Aim:  To explore what it is to be letting grow the life of God in us, and through us.

Focal Point:  Packets of seeds, few plants and a vase full of mixed flowers.

Leader's Introduction
Perhaps without realising it, images and language associated with birth are used when thinking of the potential for growth. We use phrases such as "planting a seed", "sowing seeds", or "conceiving an idea"; or we talk about someone having a "new lease of life", or of a project being "pregnant with possibilities".

Associated with these sorts of experience there may well be on the one hand optimism, excitement, anticipation or encouragement; and on the other, fear or trepidation, a sense of being nervous or even overwhelmed by the reality or responsibility of allowing whatever is new to grow. A great temptation is to feel paralysed by the fear of failure, or of being misunderstood or rejected.

Letting grow is a labour of love. It's about letting the creative work of God's spirit unfold, to be brought to birth in us, loving into life that seed of an idea, knowing that our lives, and the world, are transformed in slow and tiny ways from the inside out.

Invite people in a period of quiet to listen to these words and to reflect on them (have copies available):

• To laugh is to risk appearing a fool;
• To weep is to risk appearing sentimental;
• To reach out for another is to risk involvement;
• To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self;
• To place your ideas and dreams before the crowd is to risk their loss;
• To love is to risk not being loved in return;
• To live is to risk dying;
• To hope is to risk despair;
• To try is to risk failure.

Risk must be taken because:

• The greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing;
• The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing and is nothing;
• One may avoid suffering and sorrow, but one simply cannot learn ... feel ... change ... grow ...love ... live without risk;
• Chained by one's certitudes, one is a slave, a person who has forfeited life.
• Only a person who risks is free.

Ask yourselves:

• Where and when do you find laughter and fun? What has recently made you chuckle and "shaken God" with your laughter?
• What makes you weep? What stirs you to the point of tears, touching you in the deepest places of your heart?
• What do you feel passionately about, those things that bring you truly alive, and for which you will take risks?

Sharing as listening, not a discussion group, without comment.

The Gift of Small Beginnings:  The leader can select from the following material (prepared sheets will help):

• Consider the person of Jesus and his life and ministry.
• What moments or events in the public life of Jesus have drawn you to him at different points of your life, and can be seen as growth points?
• What is there about Jesus which evokes a response of faith and trust, and invites you to grow?
• As you reflect on the life of Jesus, what attracts and draws you now to want to spend time with him?
• What part of the message of Jesus is challenging you to take risks and to grow at this stage of your life?

You created my innermost being.
You knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am beautifully and wonderfully made.

• How does that feel? Stay with it!
• "You created my innermost being"
• Created with the potential to grow into the image and likeness of God, to grow toward becoming Christ-like.
• How does that feel? Stay with it!

"You knitted me together in my mother's womb."

• Imagine yourself as a seed, or a foetus, or the raw material to be becoming "God's work of art".
• How does that feel? Stay with it!
• You may like to express your feelings in the creative form of a story, poem or prayer, incorporating, if possible, the words "letting grow".

Sharing as a listening, not a discussion group, without comment.

Invite people, in a period of quiet, to reflect on the notion that all of us can bring to birth and let grow something precious, worthwhile and wonderful into the world.

• What have you given birth to recently through your creative gifts?
• Dare you risk bringing to birth that seed of a hope, a dream, an idea, within you?
• In what areas or aspects of your life would you most like growth to occur?
• In an area of social concern or the righting of injustice?
• In developing your prayer life?
• In letting your artist out and becoming more creative?
• In the gift of giving and receiving?
• In your sense of wonderment?
• In developing a more balanced rhythm of life?
• In living with greater simplicity?
• In growing awareness of God?
• In embracing this gift of life?
• In spending more time with relationships?
• In openness and vulnerability?

Sharing as listening, not a discussion group, without comment.

Give me a candle of the Spirit, O God,
as I go down into the deep of my own being.
Show me the hidden things.
Take me down to the spring of my life,
and tell me my nature and name.
Give me freedom to grow
so that I may become my true self - the fulfillment of the seed
which you planted in me at my making.
Out of the deep I cry unto thee, O God. Amen.     (George Appleton)

• "Growth means becoming more of who we really are, not what others want us to be." (Brenda Schaffer)
• We grow by thrusting our roots deeper and our branches into the light.
• "Our real journey in life is interior; it is a matter of growth, deepening and of ever greater surrender top the creative action of love and grace in our hearts."
  (Thomas Merton)

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