Worship Themes 2024-2025

October 2024
Welcome to the Practice of Deep Listening

 

This is your chance to listen carefully.
Your whole life might depend on what you hear.
– Joyce Sutphen

Listening helps us find our way. The listening of therapists allows us to navigate our way through life. We turn to prayer to hear God’s guidance. We listen to experts so we can get ahead. Like a flashlight that leads us through the darkness, listening helps us stay on course.

And yet maybe there’s more to it than that. What if listening doesn’t just guide us through the world, but also creates our world.

Just think about why you listen to those close to you. Is it really just to gather information? To hear the other clearly? Or is it because you’ve discovered in those rare moments of deep listening that a space suddenly opens up between and around the two of you? A space that is radically different than the space you inhabited a few minutes prior. A space that feels sacred. A space that, once you’ve experienced it, you never want to leave.

This is why the flashlight way of understanding listening is so limited and limiting. Listening’s value isn’t just instrumental. It doesn’t just help us collect and clarify information. It’s not just a tool.

It’s a place!

That sacred space of being deeply listened to isn’t just calling us home; it is home. We don’t have conversations; we are our conversations. Listening literally constructs the world we live in. And whom we become.

Consider that old story about the cricket and the coins. Two people are walking down a busy city street. Everyone is rushing to and from their work, trying to get ahead. One of the friends turns to the other and says, “Do you hear that? It’s a cricket!” The other friend responds with skepticism, but after focusing his attention finally hears it. “Wow,” he says, “How did you hear that cricket with all the noise around us?” His friend responds, “It’s all about how I was raised, about what I was taught to listen for.” He goes on, “Here, I’ll show you something.” The friend then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of coins – nickels, quarters, dimes – and he drops them on the sidewalk. Everyone who was rushing by stops… to listen.

One wonders if this is why the poet says, “Listen carefully. Your whole life might depend on what you hear.”

Again friends, we must remember this: We don’t have conversations, we are our conversations. Who and what we listen to is who and what we become.

May this month, and our time together in our groups, help us take one more step toward listening our way home.

Our Spiritual Exercises

It’s one thing to analyze a theme; it’s quite another to experience it. By pulling us out of the space of thinking and into the space of doing, these exercises invite us to figure out not just what we have to say about life, but also what life has to say to us!

Pick the exercise that speaks to you the most. Come to your group ready to share why you picked the exercise you did and what gift it gave you.

Option A

Lectio Divina and Listening for a Text to Speak

This year our monthly themes are framed as practices, as a way of inviting us to think more deeply about our historic UU commitment to “deeds, not creeds.” With that in mind, this exercise invites you to try out a deep listening practice developed by our Christian siblings. It’s called Lectio Divina, which translates to “divine reading.” You can learn more about it here, here and  here.

The basic idea is to deeply listen to a text by reading it multiple times through a different reflective lens each time. You can also think of it as bringing different discernment questions to the text, with each question inviting you to listen to the text in a new way. It’s all about bringing greater intentionality to a text so that it “speaks” to you, or so that your inner voice can speak to you through the text.

Here’s our suggested instructions, which honor the traditional approach but add a few Soul Matters twists:

  • Start by picking a text. Poems are usually best, so pick a favorite poem you want to revisit. You can also choose from THIS LIST OF POETRY that we’ve put together.
  • Center yourself. Sit quietly for a couple of minutes. Or do some deep breathing.
  • For the first reading, read it aloud and simply focus on the feelings it evokes. During and after reading, ask yourself: What is the dominant feeling I am experiencing? Which part of the poem evoked the strongest emotional response? What happened in your body as you read the text?
  • For the second reading, focus on which phrase or line “pops out” at you or “shimmers” as you read it. Then reflect afterward on that phrase or line, asking: Why is this line hooking me? What is my inner voice trying to say to me through it? How is my inner wisdom trying to get me to look at or wrestle with something through this line/phrase?
  • For the third reading, focus on what memories Before, during and after you read, hold in your mind questions such as “What memories are being stirred?” or “What memory does this poem want to reconnect me with?” Afterward, reflect on the question of, “What does this memory want me to do with it?” or “What does this memory of the past want to say to me about my present?”
  • For the fourth and final reading, ask yourself, “How is my inner voice and deepest self trying to offer me a message of comfort or challenge through this poem?”
  • If you are up for another reading or want to swap one of the above out, consider using this question to guide you: “Who am I in the text? Which character, object or action represents me and where I’m at right now?”

Option B

The Metaphor of What Speaks to You

Listening to your inner voice is obviously about trying to hear a message. But the often less obvious (but just as crucial) part is deciding what metaphor to use to describe that inner voice. Or to put it another way, how we envision our inner voice significantly shapes what we hear.

For instance, if we think of our inner voice as “our soul speaking,” we will listen quite differently than if we think of it as “our heart speaking.” Likewise, we will surely hear something different from “the still, small voice within,” than from “the ache buried deep inside me” or “my creative muse.”

So, to honor this part of the practice of deep listening, spend some time this month reflecting on the metaphors you’ve used to understand and relate to your inner voice. Here are the three ways we suggest you go about it. As you reflect, consider writing down the names/metaphors as you reflect. Or maybe even draw a representation of them as you go!

  • Explore your current name for it: What metaphor is dominant for you now. Why and how did that come to be? Do you notice anything new as you retrace the story of how this came to be “your metaphor”? Do you notice a gift this metaphor gave you that you didn’t notice before?
  • Explore your past names: Trace all the metaphors you’ve used over your entire lifetime. Start with your childhood; maybe “God” is what spoke to you then. Move into your youth, when maybe it morphed into “my conscience.” Then later maybe it became “the devil on my shoulder.” And now maybe it has become “that still small voice within.” After you are done, step back and reflect on the narrative arc of all these metaphors. What do the twists and turns of their disappearance and emergence say about you and the story of your life? How did each of them serve you well at the time? What about them didn’t serve you well? What did they help you hear? What did they not allow you to hear?
  • Explore other and possibly new names: Write down as many names/metaphors as you can think of. This is all about the metaphors that you’ve heard others use, i.e., you may never have used “the angel and devil on my shoulders” or “Jiminy Cricket” or “the Holy Spirit,” but you know others have. After you are done listing as many as you can, sit back and soak the list in. Meditate on them until a couple stand out. Ask yourself why they speak to you. Then add your own imagined metaphors, ones nobody has ever used, but ones you are now inspired to “try on.” Ones that you think will help you hear what you need to hear; ones that might make you into the listener you need to be in your life right now. Let your creativity loose as you come up with the names. For instance, “my mama bear within,” “the wild horse inside that wants loose,” “my untamed self,” “The child that went inward to stay safe,” “the rebel I keep hidden inside,” “The river within.”

Option C

Listen to a Labyrinth

One of the most ancient deep listening tools is the labyrinth, a maze-like structure on the ground used for introspective walking meditations. For this exercise, spend some time this month learning about them, finding one(or creating one) and walking it.

To help you on your way, you can get background on the spiritual practice of labyrinths here and here, as well as some how-to guidance here and here. Labyrinths are quite popular so it should be easy to find one at a park, university or church near you. If you can’t find one, you can try this wonderfully creative at-home stone version

or try a finger labyrinth using a simple printable finger labyrinth found here or here. If you are feeling adventurous, you could also make one in your backyard using spray paint or mulch or leaves, build one in the sand if you are near a beach, or create one in your home out of candles.

When it’s time for you to walk the labyrinth, we suggest that you bring to mind a question, worry or problem

as you enter the labyrinth and reflect on it as you wind your way to the middle. When you arrive at the center, remain there for a while and listen for an insight or answer to the question you brought with you. Once you feel that you’ve listened enough, walk back focusing on how you might integrate the experience or the message from the center into your living and loving.

Option D

Practice the Art of Listening

We practice to become good musicians. We practice to become good athletes. We practice to become good artists. But somehow we’ve been led to believe that we don’t have to practice to become good listeners. So let’s spend the month focusing on and practicing just one listening skill. Yes, spend the month! After all, it’s not really practicing if you only do it a few times. So keep your chosen listening skill/tactic in your back pocket and look for opportunities to use it.  And if you are looking for motivation to stick with it, just remind yourself of the words of pastor and minister David Augsburger, “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.” Knowing that we are getting better at loving, not just listening, will surely make the practicing worth every minute.

Oh, “What listening skill might I choose?” you ask. Well, we’ve found a few that seem manageable, impactful and most needed. Here you go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpnNsSyDw-g&t=47s  (found minute 1:20-2:05)

  • “Will you tell me your story?” and “I’d love to know how you came to this point of view.”

https://urbanconfessional.org/blog/howtodisagree

Option E

Which Deep Listening Companion Piece Speaks to You?

Sometimes we come across a quote, song, article or movie and it perfectly captures what’s going on for us right now or allows us to view our current circumstances in a new light.

With this in mind, spend some time this month going through the Companion Pieces section below to find the one piece that speaks most powerfully to you.

As you do so, we encourage you to use the same discernment practice as we do with the packet’s list of questions: Go through them with an eye for the one that “shimmers” the most.

Come to your group ready to share the piece you picked, why it called to you and the journey it took you on.

Option F

Ask Them About Deep Listening

One of the best ways to explore our monthly themes is to have conversations about them with people who are close to you. It’s also a great way to deepen our relationships! Below is a list of questions to help you on your way. Be sure to let your conversation partner know in advance that this won’t be a typical conversation. Telling them a bit about Soul Matters will help set the stage. Remember to also answer the questions yourself as they are meant to support a conversation, not just a time of quizzing them.

Come to your group ready to share what surprised you about the conversation(s) and what gift or insight it gave you. As always, keep a lookout for how your inner voice is trying to send you a message of comfort or challenge through these conversions with others.

Deep Listening Questions:

  • On a scale of 1-10, how good of a listener are you? Tell me a story to help me understand why you named the number that you did.
  • What type of people do you have the hardest time listening to?
  • Thinking back to your childhood, what did you learn about listening by watching your parents interact with each other?
  • Have you ever heard the ocean or the woods or the sky speak?
  • If you could go back to a conversation and correct how you listened, what conversation would that be?
  • Do you believe that our bodies carry a wisdom that our minds don’t? If so, tell me about a time when the wisdom of your body “saved” you or helped you avoid a mess. Was there ever a time that you regret not listening to your body?
  • If I were to put my ear down to the ground of your life, what questions would I hear bubbling beneath the surface?
  • How have your wounds and losses altered the way you listen?
  • How good are you at listening compassionately to yourself?

Your Question

 This list of questions is an aid for deep reflection. How you answer them is often less important than the journey they take you on.

 So, read through the list of questions 2-3 times until one question sticks out for you and captures your attention, or as some faith traditions say, until one of the questions “shimmers.”

 Then reflect on that question using one or all of these questions:

  • What is going on in my life right now that makes this question so pronounced for me?
  • How might my inner voice be trying to speak to me through it?
  • How might Life or my inner voice be trying to offer me a word of comfort or challenge through this question?

 

  1. Thinking back to your childhood, what did you learn about listening by watching your parents interact with each other?
  2. Have you ever heard the ocean or the woods or the sky speak? If so, how might their words still be relevant for you today?
  3. If you could go back to a conversation and correct how you listened, what conversation would that be?
  4. Have you checked in with your longings lately? What might they be asking of you?
  5. If I were to put my ear down to the ground of your life, what questions would I hear bubbling beneath the surface?
  6. How have your wounds and losses altered the way you listen?
  7. What if prayer is really about listening until you hear a voice that says “You are beloved”?
  8. If you asked Love “Where do you need me to direct my attention?”, how might it answer you back?
  9. What would the world sound like to you without the noise of worry in your head?
  10. What noise gets in your way the most: The noise of self-doubt? Striving? Scarcity? Jealousy? Regret? Something else?
  11. How good are you at listening compassionately to yourself?
  12. There are those who say that listening to the wisdom of the unprotected, marginalized and silenced is the only way that the path to justice becomes clear. What is one step you could take this month to hear those voices?
  13. Has being listened to ever felt like being loved?
  14. What’s your question? Your question may not be listed above. As always, if the above questions don’t include what life is asking from you, spend the month listening to your days to find it.

Companion Pieces

Recommended Resources for Personal Exploration & Reflection

 The following resources are not required reading. Nor are they intended to be analyzed in your group.

Instead they are here to companion you on your personal journey this month, get you thinking

and open you up to new ways of embodying the practice of deep listening in your life.

 

 Word Roots & Notes

Listen comes from the old English,  hlysnan, meaning both “attend to” and “obey.”

“Silent” and “listen” are anagrams. They have all the same letters in a different order!

 Wise Words

The first duty of love is to listen.
Paul Tillich

Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.
David Augsburger

When someone deeply listens to you it is like holding out a dented cup you’ve had since childhood and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water. When it balances on top of the brim, you are understood. When it overflows and touches your skin, you are loved.
John Fox

Our listening creates sanctuary for the homeless parts within the other person.
Rachel Naomi Remen

To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.
Henri Nouwen

Questions that have no right to go away are those that have to do with the person we are about to become; they are conversations that will happen with or without our conscious participation.

David Whyte

Sainthood emerges when you can listen to someone’s tale of woe and not respond with a description of your own.
Andrew V. Mason

One of my patients told me that when she tried to tell her story people often interrupted her to tell her that they once had something just like that happen to them. Subtly her pain became a story about themselves.  Eventually she stopped talking to most people. It was just too lonely.
Rachel Naomi Remen

Interrupting sends a variety of messages. It says:
“I’m more important than you are.”
“What I have to say is more interesting, accurate or relevant.”..
“This isn’t a conversation, it’s a contest, and I’m going to win.”
Dianne Schilling

There is something in every one of you that waits; so listen for the sound of the genuine in yourself. And if you cannot hear it, you will never find whatever it is for which you’re searching. And if you hear it, and then do not follow it, it was better that you had never been born… you will, all of your life, spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.
Howard Thurman

We have, at least a lot of us have, awesome instincts. If we listen hard enough to our own hearts, we notice when the whispers become fervent little screams: “That! That! That’s what I want more of. That’s what I crave to understand. That’s the kind of person/mountain/book I want to be near. That’s the way I want to feel.
Courtney E. Martin

First, learn to listen.
Not only for enemies around
corners in hidden places,
but for the faint footsteps
of hope and the whisper of resistance.
Rev. Sean Parker Dennison

If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected—those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most!—and listens to their testimony. Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person—ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it.
James Baldwin

Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The human race is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Maya Angelou

My friend, Agape, says it like this: “Hear the Biography, not the ideology”… When you find yourself in disagreement, just ask one question: “Will you tell me your story?  I’d love to know how you came to this point of view.”
Benjamin Mathes

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers…
If what a tree or a branch does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
David Wagoner

The real “work” of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me,…
and calls [me] beloved… To pray is to let that voice speak to the center of your being, to your guts, and let that voice resound in your whole being.
Henri Nouwen

The silence of the morning includes you.
The wildflowers in the pasture welcome your looking…
The noise of the city is not mindless but pleading.
Hear the world calling to you,
neither an emperor nor a beggar
but a lover, a spouse, calling you to come home.
Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Places sing calling songs.  Just now, they might be missing their people. We might learn that by allowing ourselves to miss them… In our bone-deep missing, and in our willingness to remember ourselves as worthy of being missed, we could begin to hear [their] songs.
Adam Wilson

Our bodies are telling the stories we have avoided or forgotten how to hear – and sometimes our inability to feel our feelings (the messages that precede the alarm bells) means that our bodies have to scream in order to get some attention.
Hillary L. McBride

I sometimes wake in the early morning & listen to the soft breathing of my children & I think to myself; this is one thing I will never regret & I carry that quiet with me all day long.
Brian Andreas

Speak as if God is listening. Listen as if God is speaking. Speak as if Spirit is speaking through you. Listen as if Spirit is listening through you.
Alexandra Bell, on Quaker Practice

Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.

Parker Palmer

Music

Click here for our Spotify playlist on Deep Listening

Click here for the YouTube playlist on Deep Listening

Remember! Our theme-based playlists are organized as a journey, so consider listening from beginning to end and using the playlists as musical meditations.

Videos & Podcasts

 

Everything is Alive https://www.everythingisalive.com/

If we listen deeply and imaginatively enough, we discover that everything is alive and speaking to us, even that soda can on the shelf or that bar of soap sitting by the sink!

We suggest starting with this episode and if it hooks you, move on the this one and this one.

The Story Of John Cage’s ‘4’33”

On listening to the music of  silence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bGU9NTJlIo

More HERE ; One performance of it HERE

Weightless by Marconi Union
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfcAVejslrU&t=344s

A song designed to slow a listener’s heart rate, reduce blood pressure and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. One set of neuroscientists have named it the most relaxing and stress-relieving song on earth.

Sanctuaries of Silence – a listening journey
https://vimeo.com/268526502

The Power of Walking and 17-Year Vow of Silence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4PMfoAK2Ek

Adam Grant on How to Debate Someone With Opposing Views
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onwCTtU1Vyc

Dancing and Listening to Grains of Rice

The instructions for this art piece as well as this one were simply “listen to the rice and listen to your partner.” Watching them create it can’t help but help you listen to yourself!

Articles

 

Want to Fix Your Mind? Let Your Body Talk.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/18/magazine/somatic-therapy.html

 

“Listen” Deeply to a Painting

The New York Times challenges you to test your deep listening skills by spending 10 minutes with one painting?

Relatedly, check out the “slow looking art movement.”

 

How to speak to a hostile crowd

https://www.planetcritical.com/p/even-the-millionaires-are-fed-up

On the so-called “radicals” making it possible for the so-called “moderates” to be heard.

 

On Listening to What’s Beneath Our Anger

https://www.michaelswerdloff.com/anger-secondary-emotion-what-protecting/

 

Books

You’re Not Listening

A Rhythm of Prayer

Movies

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Hulu)

White Right: Meeting the Enemy (Kanopy)

Zone of Interest (Hulu)

Harriet (Netflix)

 

More Inspiration on the Monthly Theme…

on our Facebook Inspiration Page:  https://www.facebook.com/soulmatterssharingcircle/

on our Instagram Page:
“soul_matters_circle”

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Packets are for use only by member congregations of the Soul Matters Sharing Circle.

Learn how to join at  https://www.soulmatterssharingcircle.com

September’s Theme

Welcome to the Practice of Invitation

 Do not try to save the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create a clearing
in the dense forest of your life
and wait there patiently,
until the song that is your life falls
into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself to this world
so worthy of rescue.
-Clearing by Martha Postlewaite

 There is so much saving needed in this world of ours. Especially in this moment. Which is why this call for clearings and cupped hands seems so odd and out of place. Doesn’t this dear poet understand the urgency of the moment? Doesn’t she understand that we need to be lifting up our voices as loudly as we can, not carving out space for quiet? Doesn’t she understand that we need engaged hands not cupped hands, with all of us pushing as hard as we can against the tide and madly mending a world that is about to be torn in two?

Well, yes, she certainly could be clueless. But it’s also clear that she thinks we are the wrong-headed ones. Hers is an invitation to see that our urgent, muscular mode of saving is just not what the world needs.

And of course she is correct. In our better and clearer moments, we know the world needs us to be grounded and centered before rushing into battle. We need those cupped hands to catch our breath before we cover them with boxing gloves and engage the fight.

We also know that creating clearings is never a waste of time. The dense forest homes we so carefully cultivate keep us safe and comfortable, but they also make it hard to see the horizon and the newly rising sun. Clearings let that new light in and in turn help us notice when we are applying old ways of being and thinking to a world that isn’t here anymore.

Ah, that seems right. A good place to leave it. With us thanking the poet for her invitation to better understand what the world needs.

But there’s that pesky piece about the world handing our song back to us. That complicates things. It means this isn’t just an invitation to see what the world needs, but also an invitation to notice that the world sees us in need and is trying to give us a gift; an invitation to notice that the world is also an actor in this precious play, not just an object we are acting upon; an invitation to notice that while we are focused on saving the world, the world is also focused on saving us.

Or to put it another way, maybe the world is trying to love us. And we are being invited to let it.

Maybe that is what this talk of cupped hands is all about.

And if so, what a way to begin this new church year! And maybe even what a way to travel through our lives all the time! With cupped hands, remembering and open to receiving the love of the world.

 

Our Spiritual Exercises

It’s one thing to analyze a theme; it’s quite another to experience it. By pulling us out of the space of thinking and into the space of doing, these exercises invite us to figure out not just what we have to say about life, but also what life has to say to us!

Pick the exercise that speaks to you the most. Come to your group ready to share why you picked the exercise you did and what gift it gave you.

 

Option A

The Invitation that Isn’t Easy For Us

 

You likely saw this one coming. When the monthly theme is invitation, inviting someone to come to church seems an obvious exercise. What may not be obvious is the additional invitation to share with your invitee how church makes a difference in your life. This is where all of us understandably struggle. Sharing why church matters to us can feel uncomfortably close to the pushy proselytizing we want nothing to do with. But sharing how your church has given you a gift is quite different than trying to convince someone that your religion is the only right way. It’s one thing to tell a friend: “I’m worried about your soul and really want you to give your life to Jesus.” It’s quite another to tell them: “Hey, you mentioned that you’re feeling a hunger for community lately and I found that at my church, so I was wondering if you want to come with me to check it out.” One is about inviting; the other is about convincing.

Navigating your way through these complex and uncomfortable waters is what this exercise is all about. It’s not just about inviting someone to church; it’s about digging deeper into why that’s not just something you naturally and always do. It’s not just about fighting through the discomfort of telling someone why you love your church and why they may love it too; it’s about figuring out why that discomfort is there in the first place. And it’s not just about figuring all this out; it’s about finally feeling joy as you make this invitation to your friend.

Option B

The Invitation of a Story

Sometimes the best invitations are those made by a story. Here’s one about a hunter and the mythical “fox woman.”

As you listen to it, use our disciplined listening practice: i.e., ask yourself as you listen, “How is this story trying to offer me a message of comfort, a message of challenge, or reconnection with an important memory?”

A more focused question to listen with might be: “What have I lost through my decisions to disinvite the difficult?” or “Where am I being invited to embrace and invite in the full experience of something – the parts that are easy and beautiful as well as the parts that ‘stink’?”

 Here’s the story: The Hunter and the Fox Woman – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn2DB11yL5A

 

Option C

An Invitation to Proclaim (Your UU “Alter Call”)

Growing up Southern Baptist, there was an invitation that was part of every worship service, a central part in fact.  The altar call, an invitation to proclaim one’s belief in Jesus as one’s savior. Unitarian Universalists have a similar practice. (By the way, I love finding similarities between UUs and Baptists!) Core to our faith is a proclamation of beliefs, not of a single specific belief as was my Baptist background, but a proclamation of the beliefs that one has found to be true, one’s own creed, or credo statement as we like to call it. This is, in fact, the primary thing that drew me to Unitarian Universalism in the first place, the fact that we are not only welcome to but are invited to find and name our own beliefs and that no one is telling us what they should be.     – Rev. Michelle Collins

What a great invitation to begin the new church year with: an invitation to anchor ourselves in a clear articulation of our core beliefs! To make it easier, and possibly more enriching, we’ve gathered a bunch of credo-like statements made by others. Here’s how to use them as partners to create your own statement:

  • Read through a few, or all, of them.
  • As you do so, write down phrases that strongly resonate with you. Try keeping your list to 5-8.
  • Use that list of what you wrote down to create your own credo statement.
  • To put your personal imprint on the list, you can…
    • order the list of statements in a way that reflects your priorities or a personally meaningful flow,
    • leave the wording as you found it and add your own short reflection to each statement,
    • rewrite the statements in language that fits you and speaks to your life,
    • turn the statements into a poem.

Here’s the list of others’ efforts…

Option D

Aging’s Invitation to You

 Aging takes! And takes and takes. Ask most middle-aged and senior folks about the passing of time and this will likely be the most uttered response.

But what if there’s another way to look at it? What if aging isn’t just trying to take something from us, but talk to us?! Or to put it into the language of this month’s theme: what if aging is trying to offer us an invitation?

This is how spiritual teachers of all types approach aging and this is how this exercise encourages you to approach it this month. To help with the exercise, we’ve gathered a bunch of quotes, essays and videos that give voice to a variety of invitations that people have received from their middle and later years. You can find them by clicking on THIS LINK.  Here’s our suggestions for working with them:

  • Read through the ones that are relevant to your stage of life.
  • Identify the two or three pieces that most resonate with you.
  • Based on the pieces you choose, craft two or three statements/sentences of your own that capture the invitations your stage of life is offering you. This is the hard part, so take your time. You will likely end up revising the statements over and over. This is how it should be. The deeper we listen to life/age, the more refined our statements will become.
  • Then share your statements with someone close to you. Start by sharing the two or three pieces that gave rise to your statements. Explain why these spoke to you and ask your conversation partner if the pieces speak to them as well. Then share your statements, asking your conversation partner if they agree that these seem like the invitations that fit you.

(The reason this exercise focuses on middle and late stages of life is that those are the two stages that most often get a bad rap. But don’t worry. We’ve got a bunch of stuff planned for you earlier adult folks in upcoming packets!)

Option E

Ask Them About Invitation

One of the best ways to explore our monthly themes is to have conversations about them with people who are close to you. It’s also a great way to deepen our relationships! Below is a list of questions to help you on your way. Be sure to let your conversation partner know in advance that this won’t be a typical conversation. Telling them a bit about Soul Matters will help set the stage.

Come to your group ready to share what surprised you about the conversation(s) and what gift or insight it gave you. As always, keep a lookout for how your inner voice is trying to send you a word of comfort or challenge through these conversions with others.

Invitation Questions:

  • What relationship invited you to grow up the most?
  • What parts of you have friendships invited to come out into the open?
  • What do you wish you had disinvited from your life earlier than you did?
  • Have you ever heard a healing invitation arise from illness?
  • Have you grown more from what you’ve invited into your life or what you’ve disinvited from your life?
  • If you could only invite two new things into your life in the coming year, what would they be?
  • What question do you need to invite into your life in order to enter the next phase of your becoming?
  • What is the most beautiful invitation you ever received?

 

Option F

Which Invitation Companion Piece Speaks to You?

Sometimes we come across a quote, song, article or movie and it perfectly captures what’s going on for us right now or allows us to view our current circumstances in a new light.

With this in mind, spend some time this month going through the Companion Pieces section below to find the one piece that speaks most powerfully to you.

As you do so, we encourage you to use the same discernment practice as we do with the packet’s list of questions: Go through them with an eye for the one that “shimmers” the most.

Come to your group ready to share the piece you picked, why it called to you and the journey it took you on.

 Your Question

This list of questions is an aid for deep reflection. How you answer them is often less important than the journey they take you on.

 So, read through the list of questions 2-3 times until one question sticks out for you and captures your attention, or as some faith traditions say, until one of the questions “shimmers.”

 Then reflect on that question using one or all of these questions:

  • What is going on in my life right now that makes this question so pronounced for me?
  • How might my inner voice be trying to speak to me through it?
  • How might Life or my inner voice be trying to offer me a word of comfort or challenge through this question?

 What is the most beautiful invitation you ever received?

  1. What relationship invited you to grow up the most?
  2. What is regularly on your to do list that was invited there by someone else, not by you?
  3. We all inspire and influence people with our way of being in the world. What is your way of being in the world inviting people to do or become?
  4. What question do you need to invite into your life in order to enter the next phase of your becoming?
  5. How are you being invited to know fear? i.e., to travel with fear, rather than fight to eliminate it from your life?
  6. Jungian analyst, James Hollis, writes, “Something within us knows us better than we know ourselves…It speaks by silently withdrawing energy from things that are not for us. It doesn’t care about our comfort; it cares about our growth.” So, how is your inner wisdom withdrawing energy from your life? And how is that withdrawal of energy inviting you to growth?
  7. This year, we’re exploring practices that help us embody our new UU core value liberating love.
    Who’s “act of invitation” has taught you the most about what it means to love?
  8. Have you grown more from what you’ve invited into your life or what you’ve disinvited from your life?
  9.  How has your life partner invited beauty into your life?
  10. How has parenting invited you to be more courageous?
  11. What have you unwittingly invited into your life in the past year? What snuck in without an invitation?
  12. If you could only invite two new things into your life in the coming year, what would they be?
  13. How are you being invited to return home?
  14. What’s your question? Your question may not be listed above. As always, if the above questions don’t include what life is asking from you, spend the month listening to your days to find it.

Companion Pieces

 Recommended Resources for Personal Exploration & Reflection

 The following resources are not required reading. Nor are they intended to be analyzed in your group. Instead they are here to companion you on your personal journey this month, get you thinking and open you up to new ways of embodying the practice of invitation in your life.

 Definitions

Invitation

  1. the act of inviting, such as an offer of hospitality
  2. the act of enticing or attracting; allurement
  3. a provocation
  4. a formal request to be present

Synonyms: encouragement, provocation, temptation, enticement, attraction

Antonyms: denial, refusal, discouragement, repulsion

Wise Words

Come, come, whoever you are,
wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
Ours is no caravan of despair.
Come, yet again come.
Hymn #188

A real conversation always contains an invitation. You are inviting another person to reveal [themselves] to you, to tell you who they are or what they want.
David Whyte

I pray for you, world
to come and find me,
to see me and recognize me
and beckon me out, to call me
even when I lose
the ability to call on
you…
David Whyte

Change is not a threat to your life, but an invitation to live.
Adrienne Rich

We seem to think that beginning is setting out from a lonely point along some line of direction into the unknown. This is not the case. Shelter and energy come alive when a beginning is embraced… We are never as alone in our beginnings as it might seem at the time. A beginning is ultimately an invitation to open toward the gifts and growth that are stored up for us. To refuse to begin can be an act of great self-neglect.
John O’Donohue

 

Something within us knows us better than we know ourselves. It knows what is right for us. It speaks by silently withdrawing energy from things that are not for us. It doesn’t care about our comfort; it cares about our growth.
James Hollis

Life’s a party. Invite yourself.
Gary Johnson

Carl Jung once said in a BBC interview that he began calling God all those “things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly… and change the course of my life for better or for worse.” The divine is that power which disrupts everything. So, what if our practice were to court a holy disruption? To welcome in everything which challenges my perspective on how the world works, which upsets all the plans I have for myself, and turns them on their heads? What if when life started falling apart, I opened my heart to welcome in the grief and fear that arrived as well and considered them as holy guides… What if all the painful feelings of loss and disorientation were invited in for tea and tenderness? What if everything that turns our preconceived ideas inside out is precisely where we find God?
Christine Valters Paintner

Our lives would be immeasurably enriched if we could but bring the same hospitality in meeting the negative as we bring to the joyful and pleasurable… The negative threatens us so powerfully precisely because it is an invitation to an art of compassion.
John O’Donohue

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you. I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner…
Denise Levertov

 We grew up (and still live) in a world that constantly screams at us to seek pleasure… I don’t remember anyone ever telling me that it is worth striving for wisdom or strength of character.
Tristan Tell, on society’s invitations

Sabbath observance invites us to stop… It asks us to notice that while we rest, the world continues without our help.
Wendell Berry

I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination.
Scott Adams

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
Paul’s letter to the Hebrews

The Arabs used to say,
When a stranger appears at your door,
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he’s come from,
where he’s headed.
That way, he’ll have strength
enough to answer.
Or, by then you’ll be such good friends
you don’t care…
Naomi Shihab Nye

True hospitality is when someone leaves your home feeling better about themselves, not better about you.
Shauna Niequist

 

If justice is what love looks like in public, then inclusion is what love looks like among groups.
Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson

On the Invitations of Love!

 

Love is at the center… like a flame on a chalice, burning brightly, igniting the values that surround it.  The botanical nature of it seems to say that these values are rooted in and grow out of that center of love… They fill the spaces that surround them, and in each case, there is an opening for them to expand beyond their walls.
Rev. Tracy Johnson, on the flower graphic for our new core values centered in liberating love

There is a love that sets us free. Not free as in having the power to do whatever we want, but free as in not weighed down or bound by the patterns of hatred and control that get passed from generation to generation… Free as in knowing without a doubt that we are worthy and that it is ours to invite others into that same wisdom for themselves. Free to imagine a world where children are never in harm’s way…
Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
James Baldwin

Love isn’t something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn’t a feeling; it is a practice.
Eric Fromm

One thing I have observed: When we are engaged in acts of love, we humans are at our best and most resilient. The love in romance that makes us want to be better people, the love of children that makes us change our whole lives to meet their needs, the love of family that makes us drop everything to take care of them, the love of community that makes us work tirelessly with broken hearts.
adrienne maree brown

 

Videos & Podcasts

Bill Murray on Life’s Invitation to a New Day
https://www.facebook.com/reel/990746565599609

Inviting Fear to Travel with You
Elizabeth Gilbert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgKhHeiah80
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-Pe0V9M1tw

An invitation from the birds…
Poem by Andrea Gibson
https://www.instagram.com/p/C4GlSpuO2fL/

The invitation of a 3-year-old girl…
Story by Andrea Gibson
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctpo78GvZg2/

On inviting in our feelings and hearing their invitations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oFD8gbic6A&t=409s

The Story of The Hunter and the Fox Woman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn2DB11yL5A
On the dangers of what we disinvite from our lives.

Grief as an invitation
Dr. Bayo Akomolafe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcu60pvVs8s

Complicating the Invitation to “Save the Planet”
Dr. Bayo Akomolafe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PANfg8xC1sk

On the Life-Giving Questions that Change Invites Us to Ask
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt0arZN6EBM

 

Music

Each of our theme-based playlists – on Spotify and YouTube – is organized as a journey of sorts, so consider listening from beginning to end and using them as a personal musical meditation.

Click here for the Spotify playlist on The Invitation of a New Day
Click here for the YouTube playlist on The Invitation of a New Day
Click here for the Spotify playlist on The Invitation to Live Love
Click here for the YouTube playlist on The Invitation to Live Love

Books

Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism
On inviting the end of modernity’s denials and damage

Trusting Change: Finding Our Way Through Personal and Global Transformation
On inviting change into our lives

Faithful Practice: Everyday Ways to Feed Your Spirit
On inviting spiritual practice into our lives

Movies & TV

The Bear
On the invitation to community and beginning again

Somebody, Somewhere
On the invitation to self-reinvention

 Once
On the invitation to connect and heal

Rectify
On second chances and the invitation to a new day

The Great Disconnect
On the invitation to reconnect

Inside Out 2
On inviting in all of our emotions