Archive for category Small Group Ministry
The Virtue of Character
Posted by revjudegeiger in Small Group Ministry on May 2, 2012
The Virtue of Character
#30 Small Group Ministry Session Written by Rev. Jude Geiger, MRE, First Unitarian, Brooklyn - Based on the sermon, “The Real Dirt” preached by Rev. Ana Levy-Lyons at First UU on 4/22/12 found here:
http://www.fuub.org/home/clergy/sermons/?sermon_id=69
Welcome & Opening Chalice Lighting (Please read aloud) #484 In Singing the Living Tradition by William Henry Channing
Statement of Purpose: To nurture our spirits and deepen our friendships.
Brief Check-In: Share your name and something you have left behind to be here.
Covenant Reflection
Reading: An Excerpt/Edit from the sermon, “The Real Dirt.”
The producers of the modern french fry seem to believe that nobody will appreciate the integrity of good soil or of the potato that grows unseen underground. Likewise, nobody will appreciate or even know if you do good unseen, underground. The social Capitalist, the voice that’s always running the cost/benefit analysis, argues with Jesus on this point, saying, “I mean, if you’re going to do a good deed anyway, why not get the benefit of having people know about it? If you give all your money away to charity and you do it anonymously, no one’s going to think you’re a good person, they’ll just think you’re poor.”
Here is where I disagree. From what I’ve observed, the deep truth of a person or thing eventually seeps out and becomes legible. No one can pretend to be something they are not forever. Any kind of façade that does not integrate with what’s behind it ultimately crumbles. Conversely, if you focus on being the person you are even in ways that are not visible to others, people will get it, even if they don’t know why.
Discussion Questions: Our founding American Unitarian minister, William Ellery Channing once said to a classmate, “In my view, religion is another name for happiness, and I am most cheerful when I am most religious.”[1] The larger context for this quote was a discussion around the notion of ‘making America a better country.’
How does Rev. Levy-Lyons’ notion of “the deep truth of a person” relate to your sense of character? Where are you in the continuum between the ‘social Capitalist’ and ‘Jesus?’ Can you share a story of a time when someone’s hidden character shined brightly? How did it move you? What about religious living brings you inner satisfaction, or happiness as Rev. Channing spoke of?
Closing: (please read aloud – responsively if you have several copies) #568 “Connections are Made Slowly” by Marge Piercy In Singing the Living Tradition)
[1] “The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion 1805-1900,” Dorrien, Gary. P.15
“White Rage” Small Group Ministry #29
Posted by revjudegeiger in Small Group Ministry on March 30, 2012
“White Rage”
#29 Small Group Ministry Session on “White Rage” Written by Rev. Jude Geiger, MRE, First Unitarian,Brooklyn - Based on his sermon preached at First UU on 3/25/12 found here:
http://revwho.com/2012/03/25/white-rage/
Welcome & Opening Chalice Lighting (Please read aloud) #429 In Singing the Living Tradition by William F. Schulz
Statement of Purpose: To nurture our spirits and deepen our friendships.
Brief Check-In: Share your name and something you have left behind to be here.
Covenant Reflection
Reading: An Excerpt/Edit from the sermon, “White Rage.”
Religion can be of help here. We don’t need to feel like we have to go at it all alone. Likewise, when we’re successful, we don’t have to feel like it’s us against and over the world. Rage is rooted in this sense of separateness. We are left broken when we allow rage to uproot us from that web of life of which we are a crucial part. Feeling rage is not wrong. Allowing rage to indignantly convince us that we stand apart from that web, our family, is the source of crisis. When it rears its angry head, acknowledge it for what it is… and let it go. It’s not real – only our actions are real.
Sometimes that’s hard to believe. For me, that’s where faith comes in. There’s a certain point where we just need to tell the mind – the part of us that repeats the tired old story that we’re not loved, or that we don’t care, or that the world stands against us so we should stand against the world – tell that voice to settle down. Even if we can’t see the other side, we may need to find a sense of faith that allows us to believe that there can be another way. We may not be thinking logically, and then logic isn’t going to help all too much.
Discussion Questions: The sermon talks about the change in the quality of living of the average white American over the past 25 years. These economic shifts often confuse conversations about race dynamics, privilege and power. In our country, as financial situations worsen for the majority of Americans, we also see an increase in attempts to mitigate the rights of Women, LGBT and Immigrants. How do these seemingly unrelated issues connect for you? What emotional responses do you feel? Have you found yourself wrestling with anger, rage, or fear as these conversations and changes play out in our national discourse? Where do you find hope in the face of the struggle?
Closing: (please read aloud) #469 The Wisdom of Solomon 7 (In Singing the Living Tradition)
Small Group Ministry: Women’s History Month and the Role of Power
Posted by revjudegeiger in Small Group Ministry on March 3, 2012
This Side of Love: Women’s History Month & the Role of Power
#28 Small Group Ministry Session on “This Side of Love” Written by Rev. Jude Geiger, MRE, First Unitarian,Brooklyn - Based on his sermon preached at First UU on 2/19/12 found here:
http://revwho.com/2012/02/19/this-side-of-love/
Welcome & Opening Chalice Lighting (Please read aloud) by Rev. Jude
We come together this hour, A reprieve from a world that makes so many claims upon our lives. May this time of sanctuary offer us: the strength we need amidst the chaos, a sense of love that asks us to stretch, and a calmness that may seem just out of reach.For we meet upon holy ground this hour, May our hearts bless those we meet.
Statement of Purpose: To nurture our spirits and deepen our friendships.
Brief Check-In: Share your name and something you have left behind to be here.
Covenant Reflection
Reading: An Excerpt/Edit from the sermon, “This Side of Love.”
Right now, we hear stories in the media of struggles around religious freedom. What are some things we think of when we hear religious freedom? What do we mean by freedom – (worship, belief, faith of the free, personal choices, medical treatments, congregating where and how you need, etc.) It’s an important value in our country. It’s also an important value in our faith tradition. It comes from the Edict of Torda. In 1571, a Unitarian, Francis David, convinced the King of Transylvania to pass a law that said that “no one shall be reviled for their religion by anyone.” Francis famously said, “We need not think alike to love alike.” It’s thoughts like this that influenced the foundations of this nation.
The connection that’s being made in the media between Religious Freedom and Women’s Reproductive Health is stretched so thin it must soon break. Religious freedom is about being able to worship as you see fit – or don’t see fit for that matter. It’s about belief and it’s about personal choices (and you can hear the emphasis on personal right). Personal freedom, or liberty, is not about having the freedom to make the world do what you want. It’s about making your own best choices regarding personal matters – especially those matters that affect no one but yourself. I think managing one’s own body is the clearest definition of that I can imagine.
Discussion Questions:
How are we acting in such a way that we’re trying to mold people in our own image? How is our personal freedom affecting the freedom of those around us? How are our immediate wants hurting our neighbor? Do you speak over everyone around you? Do you let others be heard? Are you kind when someone does something that you disagree with? Do you seek to understand where someone is coming from – or do we try to fit their actions into our way of seeing things?
Closing: (please read aloud) #706 from Singing the Living Tradition – the gray hymnal by Kathleen McTigue
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Darwin, Faith, Mind, Heart
Posted by revjudegeiger in Small Group Ministry on February 8, 2012
#27 Small Group Ministry Session on “Darwin on Your Bumper” Written by Rev. Jude Geiger, MRE, First Unitarian,Brooklyn - Based on a Sermon by Rev. Holly Horn preached at First UU on 1/29/12 found here:
http://www.fuub.org/home/clergy/sermons/?sermon_id=62
Welcome & Opening Chalice Lighting (Please read aloud) by Rev. Jude
We are called in this life, To grow our hearts wider, To build that vision of love made manifest in our world. May our purpose be one in this. And in our coming together, May our lives find wholeness and depth.
Statement of Purpose: To nurture our spirits and deepen our friendships.
Brief Check-In: Share your name and something you have left behind to be here.
Covenant Reflection
Reading: An Excerpt from the Sermon, “Darwin on Your Bumper”
In the course of time, Darwin rejected the Bible as a divine revelation, rejected the trinity, divine omnipotence, the divinity of Jesus; ultimately he rejected the concept of a personal God.
Darwin experienced this, not as a broadening of his faith, but as a continuous loss. His inability to find religious meaning later in life was paralleled by an aesthetic incapacity. While he had formerly taken great pleasure in poetry, he wrote: “But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry.” So, too, with music. He wrote to a friend: “I am glad you were at the ‘Messiah,’ it is the one thing that I should like to hear again, but I dare say I should find my soul too dried up to appreciate it as in old days; and then I should feel very flat, for it is a horrid bore to feel as I constantly do, that I am a withered leaf for every subject except science.”
“Darwin lamented that his brain had atrophied to ‘become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.” He wrote: “If I had to live my life again I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.” He himself understood that he had lost the ability to worship. One biographer wrote that, with the loss of his own faith, he grew to depend upon that of his wife, Emma: she felt for him what he could not feel for himself. (Phipps, 152-4)
The cost of scientific genius, for Charles Darwin, was very great, indeed. But those who brand him an atheist are simply wrong. Even at the end of his life, the theological issue which most concerned him was not whether God existed, but what kind of a God a reasonable person could accept.
Discussion Questions:
Do you find yourself wrestling with the same issuesDarwinhad regarding faith and spirituality? How so? How (or when) are we like the withered leaf he references? Why do we “worship?” Is there someone in our lives that helps to bring us out of our shell? How do you balance the logic of our minds with the depth of our hearts?
Closing: An excerpt from the writings of T. S. Eliot – #685 from Singing the Living Tradition
What we call a beginning is often the end and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
Small Group Ministry Session #26: Mother Wove
Posted by revjudegeiger in Small Group Ministry on January 5, 2012
#26 Small Group Ministry Session on “Mother Wove” from New Year’s Day
Written by Rev. Jude Geiger, MRE, First Unitarian,Brooklyn
Based on a Sermon by Rev. Jude preached at First UU on 1/1/12 found here: http://revwho.com/2012/01/01/mother-wove/
Welcome & Opening Chalice Lighting (Please read aloud) by Rev. Jude
Enter this year with a sense of new life. Enter this hour with the sense of possibility. May our days come to know gladness, May our dreams expand beyond our own vision, May our hearts open to those in need of our love, Even if they may simply be ourselves.
Statement of Purpose: To nurture our spirits and deepen our friendships.
Brief Check-In: Share your name and something you have left behind to be here.
Covenant Reflection
Reading: A Prayer for a New Year by Rev. Jude
Spirit of New Beginnings, God of Endings, and Mother of Transforming and Abundant Love,
Gift us with a broader view. Grant us the courage to learn from the mistakes of the year past, To honor our travails, and love ourselves despite what we could not let go of. Help us to find a new sense of possibility in the coming year.
May we come to understand our journey as the series of changes that they are, and not as a cascade of doors banging closed. Not as limit and barrier, but as impermanence, openings, and hope. Remind us to take the time, in these longer nights, and shorter days to reflect on matters of the heart.
Stir in us intuitions of the spirit, and quiet our busy minds, So that we find more room, to live into our lives, and not our thoughts. Let us not dwell overlong in the musings of fear and worry, May we not fixate in the hells of “what if” and “if only.”
Mother of Hope, help us to focus on the Heaven in this world, that is within our power to create.
May we give gifts of service and care, compassion and forgiveness, and material things are needed, clothing and food when it is in our power to help.
May we make of this year a new year, not a return to the repetitions of the old. And may it be for gladness.
Discussion Questions:
Where have you encountered the Holy in the past month? What images of the feminine divine do you find in your own life? Which are absent? What can you do, yourself, to reclaim them?
Closing: “Jewish Prayer” #507 from Singing the Living Tradition
Grant us the ability to find joy and strength, not in the strident call to arms, but in stretching out our arms to grasp our fellow creatures in the striving for justice and truth.
Small Group Ministry: An Awe So Quiet
Posted by revjudegeiger in Small Group Ministry on December 2, 2011
#25 Small Group Ministry Session on “An Awe So Quiet” from our Hunger Communion
Written by Rev. Jude Geiger, MRE, First Unitarian, Brooklyn
Based on a Sermon by Rev. Holly Horn preached at First UU on 11/20/11 found here: http://www.fuub.org/home/clergy/sermons/?sermon_id=51
Welcome & Opening Chalice Lighting Please read aloud — By Jacob Trapp #725
Simply to be, and to let things be as they speak wordlessly from the mystery of what they are.
Simply to say a silent yet to the hillside flowers, to the trees we walk under.
To pass from one person to another a morsel of bread, an answering yes, this is the simplest, the quietest, of sacraments.
Statement of Purpose: To nurture our spirits and deepen our friendships.
Brief Check-In: Share your name and something you have left behind to be here.
Covenant Reflection
Reading: “Why Not a Star” by Margaret Gooding from Singing the Living Tradition
They told me that when Jesus was born a star appeared in the heavens above the place where the young child lay. When I was very young I had no trouble believing wondrous things; I believed in the star. It was a wonderful miracle, part of a long ago story, foretelling an uncommon life. They told me a super nova appeared in the heavens in its dying burst of fire. When I was older and believed in science and reason I believed the story of the star explained. But I found I was unwilling to give up the star, fitting symbol for the birth of one whose uncommon life has been long remembered. The star explained became the star understood, for Jesus, for Buddha, for Zarathustra. Why not a star? Some bright star shines somewhere in the heavens each time a child is born. Who knows what it may foretell? Who knows what uncommon life may yet again unfold, if we but give it a chance?
Discussion Questions:
In this holiday season how does gratitude play out in your spirit and in your lives? Does the message of gift-giving turn into consumerism? How so? How do you let yourself take a sabbath over the holidays? Are you able to or are the holidays exhausting from obligations? Where do you find the “awe so quiet” at this time of year?
Closing: By Hosea Balou #705 from Singing the Living Tradition
If we agree in love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good. Let us endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace.
Discussion Group for Liminal Spaces
Posted by revjudegeiger in Small Group Ministry on November 10, 2011
#24 Small Group Ministry Session on “Liminal Spaces” Written by Rev. Jude Geiger, MRE, First Unitarian, Brooklyn. Based on a Sermon by preached at First UU on 11/6/11 found here.
Welcome & Opening Chalice Lighting Please read aloud — By May Sarton #428 in Singing the Living Tradition
Come out of the dark earth Here where the minerals Glow in their stone cells Deeper than see or birth.
Come into the pure air Above all heaviness Of storm and cloud to this Light-possessed atmosphere.
Come into, out of, under The earth, the wave, the air. Love, touch us everywhere With primeval candor.
Statement of Purpose: To nurture our spirits and deepen our friendships.
Brief Check-In: Share your name and something you have left behind to be here.
Covenant Reflection
Reading: The entirety of this prayer can be found here showing all four voices used.
Spirit of Life, God of Many Names and One Transforming and Abundant Love, Broaden our imagination to see you in the faces of all those we meet along the way. May your teachers come in all shapes and sizes, all genders and all sexes, and may we have the courage to hear their lessons so that our lives may be moved.
We live in a world whose bodies are sometimes broken, or broken down, or weighted under burdens that none could hope to carry alone. We live in a world where we have all the capacity we ever needed to make another life that much easier.
And yet we don’t always use our power to help… we don’t always allow others in… we don’t always accept help when it is offered… we don’t always know when we can no longer do it alone.
Spirit of Life – open our hearts to the community of souls that surround us; Allow our words to be softened before the miracle of being; Strengthen our voice so that it may be a service to others; And stir in us compassion when it is gone, temperance when we are in our might, and hope when it is hard to find.
We especially hold dear this morning all the lives who have suffered harm for the bodies they were born into; for the genders whose expressions didn’t stand up to the gaze of society; and the lives that were lost due to violence born of fear, of hatred or of self-doubt. We pray for our youth who are wrestling with the choice of whether to live or to die. May our love, our compassion, and our commitment to seeing a world more free, and more free-spirited, help them to find the hope they need to continue living.
Discussion Questions:
How has gender influenced your life? Do you find yourself approaching the world from a different angle than those who are differently gendered? How does your gender lift you up or make you glad? The sermon “Liminal Spaces” asks us to enter into those difficult places outside our comfort zone so that we might be able to help others who are experiencing pain or loss due to their gender expression. Can you identify where your comfort zone begins and ends? Where can you stretch more?
Closing: “Life Again” By John Banister Tabb #626 from Singing the Living Tradition
Out of the dusk a shadow, Then, a spark. Out of the cloud a silence, Then, a lark.
Out of the heart a rapture, Then, a pain. Out of the dead, cold ashes, Life again.
