No. 54 Religion

Facilitator______________
Date___________________

Group Session Plan from FUSN (developed by Sandra Teare)

Chalice/Candle Lighting

Opening Words:

One is free to believe what one’s conscience, mind, experience, and emotions lead one to affirm. Our fellowship is founded upon the free-mind principle, and ours is an association that seeks to help the person develop the religion that is within each, rather than merely to give an external religion that can be put off like a suit of clothing. Too many people find they have no religion when the chips are down. What makes sense when we have background organ music or the filtered light of colored windows, often escapes us when we are involved in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Accordingly, if we can develop our own religion in terms of our beliefs, they can help us meet the issues of life.
George Marshall

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there when the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make sense. Rumi

Check-in/Sharing

Topic/Activity:
What is “your own religion,” the religion that you have developed from within-“your own religion in terms of your beliefs?” Or, where is the field for your soul to “lie down in that grass?” Is there a territory “beyond ideas,” beyond the realm of belief or ethics, that makes a claim on you?

Select the topic and location for the next meeting

Check-out / Likes and Wishes

Closing Words:

Religion is singing, dancing, praying;
Religion is reason, emotion, longing;
Religion is dreaming, playing, creating;
Religion is biology, morality, politics. David O. Rankin

You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest,
and I smile, and am silent, and even my soul remains quiet:
it lives in the other world which no one owns.
The peach tree blossoms. The water flows. Li Po