Resonant Reading (Saturday)-Force of Characte— Hillman
An exploration of ideas, feelings, and our life experiences, using a different short reading as our springboard each time. The sessions are on Saturdays, 4-5. All are wide open and you are welcome to come weekly or once in a while.
The reading for this session:
Some of what I mean by “force of character” is the persistence of the incorrigible anomalies, those traits you can’t fix, can’t hide, and can’t accept. Resolutions, therapy, conversion, the heart’s contrition in old age–nothing prevails against them, not even prayer. We are left realizing that character is indeed a force that cannot succumb to willpower or be reached by grace. The force of its flaws mocks all the virtuous books, whose efforts to enlighten are candles in the wind. … Character forces me to encounter each event in my peculiar style. It forces me to differ. I walk through life oddly. No one else walks as I do, and this is my courage, my dignity, my integrity, my mortality, and my ruin.
—James Hillman, The Force of Character and the Lasting Life, © 1999, p. 181
The participants over the years have found that the approach we take, and the respectful, affectionate community of inquirers in which we read and converse, are as important as the reading itself. While many small groups begin with a check-in, with a session only an hour long, Resonant Reading jumps right in to the conversation. Those who are frequently in the group get to know each other very well this way, and those who are new will soon find they are among friends.
Facilitators use a light hand, posting the reading in the chat and calling on whoever’s Zoom hand is up. Suggestions for readings* come from group members, who also take turns facilitating, if they want to try that role.
How to join:
- Join this class from your Web browser: https://zoom.us/j/91019857324, passcode 227385
- Join this class using the Zoom app: Meeting ID: 910 1985 7324
- Join this class by phone: 669 900 9128 US (San Jose), Meeting ID: 910 1985 7324
- Join this class by on-tap on mobile phones: +16699009128,,91019857324# US (San Jose)
- Phoning in, but not in the bay area? Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/abL8clvIYT
This is the Zoom link for Saturdays. For the Wednesday Zoom link, go to the Calendar and click on a Wednesday session.
Questions? Drop an e-mail to resonant-reading+owner@uucpa.org.
*This activity was formerly called “Sacred Text Reading.” That proved misleading–for one thing, more often than not our sources are secular–but it’s worth describing the qualities of a sacred text, which we still look for in the readings we choose. It is any reading that helps us to:
- connect to something of supreme importance to us
- feel more connected to other beings or to the universe
- feel more intensely alive
- align our lives with our values,
- perceive or feel more deeply
- be more fully and authentically ourselves.