Chalice Circle Topic for June 2015

Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship

Chalice Circle topic for June, 2015

Creativity

Adapted from: Main Line Unitarian Church, Devon, PA November 2003

Note: See the Circle Ministry Session Sequence for process guidelines.

Gathering, Welcoming (2 minutes)

Business

There will not be any official session plan for July—your group should decide if you will be meeting in July or not—I recommend a social gathering, maybe a potluck or picnic….

Opening Words and Chalice Lighting

“Sometimes you’ve got to let everything go—purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything… whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you’ll find that when you’re free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.” – Tina Turner

Meditation

Offer a few minutes of silent reflection before checking in.

Check in/Personal Sharing (approximately 30 minutes)

(If needed, the facilitator should briefly remind the group of important elements of the group covenant… confidentiality/ anonymity, that this is not the time for cross conversation, etc.)

Focus Readings:  Creativity and Religion

All of us dwell on the brink of the infinite ocean of life’s creative power. We all carry it within us; supreme strength, the fullness of wisdom, unquenchable joy. It is never thwarted and cannot be destroyed. But it is hidden deep, which is what makes life a problem. The infinite is down in the darkest, profoundest vault of our being, in the forgotten well-house, the deep cistern. What if we could discover it again and draw from it unceasingly? (Huston Smith, from The Religions of the World)

Activity (Optional)

Cut up the quotes on the last page of this session plan into strips and place them in a basket before the session. At this point—before posing the focus questions—invite each participant to pull a quote out of the basket and go around and read them….

Focus Questions:  (45-60 minutes)

           

The desire to create is part of our human heritage and potential. Being creative is not just about painting, acting, gardening, or playing the piano. It can also be an approach to the way we live our lives.

·      What are the ways in which you think you are creative?

·      Share some things you are proud to have created.

·      What creative longings do you have? Can you name some ways you might try to nurture the creator in you.

·      Do you see ways spirituality and human creativity are connected, and how are they related for you?

·      Share a creative activity or moment that you experienced as religious or spiritual.

Checkout/Likes and Wishes

(This is the time for facilitators to ask participants what they liked about this meeting and what they might wish for future meetings.  This is also the time for any discussion of logistics.)

Closing Words & Extinguishing Chalice:

There is no use trying,” said Alice. “One can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” — Lewis Carroll

QUOTES ABOUT CREATIVITIY

“Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.” -- Bill Moyers

“It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning”--  Salvador Dalí

“The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity. . .” – Marianne Williamson

“Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.” -- Martha Graham

            “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.” -- Steve Jobs

“Creativity often consists of merely turning up what is already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago?” -- Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

“Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.” -- John Updike

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.” -- Albert Einstein

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” -- George Bernard Shaw

“Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.”-- Ray Bradbury

Chalice Circle Topic for May 2015

Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship

Joy

Adapted from: Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stony Brook, NY, May 2013

Rev. Margie Allen and Rev. Dr. Linda Anderson

Note: See the Chalice Circle Session Sequence for process guidelines

Gathering, Welcoming (2 minutes)

Business
As needed—checking in about who is coming, where you are meeting, service projects, updating your group covenant….

Chalice Lighting (2 minutes)

Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Silence (2 minutes)

Let us take a couple of minutes of silence to settle into this place so we can be fully present for each other. Uncross your arms and legs, place your feet on the floor, take a few deep breaths and just be.

Check-in/Sharing (3-4 minutes@ - 30-40 minutes)

This is an opportunity to share recent events and/or current feelings that may (or may not) need to be set aside in order to be most present for the session.

Topic Introduction

Joy is an emotion.  Emotions can function as message flags that let us know that an important need of ours is being met or is not being met. Joy is the emotion evoked by experiences of needs being met—of well-being, success, good fortune, pleasure, the prospect of possessing what one desires or of seeing another’s desires realized.  Joy is an intense distillation of happiness, an vivid ecstatic or exultant essence, that can make our world seem particularly generous and beautiful for moments or for days. The truly enlightened among us have learned to live in a nearly uninterrupted state of joy that embraces and reframes human difficulties and sorrows.

We think of joy as connected to major celebrations, breakthroughs, and surprises, but joyful moments happen all the time. They can happen when you’re eating breakfast with your kids, and laughter breaks out. They can happen when you’re walking to work, basking in the sunshine or feeling the sweet, cool breeze or the rain on your face. They can happen when you’re sipping your morning coffee, taking a few quiet moments for yourself.

In this Chalice Circle session, we invite you to explore, in good company, your own relationship to joy.

Quotations

Make enough copies of the handout for each participant. Handout is at the end of this session plan. Go around in your group and let each person read a quote until you have read them all. Then pose the questions.

Deep Sharing/Deep Listening (60 minutes)

Tell participants that you will read the questions twice (with a pause in between) people can respond to whatever questions spark their imaginations….

1.      What feelings and images come to mind when you think of the word “joy?”

2.     What brought you joy when you were a child?

3.     Can you remember a time when you were filled with great joy? Tell us the story of that experience.

4.     Who has served as a model of joyful living in your life, a model and inspiration to you? Have there been people in your life who stifled or spoiled your joy?

5.     Share the story of a time when an act of service gave you great joy.

6.     What have you observed about the relationship between joy and sorrow?

7.     What will be your legacy of joy to the generations that follow yours?

8.     What regular habits and practices might create more joyfulness in your heart, home and community?

Open Discussion (as time permits—this is the cross talk portion)
This is the opportunity to ask questions, and continue to engage the topic….

Likes and Wishes (Likes: celebrations, gratitudes, appreciations for needs met; and Wishes: mournings, requests, acknowledgements of needs not met)

Closing Words       Welcome Morning  (Anne Sexton)

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.

~ Anne Sexton ~

Chalice Extinguishing   

Quotations on Joy

Give not over thy soul to sorrow; and afflict not thyself in thy own counsel. Gladness of heart is the life of man and the joyfulness of man is length of days.  ~Ecclesiastes

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.  ~George Bernard Shaw

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy! ~Louise Bogan

 ‘Without pain, how could we know joy?’ This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering. Its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.”  ~John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.  ~Pearl Buck (1892 - 1973)

Joy and sorrow are inseparable. . . together they come and when one sits alone with you . . remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.  ~Kahlil Gibran

Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow. ~Helen Keller

Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.  ~Henri Nouwen

I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don't want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my every day to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.  ~Shauna Niequist

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.  ~Thich Nhat Hanh

There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead.  ~Elizabeth Berg, The Art of Mending

To find joy in another's joy; that is the secret of happiness.  ~George Bernanos

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.  ~Rabindranath Tagore

Chalice Circle Topic for April 2015

Redemption

By Crystal Neva, Adaptation and Story from, Karen Hering and her prompts in Writing to Wake the Soul: Opening the Sacred Conversation Within

Note: See the Chalice Circle Session Sequence for process guidelines

Gathering, Welcoming (2 minutes)

Business
As needed—checking in about who is coming, where you are meeting, service projects, updating your group covenant….

Chalice Lighting and Reading (2-3 minutes)

God entrusts and allots to everyone an area to redeem:

this creased and feeble life, “the world in which you live,

 just as it is, and not otherwise.”—Annie Dillard quoting Martin Buber

May the spark we ignite today inspire us to redeem our areas, our lives.

Check-in/Sharing (3-4 minutes@ - 30-40 minutes)

This is an opportunity to share recent events and/or current feelings that may (or may not) need to be set aside in order to be most present for the session.

Transition Meditation (optional, depending on the norms of the group—suggested meditation is at the end of this session plan)

Help the group move from check-in preliminaries to silence with directed deep breathing, soft words, music, or other meditative techniques.

Topic—Redemption

Although religious usage of the word redemption may be wanting in some circles, the word has been widely adopted by secular cultural critics today, who frequently describe literature, films, and theater productions as having a redemptive message. What do you suppose they mean?

A story from Naomi Shihab Nye suggests one answer. A Palestinian American, Nye was traveling in the United States some time after the September 11 attacks, waiting in the Albuquerque airport after learning her flight had been delayed several hours. Among the airport’s prerecorded messages about heightened security alerts and the need for passenger vigilance and suspicion, she heard another announcement asking anyone who understood Arabic to please come to gate A-4, which happened to be her gate.

Arriving at the gate, she found an older woman in Palestinian dress weeping on the floor and an airline service person helplessly standing by, unable to communicate. In faltering Arabic, Nye first explained to the woman that their flight had not been cancelled, just delayed. Then the two of them began to pass the time by making phone calls to their family members on Mye’s cell phone and introducing each other to the loved ones on the other end. They told their stories to each other, laughing together, with infectious results at the gate. When the woman opened a bag of homemade cookies she was carrying and passed them around, powdered sugar landing on everyone’s laps, the airline’s staff enlisted two young girls to hand out apple juice. And looking around the waiting area at Gate A-4 that day, Nye noticed that everyone had taken the cookies and no one looked apprehensive anymore about anyone else. “This can happen anywhere,” Nye asserted. “Not everything is lost.”

Redemption, it seems to me, happens in this story because the ending opens into possibilities not easily foreseen in the beginning. And like this story, redemption can occur anywhere and anytime we live through stories of our own that might begin with apprehension of one form or another; with long, unbearable waiting; or with strangers in cold, impersonal settings. And then, often starting with some small act of kindness, the stories open up into a different, wider narrative, where trust and new relationships are again made possible and real.

Deep Sharing/Deep Listening (60 minutes)

As we begin Deep Sharing and Deep Listening, I invite you to reflect on the ways in which your life is being redeemed day by day—the small, unexpected moments of redemption. Here are some questions to consider:

·      What does the word redemption mean to you?

·      If, as Nye said, “Not everything is lost” then what remains—what good exists when things seem bleak?

·      Do you have a story of redemption that you would like to share?

·      Whom or what are you indebted to—how do you redeem yourself?

·      What imprisons you—how do you free yourself?

·      How is your life being redeemed today?

Open Discussion (as time permits—this is the cross talk portion)
This is the opportunity to ask questions, and continue to engage the topic….

Check-out/Feedback  (10 minutes)

Thank the group.   Ask what they liked in this session and what changes they would hope for.

Closing Reading/Extinguishing the Chalice

Excerpt from “Ordinary Time” by Tim Dlugos—writing about recovery from addiction

Which are the magic

moments in ordinary

time? All of them,

for those who can see.

That is what redemption

means, I decide

at the meeting.

Mine consists of understanding

that the magic isn’t something

that I make, but something

that shines through the things

I make and do and say

When I am fearless and thorough

enough to give it room

Meditation: Peace

Take a moment to make sure you are comfortable

Uncross your legs and arms

Place both feet flat on the floor

Close your eyes and

Take a deep breath in and let it go

Take another deep breath and let it go

Breathe-in slowly.  Breathe-out gently. 

As you breathe, allow your body to just let go.

Allow your mind to be peaceful and relaxed.

Now I am going to give you some simple instructions

Breathe in and on the out breath, Say silently - Peace to my thoughts

Breathe in and on the out breath, Say silently - Peace to my heart

So it goes like this

Breathe in Breathe out - Peace to my thoughts

Breathe in Breathe out - Peace to my heart

Breathe in Breathe out - Peace to my thoughts

Breathe in Breathe out - Peace to my heart

Breathe in Peace to my thoughts

Breathe in Peace to my heart

Breathe in Peace to my thoughts

Breathe in Peace to my heart

Now let’s simplify it

Breathe in peace Breathe out love

Breathe in peace Breathe out love

Breathe in peace Breathe out love

Feel peace enter and fill you completely

Feel love flow through you and from you

Become peace

Become love

Become

Breathe in

Breathe out

Take a deep breath in and let it go.

Come gently back into this room

Bringing the love and peace with you

as you slowly open your eyes