No. 5 What We Love

Facilitator______________
Date___________________

Group Session Plan from UUCCA* - Rev. Calvin O. Dame

Chalice/Candle Lighting

Opening Words:

"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—over and over announcing your place in the family of things."
Mary Oliver -- Singing the Living Tradition #490

Check-in/Sharing

Topic/Activity:
Mary Oliver says, "You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

What do you love?
Tell a story of when you first encountered one of your loves.
How does it feel: doing or being with the thing you love?
How do you feel when you are apart from it or unable to do it?
Are you at peace with the things that you love to do or be?
What would you have to do to "let" yourself love what you love?
How could we help each other achieve that?

Select the topic and location for the next meeting

Check-out / Likes and Wishes

Closing Words:

"As we leave this community of the spirit, may we remember the difficult lesson that each day offers more things than we can do. May we do what needs to be done, postpone what does not, and be at peace with what we can be and do. Therefore, may we learn to separate that which matters most from that which matters least of all."
Richard S. Gilbert

* Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Augusta, Maine