No. 53 Process Theology

Facilitator______________
Date___________________

Group Session Plan from FUSN (developed by Ros Winsor and Bob Zeeb)

Chalice/Candle Lighting

Opening Words:

“I had been thinking of certain aspects of my life that seemed discouraging,” remembers Hartshorne. “These somewhat gloomy reflections were interrupted by a simultaneous multitude of shrill sounds.” Looking to his left almost vertically down to the bottom of the cliff, he saw a school playground filled with shouting, laughing French children. The contrast was enlightening. “Suppose my own life is unsatisfactory,” he thought. “So what? I am a tiny fragment of human life. The rest of it is not all unfortunate or wretched. Nothing compels me to think of myself as miserable rather than others— these children are happy.” “Never since then” writes Hartshorne, “have I allowed myself to identify, unless briefly, the question: Is life good and beautiful? with the question, Is my life now good and beautiful?”
Gary Kowalski (from “The Ultimate Canvas” in the UU World)

Check-in/Sharing

Topic/Activity:
After reading Gary Kowalski’s article, The Ultimate Canvas, consider what your canvas is and what your experience of the ultimate is? How do Hartshorne’s two pivotal experiences and Kowalski’s understanding of them, speak to you? Kowalski says that he does not think Hartshorne is “ unique in his religious intuitions.” He suggests that many of us have had similar experiences. What about you?

Select the topic and location for the next meeting

Check-out / Likes and Wishes

Closing Words:

Let us, each of us, mine this text for what it gives to us, for what we can harvest here for the group. Pick a passage, a sentence or two from The Ultimate Canvas, which most powerfully speaks to you and read it aloud to the group.

Gary Kowalski