Prompts 2023-2024
September 2023
Take some time to update us on your summer. Then ask yourself if there is anything “new” stirring in your life … an impulse toward new activity, a change on the horizon for your family, anything at all.
October 2023
In October we arrived at Scott Walker’s house with an object that described the state of our souls. We shared about it and then came back again to see if more light was shed in the conversation.
November 2023
Let’s work this image in a spirit of fun and even irreverence…
“Opportunity comes knocking.”
What are you doing when you hear that knock?
When you open the door, what … or who … do you see?
If no-one seems to be there, what do you do?
Do you tell a friend about this (or act like it never happened…)?
Now, in a couple of phrases note some possible opportunities in your life right now. Don’t get into problem solving mode. Just note them so that you (and we) can see them.
December 2023
One of the things we have all appreciated about our group is that we hold good boundaries, personal, real… but not walking over the line in sharing. And yet we DO want this to be real. One approach is to say to our group… “this is my story, my feelings…”. If it’s a particular story, you might also check in with that other person to see their comfort with sharing the story with our group.
Tell us about your childhood experience of anger. Did parents express their anger? Were you the object of their anger ever? What imprint did that have for you?
Do you have rules for engaging your grumpiness/anger these days? How are you doing with those rules?
Fun challenge: check in with a spouse or someone who knows you well. How do they see your grump factor? Give them a chance to talk and don’t manage the conversation. Tell us about what it was like to open up this topic.
January 2024
Basic question: “What do you still ‘carry’ about your work life? Or what challenge do you experience in your current work? Tell us a little about it and why you think you carry it in the way you do?”
Possible topic along with this if you want…
Tell us about a time at work where you didn’t just see the challenge in front of you, but the more vexing challenges of the work itself. What caused you to see it? What did it call out in you in themoment? Were there any others who saw it too?
Our last conversation about our work experiences seems to be inviting fuller consideration. It got many of us thinking deeply and in ways that call for balance. Joe’s follow-up email described feeling only “partially done” with the topic and suggested we consider the redemptive side of what we have experienced in or through our working lives. I agree and think it best not to turn to a new topic. So how about the following for stage 2 of our conversation (either or both could serve as a prompt):
Where has your work experience, perhaps especially failures or disappointments, led to things you now recognize as redemptive or beneficial?
How has your work experience led to greater self-acceptance, if not contentment with who you are? Can you tell a story about this?
March 2024
We began reading Thomas Moore’s Ageless Soul this month.
“When I use the word aging, I mean becoming more of a person and more you over time. I keep an image in my mind of cheese and wine. Some get better with the simple passage of time. We set them aside to rest until they are ready. Time improves them, as an inner and invisible alchemy transforms them and gives them taste and flavor.
Human beings age in a similar way. If you let life shape you, then as time goes by you will become a richer, more interesting person. That is aging in the style of cheese and wine. In that sense, your very purpose in life is to age, to become what you are; essentially, to unfold and let your inborn nature be revealed. You let your ageless self, your soul, peek out from behind the more anxious, active self, trying hard to be successful through planning and hard work.”
— Ageless Soul: The Lifelong Journey Toward Meaning and Joy by Thomas Moore
We found the term “inborn nature” intriguing. Tell us a story when you thought you were seeing that “inborn” character a little more clearly… something emerging in your life that you liked and that seemed “true” to your real self.
April 2024
“Another way to imagine the passing of the years is as a series of initiations or passages. Initiation means beginning, and indeed throughout a lifetime, most people go through various beginnings as they encounter new dimensions of who they are.
One of those initiating experiences common in old age is sickness. We tend to think of illness as a physical breakdown in need of repair. But as an experience – emotional, intellectual, and relational – illness may force us to examine our lives, face our mortality, and sort out our values.”
— Ageless Soul: The Lifelong Journey Toward Meaning and Joy by Thomas Moore
Tell us a story about how you have personally encountered or are encountering illness or other trauma (with yourself or loved one) and how that experience has served as an initiation into your continuing story/life.
May 2024
Moore writes of an unanticipated friendship with an elder, noting that an elder has a “special talent… to break protocol and instead make a friendly gesture that could turn into a friendship…”
Have you ever experienced this sort of unexpected relationship with an elder and received “that essential source of wisdom and inspiration”? Perhaps you have been the elder who initiated the generative friendship with the younger individual.
If you have had such an experience, or desire to, tell us a story about it and the impact it had (or could have) on your life. Were any of the “steps to being a positive elder” (pp. 179-182) evident in the relationship? Which of the steps would you like to cultivate at this time in your life?