Resonant Reading (Saturday)-Commitments-Gardner

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 (5/24 at 4PM)

The mature individual makes commitments to something larger than the service of one’s “convulsive little ego,” to use William James’ memorable phrase—religious commitments, commitments to loved ones, to the social enterprise and to the moral order. In a free society we shall never specify too closely what those commitments should be. …

We speak of happiness as involving a “striving toward” meaningful goals, not necessarily the attaining of those goals. It is characteristic of certain kinds of human striving that the goals may be unattainable. Those who dedicate their lives to the achieving of good government or to the combating of human misery may enjoy small victories but can never win the longer battle. The goal recedes before them. … For this reason, these self-renewing persons never feel that they have “arrived.” They know that the really important tasks are never finished—interrupted, perhaps, but never finished.

–John Gardner, Self-Renewal (1963), pp. 96, 98. (Edited to avoid gendered pronouns.)

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.