My Desires, God's Hopes

Introduction & Welcome (1 min.)

Welcome the group. If you have new members, welcome them and briefly go through introductions.

I. Opening Prayer (5 min.)

Grace: To get in touch with our desires and goals for the year and make a covenant with God.

Use the grace or the suggested scripture above to create your own prayer or use the one below: After reading the scripture, say:

Lord, we thank you for gathering us here tonight. We ask you to help us get in touch with our hopes and desires for the year. We also ask for the grace of being open to make a covenant with you. Just as you have promised to be the God of Israel and Judah and take care of them, please continue to be our God. Help us to continue choosing you as our God for we belong to you as your people. Amen.

Note: Ask for a volunteer to lead opening and closing prayers for the next meeting

II. Check-In (5 min.)

Invite members to share some of the high and low points of the week. This check-in is meant to ease the group into reconnecting and reflecting on their experiences and it should be brief.

• What were some of your high and low points of the week?

III. Focus Exercise (40 min.)

Materials Needed: CLC supply box (CLC journal booklets, papers, pens, etc.), CLC Examen bookmarks, a large sheet of paper or poster to use as "CLC covenant cloth", instrumental music, My Covenant with God handout (found in journal booklet)

Introduction

Tonight, we are going to talk about our desires, goals, and commitments for the year and then discuss the meeting topics.

Exercise 1: My Covenant with God (20 min.)

1. Encourage members to pray on "My Covenant with God" (on page 6 of your journal booklets) and write down the answers. Give them about 7 minutes or so to pray. Play some instrumental music during prayer.
2. If helpful, explain the word, “Covenant.” The Hebrew word berith, covenant, occurs over 280 times in the Old Testament. (The English word covenant means "a coming together.") Covenants can include treaties, alliances, agreements, compacts, pledges, mutual agreements, promises, and undertakings on behalf of another. Covenants in the Bible can be agreements between two individuals, between a king or leader and his people; or between God and individuals, or God and groups of individuals.
3. Put a large sheet of paper or poster (the Covenant Cloth) in the middle of the circle.

Sharing

Encourage everyone to share their prayers

1. My hopes and commitments: After each person shared, have each member write his or her commitment in the back of the Awareness Examen bookmark. (note: if for some reason they don’t have Examen bookmarks, you either give or encourage them to make one). Invite members to put the bookmark on their prayer centers at home, which you will discuss more about later.
2. Our hopes and commitments: Say, “In a few minutes, we are going to make a covenant with God. Before we do that, we need to come up with 2 or 3 common hopes and commitments that our group wants to commit to each other and with God.”
   • Ask, “Do you hear any common hopes and commitments from what we’ve shared?” Allow time to discuss. Here are a few suggestions for the group to consider: attend weekly meetings, pray with the Awareness Examen daily, do group service project once per quarter, attend CLC events regularly, etc. Choose two or three common hopes and commitments.
   • Write or draw images that capture the group’s hopes or graces to pray for in the center and the group’s commitments around the CLC Covenant cloth. Feel free to decorate it. Once this is done, tell members that we are going to display it in our prayer center each meeting as a way to remind ourselves.

Exercise 2: Meeting Topics for the Year (10 min.)

1. Members’ input: Allow time to discuss the meeting topics. Encourage members to keep in mind their hopes of the year and the graces we pray for.
   • Which meeting topics would be helpful for us to receive the graces we pray for?
2. Formation team’s input:
   • Share with members our formation team’s research studies from the past few years. The results show that in Phase 3 members want to be challenged more and want to have a stronger sense of belonging in CLC. They want to have more opportunities to explore the questions of faith and vocation. They also want to know how to discern in order to choose activities and people that help them grow fully and get closer to God.
   • Thus, the team designs the meetings in Phase 3 with the members’ desires in mind. They highly recommend the group to follow the suggested meetings and spiritual movements. The main focus of this year is Discernment—discerning Relationship, Faith, and Vocation. If helpful, you can refer them to see the “Meeting Topics” under the Table of Contents on the first page of their journal booklets or just mention them out loud (Fall, Winter, Spring Quarter Topics).

(Note: Feel free to adjust meeting topics within the themes according to your group’s needs.)

Listening Deeper

Suggested questions to deepen awareness of inner movements and further conversation

• What has struck you as you have been listening to others share? Do you notice any patterns or commonalities?
• How have you been feeling throughout the meeting? Comfortable? Anxious? Curious?
• Is there anything you would like to share after listening to another person share?

IV. Moving Forward (5 min.)

• Wrap-Up: Thank members for their openness and participation.
• Action: The heart of CLC spirituality is to grow in faith. Every week, we suggest one concrete action for group members to pray about or act on.
  1. Prayer Center: Encourage members to create a prayer center in their rooms and put their commitment bookmarks on it as a reminder of their own covenant with God. Choose one habit to work on until they receive the grace they pray for. (Note: if helpful, explain that a prayer center is a “sacred space” to remind ourselves of the presence of God. It could be simply as a candle and a cloth, a sacred image, a Bible, a crucifix, etc.)
  2. Prayer Partner: Pray for each other during the week and get together once for CP time. If helpful, explain CP stands for Cura Personalis—care for the whole person
• Announcements: Topic for next meeting and upcoming CLC events

V. Closing Prayer (5 min.)

Encourage members to pray for each other’s hopes for the year by praying for the person to his or her left. Member A prays for member B, who will then pray for C and so on.

(Coordinator should begin first) I would like to pray in thanksgiving for …