Situation in Life

• Choose an experience in your life related to the week’s topic.  What is the experience?  Narrate its elements as neutrally as possible; suspend judgment.  Do this in writing.
• Remembering the event and attending to your physical sensations, what one or two feelings do you experience most strongly?  These feelings together with the event indicate the heart of the matter.  Write a paragraph about these feelings and about the "heart of the matter."

 

 

  Image

• Sit with the story and the feelings it evokes until an image emerges.  Listen for how God might be present and calling.
  • Notice what is broken or sorrowing.
  • Are there possibilities of healing and newness?
• Write about your image and answer these two questions in a paragraph.

 

 

  Scripture

• Think of your image.  Brainstorm the places it takes you in scripture.  Does this image come up in scripture?  Do your feelings remind you of a character or episode in scripture?  Write down all the associations you come up with.  At this point, don’t analyze-simply list them.
• Choose one of these places in scripture.  Listen for how God might be present and calling.
  • Notice what is broken or sorrowing.
  • Are there possibilities of healing and newness?
• Write about your story and answer these two questions in a paragraph.

 

 

  Return to the Image

• Reread your comments on what is broken and sorrowing, what is healing and new, in both your image and in the scripture story.  Are there similarities? differences? common themes? tension between them?

 

 

  Return to Life

• Has any light been shed on your original experience?  On how you think or feel about it?
• Are you being called to some concrete action?
• The next time you are in a similar situation, how will you think or act differently?