Heart to Heart: Fourteen Gatherings for Reflection and Sharing

by Christine Robinson, Alicia Hawkins

Overview

Embark on a path to deeper community with this thoughtful small group resource—the first in a beloved series.

This elegant guide for spiritual sharing offers small groups the opportunity to connect through readings and journaling assignments. It features thought-provoking exercises on topics ranging from forgiveness and loss to nature, money and friendship. An easy-to-use handbook for both leaders and participants, Heart to Heart includes exercises for personal contemplation before each meeting and outlines a program for sharing these reflections in a small group. The authors present a model for careful, uninterrupted listening that allows participants to feel truly heard. Enriched by the experience, group members can take what they learn about themselves and each other into their homes, churches and the wider world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558965508
Publisher:	Unitarian Universalist Association
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.39(d)

About the Author

Christine Robinson served Unitarian Universalist congregations in Columbia, South Carolina and Albuquerque, New Mexico over thirty-five years. She co-authored three books of resources for small group spiritual conversations, Heart to Heart, Soul to Soul, and Listening Hearts.

Alicia Hawkins is an inveterate collector of quotations and resources for the spiritual journey. She helped develop and has been involved in the small group ministry program of the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque since 2004.

Read an Excerpt

We listen to other people a lot. We listen to pass the time, to get information, to be entertained. We listen waiting for our turn to speak. We listen because it is expected of us.

Most of the time we don’t listen deeply, even when our intent is to be helpful. We think we are listening, but we are spending most of our energy thinking about things to say that are encouraging or insightful. We are often surprised when our “helpful” comments end the sharing, or when the speaker says, “I don’t need you to solve my problem, I just want you to listen!”

Why is it so difficult to just listen? Perhaps because we have a hard time believing that it is simply our presence that helps, rather than our thinking and advising. our open hearts do the healing rather than our carefully chosen words. But most of us haven’t experienced this.

Physician and author Rachel Naomi Remen says, “I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention . . . When people are talking, there’s no need to do anything but receive them.”

The kind of listening you will offer and receive in your group gatherings can be a great blessing to others. the structure of the gatherings will help you learn this unfamiliar discipline. You won’t have to think about how to respond to others because that’s not part of the process. it may take some getting used to—at first, it can feel uncaring to just listen to someone without commenting or commiserating. But the process can be very supportive. We feel free to say what is in our hearts when we don’t have to fend off misunderstandings or clumsy responses.

That doesn’t mean the listening is passive. It’s hard work to listen with an open heart rather than an analyzing mind. It requires putting aside judgment, categorization, and evaluation and instead just hearing the story that is told, and the feelings behind it. Some people say they can feel themselves shift from their minds to hearts when they are listening. Some describe deep listening as a sacred experience.

It is the mind’s nature to think, and so even the most experienced listeners repeatedly will slip into judging and analyzing. When you realize that this has happened, gently set aside your thinking for later and open your heart. Buddhist meditators, who face the same problem, speak of treating the mind like a beloved but sometimes inappropriate child who wants to show off to guests. “Not now, sweetie,” says the kind parent. “You go and play and we will join you in a bit.” Similarly, when we are listening and notice that we are commenting to ourselves about what is being said, we can tell our minds, “this is not the time for analysis. I just need to hear this story.”

Most people need a few experiences of simply being listened to before they can really believe that just listening is enough. in time, we discover that to be listened to is a way of being loved, and that listening is a way of being loving. We can take what we learn from our sharing groups out into the rest of our lives and bless the world.

Activities

Before the group meeting, reflect on the idea of sharing in a group by creating your stepping stones and choosing one or more of the other journaling suggestions to explore this topic. Also, be sure to read the introduction.

Stepping Stones

To help you begin to tell your story to others in the group, think about your life so far as a set of stepping stones marking major eras in your life. These could include your years as a single mother, or the time you served in the military, or the job you had in Portland, or the time you spent recovering from an accident. Often stepping stones begin or end with a major event of some kind. You might describe one by saying, “I was promoted to a job which I hated and I did it faithfully for three years until I had a heart attack, which was a wakeup call, and so I moved on to . . .” or, “Joey was born and I stayed home with him and earned my degree. I graduated, he turned three, and that era ended.”

Table of Contents

Introduction

Listening

Gratitude

Balance

Forgiveness

God

Loss and Grief

Money

Nature

Success and Failure

Friendship

Doubt

Making Peace with Parents

Sustainable Living

Endings

Advice for Leaders

Leader's Notes for Each Gathering