Book Group

Group Makeup:
A woman’s book group that has been meeting together for 10 years. The Spiritual Literacy DVDs are their first non-book selection. The group members are women ages 55 or older, college educated, most with graduate degrees in various disciplines. They are all either Episcopalian or Roman Catholic.

Goal of Group:
To raise participants’ awareness of the values and spiritual qualities in each episode.

Preparation:
Group facilitator spends about an hour each week finding quotes and resources for the episode topic of the week. She then prepares a handout for the group that includes these and additional resources from the Spiritual Literacy section of the SpiritualityandPractice.com website.

Group Process:
Before the group some of the participants attend a half hour centering prayer group. The book group meets for an hour after that. They view the episode, stopping along the way if someone wants to reflect about something in particular that speaks to them. Afterwards, they spend the rest of the time using the handout and discussing the episode. At the end of each session, the facilitator tells them the theme for the following week and encourages them to be attentive to that spiritual quality in their week ahead.

Benefits of participating:
Group members have commented that they find themselves being more attentive to the themes of the episodes in their everyday lives. Because it is a group that has been meeting for a long time, the benefit of using the films instead of a book is that it has given them another way to see the spiritual, not just through the written word. This has opened them further, individually and as a group.

— Contributed by Carla Pineda, Viva Books, San Antonio, Texas