SPIRIT IN PRACTICE
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
WORKSHOP 8: LIFE PRACTICES
BY ERIK WALKER WIKSTROM
© Copyright 2008 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 8:53:31 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
"Tell me, why do we require a trip to Mount Everest in order to be able to perceive one moment of reality? I mean... is Mount Everest more 'real' than New York ? Isn't New York 'real'? You see, I think if you could become fully aware of what existed in the cigar store next door to this restaurant, I think it would just blow your brains out! Isn't there just as much 'reality' to be perceived in the cigar store as there is on Mount Everest?"
—Wallace Shawn
The 1981 movie My Dinner with Andre consists primarily of one long dinner conversation between two friends, Andre and Wally. While they are discussing Andre's several years in esoteric spiritual seeking, Wally speaks the words in the quote above, concluding, "Isn't there just as much 'reality' to be perceived in the cigar store as there is on Mount Everest?"
Too often we think of spiritual experiences as somehow different from the rest of our experiences, perhaps even their opposite. We attribute to spiritual experiences an aura of peace and tranquility that seems foreign to the everyday lives of most contemporary people.
Yet even monastics have to shop, cook, clean up, try to get into the shower before their housemates use up all the hot water, and run the business that supports their monastery. Then there are all those tricky personality issues that don't go away just because everyone is wearing the same color of robe. An American Zen monastery advises potential monks that if they're thinking of coming to the monastery to get away from the problems of life, they should think again. Life in the monastery, they say, has a way of bringing life's problems into even sharper relief.
And this really should be no surprise. The same kinds of issues will come up for people whether they're living in monastic communities, cities, subdivisions, or the country. Stresses are manifested in different ways, perhaps, but the issues are real and important. They will come up wherever human life is taking place. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we explore these big issues: What really matters in life? What is of ultimate importance?
It may seem obvious that religious leaders and monastics wrestle with such questions. Yet don't parents also wrestle with them whenever they have to decide whether to attend to the needs of their children or the demands of their own schedules? Aren't these exactly the issues being weighed when considering whether to put in another weekend of overtime to impress the boss or to spend time with a partner who's going through a rough patch? Aren't these the very values hanging in the balance when choosing whether to speak up about a racist or homophobic joke or to "go along to get along"?
Each and every moment of each and every day presents us with opportunities for engaging in spiritual practice. Raising kids, making a living, choosing how to spend money (however much or little of it we have), choosing how to spend our time, the kind of car we drive, the food we eat, the way we care for our bodies, the way we care for our significant relationships, the way we treat our housemates and co-workers—each of these provides us with opportunities to be conscious in the way we live our lives. Each offers opportunities to make choices, to "walk our talk," and to engage in our lives and our living with integrity and intention. These opportunities are at the heart of spirituality.
There is a danger, of course, in proclaiming that "everything I do is prayer" or that "my life is a meditation." It can be, but it requires intention, discipline, commitment, and accountability to make it so. As an illustration: you could pick up a musical instrument that you've never touched before and declare that whatever you play is music, and in a certain sense you would be right. Yet most everyone else would more than likely call the result not music, but noise. Only with at least some amount of regular, disciplined practice can we increase the ratio of music to noise. The same is true of the spiritual life.
This workshop adds an important dimension to the Spirit in Practice series. All of the other spheres of spiritual growth—personal practices, communal worship, spiritual partnerships, mind practices, body practices, soul practices, and justice practices—could be things we see ourselves doing as a separate segment of our lives. This workshop encourages us to see every moment of our regular, daily lives as an opportunity to deepen our spiritual awareness and connections—whether we are giving medicine to an ailing parent or flossing our teeth, dealing with a co-worker or discovering that we've burned our dinner. In short, it encourages us to recognize that our trip to the corner drugstore can be as mystical an experience as a trip to the top of Mount Everest.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Welcoming and Entering | 0 |
Opening | 5 |
Activity 1: Sharing Names | 5 |
Activity 2: The Story of the Wise Fool | 10 |
Activity 3: Three Practices | 35 |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: The Presence of Spirit | 30 |
Alternate Activity 2: Further Exploration of Three Practices | 20 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Leaders are encouraged to prepare for the workshop not only by gathering supplies and reviewing the workshop's activities, but also by engaging in a spiritual "life practice." You are encouraged to spend at least a day paying mindful attention to the spirit in your everyday tasks and reflecting on the experience. Was it easy to perceive the spiritual in the everyday? If so, why? If not, why not? Consider ways that you can bring more spiritual awareness to the things you do every day—eating, cleaning, relating, sleeping, waking, watching TV, and so on. Record your thoughts in your journal or share them with your co-leader.
WORKSHOP PLAN
WELCOMING AND ENTERING
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
As participants enter, invite them to sign in, create name tags, and pick up a schedule for the workshop series if they have not already done so. Direct their attention to the agenda for this workshop.
OPENING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Welcome participants to Spirit in Practice.
Ask the group to turn to "For You" by Walt Whitman, 659 in Singing the Living Tradition. You may wish to share with participants that Walt Whitman was a famous and controversial 19th-century poet who is widely believed to have been gay. Invite a participant to light the chalice as the group reads responsively.
After the reading, ask the group to turn to "For All That Is Our Life," 128 in Singing the Living Tradition. Invite the group to join in singing. If the group is largely unfamiliar with the song, you may need to teach them the tune.
Including All Participants
If your congregation has large-print and/or Braille versions of Singing the Living Tradition, make those copies available for participants who might need them. Using a microphone for this activity helps more people hear you.
ACTIVITY 1: SHARING NAMES (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce yourself and your co-leader(s), and invite participants to take turns sharing their names. As participants introduce themselves, invite them to stand (if they are willing and able) and to speak loudly or use the microphone so they can be better seen and heard.
Including All Participants
Using a microphone for this activity helps more people hear one another.
ACTIVITY 2: THE STORY OF THE WISE FOOL (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Read the story "The Wise Fool" aloud. Provide copies of the story to people who prefer to read along.
After sharing the story, invite participants to take a moment to quietly center themselves, to let go of any tension or emotions that are not needed for the next hour, and to breathe deeply. You may ring a bell at the beginning and end of this silent time, or simply invite people into the silence and then gently bring them out.
After the silence, invite participants to discuss their responses to the story. Keep the discussion brief and focused, allowing time for your own concluding remarks. Ask:
Conclude with the quote from My Dinner With Andre that introduces this workshop. You may also wish to make some of the points found in this workshop's Introduction.
Including All Participants
Be sure that all participants can hear the story, or have the story interpreted for them. Using a microphone for this activity helps more people hear the story. You may wish to print out a copy of the story in advance for participants who are hard of hearing or who prefer to read along.
ACTIVITY 3: THREE PRACTICES (35 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite the group to self-select into three smaller groups. Explain that each one will look at a spiritual practice that integrates spirituality and everyday living. The first is Sacred Rest. The second is Spirituality and Money. The third is Eating in Community. If one of the groups is considerably larger or smaller than the others, ask if anyone would be willing to switch groups for better balance.
Once the groups are formed, give each group the handout for their topic. Invite participants to spend 15 minutes discussing the questions on the handouts, or anything else the topic brings up for them. If a group truly believes it is finished discussing before the time is up, members can join other groups in progress.
After 15 minutes, ring the bell. Invite everyone back into one group to spend the remaining time (about 15 minutes) discussing anything that came up. If participants are willing, invite them to share with one another any commitment they might like to make regarding integrating a new "daily life practice" into their lives.
Including All Participants
If you notice participants struggling to hear one another in their small groups, allow some groups to leave the room and find a quieter space.
You may wish to pass a cordless microphone during the whole-group discussion so that participants can hear one another better.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather participants around the altar or centering table. Affirm the good work that participants have done in this workshop.
Offer an opportunity for the group to reflect back over the workshop, seeking what are sometimes called "like and wishes." Ask participants, if they wish, to briefly share something they particularly liked about their experience and one thing they wish for in the future. If the group is small or there is extra time, allow participants to speak freely. If the group is large or time is tight, limit people's sharing so that all who wish to share will have the opportunity.
Distribute your customized Taking It Home handout. Review the ideas for how to continue exploring the workshop's subject with friends and family.
If you have chosen to encourage journaling throughout the Spirit in Practice workshop series, remind participants to write in their journals. (See Workshop 1, Alternate Activity 2: Introduction to Journaling.)
Make any announcements concerning the next meeting, especially any changes to routine (such as a change in meeting time or place, a guest presenter, etc.).
Close the workshop with this ritual: The leader takes the hand of the person on his/her right while saying, "I put my hand in yours so that we might do together what we cannot do alone." That person, still holding the leader's hand, then takes the hand of the person on his/her right, saying the same thing. When this saying has gone completely around the circle and everyone is holding hands, the workshop has ended. Extinguish the chalice.
Including All Participants
Using a microphone for this activity helps more people hear you.
Be sure to be inclusive of people with a variety of living situations—living alone, with a significant other, in a family, with housemates, etc.—in the way you explain the Taking It Home activities.
You may wish to adapt the closing ritual to make it more comfortable for people who are averse to holding hands. You can change the words to "I reach out to you so that we might do together what we cannot do alone" and change the accompanying gesture to reaching rather than holding hands.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
After the workshop, co-leaders should make a time to get together to evaluate this workshop and plan future workshops. Use these questions to guide your shared reflection and planning:
TAKING IT HOME
The following tips can help you develop spiritual awareness in the everyday.
Celebrate what you're already doing. Look for something you're already doing that you can begin to think of as a spiritual practice, in spite of (or perhaps because of) its mundane quality.
Add gently. Don't try to make yourself conscious of spirituality 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You'll make yourself crazy! Instead, choose one thing that you do regularly and commit to using that as a practice. The aim is not changing the activity so much as changing your consciousness while doing it.
Find a reminder. The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh suggests letting the brake lights on the car in front of you stand in for a meditation bell. Whenever you see the car in front of you brake, remember to breathe in and be thankfully aware. Anything you encounter regularly could serve the same function. You could even set an alarm to go off at regular intervals throughout the day, calling you back to awareness.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: THE PRESENCE OF SPIRIT (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to reflect on the ways that they find spiritual connection in their everyday lives. Explain that people think of "spirit" in different ways: as a feeling of peace and connection, the human spirit, a unifying force, the force of life, the Holy Spirit, God or Goddess, or the ground of being.
Display the newsprint or digital slide with these questions for reflection:
Invite participants to spend about one minute silently reflecting on these questions.
After about a minute, ring the bell. Invite participants to form pairs for speaking and listening. Explain that each partner will have three minutes to speak while the other person listens. They might tell stories of times when the daily and the divine intersected in a particularly clear way, or they might talk about the kinds of activities in which they find meaning and spiritual sustenance.
After three minutes, ring the bell to invite the pairs to switch speakers.
After another three minutes, ring the bell and bring everyone back into one group for discussion. Ask:
Including All Participants
If you notice participants struggling to hear one another in their pairs, allow some pairs to leave the room and find a quieter space. If two participants require American Sign Language interpretation and you have only one interpreter, pair up those participants. If you have more than two participants needing ASL interpretation, find a second interpreter to help.
You may wish to pass a cordless microphone during the whole-group discussion so that participants can hear one another better.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: FURTHER EXPLORATION OF THREE PRACTICES (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
You may wish to extend Activity 3: Three Practices by an additional 20 minutes, for a total of 55 minutes, by having each group explore all three of the practices. Give the groups ten minutes to discuss each topic, sounding the bell when it is time to switch topics. Expand the whole-group discussion to 20 minutes (or whatever time remains).
Including All Participants
If you notice participants struggling to hear one another in their small groups, allow some groups to leave the room and find a quieter space.
You may wish to pass a cordless microphone during the whole-group discussion so that participants can hear one another better.
SPIRIT IN PRACTICE: WORKSHOP 8:
STORY: THE WISE FOOL
Once the great Sufi holy man and wise fool Nasreddin Hodja was walking down the street when a group of women came running up to him. Obviously distressed, they cried out to him, “Help us, Hodja! Help us.”
“What can be done I will try to do,” the Hodja replied. “What seems to be the trouble?”
“Our husbands,” the women cried. “They’ve all decided that they must go out into the desert in order to dedicate themselves to finding Allah. Our children and we have been abandoned.”
“This should not be,” the Hodja declared, and he set out after the pilgrims as fast as his donkey could carry him. As he approached the band of men, he began to shout, “Help me! Help me, my brothers.”
“What seems to be the trouble, Hodja?” the men called back.
“My donkey,” he said. “I’ve lost my donkey and can’t find him anywhere. Oh, help me search. I must find him!”
“But he’s right there,” the men replied, laughing. “Can’t you see that you’re sitting right on top of him? You don’t have to go anywhere to look for him.”
“And why do you,” the Hodja said, pulling his donkey to a stop, “feel that you must go anywhere to look for Allah? Go back to your wives; go back to your lives.” And that’s just what they did.
SPIRIT IN PRACTICE: WORKSHOP 8:
HANDOUT: EATING IN COMMUNITY
When people hear the word “communion,” they usually think of the Christian service of sharing bread and wine (or grape juice) in commemoration of Jesus’s last supper with his friends. Yet the first definition of the word in the American Heritage Dictionary is not in the least religious at all: “The act or an instance of sharing, as of thoughts or feelings.” The word “communion” comes from a Latin word meaning “mutual participation,” and it has the same root as such words as “common” and “community.” So a family eating dinner together—an act that for many families has become rare—can be seen as a kind of spiritual communion.
During the next 20 minutes, discuss questions such as the following (or whatever else this topic brings up):
· Did people in your household eat together when you were growing up? Either way, what was that like?
· Do you regularly share meals with other people today? Either way, what is it like?
· How might shared food enhance spiritual connection?
· What do you see as the benefits of eating in community?
· What do you see as its challenges?
· What else do you want to talk about in relation to this topic?
SPIRIT IN PRACTICE: WORKSHOP 8:
HANDOUT: SACRED REST
Nearly every religious tradition encourages taking times of pure rest. In the Jewish tradition this is called “Sabbath,” a complete break from all work. Christians also observe Sabbath, yet differently: one Episcopal priest calls Sabbath a time to do whatever you truly feel called to do and nothing you feel you “should” do.
During the next 20 minutes, discuss questions such as the following (or whatever else this topic brings up):
· Have you ever known times such as this? When? What made them “sacred rest” for you?
· Do you regularly schedule such times in your life today? Why or why not?
· If you do, how do you manage to do it? What’s it like for you?
· If you do not, how might you begin to create such times?
· What do you see as the benefits of Sabbath time or sacred rest?
· What do you see as its challenges?
· What else do you want to talk about in relation to this topic?
SPIRIT IN PRACTICE: WORKSHOP 8:
HANDOUT: SPIRITUALITY AND MONEY
People often think that money and spirituality are unrelated or even contradictory. We recall the sayings “Money is the root of all evil” and “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Yet money is just a means of ascribing value or worth to things, and our modern word “worship” comes from an Old English word that means “to ascribe worth to.” Money has spiritual power—for good and for bad.
During the next 20 minutes, discuss questions such as the following (or whatever else this topic brings up):
· How conscious are you of your choices around how you spend your money?
· Does the way you spend your money reflect your values?
· If so, how have you managed to achieve this?
· If not, how might you begin to create such a reflection?
· What are some of the spiritual challenges you associate with money?
· What is a spiritual antidote to greed—in ourselves and in others?
· What is a spiritual antidote to envy—in ourselves and in others?
· What else do you want to talk about in relation to this topic?
FIND OUT MORE
Alexander, Scott W., ed. Everyday Spiritual Practice: Simple Pathways for Enriching Your Life (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=597) . Skinner House Books, 1999.
Bass, Dorothy C., ed. Practicing Our Faith: A Way of L ife for a Searching People. Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1997.
Brussat, Frederic and Mary Ann. Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life. Touchstone, 1998.
Nhat Hanh, Thich. Present Moment, Wonderful Moment: Mindfulness Verses for Daily Living. Parallax Press, 1990.