Wisdom Circle – AgitationApril 2018

Chalice Lighting , b y Laura Wallace

As frozen earth holds the determined seed,this sacred space holds our weariness, ourworry, our laughter and our celebration.Let us bring seed and soul into the lightof thought, the warmth of community,and the hope of love.Let us see together, hear together,love together.

Check-In As you feel comfortable, take 2-3 minutes to share whatever you need to share with this group in order to be fully present. This is a time for sharing, but not for discussion.

Business (approx. 10 min) Use this time for any new business: Welcoming new members; Scheduling future meetings; Revisiting the Covenant; Answering questions about Wisdom Circle processes; Etc…

Spiritual Exercise

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Share any insight, learning, lesson gained from doing or resisting this month’s spiritual exercise. (Focus on your heart/emotions/spirit/personal experience). Because this is a section for personal sharing, attentive listening and no-crosstalk is recommended.

a) Agitate your spirit – think of the definition of agitate as ¨from Latin agitatus, past participle of agitare  "to put in constant motion, drive on ward, impel”. What would agitate your spirit? What would put you in constant motion? (Feel free to interpret this as you see fit)

How was this experience for you? What insight did you gain?

Discussion of Reading and Words of WisdomTake turns reading the words of wisdom. Share about the one(s) that caught your attention. Discuss the reading and the questions below. Crosstalk can enrich your conversation here (avoid judging or wanting to “fix” things, and speak from your own experience, avoiding generalizations, and identifying who you mean when/if you use the word “we”).

Words of Wisdom

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.Frederick Douglass (1818-95) African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman

Happiness is good, but well-overrated: what we hate most are the very motivators that put us in gear. A man drifts along with little to contribute until something agitates him enough to make a difference, whether for himself or for his communities.Criss Jami (b. 1987) American Philosopher, poet, essayist, designer

Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.Eugene V. Debs- (1855 -1926) Am. 5 time presidential candidate, Socialist Party.

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Agitation gives birth to creation.Terry Tempest Williams (b. 1955) Am. Naturalist, prose writer of many books, Am. West and Mormon background.

Progress is dependent upon a productive and dynamic tension between institutionalism and insurrectionism. Insurrectionists keep our institutions honest. Insurrection us are stewards of our collective public life.Christopher Hayes (b. 1979) American liberal political commentator, Editor of “The Nation”

Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil.Martin Luther King, Jr.

Agitation is that part of our intellectual life where vitality results; there ideas are born, breed and bring forth.George Edward Woodberry (1855-1930) American literary critic and poet

Human beings, as far as I can tell, seem to be divided into two subspecies -- the resigned, who live in quiet desperation, and the exhausted, who exist in restless agitation.Sarah Ban Breathnach (b. 1947) Author, philanthropist and public speaker

Fullness is always quiet; agitation will answer for empty vessels only.Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer

Music can be a distraction and an escape. Sometimes a welcome escape. You need it. But music can also serve a very important social function because music can do things that mere prose, mere ordinary political agitation can't do.Howard Zinn (1922-2010) American historian, playwright, and social activist

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never allow us to bring about genuine change.Audre Lorde (1934-1992) American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, civil rights activist

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Providence has given human wisdom the choice between two fates: either hope and agitation, or hopelessness and calm.Yevgeny Baratynsky (1800-1844) Russian elegiac poet

We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong - this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty and we must follow it.W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor

Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilization.Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet and playwright

Reading

Our Unitarian and Universalist Histories are full of agitators. In fact, both terms Unitarian and Universalist were considered, and for some they still are, heretic. Michael Servetus was killed for not recanting his belief on the lack of biblical basis for the concept of the trinity.

William Ellery Channing was the first to reclaim the name Unitarian for those who believed in the unity of God, but until then, the word was used as an insult for the anti-Trinitarians of the time.

During the 19th century, many Unitarians spoke against slavery and many Unitarian and Universalist women were suffragettes. This April 2018, a new series will air on Netflix ¨Come Sunday” That tell the story of pastor Carlton Pearson. A famous megachurch pastor who literally lost everything and caused a lot of controversy when he declared that he didn’t believe in hell and was deemed a heretic. And even the Pope found himself in troubled waters last week when a journalist published an interview saying the Pope didn’t believe hell existed. The Vatican, of course, immediately released a statement denying the story.

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I used to think about agitators as people taking on the streets, yelling, and creating disturbances. But thinking about the things I have read and know that have agitated people in the past, it doesn’t really take much. Agitation occurs where there´s a dissonance between our sense of being and beliefs and an external stimulus that challenges them.

Though I only gave examples related to our community of faith, agitation occurs also in the personal realm. Think about the morning you woke up knowing you couldn’t work for that company anymore, or be in a specific relationship, or to continue on whatever path you were on. A sense of agitation you recognized as a call to make a move, to go somewhere else, to continue your search, to make a change.

Agitation, whether personal or social, can be a gift in a sense that it calls our attention to make a change, to tell us that something isn’t completely right, that we’ve been too comfortable for too long. It is an invitation to reassess where we are, how we see things, how we understand the world. It’s up to us to accept or reject the invitation. That’s a path no one else can walk for us.

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Suggested Questions for Discussion

1. How do you understand agitation?

2. Do you have a favorite famous agitator?

3. Where has agitation led you to in the past?

Silence: You may take a minute of silence to reflect on the group’s session.

Gratitude: Share 1-2 things that have been meaningful to you from this session

Extinguishing of the Chalice:

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“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

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