Wellspring of decency - Welch

Date/Time
Date(s) - 04/17/2024
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

A twice-weekly online sacred text reading group. We meet on Saturdays, 4-5, and on Wednesdays, 12-1. All are wide open and you are welcome! Please note that the Zoom room now requires a password, so please drop an e-mail to sacred-text-reading+owner@uucpa.org to express interest.

What do we mean by a sacred text? Any text 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.

As Unitarian Universalists, we find these kinds of meanings everywhere, so the text itself might be from a so-called secular source, or from a religious canon, or something in-between.

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 text. Our practice usually follows one of these versions of Lectio Divina. The aims of the sessions are educational (learning something about the texts and traditions), spiritual/moral (discovering what the texts ask of us), and community-building (getting to know each other better).

The facilitator will post a version of the text in the chat for all to see. Everyone is welcome, as are your suggestions of future texts. Group members also take turns facilitating, if they want to try that role.

On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, our text will be
The wellspring of decency is loving this life in which people die, people suffer, there are limits, and we make mistakes. The wellspring, then, of moral action is not utopia, not a counterfactual vision, not a declaration that the world could and should be otherwise. Rather, it is a deep affirmation of the joy, richness, and blessing that the world is. The ground of challenging exploitation, injustice, and oppression is not a vision of how the world could be or will be in the future reign of God, or after the revolution. The ground of challenging injustice is gratitude, the heartfelt desire to honor the wonder of that which is; to cherish, to celebrate, to delight in the many gifts and joys of life.
Sweet Dreams in America: Making Ethics and Spirituality Work (page 135), Sharon D. Welch

For check-in / getting-acquainted time, and for those who are new and want a brief orientation to the practice, the room will be open ten minutes before and ten minutes after the session.

How to join: First, e-mail sacred-text-reading+owner@uucpa.org, since you will need a password. Then:

  • Join this class from your Web browser: https://zoom.us/j/96865808923
  • Join this class using the Zoom app: Meeting ID: 968 6580 8923
  • Join this class by phone: +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) Meeting ID: 968 6580 8923
  • Join this class by one-tap on mobile phones: +16699006833,,96865808923#  (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 Wednesdays. For the Zoom link for Saturday, go to Calendar and click on a Saturday session.

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