Resonant Reading (Saturday)-Go on a journey-Odyssey
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, and on Wednesdays, 12-1. All are wide open and you are welcome to come twice a week or once in a while.
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.

The reading for this session, Saturday, November 2, 2024:

“But after you have killed these suitors in your own palace,
either by treachery, or openly with the sharp bronze,
then you must take up your well-shaped oar and go on a journey
until you come where there are men living who know nothing
of the sea, and who eat food that is not mixed with salt, who never
have known ships whose cheeks are painted purple, who never
have known well-shaped oars, which act for ships as wings do.
And I will tell you a very clear proof, and you cannot miss it.
When, as you walk, some other wayfarer happens to meet you,
and says you carry a winnow-fan on your bright shoulder,
then you must plant your well-shaped oar in the ground, and render
ceremonious sacrifice to the lord Poseidon,
one ram and one bull, and a mounter of sows, a boar pig,
and make your way home again and render holy hecatombs
to the immortal gods who hold the wide heaven, all
of them in order. Death will come to you from the sea, in
some altogether unwarlike way, and it will end you
in the ebbing time of a sleek old age. Your people
about you will be prosperous. All this is true that I tell you.”
Book 11, Lines 119-137, Odyssey, Richard Lattimore translation

 

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.