize Faith in Action, Taking It Home or any other component of a Tapestry of Faith program. Download it to your own computer and edit it with your own word processing program.)
Closing. Each workshop offers a closing ritual that signals the end of the group's time together. Like the Opening, the Closing grounds a shared learning experience in ritual. Shape your closing ritual to fit the group and the culture and practices of your congregation.
Leader Reflection and Planning. Find time as co-facilitators to discuss these questions after each workshop to strengthen your skills and your understanding of the group.
Alternate Activities. Workshops offer Alternate Activities you can use either as a substitute for a core activity or to add to the workshop. An alternate activity may require more time than a core activity or approach the workshop's core content in a different way. It may depend on Internet access or video presentation equipment. It may extend learning in a direction not offered in any of the core activities.
Review alternate activities along with the core activities when planning a workshop. Select the activities you feel will work best for you and the group. Keep in mind the benefits of a well-paced workshop that includes different kinds of activities.
Resources. Workshops include the following resources you will need to lead the workshop activities.
LEADER GUIDELINES
Facilitators should be attentive to the different life experiences and knowledge participants bring to the group, particularly if the group spans a wide age range. Help the group to share the floor respectfully and honor all members' individual contributions and questions. Assume diversity, especially economic diversity. Make time to do the Spiritual Preparation reflection or exercises offered for facilitators with each workshop; preparing ahead in these ways will help you be an effective facilitator.
IMPLEMENTATION
Offer on-site childcare or in-home babysitting to include adults with young children. Evening workshops can be a challenge for participants who do not drive, who do not drive after dark, or who live a long way from the congregation. Arranging carpools can help.
BEFORE YOU START
Determine the calendar schedule for workshops. Once you have determined which workshops you will offer, choose dates and times for all the workshops. Enter the information on the congregation's calendar.
Choose a meeting space. Find a comfortable room in which you will be able to display materials as digital slides or newsprint. Make sure the space is accessible for participants who use wheelchairs or other assistance devices. Reserve the space and any equipment you may need for all the workshop dates and times you have chosen.
Arrange for childcare. Make arrangements with qualified childcare providers and reserve a room for childcare.
Promote the workshops. Use newsletters, websites, printed and verbal announcements, adult religious education brochures, and special invitations to publicize the workshops. Personally invite potential participants at worship, new member orientations, and religious education programs and meetings. You may also choose to promote the workshops more broadly with a listing in your local newspaper or on your local community access television channel. If participants pre-register, you may wish to send reminder letters, postcards or emails with the date, time, and place of the first meeting.
PRINCIPLES AND SOURCES
Unitarian Universalist Principles
There are seven Principles which Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote:
Unitarian Universalist Sources
Unitarian Universalism draws from many Sources:
FACILITATOR FEEDBACK FORM
We welcome your critique of this program, as well as your suggestions. Thank you for your feedback! Your input improves programs for all of our congregations. Please forward your feedback to:
Faith Development Office
Ministries and Faith Development
Unitarian Universalist Association
25 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02108
religiouseducation@uua.org
Name of Program or Curriculum:
Congregation:
Number of Participants:
Age range:
Did you work with (a) co-facilitator(s)?
Your name:
Overall, what was your experience with this program?
What specifically did you find most helpful or useful about this program?
In what ways could this program be changed or improved (please be specific)?
Did you enrich the program with any resources that you would recommend to others?
What impact, if any, do you think this program will have on your life going forward?
What impact, if any, do you think this program will have on your congregation going forward?
PARTICIPANT FEEDBACK FORM
We welcome your critique of this program, as well as your suggestions. Thank you for your feedback! Your input improves programs for all of our congregations. Please forward your feedback to:
Faith Development Office
Ministries and Faith Development
Unitarian Universalist Association
25 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02108
religiouseducation@uua.org
Name of Program or Curriculum:
Congregation or group:
Your name:
Overall, what was your experience with this program?
What specifically did you find most helpful or useful about this program?
In what ways could this program be changed or improved (please be specific)?
What impact, if any, do you think this program will have on your life going forward?
What impact, if any, do you think this program will have on your congregation going forward?
WORKSHOP 1: TALKING ABOUT MONEY
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future. — John Maynard Keynes, British economist (1883-1946)
The Wi$dom Path program taps a willingness to develop a greater awareness of one's past experiences and behaviors with regard to money and one's feelings and values associated with that history. This workshop begins the exploration by asking: Why is it important to talk about money? Participants think about the meaning of money and the ways one's personal money issues can be a factor in living a fulfilling life. They consider the variety and complexity of individual and social dimensions of our relationships with money. Participants develop a productive way of being together to explore money issues. They begin to develop an intellectual framework for subsequent learning and a crucial emotional foundation on which to continue individual and interpersonal reflective work.
Before leading this workshop, review the accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: Program Overview and Expectations | 10 |
Activity 2: Forming Our Covenant Together | 10 |
Activity 3: Names for Money | 15 |
Activity 4: The Functions of Money | 15 |
Activity 5: Money Stories | 15 |
Faith in Action: Money in the Public Square | |
Closing | 15 |
Alternate Activity 1: Spectrum Exercises | 15 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Reflect on your own relationship to money issues. This exercise will sharpen your awareness of and sensitivity to issues raised with and by the participants and, thus, help you effectively facilitate this program. Use these guide questions:
If you wish to reflect in more detail before this workshop, complete the Taking It Home activity you will assign the group during this workshop's Closing.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
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:
We light this chalice in the spirit of the love that calls us together;
for the care that we commit to show one another;
and in the hope that we are mindful and deliberate
in the journey we undertake together today.
Lead Responsive Reading 660 in Singing the Living Tradition, "To Live Deliberately" by Unitarian Henry David Thoreau. Read aloud the words in plain type and indicate for participants to respond with the words in italics.
If you have chosen to use a talking item, 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 talking item, if you are using one) and give each person 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.
ACTIVITY 1: PROGRAM OVERVIEW AND EXPECTATIONS (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute the handout you prepared using Leader Resource 1. Briefly introduce The Wi$dom Path, offering a "headline" for each workshop your program will include. Pause after naming each workshop for questions or comments. Have a co-facilitator or volunteer capture questions or areas for deeper, future exploration on the newsprint "parking lot." A co-facilitator should keep the newsprint so you will be able to return to and address items later in the program.
ACTIVITY 2: FORMING OUR COVENANT TOGETHER (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain "covenant" with these or similar words:
A covenant is a mutual promise to one another. We agree to a way of being together as the foundation of our group relationships. At the root of all of our covenants with each other is our commitment to the first Unitarian Universalist Principle, the inherent worth dignity of each one of us. A group covenant makes explicit our promises to one another, ensuring that we have a safe and productive space in which to do our work together and serving to hold us as a community of faith and a community of learners.
Call attention to the sample covenant you have posted. Invite a volunteer to read each element. Ask the group if they have any questions or concerns about the points of the sample covenant.
Ask if there are any other elements that should be added to make people feel safe and to support an effective group experience. Write each suggested addition on newsprint and invite discussion, modifying as appropriate. Say that as the program goes forward, the group can and should check in about how covenant guidelines are working in the group and whether any additional guidelines need to be added.
When agreement is evident, ask the group to adopt the covenant by consensus. Commit to keeping the covenant posted throughout the program.
ACTIVITY 3: NAMES FOR MONEY (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce the activity, saying:
The language we use to talk about money reflects our assumptions and experience. Our language about money can influence the tone and direction of any conversation. Let's begin by brainstorming all the terms we can think of for money.
Lead the brainstorm by going around the circle and inviting each participant to give one word for "money" (from proper English, slang English, or another language that they use) while your co-facilitator or scribe writes it on newsprint. Let people know it is fine to pass if they can't think of a word. After two times around the circle, open it up for people to shout out words in any order ("popcorn" style). If the group has difficulty generating examples or has not included cultural variety in their brainstormed list, supplement with examples from Leader Resource 3, Some Names for Money, and then ask for additional words. After the ideas are exhausted, ask the group to take a minute to reflect on the range of expressions generated. Lead a reflection and discussion time. Allow a few responses to each question:
ACTIVITY 4: THE FUNCTIONS OF MONEY (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute handout and introduce the activity, saying: "Money serves many purposes in our lives, some obvious and some more subtle. The handout lists a number of them." Invite volunteers to read aloud the roles and purposes section of the handout and invite comments and observations.
Then, invite different volunteers to read each of the three quotes representing a perspective on money in the handout. After each quote is read, ask for examples of how money has served the function that quote names, in participants' lives. You may want to use your own brief examples as a model. Ask:
Keep discussion brief and fluid, allowing a few examples in each area. To end discussion, re-state that money acts as a vehicle for reallocating value, exercising power, and expressing personal meaning.
Then, ask:
Give each participant a chance to identify one example mentioned in the group and explore briefly why it is spiritual or theological for them.
ACTIVITY 5: MONEY STORIES (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain that you will share excerpts from personal money stories told by members of the UUA President's Council. Distribute the handout. Note that the stories selected are only a few examples; they do not represent the full diversity of experiences and money stories among UU leaders, UUs in general, or participants in this workshop.
Invite participants to take note of parts of the stories that catch their attention. Distribute paper and pens to participants who wish to take notes.
Invite volunteers to read the stories you have selected. Allow a pause between each story for participants to process and reflect. Lead a discussion using these questions:
CLOSING (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Handout 3 and say:
At the next workshop, you will be invited to share some of your personal money story.
Invite participants to take a moment to read the instructions on the handout. Answer any questions. Emphasize that the structure of their autobiography and which story from it they will share aloud are up to them. Suggest participants may wish to use the personal reflections in Handout 2, Money Stories, as models for developing their financial autobiographies.
Invite participants to join hands in a circle, and then to name one meaningful insight, idea, or gratitude they will carry with them from this time together. Share Reading 684 from Singing the Living Tradition. Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: MONEY IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Attend a public meeting where a significant local, state, or national program or policy will be discussed. Bring journals and pens, and collect a printed agenda at the meeting. Reflect on these questions during the meeting, making note of your observations:
Gather at another time after the public meeting to share your observations and insights. Consider whether and how the public process could be changed to engage the money issues you identified in a more productive way.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Make a time for individual reflection and discussion with your co-facilitator after the conclusion of the first workshop. Consider these questions:
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: SPECTRUM EXERCISE (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say that this activity will explore participants' feelings and preferences on some themes related to money and wealth. Emphasize that the purposes of the activity are to reflect while having some fun and to get to know each other.
Explain that you will offer pairs of phrases. Indicate which end of the room participants should move to if they agree with the first phrase of the pair and which end for the second phrase. Say that participants can also place themselves along the continuum to represent a position that is somewhere in between.
Read the pairs aloud and invite participants to place themselves along the continuum. Do not offer explanation of the meaning or intention of word pairs; instead, allow for personal interpretation. Reassure the participants that there are no wrong answers and that it is fine to be standing apart from the group.
Each time people arrange themselves in response to a prompt, take a moment to notice patterns and ask the group to do the same. Ask if anyone would like to say just a few words about their position and any challenges or surprises related to where they have placed, or found, themselves.
To conclude the exercise, lift-up the diversity of experience that has been revealed in the group. Affirm the value of the different starting points for the future workshops and your work together.
Including All Participants
Adapt the space or the activity to accommodate participants who have limited mobility or difficulty standing for extended periods of time or who use assistive devices. Ensure the area for the exercise is clear and open to allow wheelchair access. You may invite a stationary participant to raise a hand or have a partner move by proxy to indicate where the participant wishes to place themself. You can place chairs at intervals across the open space for participants to sit and rest.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 1:
HANDOUT 1: PERSPECTIVES ON ROLE AND PURPOSE OF MONEY
Some purposes and roles assigned to money:
In all of its roles, money can be used in morally positive and morally negative ways.
AN ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE
From "Of the Origin and Use of Money" by Adam Smith in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (at www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html) (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.,1904)
Adam Smith articulated the way that money is a necessary tool for reallocating things of value between people who do specialized work, making it possible to exchange the surplus of one person's efforts for the surplus of another's and for each to meet their broader needs and desires within a social system.
When the division of labour has been once thoroughly established, it is but a very small part of a man's wants which the produce of his own labour can supply. He supplies the far greater part of them by exchanging that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he has occasion for. Every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society.
... every prudent man in every period of society, after the first establishment of the division of labour, must naturally have endeavoured to manage his affairs in such a manner, as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one commodity or other, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their industry.
A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
From "The Sociology of Money" by Wayne E. Baker and Jason B. Jimerson, The American Behavioral Scientist, July/August 1992
... Money takes fewer forms but has more "uses" in the sociological conception. Economists focus only on the limited bundle of impersonal and neutral traits conferred by market integration: a medium of exchange, a means of payment, a store of value, a unit of account, and a standard for deferred payment... Sociologists recognize such money uses but consider a much broader range, especially the use of money as power... Weber (1922/1978) ... emphasized control and power in economic action: "Money prices," he argues, "are the product of conflicts of interest and compromises; they thus result from power constellations...
A PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
From The Psychology of Money by Adrian Furnham (Michael Argyle, 1998)
... There are probably two rather different fairy tales associated with money. The one is that money and riches are deserts for a good life. Further, this money should be enjoyed and spent wisely for the betterment of all. The other story is of the ruthless destroyer of others who sacrifices love and happiness for money and eventually gets it but finds it is of no use to him/her. Hence all they can do is give it away with the same fanaticism with which they first amassed it....
Money is, in and of itself, inert. But everywhere it becomes empowered with special meanings, imbued with special powers. Psychologists are interested in attitudes towards money, why and how people behave as they do towards money, as well as what effect money has on human relations.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 1:
HANDOUT 2: MONEY STORIES
These personal reflections on money and wealth were selected after a facilitated conversation among Unitarian Universalist leaders who serve on the President's Council.
1ST REFLECTION
I grew up on a farm, so my parents were self-employed. The issue of working hard was always very important. I was the first in my family to go to college, so I had an image of myself as a professional woman. I also got my master's degree. I was working and then had children. I worked full time until our second child was born and then I worked part time. After about a year it became obvious to me that it was difficult to handle the children and the household and hold down a job which I was not making a lot of money at because I was doing social work at the time but also had to pay for day care. [My husband's] travel was picking up and so we made the decision that I would stop working.
Not having a paycheck really changed my perspective of who I was. I began to ask what the value of my work really was if I was not earning a paycheck. Because for some reason I had always measured myself that way—just the fact of having a paycheck. So I always felt the work I did with the children and volunteering work had to make up for the paycheck I wasn't bringing into the family. Fast forward a few years and now our daughters have graduated from high school. The question for me became: I am not doing that work anymore of raising the family and holding the household together, do I go back to work? What is the value of what I have been doing over the last eighteen years?
Our income had changed dramatically; we were at a point where I did not have to go back to work to make a financial contribution. We were doing fine. So I really had an opportunity to look at what I wanted to do with my life—was that paycheck that important or were there other ways I could use my life and my talents to give back in a way I wouldn't if I went out and found a job.
2ND REFLECTION
I grew up in a small town, the fifth of ten children for an American Baptist minister—so with essentially no money. When I was in first grade all the boys played marbles at recess. They always played keepsies, which means you brought your own marbles and if you played and lost, you lost your marble. Then you could buy a bag of ten new marbles for 20 cents. What would happen with boys is that the marbles would fall out of their pockets in classes. The teachers would pick them up and give them to the janitor. The janitor ended up with thousands of marbles and he would resell them for a penny a piece, used marbles. So at recess, if you wanted, you could just pay a penny, get yourself a marble, and you could play.
... Over the next two years I played marbles all the time, every recess. I started to accumulate a very large marbles collection. I decided to undercut the janitor and offer two marbles per penny. By the time I finished third grade I had not only established myself firmly with my peer group as the marble king, I had put $18 dollars in the bank from marble sales, had three years of spending money, and was able to give my younger brothers thousands of marbles they could keep for their own collection. This is when I decided you don't have to start with nothing and stay with nothing. There are ways to move somewhere else.
3RD REFLECTION
I began to think about how it had flowed across the generations in my family and I thought about my mother's side. Her forebears were fairly successful New York merchants and did very well. And on my father's side there was a long history of being doctors and lawyers and they did moderately well. And then as classically is the case for so many, the Depression came along and largely wiped out the New York merchant family. And with that came a great deal of hardship for my grandmother and her children. When it came time to decide whether or not the kids—my mother and her brother—would go to college, it turned out that the brother being a male and it being those days was the one who go to go to college and my mother who was clearly the brighter of the two did not. The result was that he wasted his college years and she was frustrated for many years afterwards.
My parents, respecting money a great deal, were very careful with it. And that led to our being able to enjoy ourselves because they made things possible for us that they denied to themselves.
In my own life I've been very comfortable money-wise. And I've had money to spend when I needed it. Uncle Sam came forward just in time when I got out of the service to help me go to graduate school. And after that my legal career has been sufficiently remunerative to not hurt for money. However I find money a difficult commodity to come by in the life I've increasingly begun to lead, which is to try to start things that I think are important. And I have spent much of the past forty years trying to initiate projects that I thought have meaning for society, putting my own money into them but trying very hard to try to persuade others that their money should be directed in that fashion. So for me, money is partly priming the pump and partly trying to induce others to attach the same value that I do to a project and devote their resources accordingly. So I spend a great deal of time thinking about money because these causes are important to me and it will take money to make them happen.
4TH REFLECTION
In my family of origin we started also with very little. By the time I was an early teenager my parents had saved up a little bit of money but then my grandfather developed Parkinson's disease and had to go to a nursing home. My father called his brother and sister. His brother had virtually no capacity to help out, his sister did but wouldn't, so the financial burden really fell to my parents to help pay for the nursing home. They almost went bankrupt as a result of this and it was not until the month before my grandfather died that they realized there was a federal program out there, Medicaid, which would have helped him. There was no way to recapture the money they had spent to help my grandfather so they were basically starting from scratch when my brother and I went to college. It was a real struggle for them for a long, long time. The lesson I took from this was that no matter what you have, you still need a cushion on top of what you think you might need. It is not that you can never have enough, but you have to be really careful. And also it is important to look for other sources of revenue that might be available to you if you run into a hard spot.
5TH REFLECTION
My father worked in a bank so I understood money, at least as a child can understand money. We got an allowance we had to make that allowance last all month. We were taught to budget, to make that twenty-five cents last. As a grown-up I think one of the most important things is, we read Your Money or Your Life several years ago, we read it together and we tried to really look at where our values were and where our time was going in terms of money. It was life changing in a lot of ways because we could see what we valued. Another moment I remember is a few years ago. I am sort of semi-retired now so investments are important and we all know what happened in 2008. I support a woman through Women International and I said, "Oh, I can't do this anymore." I just laughed at myself because it is $350 a year and I definitely have $350 a year to put one of these women in the program even after 2008. So I felt like a shift happened to me. I kind of joked "I am through being cheap." I am trying to be more generous even with people I know that don't have means.
6TH REFLECTION
I grew up on the margins of the middle class. The marginal part came from the fact that my parents divorced when I was 5, back in 1947 when divorce was not so common. My father was a newspaperman—which I grew up to be—and he was paid squat. My mother got the house and there was not enough money with my father's consistent child support to keep the house, so she rented rooms to women. This is postwar when there was a housing shortage and I grew up in a house of women, which was interesting. And when I got old enough to start earning money, the money went to my mother no matter. I worked at various jobs, I did not get paid much, but it helped. And that continued through my early professional life because my grandmother moved in with us and then she got sick. This was before coherent health insurance, and I lived at home the first year and a half of my newspaper career. Essentially I gave my salary to pay my grandmother's medical bills.
The thing that made us marginally middle class is that both of my parents went to college, so you get the values without the money.... The message I internalized was scarcity and pain, watching my mother trying to get the bills paid and the struggles she had... .Money made me squirm most of my life... I have gotten past my discomfort but it is still not the favorite part of my life. I have struggled to become very responsible about saving and investing and making sure that all my insurance is place and all the things you need to do to be a responsible adult, but it didn't come easy for me.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 1:
HANDOUT 3: TAKING IT HOME: OUR PERSONAL FINANCIAL HISTORIES AND IDENTITIES
The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future. — John Maynard Keynes, British economist (1883-1946)
We all encounter the extraordinary in the ordinary. It happens all the time. But caught up in the demands of our daily lives, we too often fail to take the time to see the extraordinary, to envision it in a story, or to open ourselves to the possibility of mystery. — Nancy Lamb in The Art and Craft of Storytelling
Prior to the next workshop, take time to reflect on your personal financial history and identity. Prepare a financial autobiography in written form with emphasis on its spiritual dimensions, and prepare to share excerpts from your autobiography aloud in the next workshop.
While the structure of the autobiography, how you tell your story, is up to you, you are invited to consider:
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 1:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: THE WISDOM PATH: PROGRAM OVERVIEW
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 1:
LEADER RESOURCE 2: SAMPLE COVENANT
Previously published on the UUA website as "Community Covenant: For Use in Lifespan Faith Development Settings with Adults or Youth," attributed to the Spiritual Eldering Institute and used with permission.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 1:
LEADER RESOURCE 3: SOME NAMES FOR MONEY
Benjamins | Dough | Moolah |
Bones | Dosh | Plaster |
Bread | Ducats | Rocks |
Bucks | Gelt | Scratch |
Cabbage | Glad Wealth | Shekels |
Candy | Greenbacks | Simoleons |
Cheddar | Lettuce | Sugar |
Clams | Long green | Tin |
Coin | Loot | Wampum |
Cush | Lucre | Welcome Green |
Dead Presidents | Mazuma | Wonger |
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 1:
LEADER RESOURCE 4: SPECTRUM EXERCISE PROMPTS
Money is...
A Big Part of My Life / Not Important to Me
Related to my Faith / Unrelated to My Faith
The Root of All Evil / A Tool for Good
Connected to Things of Value / Disconnected from What's Real
Necessary in Church / Better Left Outside the Church
An Attachment to Get Past / A Resource to Be Embraced
I am...
Happy to Talk about Money / Unhappy to Talk About Money
Rich / Poor
Generous with Money / Miserly with Money
In Control of My Money / Subject to Control by My Money
Financially Sophisticated / Financially Naﶥ
A Worrier About Money / Carefree About Money
FIND OUT MORE
Baker, Wayne E. and Jason B. Jimerson. "The Sociology of Money (at webuser.bus.umich.edu/wayneb/pdfs/sociology/sociology%20of%20money.pdf)" The American Behavioral Scientist 35,6 (Jul/Aug 1992)
Furnham, Adrian. The Psychology of Money (New York: Routledge, 1998)
Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (at www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html), Edwin Cannan, ed. (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.,1904)
WORKSHOP 2: THE MEANING OF MONEY IN OUR LIVES
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
What you are now is what you have been, what you will be is what you do now. — The Buddha
Beginning in childhood and throughout our adult lives, we receive many messages about money from family members, friends, co-workers, popular culture and our faith community. These messages are often conflicting. How money is managed and spent can be a source of confusion and conflict in our close relationships. Understanding one's personal story and the values that are at the root of one's relationship with money is an important step in creating a spiritually healthy relationship with money. For this reason, the central stories in this workshop will be the money autobiographies of the participants.
In this workshop, participants will also be introduced to the idea that there are generational differences in how we understand money and finances, dynamics that might come into play in our personal, familial and congregational interactions around money. After reflecting on their own stories and on the broader context for those stories, participants will have an opportunity to reflect on how their money habits align with their personal values and the shared values of our Unitarian Universalist faith.
The money autobiographies are a significant component of this workshop. Please send an email a few days prior to the workshop attaching Workshop 1, Handout 3, and reminding participants to prepare their stories.
Before leading this workshop, review the Accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: Sharing Our Money Autobiographies | 35 |
Activity 2: Money and the Generations | 15 |
Activity 3: Hopes and Dreams | 10 |
Activity 4: Connecting Money to Our Values, Hopes, and Dreams | 15 |
Faith in Action: Witness Our Dreams | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Documentary Film — Wants and Needs | 75 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Read Leader Resource 1, The Soul of Money. Mark any passages you may wish to share with the group during this workshop's Opening.
Then, follow the directions on Workshop 1, Handout 3 to write your own money autobiography as the participants will have done between Workshop 1 and this workshop. Make time to share your money autobiography with a co-facilitator or a trusted friend.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Sound the chime and invite participants into quiet reflection as you prepare to enter into a time of centering and sharing.
Invite a volunteer to light the chalice as you share these words, adapted from chalice lighting words by Andrew Pakula, used by permission:
Come into this circle of community. Come into this sacred space.
Bring your whole self!
Bring the joy that makes your heart sing.
Bring your kindness and compassion.
Bring also your sadness and your disappointments.
Spirit of love and mystery, help us to recognize the spark of the divine that lives inside each of us.
May we know the joy of being together.
Teach/lead Hymn 1003, "Where Do We Come From?" from Singing the Journey.
Say:
Powerful money messages are handed down in our families of origin. Today's workshop will focus on our individual money stories and the impact those stories have on our money behaviors.
Pass the basket of money proverb strips and ask each person to select one. Invite participants to state their first name and then read aloud the proverb they have selected. After all proverbs have been read, invite participants to briefly comment on money proverbs which resonate with them, if any, or to suggest other proverbs.
Say:
May our time together be made holy by the sharing of stories, the gift of good listening, and the joy of being held in community.
Sound the chime to signal the end of the centering time.
Including All Participants
If you wish to invite the group to rise and sing, ensure that the option to remain seated is communicated. You may say, "Rise in body or spirit."
ACTIVITY 1: SHARING OUR MONEY AUTOBIOGRAPHIES (35 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Call attention to the posted covenant and remind people of their agreements. Say:
You will share your money autobiography with a partner, revealing as much of your story as you feel comfortable sharing. If you have not prepared a story, you may respond to the posted questions when it is your time to speak. Each speaker will have 10 minutes to share; a total of 20 minutes for the pair. Please listen with intention. Refrain from interruption, comments, or questions when it is your partner's turn to speak.
Invite participants to form pairs. If you have an uneven number, form a group of three. Keep track of time. Sound the chime after 10 minutes (and every 6-7 minutes, for triads), asking partners to switch roles. Sound the chime again at the end of the allotted time.
Have partners rejoin the larger group. If you have chosen to use a talking stick, 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 or planning one's own next words. Invite each person to briefly share two or three highlights from a partner's story. Keep this portion of the activity to 10 minutes.
For the final five minutes, lead the group to brainstorm patterns, themes, and feelings that emerged from the stories. Record them on newsprint.
ACTIVITY 2: MONEY AND THE GENERATIONS (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Handout 1 and invite participants to read it over. Lead a discussion about how generational identity impacts our attitudes about money.
Some questions for group reflection are:
ACTIVITY 3: HOPES AND DREAMS (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Handout 2 and invite participants to record their reflections there or on blank paper. Allow five minutes for journaling. Then, invite participants to use the posted questions to share with the large group their thoughts on the process of naming hopes and dreams.
ACTIVITY 4: CONNECTING MONEY TO OUR VALUES, HOPES, AND DREAMS (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say:
We will use some practical scenarios to begin to think about the connections between values, practical considerations, and faith in our everyday financial decision making.
Call attention to the newsprint depicting the first scenario you chose. Ask:
Keep the pace quick as you list practical considerations, values, and faith commitments related to this scenario. Then lead a group conversation using the questions posted on newsprint as a guide. Move on to process additional scenarios as time allows.
Then, distribute Handout 3, Faith, Dreams, and Values and invite participants to begin consider how their everyday financial decisions are aligned with their faith, their dreams, and their values. Explain that in workshops to come, the group will explore these issues more deeply.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home.
Then, form a circle and join hands. Invite participants to reflect quietly for a moment and then share a word or phrase that describes one insight or take-away from this workshop. Share Reading 701 from Singing the Living Tradition. Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: WITNESS OUR DREAMS
Description of Activity
As a group or individually, create a series of short testimonials about hopes and dreams for the congregation. Lift up ways in which the hopes and dreams participants hold for the congregation are connected to financial practices. Come together to share testimonials. How are generational differences reflected in the testimonials your group prepares? Consider sharing the testimonials in a congregational newsletter or email, via social media or in a worship service.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Make a time for reflection and discussion with your co-facilitator after the conclusion of the workshop. Consider these questions:
TAKING IT HOME
What you are now is what you have been, what you will be is what you do now. — The Buddha
Invite older family members to tell a favorite story about money from their childhood. Reflect with them on the similarities and differences between generations with regard to money.
Create a journal to track your discretionary spending (the things you choose to spend money on rather than the things you must pay for). Each time you make a choice about how to spend your money, record it in the journal and reflect on how your spending does or not does not align with your values. What patterns or trends do you see over a month, six months, or a year?
Consider a request you have received for a charitable donation. How does the organization or project align with your values? Your money dreams? Your Unitarian Universalist theology? How does that alignment (or lack of alignment) influence your decision about making the requested donation?
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: DOCUMENTARY FILM — WANTS AND NEEDS (75 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Show the film. Facilitate discussion afterward, using questions such as these:
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 2:
HANDOUT 1: GENERATIONS THEORY SUMMARY
Based on the work of William Strauss and Neil Howe, in Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992) and Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (New York: Vintage Books, 2000). This handout originally appeared in Workshop 15 of the Tapestry of Faith program, Faith Like a River: Themes in Unitarian Universalist History.
Below is a brief summary of the forces that shapes the generations of people in our congregations, as well as a list of broad generational characteristics. As is the case with any generalization, the lists may not accurately or completely describe the experiences and perspectives of an individual in a particular generation. Note where your experiences and perceptions are in line with the generalizations, and where they differ.
The GI Generation (born between 1901 and 1924)
Shaped by the Great Depression, World War II
Characteristics:
The Silent Generation (born between 1925 and 1945)
Shaped by Roosevelt Presidency, Korean War, Cold War, Anticommunism, technological and scientific advances, Civil Rights movement
Characteristics:
The Baby Boomers (born between 1943 and 1963)
Shaped by Civil Rights, Vietnam, sexual revolution, liberation movements, political unrest and assassination, Watergate scandal
Characteristics:
Generation X (born between 1964 and 1980)
Shaped by the Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies, the end of the Cold War, the AIDS epidemic, the home computer, the Internet as a tool for social and business purposes, high parental divorce rate, high incarceration rate
Characteristics:
Millennials (born between 1981 and 2001)
Shaped by highly involved and protective parents and institutions, electronic social networking and new media, targeted marketing, Columbine school shooting, September 11 terrorist attack, unemployment, War on Drugs, environmentalism
Characteristics:
As-yet-unnamed Generation (born after 2001)
Shaped by communications and technology, War on Terror, the first African American U.S. president, and forces as yet unknown
Characteristics:
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 2:
HANDOUT 2: HOPES AND DREAMS WORKSHEET
Download a high-resolution PDF (at www.uua.org/documents/tapestry/wisdom/chart.pdf) for printing.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 2:
HANDOUT 3: FAITH, DREAMS, AND VALUES
Download a high-resolution PDF (at www.uua.org/documents/tapestry/wisdom/diagram.pdf) for printing.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 2:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: THE SOUL OF MONEY
Excerpted from The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life by Lynne Twist (W.W. Norton and Company, 2003).
In our private lives, we all, at one time or another, have demeaned and devalued ourselves, taken advantage of people, or engaged in other actions we're not proud of in order to get or keep money or the power we believe it can buy. We've silenced ourselves to avoid conflicts or uncomfortable interactions over money. Our behavior around money has damaged relationships when money has been used as an instrument of control or punishment, emotional escape or manipulation, or as a replacement for love. Among families of great wealth, many have been poisoned by greed, mistrust, and a desire to control others. Their lives of privilege have cut them off from the essential experience of ordinary human interactions and authentic relationships. In lives where money is scarce, the struggle can easily become the defining theme that discounts the self-worth and basic human potential of an individual, a family, or even whole communities or cultures. For some, the chronic absence of money becomes an excuse they use for being less resourceful, productive, or responsible than they could be.
We are born into a culture defined by money, and our initial relationship with money is the product of that culture, whether it is one based primarily in poverty, in a country like Mozambique or Bangladesh, or a culture of affluence and wealth in a country like the United States or Japan. From our earliest experiences, we learn money's place and power in our families, our communities, and in our own lives. We see who earns it and who doesn't. We see what our parents are willing to do, and what they aren't willing to do, to acquire money or the things money buys. We see how money shapes personal perspective and public opinion.
In our distinctly aggressive American consumer culture, even our youngest children are drawn into that fierce relationship with money. Much as we did, only more so today, they grow up in a media milieu and popular culture that encourages an insatiable appetite for spending and acquiring, without regard to personal or environmental consequences. Distortions in our relationship with money emerge from a lifetime of these seemingly innocuous everyday experiences in the money culture. Personal money issues, as well as issues of sustainability and social equity central to the human economy and the environment, are clearly rooted in the soil of our relationship with money and the money culture into which we are born and which we come to accept as natural.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 2:
LEADER RESOURCE 2: MONEY PROVERBS
Cut each statement into strips.
1. The best things in life are free.
2. You can't take it with you.
3. It is better to give than to receive.
4. Money doesn't grow on trees.
5. Here today, gone tomorrow.
6. Money is the root of all evil.
7. Penny-wise and pound-foolish.
8. Time is money.
9. Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
10. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
11. A penny saved is a penny earned.
12. A fool and his money are soon parted.
13. Neither a borrower nor a lender be.
14. Money isn't everything.
15. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
16. Waste not, want not.
17. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
18. Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 2:
LEADER RESOURCE 3: BIG MONEY PICTURE SCENARIOS
You shop at a big box store where the prices are lowest.
You drive a gasoline-powered vehicle.
Your employer's retirement fund invests in companies that operate in countries with oppressive laws or policies.
You work for a company that gives financial support to political causes that are in conflict with your own.
Your family is choosing a pet.
FIND OUT MORE
Values-based financial planning information and tools:
More information about Generations theory:
WORKSHOP 3: CULTURAL LESSONS ABOUT MONEY AND WEALTH
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritual creation, and not in augmenting animal existence. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, in The Conduct of Life
This workshop considers the role of cultural and religious messages in shaping our understandings of money and wealth. Recognizing how these messages affect our personal experiences and decisions is part of intentional spiritual work about money.
This workshop creates a space for reflecting on the spoken and unspoken messages we receive about money throughout our lives. Participants examine messages about money and wealth from several major religious traditions as well contemporary Unitarian Universalism, asking whether and how these religious messages connect to our own understandings of wealth and money and our sense of financial "virtue."
To facilitators: Awareness of the cultural messages and values you have absorbed about money and wealth is crucial for effective and inclusive facilitation of this workshop. Set aside time before leading this workshop to consider the questions in the Spiritual Preparation section of this workshop. In addition, review the Accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: The Messages of Our Culture(s) | 25 |
Activity 2: Traditional Religious Messages about Financial Virtue | 15 |
Activity 3: What is Financial Virtue? | 20 |
Activity 4: Contemporary UU Pulpit Messages | 15 |
Faith in Action: Money Values and Virtues in Congregational Life | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Case Study — Moving UU Headquarters | 25 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Take the time to reflect on your position in the world and how it influences your interpretations, values, and understanding of money and wealth:
Notice the emotions that go along with the messages for you. Use this self-awareness to plan ways to guide and make space for others in the workshop.
More broadly, consider what values are most important to you in your economic life. If you were invited to preach a "gospel" or good news about money and wealth, what would you say? How would your good news about money help people live more fulfilled lives? How would your good news help create beloved community in your congregation and beyond? Take time to reflect on any tensions or difficulties your message might evoke in others.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Welcome participants. Sound the chime and invite participants into a moment of quiet reflection as you prepare to enter into a time of centering and sharing. Invite a volunteer to light the chalice as you share these words:
We light this chalice in the spirit of learning that calls us together,
for the commitment to become teachers for one another,
and in the hope that we may be open and ambitious
in the journey we continue together today.
Go around the circle, passing the talking piece if you have chosen to use one and invite each participant to say their name, and check-in with a few words about one personal experience they've had with money since the last workshop. Sound the chime again to signal the end of the centering time.
ACTIVITY 1: THE MESSAGES OF OUR CULTURE (S)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Remind participants, in these words or your own:
We are all shaped by multiple cultural influences and these influences differ from person to person. They may include our geographic, ethnic, racial, socio-economic, gender identity, or affectional orientation; professional and religious contexts in which we have grown up or now life, and other influences. Different influences may have differing importance in shaping our sense of identity and the values we hold.
Invite the group to reflect, and, as they feel moved, to share what they think of as their single most important cultural identity. Ask them to name only one significant cultural identity at this time. Request that participants not respond or discuss, but simply give one another the gift of listening. Allow five minutes for this sharing.
Then, call attention to the mural paper or white board you have posted. Invite participants to draw, using the art materials you have set out, an image to represent a fundamental message they have taken from their own culture about money and wealth. Remind them that their cultural background may include race, ethnicity, geography, social class, gender identity, affectional orientation, or professional or religious affiliation. Play instrumental music and give participants eight minutes to work. With one minute left, ask everyone to complete their drawings and then to write a few words as a summary slogan or "bumper sticker" which reflects the core message their image evokes or represents for them.
Then, gather everyone at the "graffiti wall" to witness the range of images and ideas that have been expressed. Give people two or three minutes to reflect.
Lead a large group discussion with these questions:
ACTIVITY 2: TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS MESSAGES ABOUT FINANCIAL VIRTUE (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Read aloud the selections on the leader resource, one at a time, without identifying the sources. After each selection, invite participants to name the religious group or scripture from which it comes, and supply that information if they cannot. Then, ask for their immediate responses: How does the text engage, affirm, or challenge them? Ask: How does this scripture, or the tradition it comes from, define financial virtue? Say that it is fine to use prior knowledge of a tradition to amplify the brief message the selection offers. Post responses on the newsprint you have prepared.
When you have finished considering the selections, ask participants if any of these or other sacred texts have been formative in their own understanding of financial living.
Ask what connections (if any) can be drawn connections between cultural messages discussed in Activity 1 and the teachings about financial virtue from several world religions. Where are the religious and cultural messages disconnected from cultural messages, or even in conflict?
ACTIVITY 3: WHAT IS FINANCIAL VIRTUE? (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say that five volunteers will present short role plays depicting different approaches to financial virtue. If needed, ask for volunteers. Distribute a section from the leader resource to each volunteer (if they do not already have their roles). Allow volunteers a minute to review the description while asking the whole group: What does it mean to be financially virtuous? What is financial virtue? Offer the definition that a virtue is a moral or ethical principle and that to be virtuous is to be guided by and to habitually live according to certain moral or ethical principles. The question is, what moral or ethical principles are key to being financially virtuous? Say that there is no agreement about that.
Introduce the volunteers, saying that each will present a different person who os living a financially virtuous life. Have each volunteer to read their testimony. After all are read, distribute copies of the handout for participants to review at home. Invite comment and discussion, asking:
ACTIVITY 4: CONTEMPORARY UU PULPIT MESSAGES (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Tell the group they will explore recent sermon texts to identify financial values and virtues lifted up among contemporary Unitarian Universalist religious leaders.
Distribute Handout 1. Ask for volunteers to read each excerpt aloud.
After each one, ask: "In your own words, what are the key messages you heard?" Capture responses on the newsprint you have posted.
Lead the group to reflect, using these questions:
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home.
Then, form a circle and join hands. Invite participants to reflect quietly for a moment and then share a word or phrase that describes one insight or take-away from this workshop. Share Reading 687 from Singing the Living Tradition and extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: MONEY VALUES AND VIRTUES IN CONGREGATIONAL LIFE
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explore the presence of messages in your congregation's life and practices that convey an understanding about financial values and financially virtuous behaviors. Use these questions start discussion:
Briefly share the timeline you have made and information you have gathered. Invite participants to add their own memories and reflections.
Lead a discussion, using these questions to guide you:
Plan a way to share your research, reflections, and observations with professional and lay leaders in your congregation.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Make a time for individual reflection and discussion with your co-facilitator. Consider these questions:
TAKING IT HOME
The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritual creation, and not in augmenting animal existence. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, in The Conduct of Life
With family members or close friends, review the handout you received: Leader Resource 1, Approaches to Financial Virtue. Which profile most closely resembles your approach to financial virtue? What different approaches are represented in your family or your circle of close friends? How might people with different approaches find common ground?
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: CASE STUDY — MOVING UUA HEADQUARTERS (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say:
Although the decision to sell the UUA's Beacon Hill properties and move to 24 Farnsworth Street in Boston has already been made, it is interesting to explore the values and financial issues that were part of the conversation about the decision. Let's look at excerpts from an article UU World magazine published in the spring of 2013—after the UUA Board had voted to sell but before the UUA had chosen a new location for its headquarters.
Distribute the handout and give them time to read it. Ask participants to form groups of four and discuss the case study. Ask each group to (1) identify the role of money in the decision process and (2) lift up other values mentioned. Call attention to the questions you have posted.
Give small groups 15 minutes. Then, re-gather the large group and invite each small group to share highlights of their conversation.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 3:
HANDOUT 1: CONTEMPORARY UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST PULPIT MESSAGES
From "Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later" by the Rev. Dr. Michael A. Schuler (July 4, 2010)
In the long run, it seems obvious that no one "owns" anything. Evidence suggests that we are all mortal beings and whatever we manage to accumulate will, in the end, belong to someone else...
[One family] gladly agreed to limit their own economic opportunities in the interest of protecting [land they owned] from the predations of future commercial developers. Whether or not their own family chooses to continue living on and working the land, [they] feel confident that future generations will commend them for their consideration and foresight.
From "Moral Sentiments" by the Rev. Dr. Galen Guengerich (October 30, 2010)
The free market system, along with its political counterpart, democracy, is based on the obvious conviction that I am motivated by my own interests. Furthermore, it rightly presumes that I know my interests better than anyone else. The theory is that is you take a group of people and set them free to pursue their own interests, better things will happen than if someone else defines their interests for them. In order for people to pursue their own interests they need to know what those interests are and possess the ability to pursue them. The increasing disparities in education and income among Americans threaten to make our democratic and capitalist claims into a farce.
From "What Would Jesus Buy" by the Rev. Kaaren Anderson (2011)
It's almost like Americans are being the Christmas tree with the most shiny objects on it. Our self-worth is determined by how bright our lights are, how many baubles we have hanging from us, what we can provide for our children by buying them things. If I can have the new PlayStation, the newest shoes, the trip to the latest hotspot, then I'm the tree with all the stuff and I'll be noticed. It's become a season of "see me." See me with the right things that I have collected and bought, and in that "see me" is the root of our self-worth being grounded.
But here's another thing, if you get so focused on what you put on your tree, you don't pay attention to putting any water in the stand, you don't feed the tree. With all the focus on the baubles, lights and the gifts under the tree, we don't pay attention to watering the family, to the quiet calm of what we need with one another. And put most acutely, without water, the tree's gonna die.
From "Is Money Really A Danger To My Soul?" by the Rev. Andrew C. Kennedy (2011)
I am not here — especially here in this magnificent facility — to call the kettle black, to "bash the rich," nor to romanticize poverty, either. As Jacob Needleman notes in his book, "Money and the Meaning of Life," in many households, the most intense and violent emotions are centered around money — the lack of it, the need for it, the desperate difficulty, sometimes, of getting enough of it, and the fears of what will happen to us without it. In many important respects, money is power, reality, safety and security, if not happiness, and I believe the lack of money, despite what Jesus and the other religious traditions may say, can truly break one's body, one's home, one's family, and one's spirit. So, let us not romanticize poverty. Indeed, it may be heresy to say this, but sometimes I believe money is the answer, for it can buy: food for the hungry, medicine for the sick, shelter for the homeless, a walker for the unsteady, books to read, games to play, cakes for birthdays, trips in the summer, tickets to the theater or a ballgame. And on and on, we could go. For money is the answer to some things -- many things -- and I suspect it is only those who have never known the sting of poverty that can pretend otherwise.
Money can be especially dangerous if we make it our god -- if we make it our ultimate concern. That is, we endanger our lives, our souls, if we make money the most important thing -- or even nearly the most important thing -- in our lives.
From "Fairness" by the Rev. Roger Fritts (March 14, 2010)
How do you decide when you are doing enough good? ... when it comes to helping others I like the ancient idea of tithing. The idea of giving away a 10th of our income as charity first appears in the book of Genesis. Not 50% of your wealth, but 10%. When it comes to fairness, tithing remains a helpful and frightening guide. Ten percent of my income, 10% of my time, 10% of my life, I should use to help others. That is my goal. It is scary.
I can only say that when I give money to this or that organization, such as Haiti relief or to the health care fund at Children's Hospital and of course to our church, or when I spend 10% of my time going to an immigration rally on the mall, I do not feel like a chump. I felt strong, powerful and loving.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 3:
HANDOUT 2: FAREWELL, 25 BEACON STREET?
By Richard Higgins; from UU World, Spring 2013. Used with permission.
As the UUA looks for a more modern headquarters, Unitarian Universalists reflect on the symbolic meaning of its perch on Boston's Beacon Hill.
When a group of Unitarian Universalists from Dallas visited Boston last spring, they were proud to see the banner of the Unitarian Universalist Association flying outside an old, red-brick, oak-paneled townhouse overlooking Boston Common and next door to the gold-domed State House. The leader of the tour, the Rev. Dr. Daniel Kanter, minister of First Unitarian Church of Dallas, said the Texans shuddered to learn about the lack of central air conditioning at the UUA's headquarters at 25 Beacon Street. But, while the building may not be modern, he recalled one man in the group saying, "at least there's a there there."
The meaning of that "thereness" is on many Unitarian Universalists' minds as the UUA searches for a new home. Last spring, the Board of Trustees gave its support to a plan to sell the association's four Beacon Hill properties and buy a more modern headquarters in Boston. Not surprisingly, Unitarian Universalists see the symbolic and practical value of 25 Beacon Street differently, reflecting the ever-present creative tension over who we are and where we are headed.
Beyond a sense of place and history, many UUs see an archaic, ill-configured, energy-wasting, command-and-control style building with a broken elevator that, as President Peter Morales put it in 2009, "reeks of privilege and hierarchy." To him, 25 Beacon is "a symbol of our past, not our future."
The Rev. Christine C. Robinson, senior minister of First Unitarian Church in Albuquerque, was proud of 25 Beacon when she was a seminarian at Boston University thirty years ago. Now, she says, she believes it reflects the UUA's "stuckness." "I'd like to see them in a more modern building, and in somewhere other than the most hidebound part of Boston," she said. The building "doesn't mean anything to UUs here in New Mexico."
To others, 25 Beacon Street is sacred Unitarian Universalist ground, and an anchor in our roots and principles amid rapid change. To them, forsaking the stately, Federal-style townhouse for more modern space would be like the Roman Catholic Church selling the Vatican and buying the Mall of America.
"It's as close to a mecca as we're going to have," said the Rev. William G. Sinkford, minister of First Unitarian Church of Portland, Oregon, and president of the UUA from 2001 to 2009. It is a shrine, he said, to religious thinkers, reformers, and activists who continue to inspire today. After working in the UUA's Beacon Hill buildings for fifteen years—including eight at 25 Beacon Street as president—Sinkford said he was all too well acquainted with its frustrations. Nevertheless, if it were gone, "I would miss the connection with our history, miss its role as a symbol."
...
"Twenty-five Beacon is a beautiful building," said John Hurley, UUA director of Communications, "but it would take millions to bring it into the twenty-first century." The administration estimates the cost at $6 to $10 million. As the association's unofficial historian, Hurley said he worried initially about the loss of a central historic place. "Now I am very much in favor. My bags are packed. Too much keeps going wrong."
Why leave? Installing an Internet connection fast enough to meet the demand, a video production studio, and other needed technologies is prohibitively expensive because of the antiquated construction and historic designation of the UUA's two office buildings, Hurley said. Part of 25 Beacon is not accessible to people with disabilities; the building also wastes energy and lacks adequate meeting and office space. The staff are spread between 25 Beacon and the UUA's six-story office building at 41 Mount Vernon Street, one block away, which houses Beacon Press and UUA program offices
Laskowski said all those reasons mattered to her, as well as the "capital it would unlock." The UUA has been advised that selling its Beacon Hill properties could fetch between $20 and $30 million. Laskowski's own experience clinched her decision. "Seeing older board members struggle with the ramps to the back of the building affected me," she said. "Also, I'm chemically sensitive. The chemical residue in the building sets off my allergies, and I know it's a problem for others."
...
Even skeptics about the move concede the headquarters has long been inadequate. The central issue, almost all agree, is balancing practical needs with the symbolic meaning of 25 Beacon Street. UUs differ, however, on the importance of that symbol to our faith tradition.
Morales, a native of San Antonio, Texas, whose formative experiences as a Unitarian Universalist took place in Oregon, California, and Colorado, said that when he came to Boston in 2002 to lead the UUA's district staff, he was put off by the signs of privilege and institutional entrenchment he saw. He describes 25 Beacon as a kind of Unitarian golden calf.
...
Some UUA staff and people in Boston "understandably have attachments to this place," Morales added, "but I think for most UUs who live outside of Boston, it's just a return address."
...
The Rev. Diane Miller, minister of First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts, also favors keeping 25 Beacon as a "symbolic presence," with a bookstore, reception hall, and exhibit of UU heritage, but perhaps leasing the upper floors. Miller was director of Ministry at the UUA from 1993 to 2001 and a candidate for UUA president in 2001, and she recalls the headquarters building as an "awkward place to work." But she said she is "very skeptical" about the reasons being set forth for the move and disagrees with the view that Beacon Hill is a quiet, hoity-toity enclave. In spite of its signature residences, "Beacon Hill is actually a very diverse neighborhood," she said, with students, immigrants, and entry-level workers living in numerous small studios and efficiencies, especially on its northern side. "It's full of life," she said.
...
Former UUA President Sinkford recalled the banners promoting marriage equality that hung from 25 Beacon after the [Massachusetts] Supreme Judicial Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2003, which gave encouragement to activists outside the State House.
As an African American, however, working atop Beacon Hill "in the middle of one of the great bastions of privilege" was a double-edged sword. "As I walked to my office," Sinkford said, "I often had the feeling that I didn't belong there, that I was walking into enemy territory. I never got used to it."
Buehrens said his fondest memories of his UUA presidency involved Coming of Age and high school youth group tours of the building. "I gave standing orders to my assistants that I was to be interrupted if any such groups were in the building," he said. "The sight of their faces, the questions they asked as they looked at Starr King's desk, or the Selma Memorial, or the room, Eliot Hall, from which the Board of Trustees adjourned a meeting to go and march in Alabama [in 1965]—to me it shows our history not as an idol but as a guiding force for people today."
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 3:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS MESSAGES
1. Judaism: Wisdom is as good as a patrimony, and even better, for those who behold the sun. For to be in the shelter of wisdom is to be also in the shelter of money, and the advantage of intelligence is that wisdom preserves the life of him who possesses it. (Ecclesiastes 7:11-12, JPS)
2. Christianity: Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. (Matthew 6:19-21, 24, NSRV)
3. Islam: Believe in Allah and His apostle, and spend (in charity) out of the (substance) whereof He has made you heirs. For, those of you who believe and spend (in charity), for them is a great Reward. (Quran, 57:7)
4. Buddhism: Riches ruin only the foolish, not those in quest of the Beyond. By craving for riches the witless man ruins himself as well as others. (The Dhammapada, 24: 355)
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 3:
LEADER RESOURCE 2: APPROACHES TO FINANCIAL VIRTUE
Terry (the aspiring ascetic)
I've come to feel that money is a part of my life that distracts from the more important things. I care more about people than things and this priority is an important part of practicing my faith. I try to make do with less, when I can. I make small efforts. I see so much needless waste in the world—wastefulness that is destroying our world and the other creatures living within it. My spiritual path has a lot to do with decreasing my reliance on money and really all kinds of material things to make more space for the spiritual things.
James (the mindful hedonist)
I've never been particularly sophisticated with money and I'm certainly not rich. But to me, money is like all kinds of material things, simply a tool for enjoying life. We spend too much time worrying about money and not enough time being grateful for what we have and simply enjoying it. I try to stay in the present and not let my fear get in the way of the abundance. Accepting money as a means to good things and appreciating them is part of my spiritual practice of gratitude.
Janice (the diligent worker)
Money isn't itself the objective; it's the result of hard work. There's nothing wrong with having money if you use it constructively. To be honest, I'd prefer not to talk about money; I was raised to believe we spend too much time dwelling on it, which distracts from the important things. My vocation and hard work arise from a place of faith for me—I work hard because I believe that work makes a difference in the world and hard work makes a difference in me. I consider dedication to my ongoing work part of my responsibility as part of the community, my recognition of our interdependence.
Alana (the saver)
I've had times in my life when there wasn't enough money for basic needs. Today as a parent, I take seriously my obligation to ensure my family is taken care of. Supporting them with love and, yes, money is a primary way I practice my faith. I take money seriously because it's part of that and it's by the grace and good fortune that I've been able to make what I have. It has to be my primary focus to continue to earn that money and to save any extra so my children can have a better life. That has got to be my core spiritual discipline.
Robert (the philanthropist)
I was very fortunate in my work life. I was able to make a good amount of money. I did it with luck, but also with hard work and, as it turned out, a talent for the business I was in. It means lot to me to be able to use those resources in a constructive and charitable way. I take that as a deep responsibility. I give in places that matter to me and that I believe will make the world a better place. I find this deeply and spiritually satisfying, I consider a blessing to be able to do it. I believe it is a spiritual practice to come into relationship with others less fortunate than I am through this giving and in other more personal ways.
FIND OUT MORE
These books offer insight about matching one's financial behavior to one's values:
Online resources:
WORKSHOP 4: THE MANY MEANINGS OF MONEY
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Follow the money. Always follow the money. — from the film All the President’s Men
This workshop considers the many ways money influences our choices and relationships at home and in our congregation. While we sometimes view money as a straightforward medium of exchange, at other times we attach social, relational, or political significance to money or designate certain monies for specific purposes. In the story in this workshop, a child feels pressure to spend designated money on "baubles" and struggles with a choice to spend it differently. Participants learn specific communication practices for healthy money talk and reflect how these practices might contribute positively to family and congregational life.
Because emotional challenges in talking about money can cause discomfort, take the time to read through the workshop carefully and envision how you will facilitate conversations. It is helpful to have some familiarity with systems theory; consider viewing congregational consultant Gil Rendle's talk on Congregations as Emotional Systems (at www.youtube.com/watch?v=40ft_Oj5QK4) (36:52) at UU University 2006 as part of your workshop preparation. In addition, review the Accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: The Flow of Money | 10 |
Activity 2: Special Money | 10 |
Activity 3: Lucky Money | 20 |
Activity 4: Money Talk in the Congregation | 25 |
Activity 5: Journal Writing | 10 |
Faith in Action: Lucky Money Choices | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Letter to My Dad | 20 |
Alternate Activity 2: Money Talk at Home | 25 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Take a few minutes to reflect on your answers to the questions posed in the Opening and share your responses with your co-facilitator or a trusted friend.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
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 Rev. Dawn Skjei Cooley:
We light our chalice, grateful for the love that we experience in this beloved community. May the flame light the way for all who seek such abundance.
Lead "Come, Come, Whoever You Are," Hymn 188 in Singing the Living Tradition.
Tell participants this workshop focuses on the ways money flows through our personal lives and our congregational lives and how this flow influences our choices. Invite participants to reflect silently for a moment or two on a time when money came into their lives unexpectedly (for example, a gift or a bonus). How did it feel? Now reflect on a time when you gave a monetary gift to someone else. Did you have expectations about how the recipient would use the gift? Would you be disappointed if they use it differently than the way you imagined it? Allow a few moments for reflection.
Say:
May our time together be made holy by the sharing of stories, the gift of good listening, and the joy of being held in community.
Sound the chime to signal the end of the centering time.
Including All Participants
If you wish to invite the group to rise and sing, ensure that the option to remain seated is communicated. You may say, "Rise in body or spirit."
ACTIVITY 1: THE FLOW OF MONEY (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Engage participants in a brainstorm. Ask them to name different ways that money comes into our personal lives (for example, earnings from work, gifts, garage sales) and then to name ways that it leaves (for example, rent, groceries, charitable donations, education, family support). Record the responses in the columns on the "home" sheet of labeled newsprint, until you have 10 to 15 items on each side of the "ledger." Then, repeat the process for the inflow and outflow of money in the congregation, capturing responses on the other labeled sheet of newsprint. Examples of inflow might be pledges, grants, collection plate, rental income; outflows might be salaries for staff, money spent on worship, the RE budget, and so on.
Post the sheet of newsprint with reflection questions. Offer these questions for group reflection, noting that you will explore them more deeply later in the workshop:
ACTIVITY 2: SPECIAL MONEY (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Referring to the lists created in Activity 1, introduce "special money." Say:
"Special money" is money we designate, or earmark, for a particular use, limit to particular users, or categorize differently based on its source or intended purpose. Earmarking has gained a negative reputation in our sociopolitical discourse. Here, however, we are going for a broader understanding of the term.
Ask:
Ask participants to review the newsprint lists of congregational inflow and outflow and identify areas where "special money" comes into play in congregational life. Invite participants to consider how earmarking can be used as a tool to intentionally direct the flow of congregational money toward a larger purpose.
ACTIVITY 3: LUCKY MONEY (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute copies of the story "Sam and the Lucky Money." Have volunteers read the story aloud. Allow a moment for the group to reflect, and then invite participants to move into pairs and respond to the questions posted on newsprint. Give pairs 10 minutes.
Use the chime to keep track of time. At the five minute mark, indicate that the second person in the group should be speaking. Sound the chime again two minutes before the end of the allotted time. Re-gather the group and ask each pair to share one "aha" from their discussion. Limit the group reporting time to about five minutes.
ACTIVITY 4: MONEY TALK IN THE CONGREGATION (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Handout 1, Case Study — East Red Velvet UU Fellowship. Introduce the case study, a budgeting discussion among congregational leaders. Ask for up to six volunteers to participate in the role play and assign them each a role number. Give the group about five minutes to read the case study description. Then, read the case study description aloud and invite volunteers to enact the role play. If you have more than six participants, invite those who do not have a role to observe the process.
Tell the role-players their task is to make progress toward a solution, but they needn't come to a final resolution. Allow 10 to 12 minutes for the role play. Afterward, give role-players an opportunity to offer feedback about their role. Was it easy or challenging? Comfortable or uncomfortable? Why?
Distribute Handout 2, Healthy Communication Practices and engage the full group to discuss these questions:
Including All Participants
If the group includes people who use mobility devices such as a wheelchair, arrange the role-play space in such a way as to welcome them to take a role; that is, set chairs for the inner circle aside until you know how many you will need.
ACTIVITY 5: JOURNAL WRITING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Indicate the paper and writing/drawing implements. Invite participants to write or draw thoughts and reflections. Suggest they consider:
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home. Invite everyone to form a circle and join hands. Ask participants to reflect quietly for a moment and then share a word or phrase that describes one insight or take-away from this workshop. Share Reading 701 from Singing the Living Tradition. Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: LUCKY MONEY CHOICES
Description of Activity
Challenge one another to keep track of purchases for a single week. Ask each person to look over purchases with a critical eye, asking:
As a workshop group, share your discoveries about the "lucky money" you have identified in your life. Reflect on how it would feel to give that same amount of money to an organization or charitable group you are passionate about. Covenant together to making clear-headed choices about how to spend your "lucky money," in a way that is in tune with your most cherished values. Check in with one another periodically about your progress in honoring your commitments.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Make a time for reflection and discussion with your co-facilitator after the conclusion of the workshop. Consider these questions:
TAKING IT HOME
Follow the money. Always follow the money. — from the film All the President's Men
Think about your money inflow and outflow. Create a pie chart of where you think you spend your money and then do a quick analysis of your actual spending. Can you identify pockets of "special money" in your household?
Host a "money movie" night. Show movies where money is a major theme or motivator. What healthy/unhealthy behaviors do you observe? What values are at work? Examples include: Rainman, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Color of Money, Brewster's Millions, Ocean's Eleven, and It's A Wonderful Life.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: LETTER TO MY DAD (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Tell participants you are going to read a letter from a young adult to his father about his choice to give away a significant portion of his trust fund. Distribute Handout 3, Letter to My Dad and have a volunteer read it aloud. Allow a moment for participants to reflect, and then invite them to find a partner. Invite pairs to take 10 minutes to consider the questions you have posted.
Use the chime to keep track of time. At the 5 minute mark, indicate that the second person in the group should be speaking. Sound the chime again two minutes before the end of the allotted time.
Bring the group back together and ask each pair to share one "aha" from their discussion. Limit the group reporting time to about five minutes.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: MONEY TALK AT HOME (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Handout 4, Case Study — The Miller Family. Introduce the case study, a family discussion around budgeting for a child's college education expenses. Ask for up to five volunteers to participate in the role play and assign them each a role number. Give the group about five minutes to read the case study description. Then, read the case study description aloud and invite volunteers to enact the role play. If you have more than five participants, invite those who do not have a role to observe the process.
Tell the role-players their task is to make progress toward a solution, but they needn't come to a final resolution. Allow 10 to 12 minutes for the role play. Afterward, give role-players an opportunity to offer feedback about their role. Was it easy or challenging? Comfortable or uncomfortable? Why?
Distribute Handout 2, Healthy Communication Practices and engage the full group to discuss these questions:
Including All Participants
If the group includes people who use mobility devices such as a wheelchair, arrange the role-play space in such a way as to welcome them to take a role; that is, set chairs for the inner circle aside until you know how many you will need.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 4:
STORY: SAM AND THE LUCKY MONEY
Sam and the Lucky Money text Copyright © 1995 by Karen Chinn. Permission arranged with Lee & Low Books, Inc., New York, NY 10016.
Sam could hardly wait to get going. He zipped up his jacket and patted his pockets. It was time to go to Chinatown for New Year's Day!
Sam thought about sweet oranges and "lucky money": Crisp dollar bills tucked in small red envelopes called leisees [pronounced "lay- sees"].
Sam's grandparents gave him leisees every New Year. Each envelope was decorated with a symbol of luck. Sam's leisees were embossed in gold.
Sam counted out four dollars. Boy, did he feel rich! His parents said he didn't have to buy a notebook or socks as usual. This year he could spend his lucky money his way.
The streets hummed with the thump of drums and the clang of cymbals.
It seemed like everyone was shopping for New Year's meals. There were so many people crowded around the overflowing vegetable bins that Sam had to look out for elbows and shopping bags.
Right next to the vegetable stand were two huge red-paper mounds. Sam kicked the piles with his right foot, and then with his left foot, until he created a small blizzard. On his third kick he felt his foot land on something strange.
"Aiya!" someone cried out in pain.
Startled, he looked up to find an old man sitting against the wall. The stranger was rubbing his foot. Bare feet in winter! Sam thought. Where are his shoes?
Sam stared at the man's dirty clothes as he backed away. For once, Sam was glad to follow his mother.
In the bakery window, Sam eyed a gleaming row of fresh char siu bao, his favorite honey-topped buns. Sam wondered how many sweets he could buy with four dollars.
Sam was about to ask for buns when he noticed a full tray of New Year's cookies. They were shaped like fish, with fat, pleated tails that looked like little toes. He couldn't help but think about the old man again. Sam decided he wasn't hungry after all. Suddenly, he heard a noise from outside that sounded like a thousand leaves rustling.
"Look!" he yelled. Bundles of firecrackers were exploding in the street. Rounding the corner was the festival lion, followed by a band of cymbals and drums. Sam pulled his mother outside.
The colorful lion wove down the street like a giant centipede. It came to a halt in front of a meat market, and sniffed a giant leisee that hung in the doorway. With loud fanfare, the band urged the lion toward its prize.
"Take the food! Take the money! Bring us good luck for the New Year!" Sam shouted along with the others. His heart pounded in time with the drum's beat. With a sudden lunge, the lion devoured the leisee all in an eye-blink and continued down the street.
A large "Grand Opening" sign caught Sam's eye. A new toy store! Just the place to spend his lucky money!
Sam ran down one aisle, then another. Then, he spotted the basketballs.
A new basketball was the perfect way to spend his lucky money. But when he saw the price tag, he got angry.
"I only have four dollars," he shouted. "I can't buy this."
"What is four dollars good for?" he complained, stamping his feet.
Sam couldn't help it. Even with all the shiny gold on them, the leisees seemed worthless.
"Sam, when someone gives you something, you should appreciate it," his mother said as she marched him along. Sam stuffed his leisees back in his pockets. The sun had disappeared behind some clouds, and he was starting to feel the chill. He dragged his feet along the sidewalk.
Suddenly, Sam saw a pair of bare feet, and instantly recognized them. They belonged to the old man he had seen earlier. The man also remembered him, and smiled. Sam froze in his steps, staring at the man's feet.
His mother kept walking. When she turned back to check on Sam, she noticed the old man. "Oh," she said, "Sorry—I only have a quarter." The man bowed his head several times in thanks.
He acts like it's a million bucks, Sam thought, shaking his head. As they started to walk away, Sam looked down at this own feet, warm and dry in his boots.
"Can I really do anything I want with my lucky money?" he asked.
"Yes, of course," his mother answered.
Sam pulled his leisees from his pockets. The golden dragon looked shinier than ever. He ran back and thrust his lucky money into the surprised man's hands.
"You can't buy shoes with this," he told the man, "but I know you can buy some socks." The stranger laughed, and so did Sam's mother.
Sam walked back to his mother and took her warm hand. She smiled and gave a gentle squeeze. And as they headed home for more New Year's celebration, Sam knew he was the lucky one.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 4:
HANDOUT 1: CASE STUDY — EAST RED VELVET UU FELLOWSHIP
East Red Velvet UU Fellowship is in the midst of budget planning for the next program year. Each committee was asked to submit a budget request for consideration. Last year's budget included significant staff salary and benefit increases, so the unstated goal of the stewardship committee is to keep this year's budget increases to a minimum. The Music Committee is overdue in submitting their request and, given that they represent a significant portion of the budget, the overall process is stalled.
The board president has called together the Chair of the Finance Committee, the Music Director, the Music Committee Chair, and several board members for an informal meeting to discuss the situation and how to move forward.
Role 1
You are the chair of the Stewardship committee. You feel personally responsible for the success of the stewardship campaign and are anxious that it won't go well.
Role 2
You are the chair of the Music committee. When you were recruited, no one mentioned that you would be responsible for creating a budget. Money is not something that was ever discussed when you were growing up and you don't feel comfortable talking about it in a group. The Music Director gave you some information but it is not clear to you what you should do next. You feel inadequate and it feels like the Stewardship committee chair is pressuring you for an answer.
Role 3
You are the Board President. You are annoyed with the Music committee chair because they seem to know nothing about the music budget. They seem to not want to deal with it. You have bypassed the chair and gone directly to the Music Director.
Role 4
You are the Music Director. The Board President keeps asking you for information about the budget yet it is clearly stated in the Music committee charter that they are responsible for creating and submitting the annual budget. You have given the Music committee chair all the information they should need to complete the budget request, including the information that the cost of instrument maintenance and tuning will increase significantly this year. You feel caught in the middle and don't want to embarrass the committee chair, but you are concerned that you won't get the money you need for next year's program.
Role 5
You are on the board. Your spouse is the chair of the Social Justice committee and they have asked for an increase in their budget this year for a special project that they are very passionate about. If the Music budget increases, the Social Justice committee's request will be tabled. You don't have the personal financial resources to support this project and your spouse will be very disappointed if the budget increase doesn't come through.
Role 6
You are on the board. You are uncomfortable with the information you have about the positions of other players in the scenario but are afraid to speak to others for fear of breaking a confidence.
Questions for Group Discussion
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 4:
HANDOUT 2: HEALTHY COMMUNICATION PRACTICES
Listen attentively to what others are saying. | Be willing to discuss difficult issues. | Use "I" language. | Stay connected through conflict. Don't disengage. |
Paraphrase what you heard the other person say. | Understand boundaries. | Be open to what you can learn from others. | Respect confidentiality. |
Communicate directly, avoiding triangulation. | Use positive body language. Lean into the conversation. | Respond rather than react. | Ask clarifying questions. |
Engage in truth-telling. | Don't interrupt. | Avoid secrecy. | Try to tamp anxiety. |
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 4:
HANDOUT 3: LETTER TO MY DAD
By Tyrone Boucher, from his website, Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism. Used with permission.
Hey Dad,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response to my email!
I want to respond by bringing up stuff that is really timely right now in regards to my giving and my own relationship to wealth.
As I mentioned, I recently joined a donor circle called Gulf South Allied Funders. This move was really important to me, because GSAF is a group I've been inspired by since it began a little over a year ago. Beyond just the fact that I think a lot about the impact of Katrina and its obvious connection to racism—and want to help support social justice in the Gulf South however I can—GSAF uses a model of giving that I find really exciting and thoughtful.
Most of the money that GSAF helps channel doesn't come from the personal giving of the nine original members of the group—it comes from fundraising within the communities that those folks have access to. This includes their families, friends, churches, etc. as well as the Resource Generation community—and also a few established donor networks that have been asked to match or double the funds that GSAF raises.
I think I agree with you that just giving the $400,000 or so that I have to a grassroots organization or activist-led regranting institution won't catalyze a revolution. But there are a couple reasons why I still feel compelled to give a significant portion of what I have.
The first is what I described above—the way that my wealth and class privilege give me access to communities that have more resources than I do, and a certain amount of leverage in communicating with those communities. In teaming up with GSAF I become a part of a powerful donor network with connections, influence, and lots and lots of money.
The second reason I feel compelled to give is a more personal, spiritual urge. I'm incredibly inspired by the folks I've met who gave away their inherited wealth to support social justice. I find it particularly inspiring when this giving includes an analysis of the inherent power dynamics of philanthropy and an effort to redistribute power in a way that transfers decision-making ability about the money to the hands of people and communities who are on the front lines of social justice work. I have seen the way that this intentional letting go of power has been transformative for many of my friends.
Increasingly, I am supported and sustained by social justice work in a deep way—by the vision for a better world. When I give money, I intend to be really conscious about not doing it from a place of guilt, but doing it from a place of love and joy and the desire to align my actions with my spiritual and political beliefs.
Thank you again for having this ongoing dialogue with me—I'm really excited about it. And I can't wait to hear your thoughts.
xoxo Tyrone
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 4:
HANDOUT 4: CASE STUDY — THE MILLER FAMILY
The Miller family is facing some financial challenges. The oldest child is applying to private colleges with tuition costs that will add a significant financial burden to the family budget. It is the end of a long week and the question of how to pay for college has come up during the family's traditional Friday pizza night.
Role 1
You are the head of household and the primary breadwinner. Work has been very stressful lately and one of your longtime work associates was let go last week. The household budget is straining under the routine costs of sustaining a family of five and you feel guilty that you did not plan better for college when the children were young and suspect that your child will have to take on large college loans to go to their first choice school.
Role 2
You are the spouse and you are not currently employed outside the home. You have a bit of a book obsession and you have some credit card bills that your spouse does not know about. You want the best for your children but you don't really like to talk about money.
Role 3
You are a high school senior, planning to go away to college. Your parents have been generous to you throughout your growing up years and your expectation is that they will continue to support your dream of going to private college in another state. You have a good academic record and expect to be awarded a scholarship.
Role 4
You are a grandparent. You want to see your grandchildren do great things and you have indicated a willingness to provide some financial support. It has been fifty years since you attended college and you were shocked by the current cost of a college education. After hearing about the high cost of private school, you are adamant that the best choice is a state school.
Role 5
You are a young adult child who stopped by to join the family for dinner. You have heard stories about your parents' childhoods and know that the family's primary breadwinner grew up in very difficult socioeconomic circumstances. You also know how proud they feel of of their ability to provide for the family's comfort. You feel anxious knowing that your parents have to make difficult choices.
Group Discussion
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 4:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: SPECIAL MONIES
From "The Social Meaning of Money," by Viviana A. Zelizer, The American Journal of Sociology, volume 95, No 2, September 1989.
Special money in the modern world may not be as easily or visibly identifiable as the shells, coins, brass rods, or stones of primitive communities, but its invisible boundaries emerge from sets of formal and informal rules that regulate is uses, allocation, sources, and quantity. How else, for instance, do we distinguish a bribe from a tribute or a donation, a wage from an honorarium, or an allowance from a salary? True, there are quantitative differences among these various payments. But surely, the special vocabulary conveys much more than diverse amounts. Detached from its qualitative differences, the world of money becomes undecipherable.
The model of special monies thus challenges the traditional utilitarian model of market money by introducing different fundamental assumptions in the understanding of money:
1. While money does serve as a key rational tool of the modern economic market, it also exists outside the sphere of the market and is profoundly shaped by cultural and social factors.
2. There are different kinds of monies; each special money is shaped by a particular set of cultural and social factors and is thus qualitatively distinct.
3. By focusing exclusively on money as a market phenomenon, it fails to capture the very complex range of characteristics of money as a nonmarket medium.
4. The assumed dichotomy between a utilitarian money and non-pecuniary values is false, for money under certain circumstances may be as singular and unexchangeable as the most personal object.
5. Given the assumptions above, the alleged freedom and unchecked power of money become untenable assumptions. Culture and social structure set inevitable limits to the monetization process by introducing profound controls and restrictions on the flow and liquidity of money. Extraeconomic factors systematically constrain and shape (a) the uses of money, earmarking, for instance, certain monies for specified uses; (b) the users of money, designating different people to handle specified monies; (c) the allocation system of each particular money; (d) the control of different monies; and (e) the sources of money, linking different sources to specified uses.
Even the quantity of money is regulated by more than rational market calculation. For instance, in The Philosophy of Money, Simmel suggests that money in "extraordinarily great quantities" can circumvent its "empty quantitative" nature: it becomes "imbued with that super-additum,' with fantastic possibilities that transcend the definiteness of numbers."
Even identical quantities of money do not "add up" in the same way. A $1,000 paycheck is not the same money as $1,000 stolen from a bank or $1,000 borrowed from a friend. And certain monies remain indivisible—an inheritance, for instance, or a wedding gift of money intended for the purchase of a particular kind of object. The latter is a qualitative unit that should not be spent partly for a gift and partly for groceries.
Exploring the quality of special monies does not deny money's quantifiable and instrumental characteristics but moves beyond them, suggesting very different theoretical and empirical questions from those derived from a purely economic model of market money.
FIND OUT MORE
About congregational systems theory:
About the many meanings of money:
WORKSHOP 5: MONEY AND SOCIETY
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered. — Proverbs 21:13
This workshop focuses on economic justice and economic class to explore ways money and wealth shape our individual choices and actions in the broader society. What day-to-day challenges and opportunities face people in different economic circumstances? How do one's financial means or social class relate to the dreams we have for our lives? How have participants encountered or observed classism?
Participants safely engage with the challenging topic of classism through activities, a story, and a game. The workshop offers time for processing and reflection, both individually and collectively, through art, meditation, and conversation.
Despite the whimsical story and fun activities, the topics of classism and economic justice may elicit participant feelings of shame, guilt, or a sense of being marginalized in the group; most of us have not been taught how to talk about social class. Before the workshop, read the reflection and discussion questions to identify hot buttons or areas of sensitivity for your group. Plan a time to discuss with your co-leader a way to share facilitation that will allow you to offer safe space for the sharing of personal stories using active and supportive listening, while managing any personal discomfort or anxiety about the topics. If a participant has a strong emotional reaction to an activity, engage your minister or pastoral care team to follow up.
Acivity 5, Creative Response, invites participants to explore a nonverbal reflection activity. If you are not experienced with arts and crafts, ask a participant or a member of the congregation to help you gather supplies prior to the workshop. In addition, review the Accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 15 |
Activity 1: What Would You Do? | 35 |
Activity 2: Guided Meditation | 15 |
Activity 3: Creative Response | 20 |
Faith in Action: Food Insecurity in Your Community | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: TED Talk — Income Inequality | 25 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
What is your understanding of classism? When have you experienced or observed classism in your local community? In your congregation? Are there assumptions made in your congregation that members have a certain amount of economic privilege or that they are middle class? Journal about your reflections or share them with a trusted friend or family member or with your co-facilitator.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
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:
May this flame,eternal symbol of transformation,fire our curiosity, strengthen our wills, and sustain our courageas we seek what is good within and around us.
Lead "Meditation on Breathing," Hymn 1009 in Singing the Journey.
Say in these words or your own:
This workshop focuses on differing economic realities in our society and the cultural expectation that a successful life is equated with financial prosperity. America has been called "the land of dreams." Most of us dream of success, yet how you define success and how your "success" affects others are related to your position on the spectrum of wealth and income.
Share the story "The Daydreamer." If you feel comfortable doing so, tell the story rather than reading it. Afterward, ask participants if they have ever had "daydreams" about their lives and what they might achieve financially. Have those daydreams motivated, discouraged, or distracted them (or perhaps a combination of the three)? Invite participants to briefly share their daydreams of financial success; if the centering table includes symbolic objects, you might invite participants to choose an object to incorporate into their daydream story. If you have chosen to use a talking stick, remind participants that it will be passed to the one who is speaking as a reminder to focus on the speaker rather than planning one's own next words.
Say:
May our time together be made holy by the sharing of stories, the gift of good listening, and the joy of being held in community.
Sound the chime to signal the end of the centering time.
Including All Participants
Be considerate of participants with mobility limitations. A song leader can invite people to "rise in body or spirit;" ensure that the option to remain seated is communicated.
ACTIVITY 1: WHAT WOULD YOU DO? (35 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Hand each participant a Profile Card, explaining that the cards summarize the circumstances and resources of different people in our society. Allow participants a minute or two to read their profiles. Form groups of three, with each group including a 1, 2, and 3 profile card. If you must have a group of two, make sure each partner has a different profile number.
Give participants three minutes to introduce their profiles to one another in their small groups. Then, give each small group a Situation Card. Explain that they have three minutes to decide together the impact of the described situation on the person in each of the profiles. Use a timer and alert participants as time elapses to keep the activity moving quickly. Repeat the activity twice, keeping the small groups intact and giving each small group a new Situation Card each time.
After three rounds with Situation Cards, invite each group to share with the larger group one or two insights from the exercise. Allow five minutes for this part of the activity.
Post the newsprint and lead a discussion using the questions you wrote. Begin by acknowledging that some participants may feel uncomfortable with some aspects of the discussion. Remind participants to speak respectfully from their own experience and to practice active and receptive listening. If the group includes members of a culturally, ethnically, racially or economically marginalized group among the participants, ensure that they are heard as individuals and are not asked to speak representatively for a particular population.
Guide the discussion to ensure participants touch on and consider all four questions. You may wish to post blank newsprint to record important ideas or questions that emerge.
ACTIVITY 2: GUIDED MEDITATION (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to get comfortable, either sitting loosely in a chair or lying on the floor. Read Leader Resource 1, Guided Meditation aloud, reading the chime to begin and end the meditation as directed by the leader resource.
ACTIVITY 3: CREATIVE RESPONSE (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to create an art project in response to their feelings and experiences with classism and economic injustice. Ask them to use the materials provided and create something that expresses metaphorically what has emerged or what they may be struggling with from this workshop. Suggest a drawing, a clay sculpture, a 3D art form, or a poem. Suggest they use the questions you have posted on newsprint to spark ideas. Explain that this activity need not be done in silence and participants may want to socialize as they process and work. Tell them that they will have 15 minutes to work and then will share with others.
After 15 minutes, ask participants to gather in groups of three to share their completed project in whatever way feels comfortable. Say:
You need not describe in detail the feelings you may be experiencing. Instead, tell your conversation partners a bit more about the piece you created.
Allow about five minutes for small groups to share.
Including All Participants
Some participants may resist doing "arts and crafts." Encourage each person to participate at whatever level they feel comfortable. Creative expression, playfulness, and the use of metaphor are all important practices in faith development. Remind them that in the group, the presence of different learning styles means that someone will always be standing close to the edge of their comfort zone!
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home. Invite everyone to form a circle and join hands. Ask participants to reflect quietly for a moment and then share a word or phrase that describes one insight or take-away from this workshop. Extinguish the chalice, sharing these closing words by John I. Daniel:
May the flame which has brightened our time together
Warm our hearts, light our paths and
Inspire our vision
As we once again go our separate ways.
FAITH IN ACTION: FOOD INSECURITY IN YOUR COMMUNITY
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Coordinate a multigenerational service project at a local food bank or food redistribution center. Work with congregational leaders to publicize and promote the project. Host a breakfast or luncheon after the event and invite participants of all ages to gather in small, multiage groups and process their experience using these questions as prompts:
Facilitators should remind participants that hunger and food insecurity are not particular to any one group of people: There may be people in your congregation and in your project group who have in the past or currently need food aid. Care must be taken to avoid "us" and "them" language when sharing stories.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Make a time for reflection and discussion with your co-facilitator after the conclusion of the workshop. Consider these questions:
TAKING IT HOME
If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered. — Proverbs 21:13
Look up census/demographic data (at quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html) related to poverty in your state or local community. Are you surprised by what you learn? Talk with people familiar with the economic needs in your community to find out more and to discover ways you can help by participating in the political process or by doing service.
Consider your personal economic circumstances. How confident are you that you could financially navigate the situations we role played? What would you do if confronted with circumstances such as those we discussed? Is there a tension between your values and your financial behavior, given the reality of economic injustice? Share your knowledge and reflections with family or trusted friends.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: TED TALK — INCOME INEQUALITY (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Show the video.
Invite immediate responses. Then lead a discussion with these questions:
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 5:
STORY: THE DAYDREAMER
Adapted from a traditional folk tale from India.
Once upon a time long ago there was a man who made his living selling oil. He filled up large pots and went from village to village, selling the precious liquid to all who were interested. In fact, business was going so well, he decided he needed an assistant.
The old man found a spirited young man whose good humor made him perfect for the job. The young man's task was to carry a big pot of oil through the village balanced on his head and he told the old man that he had the hardest head of anyone he knew. The old man agreed and offered him ten rupees a day.
Well, this young man turned out to be quite a daydreamer. As he walked from house to house, he thought "Hmm, with ten rupees I can buy a few chickens. Of course the chickens will have eggs and I'll have more and more chickens! Soon I'll make so much money selling eggs and fowl that I'll be able to buy goats. When the goats multiply I'll sell them and buy cows and buffalo.
Soon I'll have so many animals that I'll be a rich man. I'll be rich enough to buy land and then I can grow crops. Of course I'll have to build a house on my land and with such a big house, I'll want to marry and have lots of children.
With a large farm and a big family I'll be a very busy man. When they call me in for dinner, I'll shake my head and 'No, I am too busy!'" He shook his head violently to emphasize his point and when he did, the pot full of oil fell from his head and broke into pieces on the ground.
The old man was angry and said, "You fool! Look what you have done. You owe me a hundred rupees to make up for the oil you have spilled."
The young man shook his head and said sadly, "Sir, you may have lost a hundred rupees but I have lost a great deal more."
"What do you mean?" said the old man.
The young man hung his head and said, "I have lost my dream of a big piece of land, overflowing with animals and crops, with a beautiful wife and a big house full of happy children."
The old man shook his head and laughed. "What a fool you are! And a greater fool am I for hiring a dreamer like you!" Both men laughed and went on their way.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 5:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: WHAT WOULD YOU DO? PROFILE CARDS
Download a high-resolution PDF (at www.uua.org/documents/tapestry/wisdom/cards_together.pdf) for printing.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 5:
LEADER RESOURCE 2: WHAT WOULD YOU DO? SITUATION CARDS
Download a high-resolution PDF (at www.uua.org/documents/tapestry/wisdom/situations_together.pdf) for printing.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 5:
LEADER RESOURCE 3: GUIDED MEDITATION
Let's take some time to relax and allow our imaginations to stretch.
Guided meditation is a way of focusing so that your innermost thoughts and memories can come to the surface of your mind. Sometimes but not always, a guided meditation will invite new insights or excite your imagination in ways that can be spiritually instructive or illuminating. The ringing of the chime is a signal that we are entering into our meditation.
[Ring the chime.]
I invite you to get comfortable, whether this means sitting in your chair or perhaps stretching out on the floor. Begin with breathing. Slowly inhale, and then slowly exhale. Inhale, then exhale. Breathe in, breathe out. Inhale, exhale. In, then out. Find a rhythm that feels comfortable to you. Focus on your breath. Inhale, exhale. Breathe in, breathe out. Starting with your feet, begin to relax your body. Let go of the tension in your feet and ankles. Relax your muscles as you slowly move up your body, from your shin to your knees to your thigh. Relax your abdomen. Feel your breath in your stomach and your diaphragm. Release the tension in your shoulders. Feel the tension leave your body down your arms, over your elbow, all the way to your hand and fingers. Shake the tension out of your hands. Let your arms go limp and rest your hands in your lap. Move up to your neck. So much tension gets held in your head and neck, try to let it go. If you are comfortable, let your head roll forward to rest on your chest. Concentrate on your spine, focusing your attention on relaxing from your neck all the way down. If you haven't already, close your eyes and relax your eyebrows and eyelids. Let go of the tension in your teeth and jaw. Are you clenching? Let your jaw go slack and leave your mouth open.
We are going to slip into the world of our imagination for a little while. Visualize a comfortable, peaceful place. It can be somewhere you have been, a memory, or you can create a place where you can relax and rest undisturbed. Is there water nearby? Perhaps you see a lake, or the ocean, or a waterfall? Are there trees, or flowers, or beautiful rocks nearby? Can you see the sun? Feel a gentle breeze? How does the air smell and taste? Are your feet or hands in touch with the earth? Do you see mountains in the distance? Find a place to rest for few minutes. Let your mind wander. Daydream a bit. What is it that makes this place special for you?
While you are resting in your special place, let your mind wander to a time in the recent past or perhaps long past, where you had to make an important financial decision. It may have involved a small amount of money or a great deal of money but it did make an impact on you. Perhaps it also affected someone you love or even your community or the world. Was it a time when you purchased something? Was it a time when you had to borrow money? Was it time when you didn't have enough? Was it a gift, given or received? Was it an investment in the future? In that situation, how conscious were you of your financial status relative to that of others?
Think back to your feeling when you made this decision. Were you confident? Were you worried? Afraid? Who else was involved in this decision? What do you think they were feeling?
How did you come to your decision? What were the steps leading up to it? Was it a logical process? Was it an emotional process? Did you have a choice? Did it require trust, either in yourself or in others? Was it easy or was it a struggle? Did this decision require you to compromise your values or did it affirm them? In what way?
Remember to keep breathing. Now focus your thoughts on the present. How do you feel now about the decision you made at that time? Did it transform your thinking or your habits or your attitudes in some way? Did you learn something from this decision? Has it changed you in some essential way? Would making the same decision today be consistent with your spiritual values, however you define them?
You are still in your special place where you feel safe. Think again on this question: Did the decision change you? Why or why not? Take a moment now to separate yourself from this memory. In your mind's eye, take a step back. If it brought warm feelings to the surface, put your arms out to embrace them. If it brought unpleasant memories to the surface, lift your face to the wind and let them go.
Breathe in, breathe out. It's time to return from your special place. Take a moment to look around once more and take in the peace you have created in your mind. Begin to bring your awareness back to the present and this space. Feel your feet and your hands. Stretch your neck and wiggle your toes. When you feel ready, sit up slowly. When I ring the chime, our time of meditation will be done.
[Allow one or two minutes of silence, then ring the chime.]
When you feel ready, open your eyes and return to the group.
FIND OUT MORE
Billionaires Ball: Gluttony and Hubris in an Age of Epic Inequality (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=1591) by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks (Beacon Press, 2012)
Enough (at www.enoughenough.org/) is a web-based, ongoing conversation about how commitment to wealth redistribution can play out in our lives.
"Exploring the Psychology of Wealth, 'Pernicious' Effects of Economic Inequality (at www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june13/makingsense_06-21.html)" PBS Newshour, June 2013
Behind the Kitchen Door (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=1764)by Saru Jayaraman(Cornell University Press, 2013), the 2013-14 UUA Common Read (at www.uua.org/re/multigenerational/read/) with a discussion guide (at www.uua.org/documents/lfd/commonread/kitchendoor_discussion.pdf) for UU groups and congregations.
WORKSHOP 6: A NETWORK OF MUTUALITY
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. — The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This workshop looks outward to examine the impact of our personal financial choices in the global economic community. A story connects the availability of inexpensive consumer goods in our country with the lives of the workers around the world. The group will brainstorm a definition of economic justice and look for economic justice/injustice in local and global news stories. Participants will deepen discussion about ways our Unitarian Universalist values resonate with a sense of responsibility to the economic greater good.
Gather a selection of recent newspapers and news magazines before this workshop. You will also need small items of clothing with labels showing country of origin to place on the centering table.
Before facilitating this workshop, review the Accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 15 |
Activity 1: Where in the World? | 30 |
Activity 2: Defining Economic Justice | 15 |
Activity 3: Our Principles at Work | 25 |
Faith in Action: Economic Justice Issues and Local Government | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Women Workers Speak Out | 30 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Use the discussion questions from Activity 2 and Activity 3 to reflect on the topic of economic justice. Explore the wonderful collections of stories and resources on the websites of the UUA (at www.uua.org/economic/) and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (at www.uusc.org/economicjustice) to gain a broader picture of Unitarian Universalist advocacy and support for economic justice, which may be helpful as grounding for this workshop.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages.
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 "O Spinner, Weaver, of Our Lives," Reading 431 in Singing the Living Tradition.
Lead the group to sing "We're Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table," Hymn 407 in Singing the Living Tradition.
Say that this workshop will continue the exploration of how our financial ways affect others, this time expanding outward to our local communities and the world. Read aloud the quote from Jeremiah 22:13 that you have written on newsprint.
Ask, "What meaning might this scripture have for us today?" Allow a moment or two for silent reflection, then invite participants to respond to the quote as they feel comfortable, passing the talking stick if you have chosen to use one.
Share these words by the Rev. Rebecca Edmiston-Lange:
Mindful of our highest aspirations,
Bound by common faith and purpose,
And, yet, beginning with ourselves as we are,
Let us take one more step, together, in our unending quest for dignity, justice and love.
Sound the chime to signal the end of the centering time.
Including All Participants
If you wish to invite the group to rise and sing, ensure that the option to remain seated is communicated. You may say, "Rise in body or spirit."
ACTIVITY 1: WHERE IN THE WORLD? (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Handout 1, Selected Wage Data for Apparel and Footwear Workers. Read the one-paragraph introduction aloud, then give participants a few moments to look over the statistics. Engage a brief conversation about the impact of our economic decisions on people all around the globe. Why do our choices matter to people in places like China or Thailand? What impact do practices and circumstances in other countries have on us?
Introduce the story by saying that it comes from a July 2013 Christian Science Monitor article about the impact of the manufacture of inexpensive consumer goods on the lives of the workers who create them. Invite volunteer readers to each read a portion of the story aloud. After a few moments of silence, ask for initial responses. Then, offer the posted reflection questions, one at a time, inviting each person in the circle an opportunity to respond (or pass) before moving on to the next question. Encourage active listening and discourage interruption and side conversations; you may wish to use a talking stick.
Variations
If the group is larger than ten, form two or more circles so each person will have adequate opportunity to share. If there is time remaining after all three questions have been addressed, open the discussion for more robust dialogue.
ACTIVITY 2: DEFINING ECONOMIC JUSTICE (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Economic justice: The basic and well accepted principle of fairness where the consequence of official policies should be the equal allocation of benefits among participants in an economy. For example, implementing policies that reflect the goal of economic justice might involve eliminating discriminatory hiring practices and permitting people to work freely where their business skills are required.
Description of Activity
Invite participants to brainstorm words and concepts for a definition of economic justice. Capture their ideas on newsprint. After several minutes, post the newsprint on which you wrote the definition from businessdictionary.com. Acknowledge that this is just one; there are other definitions. Invite participants to compare the group's list of key words and concepts with the posted definition. Ask:
Distribute newspapers and news magazines. Ask participants to work alone or in small groups to find an article that illustrates an issue of economic justice or injustice at play in their local communities and in the global community. After about five minutes, ask several people to share a headline and/or a very brief synopsis of a story they have found. Invite discussion on the way in which the impact of economic injustice is a part of everyday life, both locally and globally.
ACTIVITY 3: OUR PRINCIPLES AT WORK (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain that this activity will take place in three parts: time for journaling, conversation in pairs, and group processing. Say that you will use the chime to move participants to the next part.
Distribute paper, pens, and markers. Invite participants to find a comfortable spot and take about five minutes for reflection, journaling, or drawing in response to the stories and activities in this workshop. Suggest they consider what parts resonated most deeply with them and why.
After about five minutes, sound the chime and help participants form pairs. Assign each pair one UU Principle and ask them to consider the posted questions for about 10 minutes.
Sound the chime after eight to ten minutes to re-gather the large group. Invite each pair to offer a highlight or two from their conversation. If you did not have enough pairs to touch on all seven Principles, work together to determine how each remaining Principle guides us in a faithful Unitarian Universalist response to issues of economic justice at home and in the larger world.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home. Invite everyone to form a circle and join hands. Ask participants to reflect quietly for a moment and then share a word or phrase that describes one insight or take-away from this workshop.
Repeat the reading by the Rev. Rebecca Edmiston-Lange you shared in the workshop Opening:
Mindful of our highest aspirations,
Bound by common faith and purpose,
And, yet, beginning with ourselves as we are,
Let us take one more step, together, in our unending quest for dignity, justice and love.
Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: ECONOMIC JUSTICE ISSUES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Description of Activity
Attend a meeting of a local City Council or Board of Selectmen or a local hearing on an issue related to economic justice such as workers' rights, water rights, affordable housing, transit fare increases, or programs that help households meet their basic needs. Observe the proceedings and take notes on how economic justice is or is not supported in your community. Follow up with a letter to your elected officials or a local newspaper or news website offering your observations.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Make a time for individual reflection and discussion with your co-facilitator after the conclusion of the first workshop. Consider these questions:
TAKING IT HOME
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. — The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Spend some time with your apparel and footwear. What can you learn about workers in each item's country of origin? Consider these questions as you examine each piece:
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: WOMEN WORKERS SPEAK OUT (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Show the video. Then, lead a discussion, using these questions:
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 6:
STORY: FOLLOW YOUR LABELS
"Follow Your Labels: Your Place in the Global Consumer Chain" by Kelsey Timmerman, Christian Science Monitor, July 21, 2013; Kelsey Timmerman regularly speaks at universities, high schools, and groups across the country. Used with permission.
[Reader 1]
Your morning coffee is a miracle of globalization. Someone somewhere in the world had the faith to plant a seedling that years later would produce small cherries harvested by nimble fingers. And then the coffee bean would be transported down bumpy roads cut into active volcanoes, and across oceans. It would be processed and roasted, and ultimately it would find its way to you.
But the miracles don't end at the bottom of your cup of coffee. The blue jeans you slip into before rushing off to work were crafted from swaths of denim in a factory in a country you probably can't find on a map.
In a 1967 speech, Martin Luther King Jr. said, "[B]efore you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half of the world."
His words were never truer than today. Almost 98 percent of clothes sold in the United States in 2011 were imported, reports the American Apparel and Footwear Association. And while many Americans are attempting to get closer to their food by purchasing locally, the amount of imported food has doubled since 2000, according to a 2011 US International Trade Commission report.
[Reader 2]
It's amazing, when you think about it, to eat a banana that traveled thousands of miles from a plantation in Costa Rica. But perhaps more amazing is that so many staples of the American diet—coffee, apple juice, chocolate, to name a few—come from so far away that most of us can't imagine the plants they grow on, let alone the people responsible for producing them.
Food and clothing labels become red flags, though, when a tragedy occurs like the April [2013] collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh, which killed 1,129 workers. We realize that our shirt was made in Bangladesh, and maybe we bought it at a price that was guilt-free for our budget, but when we see reports on the catastrophe, that shirt might not feel guilt-free any longer.
How can we not wonder: Should we stop buying clothes made in Bangladesh? Should we do the same for the food we eat from places that may have similar questionable labor practices?
[Reader 3]
But the global economy is not so simple. I've picked coffee on an unimaginably steep mountainside in Colombia, hauled 80 pounds of bananas on my back alongside Costa Rican workers, and walked rows of sewing machines in a Bangladeshi factory, and I've witnessed how the line between exploitation and opportunity blurs quickly.
Our needs create opportunity for factory workers and farmers abroad, which is good. But are their lives improving because of our demand?
The global economy may provide farmers with incentives. But to get a grip on the next rung of the global economic development ladder, farmers see higher wages at urban factories as the answer. And that opportunity can be short lived in a global market that rapidly shifts to find cheaper wages elsewhere, or if middlemen take their cuts and consumers demand still-lower prices.
Ai, one of 85 garment workers involved in sewing together a single pair of Levi's on a Cambodian production line, left the fields for the factories. When she was told that some Americans don't want to buy the jeans she makes because they think she should earn more than $55 per month, she quickly replied: "If people don't buy, I'm unhappy because I wouldn't have a job."
[Reader 4]
Farm-to-factory pressure
So can we just shop for our basic needs and take comfort in knowing that the people who make our stuff in faraway factories and grow our food in exotic locales have no better options?
Over the past six years I've met garment workers in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Honduras, and Ethiopia, and almost every one was a former farmer. Farmers are leaving the fields for the factories, hoping that a job in the city sewing Levi's or assembling iPhones will improve their lives.
Farmers aren't just pulled from the fields by opportunities in factories, they are also pushed by dwindling farming opportunities. Many get paid less despite the increased appetites of developed nations for the fruits of their labor.
[Reader 5]
Coffee is a prime example. Antony Wild, author of "Coffee: A Dark History," writes that in 1991 the value of the global coffee market was $30 billion, of which producing countries received 40 percent. In 2005, the coffee market was worth $70 billion, and producing countries received 10 percent.
Gabriel Silva, a former president of the Colombian Coffee Federation, estimates that of the $3 Americans spend on a fancy mocha latte at Starbucks, a farmer gets about 1 cent.
Workers in Costa Rica at a Dole banana plantation were paid $28 per day a decade ago, but were down to $20 per day when I visited. One evening I asked one of the veteran workers, who had seen co-workers die from snakebites and had lopped off one of his own fingers with a machete while working, if he had advice for the younger worker sitting next to him. He did: "Find a different career."
From his perspective, he saw no opportunities in the fields. Similarly, Bangladeshi seamstress Reshma Begum saw no opportunities in the city factories.
After being pulled from the rubble of the Rana Plaza factory where she was buried for 17 days, she ended a press conference with a simple statement: "I will not work in a garment factory again."
[Reader 6]
So what can you do?
Awareness of where and under what conditions your food and clothing come from starts with checking the tag of your jeans and the label on your bag of coffee beans and realizing that every grocery store is a farmers' market and every department store is filled with the work of artisans.
Americans are sacrificing a smaller portion of their budgets for food and clothing than ever before; others sacrifice much more.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 6:
HANDOUT 1: SELECTED WAGE DATA FOR APPAREL AND FOOTWEAR WORKERS
From "Wages, Benefits, Poverty Line, and Meeting Workers' Needs in the Apparel and Footwear Industries of Selected Countries," a February 2000 report from the US Department of Labor and the Bureau of International Labor Affairs
The footwear and apparel industries are some of the low-wage manufacturing industries that have been dramatically affected by the changing patterns of global sourcing and production. The term "living wage" is often used as a synonym for a "fair and decent" level of income that would enable workers to meet their "basic needs." However, there is little agreement on the definition of what exactly constitute "basic needs" or on a methodology to determine the income necessary to meet such needs. While there have been a number of declarations and conventions by regional and international bodies concerning the right of workers to receive an adequate wage, most do not provide a precise definition of how it should be determined. For some, "basic needs" mean mere physical subsistence. For others, "basic needs" include a nutritious diet, safe drinking water, suitable housing, energy, transportation, clothing, health care, child care, education, savings for long term purchases and emergencies, and some discretionary income.
Country | Poverty Threshold (Converted to US $) | Minimum Wage in Apparel & Footwear Sector (Converted to US $) | Prevailing (Average) Wage in Apparel & Footwear Sector (Converted to US $) |
Bangladesh | 11.32/mo | 12.35-76/mo | 36.51-42.51/mo |
China | 20.50-26.50/mo | 12.39/mo | 114.67-190.97/mo |
Guatemala | 11.07/day | 3.16/day | 6.11/day |
Thailand | 22.00/mo | 93.37-109.01/mo | 106.08/mo |
United States | 16,655/yr(family of 4) | 13,000/yr | 17,040-17,860 |
FIND OUT MORE
Online, find resources, stories, and links for economic justice initiatives (at www.uua.org/economic/) of the Unitarian Universalist Association and stories and resources on economic justice (at www.uusc.org/economicjustice) issues such as compassionate consumption, fair wages and fair trade from the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.
The Christian Science Monitor website offers the original version of this workshop's story, "Follow Your Labels" online, where you can also watch a video interview (at www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2013/0721/Follow-your-labels-Your-place-in-the-global-consumer-chain) (16:20) with the author, Kelsey Timmerman, about his research beginning with a trip to Honduras to pursue this story.
The website 100 Under $100: The Women's Global Tool Kit (at www.womensglobaltoolkit.com/) provides stories and links to help consumers and advocates learn about business initiatives of and for women around the world.
WORKSHOP 7: IMAGINING A TRANSFORMED WORLD
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Mead
This workshop explores innovative models for economic relationships. We all know that material deprivation and economic inequality persist, even in a world of abundance. This workshop invites participants to think of persistent inequality and deprivation not as a failure of human goodness or commitment, but rather as a call for greater imagination and willingness to enact new ways to connect people in meaningful and just economic relationships across social and geographic boundaries. Participants reflect on individual and collective economic deprivation through an understanding of need and interdependence, thereby opening the door to creative individual and collective economic solutions. Hopeful stories highlight economic systems and models serving people and communities better than have our inherited systems and models.
Three creative economic models are presented in this workshop: Microfinance (Activity 3), Resilience Circles (Activity 4), and Crowd-funding (Alternate Activity 1). In a 90-minute workshop you can explore two of the three. Read the entire workshop in advance and decide whether to substitute Alternate Activity 1 for Activity 3 or Activity 4, depending on the needs and interests of participants.
Review the Accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: Our Economic System: How Are We Left Wanting? | 15 |
Activity 2: Understanding Financial Interdependencies and Complexity | 20 |
Activity 3: The Microfinance Revolution | 20 |
Activity 4: Resilience Circles | 20 |
Faith in Action: A Crowd-funding Experiment | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: The Crowd-funding Movement | 25 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Set aside a time to reflect on economic interdependencies in your life and community. Consider how your livelihood is connected to other people and institutions in your community and in the wider world:
As you reflect, you may wish to review the work you did earlier in your financial autobiography.
Share your reflections with two or three other people, and ask them to share a little about how they understand their own economic dependencies. With them, imagine new and creative economic relationships that might make a difference in each of your lives and in the lives of others in your community or the wider world. Carry this receptive and imaginative spirit into your leadership of the workshop.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Sound the chime and invite participants into quiet reflection as you prepare to enter into a time of centering and sharing. Invite a volunteer to light the chalice as you share these words:
We light this chalice in the spirit of imagination that calls us together,
for the commitment to become collaborators together,
and in the hope that we may be sensitive and courageous
in the journey we extend farther today.
Go around the circle, passing the talking stick if you have chosen to use one. Invite each participant to say their name and check in by sharing something they've witnessed since the last session that made them feel inspired or hopeful about the power of money to make a difference in people's lives.
Sound the chime to signal the end of the centering time.
ACTIVITY 1: OUR ECONOMIC SYSTEM: HOW ARE WE LEFT WANTING? (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to reflect on economic inequality they witness or experience in their daily lives. Offer two or three minutes for silent reflection on these questions:
After two or three minutes, invite participants to briefly share examples of economic injustice or economic constraint that holds people back. You might offer an example yourself and then go around the circle, writing responses on newsprint. Remind participants that, for this and all other sharing, they may pass if they so choose.
Once you have recorded a good number of examples on newsprint, ask participants to consider the questions below, one at a time. Elicit several responses for each question and document the responses to each question with a different color marker, on the newsprint, before moving on.
ACTIVITY 2: UNDERSTANDING FINANCIAL INTERDEPENDENCIES AND COMPLEXITY (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say:
This activity explores how apparently independent human and economic phenomena in communities are actually connected. We will see how a complex, interdependent system can be resistant to fixes that focus on just one aspect of a problem.
Share the contents of Leader Resource 1, Seeking Out Root Causes. Ask participants if the web of interdependencies described in the example resonate with their own experiences in their communities or in social justice initiatives in which they have been involved. Allow five minutes for sharing of experiences and observations.
Distribute Handout 1, The Southside Neighborhood Case and ask participants to read it. Then, brainstorm a list of the economic needs and constraints in the case study and capture them on the newsprint sheet you have posted. Ask, "Which issues are connected, and how?" Guide the group to name direct and indirect causes, influencing factors, or related issues. As each connection is named, draw a connecting line. You may also wish to record the type of relationship (direct or indirect cause, influencing factor, related issue, and so on).
Then, ask the group to be the policy makers. Ask, "Seeing the whole system, where and how would you intervene to have the most effect?" After three or four people have responded, say:
We're going to look at a couple of models which intervene in an economic system loaded with needs and constraints by empowering individuals and groups to change their economic equation.
ACTIVITY 3: THE MICROFINANCE REVOLUTION (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain that Muhammad Yunus originated the concept of microfinance or microcredit. Show the first 2:21 minutes of the video and the segment from 5:23-8:44.
Lead a discussion using some or all of these questions:
ACTIVITY 4: RESILIENCE CIRCLES (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say:
In this activity we will learn about and practice with the idea of "resilience circles." In this economic model, people work together in small, covenanted groups to provide mutual economic support.
Explain that resilience circles are ongoing community groups whose members respond creatively together to economic adversity through learning, mutual aid, and social action. Distribute Handout 2, Resilience Circles and ask participants to read it. Invite questions or comments. Ask if any participants have had a similar (formal or informal) support group experience. If so, invite them to share something about their experiences.
Invite participants to imagine that they are a newly convened resilience circle. Their assignment is to generate together ways to serve their mission. What learning, mutual aid, and social action projects could your group do in the near future? Encourage participants to make the role play as real as possible. For example, what skills or services could be shared that are actually needed and then available within the group. Ask the group to try to agree on at least one actionable "real" item in each area (learning, mutual aid, social action). Offer to serve as the scribe while the group generates and evaluates ideas together. Allow ten minutes for the role play.
Then, invite reflections on the experience. Ask participants what felt encouraging, difficult, surprising. Then ask:
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home. Invite everyone to form a circle and join hands. Ask participants to reflect quietly for a moment and then share a word or phrase that describes one insight or take-away from this workshop. Distribute copies of from Singing the Journey and lead the group to Hymn 1017, "Building a New Way." Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: A CROWD-FUNDING EXPERIMENT
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to experiment with alternative funding of a congregational or group social justice initiative. Introduce information you have gathered about recent social justice project ideas that have not been realized due to financial constraints.
Examine the project ideas together, using these questions:
Engage the group with other congregational or group leaders to agree on a project that offers good possibilities for crowd-funding. Then, make a plan to launch a crowd-funding initiative, including a project budget, description, and implementation tasks. Present your plan to the appropriate congregational or group leaders for support and/or approval. Divide responsibilities for fundraising, communication, and project implementation once funds are raised among the participants and others who wish to be involved.
After all preparations are made, launch the proposal on your selected crowd-funding site!
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Make a time for reflection and discussion with your co-facilitator after the conclusion of the workshop. Consider these questions:
TAKING IT HOME
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Mead
In this workshop we began to imagine how people and systems can work more creatively and effectively together to serve the well-being of a greater number of people and communities. Imagination begins on a foundation of attentiveness. Make a practice of noticing the places in your daily life where people and economic systems are working in a creative way, stretching beyond "business as usual." Even more importantly, attend to the places where, with a little imagination and more generous effort, our economic relationships and systems could work better.
Begin with a newspaper, news website or blog, or television or radio news. Each day for a week, mark, clip, make note, or otherwise save the stories which show creative economic relationships. For example, is Community Supported Agriculture in the news? It is a model for creative economic relationships between farmers and customers. Reflect on opportunities in your own primarily relationships and interactions to engage different economic exchanges and structures. Identify experiences or news items that suggest unexplored opportunities for creative thinking. Could you and your faith community support innovations which better serve their partners and communities?
After a week of careful attentiveness, find a conversation partner with whom to share findings, observations, and possibilities for future action. Involve family members and/or friends in exploring new ways to fashion economic relationships.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: THE CROWD-FUNDING MOVEMENT (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain the phenomenon of crowd-funding. You might say:
Crowd-funding is the process by which large, often widely dispersed communities can quickly come together to contribute resources to projects. Widespread Internet access and a growing array of web-based project-donor clearinghouses have made this approach possible and increasingly successful and popular.
Ask if participants are familiar with crowd-sourced projects or would like to share a personal experience. Then, distribute Handout 3 and invite participants to read the UU World blog post.
Show the group the Faithify website and invite comments, observations, and questions. Encourage those with knowledge of crowd-funding to answer questions as they are able. Visit another crowd-funding website and show projects in various stages of fundraising. Lead a discussion, using these questions:
You may wish to use the final question as a bridge to the Faith in Action Activity for this workshop.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 7:
HANDOUT 1: THE SOUTHSIDE NEIGHBORHOOD CASE
The setting is a neighborhood on the south side of a major American city. The average household income is nearly $100,000 per year. However, nearly one-third of the population lives on less than $25,000 annually, approximately the same percentage that lives below the poverty line.
The neighborhood is sharply divided into sections along lines of race and socio-economic status. It is home to numerous renowned historic sites, though tourism levels are far below sites in other parts of the city.
The neighborhood houses a major national university with more than 15,000 students and teachers. Few members of the university community are originally from the surrounding neighborhood. While many live in the neighborhood while they are in school, few stay following graduation. Many members of the faculty choose to live outside of the area.
Students at the elementary schools perform well below the state average on standardized tests and several schools may soon be closed due to poor performance. When this happens, children will be transported by bus to other neighborhood schools.
Manufacturing, which provided many jobs in the early and middle years of the 20th century, has declined dramatically. Large areas of industrial land and buildings remain unoccupied and available for redevelopment.
Large-scale public housing projects occupy a significant portion of land but have become notorious dangerous and undesirable places to live. Calls to raze these developments are increasing.
Rates of street crime, already high, are rising. In one recent weekend, 200 people were injured or killed in gun violence in the city, representing some of the hundreds of deaths in each of several recent years attributed to gun violence. A high proportion those injuries and deaths are in this neighborhood.
The trauma center for the hospital in the neighborhood has been closed in order to consolidate city trauma services, in another neighborhood. Hundreds of new police officers have been assigned to street patrol from administrative assignments and are authorized for special overtime pay which allows them to work longer hours.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 7:
HANDOUT 2: RESILIENCE CIRCLES
Adapted from "What Is a Resilience Circle? — An Overview" published by The Resilience Circle Network, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality and the Common Good. Used with permission.
A Resilience Circle is a small group of ten to twenty people that comes together to increase personal security during these challenging times. Circles have three purposes: learning, mutual aid, and social action.
The economy is going through a deep transition, and economic security is eroding for millions of people. We're worried about our financial security and about the future we are creating for our children. Many of us aren't part of communities where we can talk openly about these challenges and fears.
In response, people are forming small "Resilience Circles" of ten to twenty people. These groups are exploring a new kind of security based in mutual aid and community support, and helping build a new kind of economy that's fair and in harmony with the earth.
Resilience Circles help us:
How It Works...
Three Components of a Circle
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 7:
HANDOUT 3: FAITHIFY AND OTHER CROWD-FUNDING MODELS
Used with permission.
Several years ago, Mass Bay-Clara Barton District Executive Rev. Sue Phillips heard our UUA’s Chief Operating Officer Rev. Harlan Limpert lift up Apple’s iTunes store as an example of the role our UUA could play in the future – providing the architecture, platform, and basic rules for the wider community to share and “sell” ideas.
Meanwhile, crowdfunding – using the internet to attract funding for commercial and nonprofit projects from countless individuals – and crowdsourcing – using the internet to engage an almost limitless number of people to share ideas and services – have become global phenomena. At the same time, Congregations & Beyond – our UUA’s initiative to lower congregational walls and recognize UU ministries outside of congregations – has captured the imagination of our movement’s most creative and entrepreneurial thinkers.
Many folks throughout our movement began dreaming of a UU crowdfunding platform, and while the project is being hosted by the Mass Bay District, Faithify is the result of lots of imagination, goodwill, and passionate excitement from a wide array of people. The Rev. Sue Phillips, District Executive for the Clara Barton and Massachusetts Bay Districts shared, "This is the future of Unitarian Universalism. This is synergy at work. We are about to launch the only denominationally funded crowd-funding platform, that we know of, in the world."
The Faithify website, currently in development, allows users to browse and follow projects, share them with their networks, and fund those they wish to support. It bridges geographic and generational boundaries by using 21st century technologies to connect passionate innovators with funders excited by the projects. The overall aim of Faithify is to ignite new ministries in new venues, formats, and communities as well as offer a place of renewal through deeper connection and impact to our faith.
Explore the Faithify (at cbd-mbd-uua.org/drupal/content/faithify) page on the Clara Barton and Mass Bay Districts website.
Explore other crowd-funding websites:
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 7:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: SEEKING OUT ROOT CAUSES
Excerpted from "Efficient' Solutions Address Only Symptoms; Addressing Root Causes Requires Changing Power Imbalances" from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) Social Sustainability Resource Guide, 2011. Used with permission.
There is much debate about distinguishing between symptoms and root causes. An old analogy—but with a new twist—may help. Imagine a woman is hungry. So we give her a fish. She's less hungry. But, when we leave, she's hungry again. We only dealt with a symptom. We all know the better approach, right? Teach her to fish. She can now feed herself and her family can teach others, and we've "worked ourselves out of a job." We've addressed a deeper cause: the lack of skills/knowledge needed to catch fish.
But have we gotten to root causes? Doubtful. Why didn't that woman have the necessary skills/knowledge already? Other people—men—fish in her community. Why was that woman denied the opportunity to learn this skill?
Maybe after more digging we find out that (1) fishing is considered a commercial activity in that community, not a foodstuff for community members, (2) fishing is taught in the local school, but girls are not attending, and that (3) women have no access to the lake because fishing is considered "men's work". So, we work with community members to change those informal institutional rules. Imagine, after five years, women are permitted to fish, and fish can be consumed in the household.
Have we reached down to the root causes yet? Maybe. But let's say that after some years of trying, the informal institutional rules still aren't changing. We investigate. We find out that commercial fishing is the only source of income through which government taxes can be met by community leaders. We find out that local fishers are being ripped off by middlemen. We discover that taxes are very high because they are needed by the government to pay down the loan on the dam that created the lake. We also find that income from selling fish makes up 70 percent of local dowries, customarily the responsibility of men—fathers and uncles—to provide. We also find that the water in the river is badly polluted and the fish are contaminated because a company mining gold upstream dumps tailings into the river. This story may seem complex; but it illustrates why symptom-oriented development so rarely creates lasting change. In every chapter of the story above, there is a "development project" ready to be implemented. Let's teach fishing, do gender awareness training, leadership training, marketing. Let's clean the water, do income generation, fine the mining company, lower taxes, get the lender to be more flexible. All of these symptom-oriented things are necessary but not sufficient.
Root causes are relatively untouched, however. At the heart of this complex situation is that certain actors—urban elites, probably—have the power to direct resources and opportunities, capture rents and affect others—rural communities far from the corridors of power. Within communities themselves, long-standing forms of social inequality (sometimes reinforced by customary law) may be left unchallenged. Distant decision makers can act with relative impunity. At the end of the day, the poverty and injustice in our hypothetical fishing community isn't so "local" after all: it's tied to the policies of distant governments and private sector companies.
"Root causes" refers to this interlocking system of relationships between social actors. Poverty is about power, and power is about how people relate to other people.
FIND OUT MORE
Microfinance
Resilience Circles
Crowd-funding
WORKSHOP 8: FAITHFUL EARNING
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. — Studs Terkel, American journalist
This workshop demonstrates fundamental connections between the way we think about money and the way we acquire it. For many, the relationship with money is connected to the dynamics of the work done to earn it. Money has real human meaning, in part, because it often comes from hard effort and requires one to commit a significant part of one's life. This workshop explores the "earning" dimension of the larger cycle of acquiring, interpreting, and using money in spiritually rich and socially connected ways.
Participants share stories of what motivated them to do particular work at particular times. When and how has money-earning been connected to spiritual and ethical values? What has been the balance between vocational purpose and economic need? Participants bring their own money-earning stories to wrestle with the ways in which fairness and justice relate to wage-earning activities.
As you prepare to lead this workshop, consider how your experience of vocation and wage earning may differ from the experiences of participants and prepare to make space for those differences. In addition, review the Accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: The Meaning and Dignity of Work | 20 |
Activity 2: Personal Experiences of Earning Money | 30 |
Activity 3: Money and Motivation | 25 |
Faith in Action: Work and Meaning | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Earning and Fairness | 25 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Reflect on your own work and earning history, considering these questions:
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
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:
We light this chalice in the spirit of the possibility that calls us together,
for the commitment to receive and support one another,
and in the hope that we may be challenged and rewarded
in the work we do together today.
Lead Responsive Reading 567 in Singing the Living Tradition, "To Be of Use" by poet Marge Piercy. Invite them to respond by reading the italicized text while you read the plain text.
Go around the circle, passing the talking stick if you have chosen to use one. Invite each participant to say their name and check-in by sharing a personal experience that made them feel of use to the world, the broader community, or their circle of family and friends.
After everyone has spoken, ask participants to raise a hand if their "being of use" story involved something for which they were paid. Then, introduce the workshop by saying:
While not all useful work is compensated with pay and not all pay is given for useful work, a connection between work and money runs deep in many of our lives. Exploring the work/money connection is one key element of developing a personal theology of money and is the focus of this session of The Wi$dom Path.
Sound the chime to signal the end of the centering time.
ACTIVITY 1: THE MEANING AND DIGNITY OF WORK (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Tell participants you will use a simple parable to open discussion about connections between work and monetary compensation. Read or tell just the first part of Leader Resource 1, Stonecutters Story. Allow a few moments for silent reflection. Ask for brief, initial reactions. Then lead a discussion:
Now read aloud Drucker's commentary, the second part of the leader resource. Solicit reactions with these questions:
Then ask, "How would you launch a vigorous spiritual defense of the first stonecutter, who is there to earn a living?" As participants respond, capture the positive "values" words on newsprint. These might include words such as "duty," equity," and "discipline." After you have listed a few values, ask participants if they have made a compelling defense of the first worker. Leave the list posted, so that you or participants will be able to retrieve these values as you take the group forward toward articulating a personal theology of money.
ACTIVITY 2: PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF EARNING MONEY (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say that you will take the group deeper into the territory they entered with the preparation and sharing of their money autobiographies. Say that now they will focus on the aspects of their stories that have to do with working. Distribute paper/pens as needed, and invite participants to take a few minutes to reflect on their experience of earning money and make some notes. Call attention to the questions you have posted and encourage use of these to guide personal reflection.
Mention that the notes they have just made may be useful in future workshops of The Wi$dom Path and suggest they bring the notes to future meetings.
After five minutes, invite participants to move into groups of three and to share some of their reflections as they are comfortable. Allow about 10 minutes for sharing.
Re-gather the large group and lead a discussion with these questions:
ACTIVITY 3: MONEY AND MOTIVATION (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
In a groundbreaking 1943 paper, Dr. Abraham H. Maslow investigated different human needs as motivators for particular actions and approaches to life. Distribute Handout 1, Economic Adaptation of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Share this excerpt from Maslow's paper:
Human needs arrange themselves in hierarchies of pre-potency. That is to say, the appearance of one need usually rests on the prior satisfaction of another, more pre-potent need. Man is a perpetually wanting animal. Also no need or drive can be treated as if it were isolated or discrete; every drive is related to the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of other drives.
Allow five minutes for comment and questions.
Ask participants to consider the motivators that Maslow identifies. Call attention to the posted newsprint. Distribute self-adhesive note pads. Ask participants to write as many examples as possible of how money has served one of the needs, writing one per note. Ask them to stick notes on the newsprint next to the appropriate motivator. The examples should be specific (e.g., money pays for "health insurance," posted next to "safety.") Allow about 10 minutes for participants to populate the chart, and then ask what people notice:
Then ask:
Give participants a moment to reflect, and then offer a chance to share a first reaction, without cross-talk or discussion, if participants choose to do so. Invite participants to take the question home for deeper reflection.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home. Share these words from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr:
No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
Invite everyone to form a circle and join hands. Ask participants to share a word or phrase that describes one insight or take-away from this workshop. Then offer a benediction:
May we go forward from this place to uplift humanity and may worth follow that excellence for each of us.
Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: WORK AND MEANING
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Work with others in your congregation or group to encourage reflection on faithful earning. Through posters, social media posts and newsletter articles, ask people to talk about why they do what they do for work. What are the most challenging parts? The most rewarding? How is their work "a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread," as Studs Terkel wrote? Ask those who respond to keep the focus on what is meaningful about their work, rather than on credentials or earnings.
Decide how to share the responses with your faith community or group. You might plan part of a worship service, create a bulletin board, arrange for a panel or small group discussion, or write a session for small group ministry or covenant groups.
As part of your project, arrange for the Wi$dom Path group to spend time with the youth of your congregation. Explain that you have been talking about faithful earning, and share with them this quote from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking to students at Barrett Junior High School in Philadelphia, October 26, 1967:
I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life's blueprint. Number one in your life's blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don't allow anybody to make you feel that you're nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.
Secondly, in your life's blueprint you must have as the basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. You're going to be deciding as the days, as the years unfold what you will do in life—what your life's work will be. Set out to do it well.
Ask them to consider whether and how Dr. King's words ring true for them. Invite them to converse with you about to navigate conflicting messages about work, such as "find a career that pays well" and "follow your dreams." How are the conflicting cultural messages challenges difficult for you? For them?
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Make a time for reflection and discussion with your co-facilitator after the conclusion of the workshop. Consider these questions:
TAKING IT HOME
Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. — Studs Terkel, American journalist
Make it a practice to ask friends, family members, and acquaintances what they find meaningful or interesting about their work. What skills does each person's work require? What aspect of the work is most challenging? What brings them satisfaction or joy or astonishment? Avoid talking about job titles, compensation, credentials, and monetary compensation. Instead, focus on the wonderful variety of people and jobs there are in the world.
Read aloud or silently the Walt Whitman poem, "I Hear America Singing," written in 1860:
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
You can also listen to the poem recited on Community Audio (at archive.org/details/IHearAmericaSinging-PoemByWaltWhitman-RecitedByGrantBarrett).
Write a poem or song, or create a piece of artwork that lifts up the "singing" you have heard when you ask people what is meaningful about what they do for work.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: EARNING AND FAIRNESS (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Handout 2, The Parable of the Vineyard. Say:
We will hear a piece of Christian scripture. If it is familiar to you, please try to hear the story as if for the first time and be open to fresh interpretations. For example, the parable of the vineyard speaks to the idea of rewards in heaven, but also could speak to values about the just distribution of rewards in this world.
Read (or have volunteers read) the parable aloud. Then ask, "What principles and values does this text seem to support?" As values are named, record them on newsprint.
Now ask these questions, allowing participants a chance to respond to each and capturing on newsprint any additional values that are named:
Invite participants to keep this discussion in mind as they look at comparative compensation figures for the United States labor market. Call attention to the posted list of occupations and distribute cut slips of paper from Leader Resource 2.
Distribute tape or glue sticks. Invite participants to affix their slips of paper with hourly wage information next to the occupation they believe it represents. After everyone has made guesses, share the correct matches from the intact copy of Leader Resource 2.
Ask, "How did we do? Are there surprises here?" Then lead the group in discussion:
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 8:
HANDOUT 1: ECONOMIC ADAPTATION OF MASLOW'S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
Adapted from the "Hierarchy of Needs" developed by Dr. Abraham H. Maslow.
Download a high-resolution PDF (at www.uua.org/documents/tapestry/wisdom/maslow.pdf) for printing.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 8:
HANDOUT 2: THE PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD
From Christian scripture, Matthew 20: 1-16, New Revised Standard version.
For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same. And about five o'clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, 'Why are you standing here idle all day?' They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard.' When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, 'Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.' When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.' But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?' So the last will be first, and the first will be last."
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 8:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: STONECUTTERS STORY
Excerpted and adapted from The Practice of Management by Peter Drucker (Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, 2007).
I. Stonecutters Story
An old story tells of a man walking along in medieval times, coming upon three stonecutters each hard at work in the hot sun. He asked each what they were doing. The first replied, "I am making a living." The second kept on hammering while he said "I am doing the best job of stone cutting in the entire country." Finally, the third one looked up with a visionary gleam in his eyes and said, "I am building a cathedral."
II. Peter Drucker's Commentary
The third man is of course the true manager. The first man knows what he wants to get out of the work and manages to do so. He is likely to give a "fair day's work for a fair day's pay." But he is not a manger and will never be one. It is the second man who is the problem. Workmanship is essential... But there is always a danger that the true workman, the true professional, will believe that he is accomplishing something when in effect he is just polishing stones or collecting footnotes... .
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 8:
LEADER RESOURCE 2: AVERAGE HOURLY WAGES BY PROFESSION IN THE UNITED STATES
Selections from United States federal May 2012 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates.
Download a high-resolution PDF (at www.uua.org/documents/tapestry/wisdom/salaries.pdf) for printing.
FIND OUT MORE
Work and Meaning
The Practice of Management by Peter Drucker (Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, 2007)
Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do by Studs Terkel (New York, NY: The New Press, 1997)
Low Wage Employment and Economic Justice
Nickel and Dimed: on (not) getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (New York, NY: Henry Holt, 2002)
Behind the Kitchen Door by Saru Jayaraman (Cornell University Press, 2013). This is the 2013-14 UUA Common Read (at www.uua.org/re/multigenerational/read/).
WORKSHOP 9: FAITHFUL SPENDING
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
We are constantly seeking more only to discover that more is never enough. — Vicki Robin, in Your Money or Your Life
In this workshop, participants examine how spending habits and practices do and do not reflect their spiritual and ethical values and consider the impact of consumerism on all of our lives. Through activities, participants reflect on what they really treasure and the different ways they define what constitutes wealth.
Discussions about "stuff" and "wealth" may uncover discomfort related to class differences. Be aware of comments or responses that may indicate assumptions or judgments about the socioeconomic homogeneity of the group, congregation, or local community. You might offer a gentle reminder to be respectful of multiple perspectives or a quick review of ways to be an active listener.
You may wish to share the reflection questions from Activity 3, Consumerism and Our Faith Community with congregational leaders and professional staff so to help them be prepared to engage with any conversations participants may initiate following the workshop.
Activity 2 requires an assortment of art supplies. Enlist help in gathering the materials well ahead of the workshop.
In addition, review the Accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: What Is "Enough?" | 20 |
Activity 2: My Greatest Treasures | 25 |
Activity 3: Consumerism and Our Faith Community | 20 |
Activity 4: Journaling | 10 |
Faith in Action: Hospitality Hour Choices | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: The Story of Stuff | 20 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Read Handout 1, Voluntary Simplicity. Consider:
Share your thoughts with a trusted friend or your journal, or use another creative medium to express your responses.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
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 Norman V. Naylor:
As the polestar once guided explorers,
May the flame of this chalice guide us
To ever better understandings of
Ourselves and our universe
Lead or have a volunteer lead Hymn 16, "Tis a Gift to Be Simple."
Go around the circle, passing the talking stick if you have chosen to use one, and invite each participant to say their name and to check in with any new insights or reflections about faithful earning or other money issues since the last workshop.
Close the sharing time with 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.
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.
ACTIVITY 1: WHAT IS "ENOUGH?" (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Handout 1, Voluntary Simplicity. Give participants several minutes to read it. Invite participants to offer reactions.
Next, call attention to the Fulfillment Curve you have posted. Again invite reactions.
Ask participants to find a partner and respond to the questions on the posted newsprint. Allow about 10 minutes for paired conversation. Then re-gather the group and invite participants to briefly share insights.
ACTIVITY 2: MY GREATEST TREASURES (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Ask participants to reflect on the most expensive thing they own and on the most precious or treasured thing in their lives.
Invite participants to use the provided supplies to create an art collage that represents what they treasure the most. Allow the group to work creatively with the art materials for 15 minutes. Then, invite participants to share a brief explanation of their "treasures." (If you have 10 or more participants, form groups of five to seven participants for sharing, so that each person sharing has adequate time.)
To the whole group, pose this question for reflection, but do not discuss:
ACTIVITY 3: CONSUMERISM AND OUR FAITH COMMUNITY (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say:
Despite the fact that what we most treasure is often intangible, our lives are filled with consumer goods. We live in a society that is highly motivated by "consumerism" and our economy is fueled by our consumption of goods and services. The reality is that our lives include not only care and attention to that which we most treasure, tangible and not, but also the purchase and use of a variety of consumer goods which hold varying degrees of value and importance to us.
Invite participants into a large group conversation using some of the guiding questions you have posted on newsprint. Explain that you can only begin what should be a larger and longer term conversation about these questions.
ACTIVITY 4: JOURNALING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to record thoughts and reflections on the workshop activities, responding to one or more of the posted questions. Invite them to save their reflections from this and other journaling exercises in the next few workshops. They may wish to use their notes when they create a financial credo in Workshop 12.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home. Ask everyone to form a circle and join hands. Invite each participant to name one idea or feeling they will take from the time together. Share these closing words from Henry David Thoreau:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: HOSPITALITY HOUR CHOICES
Description of Activity
Work with your hospitality committee or other appropriate group to offer Fair Trade and sustainable products for use during coffee hour or a fellowship event. Investigate the origin of products such as coffee, tea, and chocolate and plan ways to support the congregation's use of fair trade refreshments. Examine your congregation's use of paper goods and plastic ware and propose a change that would reduce or eliminate the use of such products. Make and display signs for the serving table to explain how your congregation puts its values into action in its choice of food and service items for hospitality; challenge congregants to make similar choices at home.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Make a time for reflection and discussion with your co-facilitator after the conclusion of the workshop. Consider these questions:
TAKING IT HOME
We are constantly seeking more only to discover that more is never enough. — Vicki Robin, in Your Money or Your Life
Take a walk around your home. What objects or possessions bring you great joy? Are there items you regret purchasing or ones that have not brought you the sense of fulfillment you expected? Set an intention to highlight those items which bring you pleasure or joy, or which are connected to important memories. Allow yourself to linger over items you regret having purchased. You might journal about your purchase or share the story of the disappointment or regret with a trusted friend. If possible, find good uses for items you regret that you bought. Consider what you have learned from attending to this aspect of your consumer behavior. What changes do you resolve to make going forward?
Jot down your reflections; they may help you create your financial credo in Workshop 12.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: THE STORY OF STUFF (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Show the video segment. Then, lead a discussion using these questions:
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 9:
HANDOUT 1: VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY
From Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life that is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich by Duane Elgin, 1993 edition.
There is no special virtue to the phrase voluntary simplicity — it is merely a label, and a somewhat awkward label at that. Still, it does acknowledge explicitly that simpler living integrates both inner and outer aspects of life into an organic and purposeful whole.
To live more voluntarily is to live more deliberately, intentionally, and purposefully— in short, it is to live more consciously. We cannot be deliberate when we are distracted from life. We cannot be intentional when we are not paying attention. We cannot be purposeful when we are not being present. Therefore, to act in a voluntary manner is to be aware of ourselves as we move through life. This requires that we not only pay attention to the actions we take in the outer world, but also that we pay attention to ourselves acting—our inner world. To the extent that we do not notice both inner and outer aspects of our passage through life, our capacity for voluntary, deliberate, and purposeful action is commensurately diminished.
To live more simply is to live more purposefully and with a minimum of needless distraction. The particular expression of simplicity is a personal matter. We each know where our lives are unnecessarily complicated. We are all painfully aware of the clutter and pretense that weigh upon us and make our passage through the world more cumbersome and awkward. To live more simply is to unburden ourselves—to live more lightly, cleanly, aerodynamically. It is to establish a more direct, unpretentious, and unencumbered relationship with all aspects of our lives: the things that we consume, the work that we do, our relationships with others, our connections with nature and the cosmos, and more. Simplicity of living means meeting life face-to-face. It means confronting life clearly, without unnecessary distractions. It means being direct and honest in relationships of all kinds. It means taking life as it is—straight and unadulterated.
When we combine these two ideas for integrating the inner and outer aspects of our lives, we can describe voluntary simplicity as a manner of living that is outwardly more simple and inwardly more rich, a way of being in which our most authentic and alive self is brought into direct and conscious contact with living. This way of life is not a static condition to be achieved, but an ever-changing balance that must be continuously and consciously made real. Simplicity in this sense is not simple. To maintain a skillful balance that must be continuously and consciously made real. Simplicity in this sense is not simple. To maintain a skillful balance between the inner and outer aspects of our lives is an enormously challenging and continuously changing process. The objective is not dogmatically to live with less, but is a more demanding intention of living with balance is order to find a life of great purpose, fulfillment, and satisfaction.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 9:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: THE FULFILLMENT CURVE
This is a representation of the Fulfillment Curve concept from Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robbins (Penguin Books, 2008).
Download a high-resolution PDF (at www.uua.org/documents/tapestry/wisdom/fulfillmentcurve.pdf) for printing.
FIND OUT MORE
Read Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century, by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin (Penguin Books, 2008); Simplicity Lessons: A 12 Step Guide to Living Simply by Linda Breen Pierce; or Living Simply with Children by Marie Sherlock.
Visit the website of The Story of Stuff (at www.storyofstuff.org), a movement which began with an online video. From the home page:
We have a problem with Stuff. We use too much, too much of it is toxic and we don't share it very well. But that's not the way things have to be. Together, we can build a society based on better not more, sharing not selfishness, community not division.
Watch World in the Balance: Material World (at www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/worldbalance/material.html), an episode of the PBS series, Nova.
WORKSHOP 10: FAITHFUL GIVING
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver. — Maya Angelou
This workshop invites participants to delve into the spiritual side of giving—generosity as a spiritual practice. The crux of the workshop is the conversation about faithful giving and the ways in which giving transforms the giver. Participants explore their own experiences and motivations through sharing their own giving stories. Participants set their own giving intentions and exchange symbolic gifts of candy coins in a concluding ritual.
If you or your participants wish to explicitly examine the rationale and values represented by leaving a gift as part of your estate plan or will, use Alternate Activity 1, Legacy Giving.
Before leading the workshop, review the Accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: Our Giving Stories | 15 |
Activity 2: The Seventh Generation | 20 |
Activity 3: Faithful Giving | 30 |
Activity 4: Journaling | 10 |
Faith in Action: Share the Plate | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Legacy Giving | 20 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Consider these reflection questions from Activity 3:
Record your responses in your journal and/or share them with your co-facilitator or another trusted conversation partner. Consider how you might share parts of your own giving story with workshop participants to stimulate conversation and encourage participants to delve deeply into their own stories.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Welcome participants. Sound the chime and invite participants into quiet reflection as you prepare to enter a time of centering and sharing. Invite a volunteer to light the chalice as you share Reading 449 from Singing the Living Tradition.
Lead Hymn 402 in Singing the Living Tradition, "From You I Receive" or invite a volunteer to lead it.
Say that this workshop focuses on experiences and feelings about giving.
Read or tell the story "Know Yourself." Allow a moment or two of silence, and then say:
We enter into our time together deeply aware and with gratitude for of the many gifts that each of us brings to this sacred space and this holy conversation. You are a gift for which I am grateful.
Sound the chime to signal the end of the centering time.
Including All Participants
If you wish to invite the group to rise and sing, ensure that the option to remain seated is communicated. You may say, "Rise in body or spirit."
ACTIVITY 1: OUR GIVING STORIES (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Handout 1, Giving Stories. Invite participants to recall the circumstances of a time (or times) when they made a memorable gift or donation to their faith community (or to an organization or cause about which they are passionate). Ask them to consider whether one or more of the phrases in Handout 1 aptly describe their donation or whether they would use another phrase. Ask participants to share one or two giving stories in pairs, using the posted questions if they are helpful in telling a story. Explain that each partner will have about five minutes to share. Ring the bell or chime after five minutes to signal that it is time to change speakers. After 10 minutes, re-gather the large group and invite participants to share insights and observations. Are there phrases participants would like to add to Handout 1?
ACTIVITY 2: THE SEVENTH GENERATION (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation... even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine. — Great Law of the Iroquois
Description of Activity
Use the quote from the "Great Law of the Iroquois" as a prompt and invite participants to consider the value and impact of their giving practices on future generations. Use these questions to guide discussion:
ACTIVITY 3: FAITHFUL GIVING (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say:
One of our deepest spiritual practices is the giving of time, talent and treasure in support of our most deeply held values.
Say you will give participants five minutes to consider the posted questions about "faithful giving" privately for about five minutes and then you will invite them to share with others. Offer them chenille stems and/or modeling compound to hold, if it will help focus their reflections.
After five minutes, ask participants to move into groups of three. Direct triads to allow each person, in turn, to share some of their reflections before in the group engages in conversation.
Allow about 15 minutes in triads, and then re-gather the larger group. Ask each triad to offer a highlight or two from their conversation. After all have shared, ask:
ACTIVITY 4: JOURNALING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to journal or use art supplies to consider:
Optional: Suggest they work with chenille stems or modeling clay if it might help their reflection.
Invite participants to save any written reflections or art work they think may help them create a financial credo in Workshop 12.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home. Form a circle and join hands. Lead the group to sing a reprise of Hymn 402 in Singing the Living Tradition, "From You I Receive."
Invite participants as they are moved to select a candy and offer it to another participant while saying the words, "You are a gift for which I am grateful." After every person has had an opportunity to give and to receive, say:
Unitarian Universalism is a gift for which we are grateful. May our generosity today be the fuel that ensures a bright flame of faith for generations to come.
Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: SHARE THE PLATE
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Work with appropriate leaders and committees in your congregation to start a Share the Plate practice, in which the Sunday worship offering is regularly given to organizations or local community partners whose goals and values your congregation wishes to support. A Share the Plate practice provides rich opportunities for collaboration between the ministry/worship team and the social justice team in your congregation. Offer information about Share the Plate from the UU World article (at www.uuworld.org/life/articles/2390.shtml) and suggestions such as these:
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Make a time for reflection and discussion with your co-facilitator after the conclusion of the workshop. Consider these questions:
TAKING IT HOME
I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver. — Maya Angelou
Examine your records of financial giving for the past six months or year. What is the total amount you have given in that time? Is it more or less than you expected? What gifts did you feel especially passionate about? Is there a cause or a group you have not given to but wish you had? Calculate your giving history and assess how it intersects with your deepest values and the values of Unitarian Universalism. Consider what changes you would like to make, related to giving, to more closely align your passion and your values with your financial practices. If appropriate, invite your partner or other family members into this conversation.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: LEGACY GIVING (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say:
One way to "pay it forward" is to make provision in your will for a financial gift to your faith community or another organization about which you feel passionate. Some of you may have already considered financial gifts when writing a will; others may not have has this experience. For the purpose of this activity, let's assume that you have made such a provision in a legal document. Who would be the recipient of such a gift? How would you explain your gift in non-legal terms to those who will read your will?"
Invite participants to take a few minutes and compose a note, poem, drawing, or another expression of their hopes and dreams for the gift, and the reasons they have for leaving this financial legacy. After about 10 minutes, invite participants, as they are moved, to share what they have created.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 10:
STORY: KNOW YOURSELF
Retold by Sarah Conover and Freda Crane in Ayat Jamilah: Beautiful Signs: A Treasury of Islamic Wisdom for Children and Parents (Boston: Skinner House, 2010). Used with permission.
Kan ya ma kan: there was and there was not a man known far and wide for his generosity. One day, sitting with his friends sipping coffee in the village square, a poor woman approached him with a small request for money to feed her child.
"Of course!" he replied, and without hesitation plucked coin after coin out of his pocket, piling them into the woman's hand until they spilled on the ground.
Overwhelmed with this show of kindness, the woman began to weep. She bowed her head in gratitude. "May Allah bless you, Sir. You have saved my child's life." She carefully placed the coins in a small cloth sack. Glancing up a last time, she thanked him with a frail half-smile.
When she was out of earshot, the man's friends probed him with questions: "Why did you give her so much money?" asked one.
"That was foolish. Don't you think she will tell all her friends?" asked another.
"A line of beggars will be at your door tomorrow morning!" warned a third.
"Just yesterday, you gave your zakaat, your charity," said a fourth. "You weren't obliged to give her any. Why did you do it?"
The generous man kept silent until their indignation ran its course. At last they quieted down.
"While such a poor woman may be pleased with just a little money from me," said the generous man, "I couldn't have been." He looked from friend to friend. "Unless I give her what I am able to, I won't be happy. She may not know me, but I know myself."
And the group of men, thoughtful and contrite, said no more about it.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 10:
HANDOUT 1: GIVING STORIES
Download a high-resolution PDF (at www.uua.org/documents/tapestry/wisdom/clouds.pdf) for printing.
FIND OUT MORE
"All In (at www.uua.org/giving/awardsscholarships/stewardshipsermon/)" by Rev. Peter Friedrichs, recipient of the UUA 2013 Stewardship Sermon Award
"Sharing the Plate Increases Giving (at www.uuworld.org/life/articles/2390.shtml)" by Donald Skinner, UU World, July/August 2003
Giving--The Sacred Art: Creating a Lifestyle of Generosity by Lauren Taylor Wright (Skylights Publishing, 2008)
The Generosity Path: Finding the Richness in Giving (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=1864) by Mark V. Ewert (Boston: Skinner House, 2013)
WORKSHOP 11: FAITHFUL INVESTING
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
It is only by following your deepest instinct that you can lead a rich life, and if you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, then your life will be safe, expedient and thin. — Katharine Butler Hathaway, 20th-century U.S. American writer
This workshop looks at implications of entrusting our surplus financial resources—our investable capital—to others in exchange for the promise of future financial benefit. Through investing we can create opportunities for others to produce things of value and yield an economic return, in a manner—we hope—that aligns with both our moral values and worldly objectives. At its best, investment connects people in a way that creates and enhances possibilities for all concerned. The workshop explores investing our resources toward such an end, in a meaningful and mindful way. The workshop introduces Socially Responsible Investing, defined on the Unitarian Universalist Association website as "making money and making a difference."
This workshop introduces the basics of investment and invites participants to bring moral and spiritual values to bear on the information presented. Be prepared to offer resources for people who wish to find out more about investment and/or about Socially Responsible Investing (SRI). For investment basics, a good place to start is the "university (at www.investopedia.com/university/)" page of investopedia.com, which offers a variety of tutorials or the Financial Education Clearinghouse (at dfi.wa.gov/financial-education/resources-investing.htm) of the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions. The UUA website has excellent resources on SRI (at www.uua.org/finance/investment/sri). Explore these sites before leading the workshop so you will be comfortable recommending them.
Review the Accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: Investing Fundamentals | 10 |
Activity 2: Personal Investment Philosophies and Experiences | 15 |
Activity 3: Socially Responsible Investing | 25 |
Activity 4: Investment Analysis and Decision Making | 25 |
Faith in Action: Congregational/Organizational Investment Philosophy | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternative Activity 1: Shareholder Advocacy | 20 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
How aware are you of your attitudes and practices regarding investment? Reflect on these questions. Make time to share with your co-facilitator before the workshop:
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Welcome participants. Sound the chime and invite participants into a moment of quiet reflection as you prepare to enter into a time of centering and sharing. Invite a volunteer to light the chalice as you share these words:
We light this chalice in the spirit of growing abundance,
for the commitment to make difficult decisions in our lives,
and in the hope that we may act with both integrity and wisdom in growing the future for which today we plant the seeds.
Go around the circle, passing the talking stick if you have chosen to use one. Invite each participant to say their name, and check in with a few words about a personal experience of spending money in a mindful way since the last workshop.
Sound the chime to signal the end of the centering time.
Now, say:
This workshop is about the issues and implications of putting our surplus financial resources—our investable capital—to work by entrusting money to others in exchange for the promise of future financial benefit. By providing capital, investment can create opportunities for others to produce things of value, while yielding an economic return for the investor. At its best, investment connects people to one another in a way that creates and enhances possibilities for all concerned.
ACTIVITY 1: INVESTING FUNDAMENTALS (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Share this reading from "What Investment is Not" on investopedia.com:
Investing is not gambling. Gambling is putting money at risk by betting on an uncertain outcome with the hope that you might win money. Part of the confusion between investing and gambling, however, may come from the way some people use investment vehicles. For example, it could be argued that buying a stock based on a "hot tip" you heard at the water cooler is essentially the same as placing a bet at a casino.
True investing doesn't happen without some action on your part. A "real" investor does not simply throw his or her money at any random investment; [an investor] performs thorough analysis and commits capital (at www.investopedia.com/terms/c/capital.asp) only when there is a reasonable expectation of profit. Yes, there still is risk (at www.investopedia.com/terms/r/risk.asp), and there are no guarantees, but investing is more than simply hoping Lady Luck is on your side.
To make sure that all participants understand the basic concepts and terminology you will use in this workshop, introduce the information from Leader Resource 1, Key Investment Concepts and Definitions. You likely have participants with varying degrees of familiarity with the information; some may have no experience at all with investment. Invite comments and additions to the definitions you present, but urge participants to keep additional information simple and brief. If needed, remind the group that this workshop's topic is faithful investing, and there will not be time for a full investment tutorial. Suggest resources where participants can find out more.
Once the group appears comfortable with the information you have presented on investment basics, lead a discussion using one or more of these questions. Use your judgment to determine whether particular questions are appropriate, given participants' familiarity with financial investment:
ACTIVITY 2: PERSONAL INVESTMENT PHILOSOPHIES AND EXPERIENCES (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Handout 1, Personal Investment History Questions, paper, and pens. Invite participants to choose one or two questions from the handout and to respond by writing, drawing, or making notes, explaining that they will be sharing their thoughts with others. Allow five minutes for writing or drawing. Then, ask participants to form pairs to share reflections with one another. Explain that each partner will have three minutes to speak. (If you need to form a triad, its members will have two minutes each); sound a chime at each two-minute point as well as at the three-minute point, for pairs.)
Then, gather the larger group, and ask for comments, observations, and insights about the role spirituality and values play in financial investing.
Invite participants to save their reflections, which may be helpful in the creation of a financial credo in Workshop 12.
ACTIVITY 3: SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE INVESTING (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say:
Socially Responsible Investing, or SRI, is one way some UU congregations, groups, and individuals bring spiritual and religious values into investment. SRI pays attention to the idea that investment is fundamentally a relationship between the one providing capital through investment and the one creating something of value. A socially responsible approach to investing requires an investor to make determinations about value beyond financial return and to act on those decisions. In effect, there is a "double bottom line," where both financial performance and social effects are important, often supporting one another.
Explain that your purpose in this activity is to unpack SRI so that participants can explore if and how it might be part of personal and/or congregational financial practices. This workshop is not the place to debate SRI in congregational investment policies. Suggest appropriate congregational leaders with whom interested participants might study and discuss the issues in more depth after the workshop.
Distribute Handout 2, Ten Things All UUs Should Know About Socially Responsible Investing. Explain that the handout is an abbreviated version of a page on the UUA website. Invite volunteers to read each of the ten items. Ask if participants have any knowledge or experience with SRI. Invite them to briefly share their experiences.
Distribute Handout 3, Fossil Fuel Divestment Debate. Explain that there are two main positions in the current debate: Some believe the UUA should completely eliminate from our stock portfolio companies that extract, refine, and distribute fossil fuels; this is called divestment. Others believe we should use the UUA's position as shareholder to pressure such companies to adopt more environmentally friendly policies and practices. Invite participants to read the handout. Tell them the Summer 2013 issue of UU World (in print or online) has the full essays.
Ask for comment and discussion about the fossil fuel debate. After about five minutes, explain that although you could spend a great deal of time debating, the issues are complex, and engaging this debate is not the focus of this workshop. Invite participants instead to focus more closely on SRI, using the fossil fuel debate as a case study to help understand how SRI works. Lead a discussion using these questions:
ACTIVITY 4: INVESTMENT DECISION MAKING (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Tell participants they will practice a bit of investment analysis and decision-making, taking into account the principles of socially responsible investing. Say:
You are the newly formed Investment committee of a mid-sized Unitarian Universalist congregation. Upon recently receiving an unexpected $1 million bequest from a member, the Board has resolved to institute an endowment for the congregation's long-term financial health. Your committee has been convened and is now charged to invest the $1 million in a way that creates maximum economic return and is in line with the social justice objectives of the congregation, particularly with the "inherent worth and dignity of each person" and "the interdependent web" as guiding principles.
Before the Investment committee meets, you need to do your pre-meeting "homework."
Form pairs and give each pair a sheet with one of the examples you prepared from Leader Resource 2. Explain that each pair has an excerpt from an annual report of a publicly traded company. There are ten different business sectors represented, for example, agriculture, financial services, pharmaceutical.
Invite them to review the excerpt from a company's annual. Acknowledge that the information they have is limited. Ask them to pull out one or two key goals or strategies of the company that impress them and be ready to articulate the values those goals or strategies represent.
Post newsprint sheets while participants examine the annual report examples in pairs. After five minutes, ask each pair to write the company name and values/strategies declared on one of the sheets of newsprint.
Then, gather participants and ask them to agree on an allocation of the $1M among the investment options they have been provided. You may suggest that they begin with an agreement on the investing approach they will take, e.g., screening out undesirable stocks, choosing to take positions in order gain a voice with influential companies on important matters, or providing funding for an underdeveloped sector. Use the newsprint to record any decisions made. Stop the role play after 15 minutes, even in the likely event that they have not completed the process. Ask:
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home.
Invite everyone to form a circle and join hands. Ask participants to share a word or phrase that describes one insight or take-away from this workshop.
Share Reading 687, by John W. Brigham, in Singing the Living Tradition.
Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: CONGREGATIONAL/ORGANIZATIONAL INVESTMENT PHILOSOPHY
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Interview investment decision-makers in your congregation or organization to gain an understanding of key factors in making investment decisions. Then, examine an itemized overview of your current investment portfolio.
Convene an interested study group from your congregation.to research the fundamentals, strategies, and activities of the companies in the portfolio. Include current investment decision makers as well interested workshop participants and others suggested by your congregation's leaders. Have the group discuss these questions about your investments:
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Make a time for individual reflection and discussion with your co-facilitator after the workshop. Consider these questions:
TAKING IT HOME
It is only by following your deepest instinct that you can lead a rich life, and if you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, then your life will be safe, expedient and thin. — Katharine Butler Hathaway, 20th-century U.S. American writer
Examine your own stock investments including both direct investments and those made through retirement accounts or by way of mutual funds. Select one holding of a large size relative to your whole portfolio. Research the profile and performance of the company. Identify those elements that are consistent with your religious values and aspirations and those that are not. Use your imagination to identify constructive opportunities and directions for the company. List what you consider the positives and negatives for the company's profile and performance, taking into account the "double bottom line," financial performance and positive social effects. What opportunities do you see for shareholder advocacy? Community engagement? Do the financial prospects and social value seem to align or are they in opposition?
Engage in a shareholder advocacy action, using suggestions from the SRI page (at www.uua.org/finance/investment/sri) on uua.org. Write a letter to the company's management; attend the Annual Meeting; attempt to advance a shareholder resolution; or take another appropriate action.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: SHAREHOLDER ADVOCACY (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Read the story aloud. Then lead a discussion using these questions:
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 11:
STORY: UUA PERSUADES VERIZON TO PROTECT TRANSGENDER WORKERS
By Michelle Bates Deacon. Published in UU World online, February 27, 2012.
For each of the last five years, the Unitarian Universalist Association has filed shareholder resolutions with Verizon Communications to urge the corporation to add "gender identity or expression" to its non-discrimination policy.
In mid-February, Verizon notified the UUA that it has agreed to adopt the policy, which provides protection to transgender people and those in transition.
"This is a significant victory for the UUA's shareholder advocacy program," said Tim Brennan, UUA treasurer and chief financial officer.
Verizon is the latest in a string of major corporations that the UUA has worked to persuade to add gender identity protection to its workplace policies. Over the past five years, the UUA has filed or co-filed shareholder resolutions at multiple companies that resulted in gender identity protection for more than 2.9 million employees, according to Brennan.
The UUA has made a concerted effort to target companies that protect employees against discrimination based on their sexual orientation but do not have policies protecting people based on gender identity or expression. "That group is particularly vulnerable because it is largely unprotected by the legal system," Brennan said. "There has been tremendous violence against them and a lot of evidence of job discrimination."
Verizon's decision follows another significant victory for the UUA's socially responsible investing team. In November 2011, it learned that Walmart, the nation's largest employer, was adding gender identity or expression to its non-discrimination policy. As it had with Verizon, the UUA had been filing shareholder resolutions urging Walmart to add the policy for five years.
The UUA has been part of successful campaigns to push other companies to adopt non-discrimination language, including The Home Depot, Travelers Insurance, Procter & Gamble, Family Dollar, Lowe's, and Dr. Pepper Snapple Group. The UUA either filed or co-filed a shareholder resolution with each of those companies. Often, the UUA works in concert with the New York City Employees' Pension Funds.
In 2008, after the UUA began filing gender-identity shareholder resolutions at Verizon, the company sent a representative to meet with Brennan. "We triggered a conversation inside the company," Brennan said. At the same time, employees began pushing the company to change.
"Inside pressure and outside pressure gets companies to pay attention to issues they otherwise wouldn't," Brennan said.
The Unitarian Universalist Common Endowment Fund (at www.uua.org/uucef/index.shtml) had a market value of $128 million as of Dec. 31, 2011. The UUA purchases funds in some companies that otherwise would not pass its screens so that it can participate in shareholder activism. The UUA owned 2,276 shares in Verizon Communications and 70 shares in Walmart.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 11:
HANDOUT 1: PERSONAL INVESTMENT HISTORY QUESTIONS
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 11:
HANDOUT 2: TEN THINGS ALL UUS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE INVESTING
From the Unitarian Universalist Association's (UUA's) Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (CSRI). Find full text on the UUA website.
1) Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) means making money and making a difference.
2) SRI is much more than just avoiding bad companies.
3) "Investment selection" in SRI means using social, environmental and governance (ESG) criteria as you choose your investments.
4) "Engagement" means working to improve the ESG performance of the companies whose securities you own.
5) "Community investing" means directing a portion of your investments in a way that helps to ameliorate poverty and social inequality.
6) SRI is compatible with strong financial performance.
7) SRI is a growing movement.
8) The UUA is a well-known leader in SRI.
9) Every UU congregation can do SRI.
10) Every individual can do SRI.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 11:
HANDOUT 3: FOSSIL FUEL DIVESTMENT DEBATE
Excerpted from essays published in UU World, Summer 2013. Used with permission.
The UUA's Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Tim Brennan, and Rev. Fred Small of First Parish, Cambridge, MA, debated fossil fuel divestment in companion essays published in the UU World. Here are excerpts:
Tim Brennan
The world is hurtling toward climate change disaster, and we must act. The Unitarian Universalist Association's 2006 Statement of Conscience, "Threat of Global Warming/Climate Change (at www.uua.org/statements/statements/8061.shtml)," calls us to use "the ownership rights of the denomination's financial resources to positively ad?dress the global warming/climate change crisis."
There is a vigorous debate under way about exactly which tactics investors concerned about climate change should be employing. Author and activist Bill McKibben has called on investors to divest their portfolios of securities in the two hundred publicly traded companies with the largest proven coal, oil, and gas reserves. Other investors, including the UUA and most socially responsible investment (SRI) firms, have taken a different approach—using their leverage as shareowners to pressure the companies to address the crisis.
In advocating for divestment McKibben presents a stark, either/or choice: divest, or side with those who turn their backs. This is both simplistic and unfair to those who have dedicated years of their lives to seeking justice through shareholder advocacy...
The UUA's Committee on Socially Responsible Investing and Investment Committee have been studying the issue and consulting with leaders in the SRI field. They all agree that more needs to be done. Here are some of the steps they are taking:
In the anti-apartheid movement, it was the multiplicity of actions by investors that contributed to a just outcome. And that is what we need now—a rising tide of pressure from many sources pushing government and companies to take the necessary steps towards a sustainable, low-carbon global energy future.
Rev. Fred Small
In the moral struggle against global warming, divestment isn't the only tactic. It may not be the best tactic. But it's a crucial tactic, because right now nothing is working...
The smart money is on the status quo. It always is. But the fossil fuel divestment campaign is telling the smart money to get smarter. It's reminding treasurers and trustees that fiduciary responsibility means attending not just to short-term security, but also to long-term sustainability. It's pointing out that there can be no economy without a livable planet. It's calling upon investors to transition to a fossil-free portfolio within five years.
The campaign is asking the fossil fuel industry to stop exploring for new hydrocarbons, to stop lobbying to preserve their special breaks, and to leave 80 percent of their current reserves in the ground. Given the norms of corporate capitalism, these are audacious, even preposterous demands. Given the climate crisis, they are modest, reasonable, and necessary.
Divestment activists aren't trying to bankrupt Big Oil and Big Coal financially. They're trying to bankrupt them morally—to isolate them as outlaws, just as anti-smoking activists stigmatized Big Tobacco. As 350.org's Jay Carmona explains (at e360.yale.edu/feature/can_a_divestment_campaign_move_the_fossil_fuel_industry/2629/), "Divestment is targeting the one thing that those companies can't buy, which is their reputation." The idea is to weaken the industry politically to the point where increasing the price of carbon becomes politically feasible...
Some will in good faith and conscience fight global warming through shareholder activism. I wish them every success...
Money is always an instrument of moral choice. We must each choose as wisely as we can. I choose divestment.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 11:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: KEY INVESTMENT CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS
Adapted from the website, Investopedia.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 11:
LEADER RESOURCE 2: ANNUAL REPORT RESOURCE EXAMPLES
Annual reports of publicly traded companies are available at AnnualReports.com.
AGRICULTURAL: Syngenta AG: "an agribusiness company, engages in the discovery, development, manufacture, and marketing of a range of products designed to enhance crop yields and food quality worldwide." Syngenta AG 2012 Annual Review (at www.annualreports.com/Click/12861).
CHEMICALS: FMC Corporation: "FMC Corporation is one of the world's foremost, diversified chemical companies with leading positions in agricultural, industrial and consumer markets." FMC Corporation 2011 Annual Report (at www.annualreports.com/Click/3132)
CONGLOMERATES: General Electric: "General Electric is a diversified services, technology, manufacturing, and financial services company with a commitment to achieving customer success and worldwide leadership in each of its businesses. GE's products and services range from aircraft engines, power generation, water processing, and household appliances to medical imaging, business and consumer financing and industrial products. It serves customers in more than 100 countries." General Electric 2011 Annual Report (at www.annualreports.com/Click/4918)
AUTOMOBILES: Ford Motor Company: "Ford Motor Company primarily develops, manufactures, distributes, and services vehicles and parts worldwide. It operates in two sectors, Automotive and Financial Services." Ford Motor Co. 2011 Annual Report (at www.annualreports.com/Click/3222)
BEVERAGES: Hansen Natural Corporation: "Hansen Natural Corporation engages in the development, marketing, sale, and distribution of beverages in the United States and internationally. The company principally offers natural sodas, fruit juices and juice drinks, energy drinks and energy sports drinks, fruit juice smoothies and functional drinks, non-carbonated ready-to-drink iced teas, children's multi-vitamin juice drinks, and flavored sparkling beverages under the Hansen's brand name." Hansen Natural Corporation 2011 Annual Report (at www.annualreports.com/Click/8536)
ENERGY: Primary Energy Recycling Corporation: "Primary Energy Recycling Corporation owns and operates combined heat and power (CHP), and recycled energy facilities in the United States." Primary Energy Recycling Corporation 2011 Annual Reporthttp://www.annualreports.com/Click/16310 (at www.annualreports.com/Click/16310)
FINANCIAL SERVICES: BNP Paribas S.A.: "BNP Paribas s is a leading European provider of financial services on a worldwide scale. Its three core activities: Retail Banking, Investment Solutions and Corporate & Investment Banking." BNP Paribas SA 2011 Annual Report (at www.annualreports.com/Click/12964)
PHARMACEUTICALS: Pfizer Inc. "Pfizer Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, engages in the discovery, development, manufacture, and sale of medicines for people and animals worldwide." Pfizer Inc. 2011 Annual Report (at www.annualreports.com/Click/3950)
INFORMATION SERVICES: Yahoo! "Yahoo! Inc. operates as a digital media company that delivers personalized digital content and experiences through various devices worldwide. It offers online properties and services to users; and a range of marketing services to businesses." Yahoo! 2011 Annual Report (at www.annualreports.com/Click/1429)
FIND OUT MORE
Investment basics and tutorials
Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: An Owner's Manual (at www.berkshirehathaway.com/owners.html), A Message from Warren E. Buffett, Chairman and CEO January 1999
"Investing 101 (at www.investopedia.com/university/beginner/)" on the Investopedia website
Malkiel, Burton G. A Random Walk Down Wall Street, New York: Norton, 1985.
"Investing your Money Basics (at money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/money101/lesson4/index.htm)" CNNMoney.
"Resources by Topic: Investing (at dfi.wa.gov/financial-education/resources-investing.htm)" Financial Education Clearinghouse, Washington State Department of Financial Institutions
Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) resources
Socially Responsible Investing (at www.uua.org/finance/investment/sri/) resources on the UUA website
Two views on the debate about fossil fuel investment on the website of UU World: "Fossil Fuel Divestment is Moral, Strategic (at www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/285524.shtml)" by Fred Small, UU World, Summer 2013 and "Fossil Fuel Divestment is Not the Answer (at www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/285525.shtml)" by Tim Brennan, UU World, Summer 2013.
WORKSHOP 12: SPIRITUAL PRACTICES IN A MATERIAL WORLD
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself. — Aldous Huxley, British author (Brave New World)
In this workshop, participants craft a personal theology of wealth and money and set a plan for sustainable, spiritually healthy financial practice at home, at work, and in their congregation. The workshop revisits prompt questions from previous workshops and guides participants to articulate a "credo" about money which states their personal beliefs, values, and intentions. Then, participants plan how they will transform their intentions into actions and make a commitment to follow through.
A week before the workshop, contact participants and remind them to bring with them any written, artistic, and/ or creative expressions and reflections from prior workshops or prepare some thoughts about their hopes, dreams, and intentions for their financial lives going forward.
You and workshop participants may decide as an alternate or additional activity to plan and lead a worship service which brings the spiritual work of The Wi$dom Path program into a community religious celebration.
Before leading the workshop, review the Accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 15 |
Activity 1: Taking Stock of the Journey | 20 |
Activity 2: Creating and Sharing Credos | 25 |
Activity 3: Moving from Credo to Action | 25 |
Faith in Action: Forming an Accountability Partnership/Group | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Worship Planning | 60 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Reflect on your experience leading The Wi$dom Path program. Consider:
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
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. Invite a volunteer to light the chalice as you share these words:
We light this chalice in acknowledgement of reaching a destination,
And the threshold of a new beginning together.
We light this chalice for the places we have been
And those where we have yet to go.
We light this chalice in gratitude for our time together,
that our lives may be better for it
Go around the circle, passing the talking stick if you have chosen to use one, and invite each participant to say their name and to check in by sharing one experience of giving money they have had since the last workshop. Coach them to try to connect their gift with what they learned about themselves and their values in previous workshops.
Sound the chime to signal the end of the centering time.
ACTIVITY 1: TAKING STOCK OF THE JOURNEY (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say:
In the Wi$dom Path program we have paid close attention to the ways we have used and been affected by money, so that we might draw clearer connections between our financial choices and our values and perhaps change our financial behavior to better align with our religious and spiritual intentions. We have seen that money plays a complex role in our lives, our relationships, and our personal aspirations, dreams, and anxieties. We have seen how every financial decision we make reflects our core values. While sometimes our religious, spiritual, and ethical values make our financial decisions clear, sometimes the choices before us put some of our deeply held values in opposition to one another. In each of our financial decisions and actions, we carry myriad voices: those of our current communities, our communities of origin, our personal and familial experiences, and the inner voice which guides us to live more fully into our best aspirations for faithfully and ethically using the monetary resources available to us.
Invite participants to join you in turning inward for a guided reflection and meditation. Say it is designed to bring forward ideas and feelings from earlier program workshops. Ask them to take a moment to center themselves physically, connecting themselves in a comfortable way to the chair or floor beneath them, and to close their eyes if is comfortable. Invite them to focus on their breathing and simply to be present.
When everyone appears calm, centered, and ready, sound the chime and lead the guided meditation (Leader Resource 1).
Sound the chime to recall the group's attention. Ask participants to hold their thoughts, images, and feelings as you move to the next activity.
ACTIVITY 2: CREATING AND SHARING CREDOS (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say that a credo is a declaration of belief, commitment, and aspiration. Ask if any participants have been involved with a Coming of Age program that concluded with youth preparing and sharing a credo. Invite anyone who has been part of such an experience, as a parent, mentor, participant, or attendee at a Coming of Age service to briefly comment on the value and power of the credo experience. Say:
Part of our commitment as Unitarian Universalists is to choose our own spiritual path. The act of declaring what we believe, value, hope, and aspire to is a powerful spiritual experience. You are invited to write your own money credo, expressing what you have learned about your relationship with money and what your commitments are for that relationship going forward.
Encourage participants to look for ideas in any written, visual, or creative expressions from prior workshops they have brought with them.
Distribute Handout 1, Four Credo Perspectives. Invite the volunteers to each read a definition aloud. Emphasize that credos are personal, may be incomplete and representative, may only be a statement for this moment in life, and can bring together both intellectual and emotional elements. Ask for other comments or observations.
Distribute paper and pens. Invite participants to take 15 minutes to begin writing their personal money credo. Ask them to keep in mind the ideas and images that arose during their reflection and meditation. Challenge them to articulate what they believe most fundamentally and deeply about money. What are the basic worldly truths about money they have discovered? What roles should it play in their spiritual life? Their family life? Their community life? How is it connected to their Unitarian Universalist faith? Call attention to the questions you have posted and invite participants to use them if they are helpful. After participants have finished writing, invite them to share any brief thoughts about the credo-writing experience.
ACTIVITY 3: MOVING FROM CREDO TO ACTION (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Ask participants: How could you best put your beliefs and commitments in to action? Call attention to the posted newsprint and invite participants to brainstorm concrete suggestions for putting beliefs into action in each category. Ask: What practices can bring our relationship with money more in line with our values and more supportive of our spiritual and physical well-being? Ask them to include in the brainstorm the actions that they personally plan to take.
After a time of brainstorming, invite participants to review the lists. Lead a discussion, asking:
Conclude the discussion, and then invite participants to use sticky dots to indicate one, two, or three actions to which they are willing to make a commitment. Ask them to consider enlisting a friend or family member to help them hold themselves accountable to that commitment.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home, Singing the Journey, and Handout 2 (for those who need a copy). Lead participants or have a volunteer to lead them in singing "Building a New Way," Hymn 1017 in Singing the Journey.
Then, form a circle and join hands. Invite each participant to offer a blessing for the group to carry away from the program. Model a blessing using your own words or these:
May you go from here, into a life of shared abundance. May that which you receive and that which you give enrich your life beyond measure.
After everyone has shared a blessing, extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: FORMING AN ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNERSHIP/GROUP
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Form an accountability group for support and encouragement with interested members of your workshop group.
Ask participants to consider and come to an understanding on these questions:
Create a covenant that includes your agreements about how you will work together and support one another. Document each agreement on newsprint. Before leaving, agree on when and where to hold the next meeting. Assign responsibilities for planning and communication.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Make a time for individual reflection and discussion with your co-facilitator after the conclusion of the workshop. You may also wish to share your reflections about The Wi$dom Path program with a religious educator, minister, or lay leader responsible for planning adult faith development programming in your congregation. Consider these questions:
TAKING IT HOME
I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself. — Aldous Huxley, British author (Brave New World)
Write a prayer that expresses your deepest wishes for your own financial well-being and the well-being of those dear to you.
Prepare yourself by reading "Meditation on Love" by Thich Nhat Hanh (Handout 2). Then, meditate or pray for a healthy relationship with money and wealth for ever-widening circles. Pray first for yourself. Begin with your deepest wish for your own relationship with money and wealth. Then, hold those in your family or close friends in thought or prayer. Then, the circle of your faith community. Then the community in which you live. Then, the larger world which surrounds you. Make this prayer a regular discipline as you strive to maintain your own spiritual and financial well-being.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: WORSHIP PLANNING (60 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Plan to lead a worship service for your faith community, congregation, or group. Set a date based on your conversations with congregational and/or group leadership. Distribute Handout 3, Sample Order of Service and read it together. Explain that the handout merely offers suggestions; the form and content of the worship are entirely up to the participants.
Ask participants to appoint a leader to facilitate the planning and role assignment process. Offer to serve as scribe for the group's planning. Suggest that they agree on assignments and deadlines, including a rehearsal time. Provide support as requested. When the time comes for the worship service, enjoy!
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 12:
HANDOUT 1: FOUR CREDO PERSPECTIVES
Credo. noun (pl. credos) a statement of the beliefs or aims that guide someone's actions...
— New Oxford American Dictionary (3rd edition)
A credo is a snapshot of your values, faith, identity, and belief at one point in time. As Unitarian Universalists, we understand that your religious ideas will evolve throughout your life... you credo is simply an expression of where you are now.
— Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh in the Coming of Age Handbook for Congregations (UUA, 2009)
Try writing a credo sometime. Writing out a credo can be helpful in the living of one's life. It puts your beliefs on the table. Once you get your major beliefs out of the way, other less well organized beliefs may surprise you by surfacing. You may find that these less extravagant beliefs may affect your life far more than whether you believe or don't believe in something so grand as God.
— Rev. Maureen Titchener in the 2003 Gould Discourse
The heart is another commonly mentioned analogy for what we are trying to identify. A heart is a source of sustaining life, a motivating force, a place from which energy emerges... .The concept of "credo," usually thought of as a statement of individual belief, can be traced etymologically to the notion of "that to which I give my heart"—a commitment that is more emotional than intellectual in nature.
— From "Engaging our Theological Diversity," the 2005 report of the UUA Commission on Appraisal
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 12:
HANDOUT 2: MEDITATION ON LOVE
Reprinted from Teachings on Love (1998, 2007 revised edition) by Thich Nhat Hanh with permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, www.parallaxpress.org.
May I be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit.
May she be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit.
May he be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit.
May they be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit.
May I be safe and free from injury.
May she be safe and free from injury.
May he be safe and free from injury.
May they be safe and free from injury.
May I be free from anger, afflictions, fear and anxiety.
May she be free from anger, afflictions, fear and anxiety.
May he be free from anger, afflictions, fear and anxiety.
May they be free from anger, afflictions, fear and anxiety.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 12:
HANDOUT 3: SAMPLE ORDER OF SERVICE
Prelude
Choose your favorite money-themed song. Workshop 1, Opening has suggestions.
Call to Worship
What calls us together in worship and what does it have to do with material wealth? It could be a poem or reading, possibly from The Wi$dom Path workshops or based on short snippets from participants' money stories shared in the program. Perhaps you can use the Call to Worship as an invitation to worship attendees to reflect on, discover, or even share their own money stories.
Opening Hymn
Possibilities include:
Introduction to The Wi$dom Path
Offer a brief description of The Wi$dom Path program. Include some key questions your workshop group explored.
Reflections
Two or three members of the workshop group share their credo statements. Offer a diversity of voices and perspectives. You might separate the credo statements with music.
Offering
Work with your governing board, professional staff, or another appropriate group to propose an organization, project, or cause to which the worship offering will be given. Plan a brief explanation to introduce the offering.
Reflections
Two or three members of your workshop group share their credo statements. Offer a diversity of voices and perspectives. You might separate the statements with music.
Joys and Concerns
Invite people to silently light candles of joy or concern, with a particular focus on money in their lives.
Meditation/Prayer
Hymn
Possibilities include:
Benediction/Closing Words
Look in the Closing words provided for each workshop of The Wi$dom Path.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 12:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: GUIDED REFLECTION AND MEDITATION
Ask these questions slowly, allowing time for reflection after each set of questions:
Conclude the time of reflection and meditation by inviting participants to slowly return to the group, opening their eyes when they are ready.
FIND OUT MORE
Teachings on Love by Thich Nhat Hanh (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1998)
"Faith Reduced to Three Questions — A Drive Time Essay (at www.uua.org/publications/drivetime/57464.shtml)" by Judith A. Frediani, June 2005
Coming of Age Handbook for Congregations (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=946) by Sarah Gibb Millspaugh (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, 2009)
The Generosity Path: Finding the Richness in Giving (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=1864) by Mark V. Ewert (Boston: Skinner House, 2013)