Our spiritual gifts group met this morning. We started by listening to the first track of Andrew Harvey's Meditations for Sacred Activists CD. A couple of people had their own copies of it and said that they thought it was worth listening to. So, I think I will use it each week from now on to set the tone for our discussion.
We shared stories about how folks used their $10 from Sunday to pay it forward. Only a couple of folks had used theirs as of today. This generated a lot of discussion on ways to use the money.
It also brought up a discussion on who is most worthy of receiving the money in each person's eyes. Some thought that you should do a little research about the organizations that you might donate to. Others felt there shouldn't be any strings attached to what the person or organization
used the money for. All in all it made for a good discussion about just what is the intention when you are making a donation.
The group has made name tags with their name and the top three spiritual gifts listed below their name. Each week we are going to try to learn what each other's gifts are so that by the end of the study we have learned more about each other than just a name and a face. We took turns talking about their specific gifts and the ways it showed up for them. The stories were heartfeld, meaningful and affirmed what they seemed to already know about themselves.
One person thought that it would be a good idea to look at your spiritual gifts and see how they are expressed through your Myers-Briggs assessment. According to the Myers and Briggs foundation, "Perception involves all the ways of becoming aware of things, people, happenings, or ideas. Judgment involves all the ways of coming to conclusions about what has been perceived. If people differ systematically in what they perceive and in how they reach conclusions, then it is only reasonable for them to differ correspondingly in their interests, reactions, values, motivations, and skills." So, a person who might have creative ability as one of their gifts may actually perceive creativity in very different ways. Someone mentioned that one might be good at "decking the halls" at Christmas while another might think of new ways to celebrate Christmas by bobbing for apples We decided that each person's gifts are truly unique to them and could be manifested differently according to their personality type.
Once we started into the workbook to learn about creative abilities and the serving gifts we ran out of time to completely discuss them all. We did not break into groups but will try that next week. James Taylor was playing in Moores Square today so some folks wanted to get to the concert. I received lots of thoughtful comments about the assessment and the workbook as we went along. They are relatively minor things that I have noted in my copy. I hope you will share comments that you had about the material, too.
I enjoyed reading about how your groups are going so please continue to write and share your ideas. Especially, post any stories about the $10 pay it forward.
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1 comment:
I had an interesting conversation with a group of my friends about the $10. One of them was in church on Sunday and did not take the $10. Every single person there said they would not have taken it because they didn't want to feel an obligation to use it. I'm wondering if any people in the studies felt the same way.
Very good idea about the nametags, Paula. Sounds to me like you have a lively group!
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