THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
WORKSHOP 2: THE MEANING OF MONEY IN OUR LIVES
BY PATRICIA HALL INFANTE AND DAVID H. MESSNER; DEVELOPMENTAL EDITOR: GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL
© Copyright 2013 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/30/2014 12:02:06 AM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
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: