THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
WORKSHOP 9: FAITHFUL SPENDING
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 12:09:35 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
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.