Each month we provide a series of questions to consider, to sit with, to live into, as a way of engaging more deeply with that month’s theme. There are approximately 130 Unitarian

Universalist congregations around the country that are exploring the same themes we are. If we assume a membership of 100 for each of those congregations, that’s 130,000 Unitarian Universalists who are asking themselves questions this month about “liberation.”

As always, don’t treat these questions like “homework” or a list that needs to be covered in its entirety. Instead, simply pick the one question that “hooks” you most and let it lead you where you need to go. The goal of these questions is not to help you analyze what liberation means, but to figure out what being a person of liberation means for you today. So, which question is calling to you?

1. The sculptor Michelangelo was once asked how it was that he could create such beautiful works. “It’s very simple,” he answered. “When I look at a block of marble, I see the sculpture inside it. All I have to do is remove what doesn’t belong.” What can you remove that doesn’t belong in yourself? What might be liberated by removing what doesn’t belong? What beauty is waiting for you to give it a bit more room?
2. Have you let yourself become imprisoned by the fear of missing out? By the imaginings of what might have been or what others have?
3. Do you need to liberate yourself from the ordinary? (“When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters.” -Marilynne Robinson)
4. Have you been helping people but ignoring the call for liberation? (“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” – Lila Watson)
5. How is your balance between spiritual/personal liberation and social/political liberation? Are they feeding each other or fighting? Or just not talking?
6. Is the thing you do to feel better actually making you feel worse? Has what you turn to for liberation become a bit of a trap?
7. Is it time to forgive (and free) yourself?
8. Are you ready to take off the mask? Do you even notice that it is on?
9. Are you looking for liberation and freedom in far-away places and possibly not noticing it is waiting for you right back at home? Or right there where you are standing now?
10. Is kindness waiting for you to pick it up and liberate someone? Maybe even yourself?
11. What’s your question? Your question may not be listed above. As always, if the above questions don’t include what the theme is asking from you, spend the month listening to your days to hear it.

Monthly Soul Matters Group: These question are part of a larger packet of resources to help groups and individuals engage more deeply in each month’s theme. Beginning this month, RevWik will facilitate this kind of group during our new Sunday morning AFD time. If you’re interested, contact RevWik (revwik@uucharlottesville.org) so that he can send you the packet so that you’ll have time to consider it before the group meets on the 2^nd Sunday of the month (this month that’s the 13^th). We’ll be meeting in the Lower Hall, Room 2, from 11:15-12:30.