Are you seeking a deepening spiritual connection at UUC? Reflection Groups return this fall!

UUC's Awakening Spirit Team is delighted to announce that we will offer the small group experience to members and friends again this year. This year's Reflection Groups will utilize a Soul Matters curriculum used by many Unitarian Universalist congregations to support spiritual deepening among members and friends of their congregations. The curriculum is prepared by professional religious educators who work with UU’s across the country to select readings, videos, songs, and spiritual practices that participants can chose from in order to engage deeply with a different theme each month. During group meetings participants share their experiences, listen deeply, and discern how others’ experiences resonate with their own. This fall the groups will explore the themes of Compassion, Gratitude and Hope.

We are enthusiastic about this curriculum because of the opportunity it offers to personalize the material to the interests of each participant, while sharing spiritual experience in a small group. A participant can go as deeply into a practice as they wish based on the how they use each month’s information.

Registration will open soon for the fall Soul Matters Reflections Groups which will meet for six, two-hour sessions between October and December.

Why Join a Soul Matters Group?

Small groups are most fundamentally a means of offering sacred space to each other through the practice of deep listening. This sacred “gift-giving” is at the center of Soul Matters Reflection Groups. The Soul Matters process differs from other small group models in that it helps participants experience the themes, not just talk about them.

Soul Matters groups mend the threads of spiritual connection through deep listening in three ways. First, by listening to each other, a gift not often offered in our culture. Most of the time we are talked at instead of listened to, so that we can lose the ability to hear our own voice.

Second, by listening to our lives, which is not easy to do. Directly or indirectly, we are taught to see life as a challenge not a companion. The goal is to conquer it, not listen to it. Through spiritual practices and questions focused on our daily living, we engage the world not as an obstacle course to get through, but as a host of holy moments and voices calling us to greater loving and living.

And finally, by listening to our deepest self. Introspection is often understood as solitary work, but Soul Matters views it as largely a gift given to us by others. Ironically, we often hear that “still, small voice inside” best when the voices of friends speak and offer their presence in a disciplined way.

Together these three sacred practices of listening—to each other, the world and our deepest self—add up to a more intentional and authentic life, a journey back to connection.

Watch for registration later this month. We hope you will consider joining a group.