SGM #36: Corner of the Sky
SGM #36: Corner of the Sky
#36 Small Group Ministry Session Written by Rev. Jude Geiger, MRE, First Unitarian, Brooklyn – Based on the sermon, “Corner of the Sky” preached by Rev. Jude at First UU on 4/28/13 for our Annual Bridging Service and can be found online here: http://www.fuub.org/home/clergy/sermons/?sermon_id=111
Welcome & Opening Chalice Lighting (For this session’s chalice lighting please light the chalice, sit in silence for 30 seconds.) Then go around the room and each share what your favorite movie is (this is a reference to the sermon this session is based upon.) You can also share your name and something you have left behind to be here.
Statement of Purpose: To nurture our spirits and deepen our friendships.
Covenant Reflection
Reading: An excerpt from Rev. Jude’s sermon.
“The beauty of our faith – throughout all our smart-thinking, all our critique and challenge, part of it recognizes that there’s no one way to understand the world that’s absolutely correct. Our neat rows on Sunday morning are filled with folks who each hold a different view from the next. We seek to reflect the breadth of human experience without placing it in a box, catalogued and pinned. Follow Unitarian Universalism far enough down the road, and eventually it asks us (as Ebert described) to surrender more completely to the underlying mystery of the story – of our story. We point to a central awe at the heart of our lives – and we struggle to name it – as best and sometimes as worst as we can. Meditation or Mindfulness can bring us there. A dedication to God can bring us there. Compassion for the simple sake of compassion can bring us there. What we call it, or what discipline we use, matters much less than the openness to a sense of wonder in our lives.”
Discussion Questions:
Share a time when you’ve allowed your “head” to rule your “heart” to your own detriment. Where has your head gotten in the way of your religious path? Our Sixth Source reads: “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.” Where has our reason created idolatries of the mind, rather than warn us against them? Likewise, where has reason brought us closer to a sense of wonder in our lives?
Closing: (please read aloud ) excerpt from Rev. Jude’s sermon
“Our religion is about the laughter and the tears. It’s about the heart at our center. It’s about how we are in the world, and how we strive to be. It seeks to ground us in the mystery that is our life. All the details will pass; all the facts will someday be forgotten; it will be the laughs and the tears that linger in our hearts. Always make room for them. Always make room for them.”
RevWho 
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