No. 74 Love’s Edge

Facillitator:
Date:

Group Session Plan from FUSN (developed by Bob Zeeb)

Opening Words
Love is not without pain. Love involves change and to change involves risk. We face the limits of love in the finite circumstances of our lives, the experiences which have nurtured and wounded us. Love requires courage for risk-taking and self-possession, not self-sacrifice. The more we love, the more loss carves into our souls. Pain is the risk of loving, not the basis of life.
Rebecca Parker

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Topic
Have you ever loved someone, taken that kind of risk, made yourself vulnerable? And have you experienced the pain of love that that inevitably yields? Or, have you seen someone else experience that pain, perhaps even someone you yourself have loved? Describe what happened, how you felt and/or how you suspect the other felt. Did this experience involve anything you would describe as self-sacrifice?

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Closing Words
It is when we are joined most closely, walking on the beach in the summer sun
or reading on the porch in the autumn, preparing a meal in the kitchen on a winter afternoon, or in the garden on spring mornings turning the earth together. In just these moments of intense connection and joy and love, I can not help but feel a twinge of apprehension and pain knowing that some uncalled for interruption, some small disagreement, a little accident of fate will pull us apart. They are so close, so intertwined these experiences of joy and sorrow, of love and pain.

And similarly, no matter the petulance, the storms of anger, the harsh silence that can fall between us, I am in some part of my being buoyed up, even cheered by the knowledge that smiles and the sly touch of love will soon come, inescapable and certain, blinding and overwhelming in its power.
Rebecca Parker