Love

Questions from UUA small group ministry, set 1

Claude Fravien, West Cobb Listening Circle, Emerson UU, Marietta, GA (Nov. 2021) Original program designed by Janeane Weprin, Countryside Church UU, Palatine, IL (Feb. 2008)

• What is love?

• Do you have a love story you want to share?

• Can you describe a time that you felt completely loved, completely safe?

• How has love (or lack of love) affected your life? Has love changed you, healed you, betrayed you?

• What does it mean to fit in? What does it mean to belong?

• Where do you fit in? Where do you belong?

• Can we love others more than we love ourselves?

• What is the difference, if any, between profession love and practicing love?

Questions from UUA small group ministry, set 2

First Unitarian Church of Wilmington, Delaware, by Rev. Michelle Collins, 2013

• What does it mean to love deliberately? Why does love sometimes work but not at other times? How much of love is intentional or deliberate?

• When have you experienced deliberate love, when have you experienced love that was not deliberate?

• Can you think of any ways that living deliberately leads to loving deliberately?

• Are there any relationships in your life now where you could grow or change in loving deliberately?

Questions from UUA small group ministry, set 3

Adapted from sessions at First Unitarian Society in Newton, MA by Rev. Jan Carlsson-Bull for Circle Ministry at First Parish UU Cohasset, MA

1.    Tell a story of how you have experienced the rough sides of love, taken that leap making yourself vulnerable and known the pain of love.

2.    Joy and sorrow, love and pain, breaks and repairs are the natural rhythm in all intimate relationships. What have you learned over the years about these rhythms of intimacy, and how have you developed tools to cope?

3.    What roles do love and affection play in your life?

4.    Is “love of humanity” appropriately understood to be a kind of love? Or is it fundamentally different from the sort of personal love we have for our friends and family members?

5.    Is ecstasy an effect of love?

6.    Is jealousy an effect of love?

7.    How do you want to love and be loved?

Questions from Soul Matters, set 1

1. What did love mean to you as a child?

2. How have you changed your mind about love?

3. How has love changed as you’ve gotten older? Is it softer? Quieter? Larger? Tougher? Smaller?

Sneakier? More central?

4. Whose love has companioned you the longest?

5. When did love scare you the most?

6. When did love invite you to play?

7. What most helped put you back together after love broke you to bits?

8. What is society’s biggest misunderstanding about love?

9. It’s been argued that “If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.” Does that ring true for

you?

10. What promise might love be wanting you to make?

11. What do you know of “a love that will not let us go”?

12. What has been your greatest act of love?

Questions from Soul Matters, set 2

1. What did love mean to you as a child?

2. How have you changed your mind about love?

3. How has love changed as you’ve gotten older? Is it softer? Quieter? Larger? Tougher? Smaller?

Sneakier? More central? More painful?

4. Whose love has companioned you the longest?

5. Has love ever made you smarter?

6. Some say the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Others say its opposite is fear. What

do you say?

7. Are you using your busyness to shield you from your heartbreak?

8. Is it time to let someone know that your heart is broken?

9. Is it time to offer “tough love”?

10. Is it time to offer “sacrificial love”?

11. Is someone trying to offer you love but you don’t notice it?

12. Are you turning your back on love?

13. Are you sacrificing too much in the name of love?

14. What might it mean to regularly ask, “What would love do here?”

15. Is love ever separate from the feeling of home?

Questions from Soul Matters, set 3 (from January 2024 Liberating Love)

1. What did love mean to you as a child?

2. How has love changed as you’ve gotten older? Is it softer? Quieter? Larger? Tougher? Sneakier? More central? More painful? More universal? More ordinary? More mysterious? More demanding?

3. Whose love has companioned you the longest?

4. We know that self-love and self-care are essential. But which part of yourself most needs love and care right now? Your physical self, emotional self, intellectual self, relational self, spiritual self, sensory self, hidden self, pleasure-seeking self, fearful self, childhood self, hopeful self?

5. Has love ever scared you?

6. What most helped put you back together after love broke you to bits?

7. What do you know of “a love that will not let us go”?

8. Is there anything from your younger years that you now recognize as love, but didn’t understand as such back then? How might that awareness offer you a gift with your present relationships?

9. Some say the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Others say its opposite is fear. What do you say?  

10. Are you using your busyness to shield you from your heartbreak?

11. Is it time to offer “tough love”?

12. What might it mean to regularly ask, “What would love do here?”

13. What’s the scariest thing that could happen to your heart? How does consciously knowing that call you to protect yourself or pursue new priorities more fiercely?

14. Has heartbreak ever held you back? Could some form of heartbreak be holding you back today?

15. In which new way are you being called to use your personal/social/cultural/economic power in the service of love?

16. Which has been your greatest act of love?

17. If Love could speak, what do you think it would want to say to you?