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Book Title: What Matters Most
Reading Group Questions
The following list of questions is designed to enhance a group or individual's
thinking about or discussing some of the issues we hope you will consider after reading this book. This is designed as a starting point only and is not meant to limit the discussion.
Chapter 1: The Self
Early in this chapter you find the words, "The moment comes when you have
to decide for your self who you are and what your own desires and fantasies
are."
- Take the time right now to describe in your own words who you
are. How would you describe your self?
- Don't be afraid. Don't be ashamed. Open your heart to life's possibilities
by boldly declaring what your dreams and hopes are for your life.
- How much of your self have you given away over the years for the
sake of love? What will it cost you, do you think, to reclaim those
lost parts of yourself?
Chapter 2: Identity
In this chapter you find the words: "Your past isn't something for you
to be rescued from. Your past is what you learn from as you figure out how
to integrate those lessons into the you you're still becoming."
- If you'd known 10, 20 or 30 years what you know now, what would
you have done differently?
- Use the example of the journal entry on page 37 to write a letter
to the self you were 10 or 20 years ago. What assurances and comfort
would you want to offer woman back then that might help her forgive
herself, not be so hard on herself, to instruct her, or to encourage
her.
- What are you absolutely passionate about these days?
Chapter 3: Truth
At the heart of this chapter is the line, "Coming to grips with the fact
that there will be lots of people who will not like you for speaking the truth
is a hard reality for women to face."
- What is your greatest fear about telling the truth?
- Name some people God has placed in your life who are your greatest
cheerleaders and others who are your most ardent critics?
- What is
the difference between an arrogant woman and a self-confident woman?
- Can you name some ways in which prejudice and stereotypes have
kept you from opening yourself up to meet new (and different) people?
Chapter 4: Balance
We've all fallen prey to the temptation to do it all. "Like man
woman, the Shulammite is unaware that she is setting herself up for the
role the SuperWoman, SuperWife, and SuperMom." Take your pick.
- Sit down and make a list of all the roles you play and hats you
wear in a week? a month?
- Which roles have you fallen into because it was easier than starting
a fight? Which ones did you volunteer and take on (not knowing fully
all that was involved)?
- Who are what is draining your energy these days?
- What are some things, as a result of reading this chapter on balance,
can you begin making some shifts, some eliminations, and start renegotiating
in order to achieve more balance in your personal life and more equity
in your relationships?
Chapter 5: Choices
"As a choice maker you learn to pause to sort out your priorities
and motives, and the potentialities of a situation. You have to think
through what your choices are, consider what choices will cost you emotionally,
predict as best you can where the decision might lead you, and figure
out intuitively what matters most to you." Such is the main point
of this chapter.
- How much time do you spend anguishing over choices? How much
time do you spend beating up on yourself about the choices you've made,
or
failed to make?
- What innovative ideas have you had lately that excited you but
you didn't act on them? Why did you fail to act on them?
- Finish this sentence. So, I failed in the past in doing . But,
thank God, today is a new day. There's still a chance I can .
- Finish this sentence. Today I choose .
Chapter 6: Inner Wisdom
If you making and keeping friends is difficult for your, this chapter
may cause you some discomfort. But don't give up on yourself or on the
chapter. Listen with your soul. Perhaps the spirit is speaking to you. "We
each have an inner core where our deepest feelings, needs, and beliefs
are buried, and we typically have an inner circle of friends with whom
we share our inner core of feelings and needs."
- How has friendship become more or less important in your life
in recent years? Why?
- Have you ever had a friendship end because of
conflict? Do you now know
ways to handle that conflict that might have saved that friendship?
- Name
those whom you count as your closest friends? What does each person bring
to your life? Have you told them? Tell them.
- How do you know when
you've gone against your own best judgment and made a decision that transgresses
who your are?
- What ritual have you set
up for spending time with yourself, for conferring
with the spirit, for listening to that still small voice within?
Chapter 7: Danger
Each of us has been wounded in intentional and unintentional
ways by society, by institutional religion, by those we love
and who love
us, and by complete
strangers. "We can never hope to experience the repentance, forgiveness
and reconciliation that we all look forward to in our faith until we are
prepared to give both victims and perpetrators permission to talk openly
about the ways
in which we have all been wounded by misguided teachings, by bad (though
well meaning) theology, by unreasonable cultural expectations thrust on
us as women
and men, and by some rather wrongheaded notions we have about what love
and intimacy entail."
- Can you name some of the way in which misguided teachings and
unreasonable expectations have kept you stuck in unhealthy relationships
and unable
to see your potentialities as a woman of faith?
- Name some women you know who lost their lives or suffered violently
as a result of abusive relationships?
- What can be done to stem the tide of violence against women? What
can we do to help younger women recognize violence in their own relationships
and to respond appropriately?
- In what ways as women have we absorbed the message of our culture
about violence and become abusers ourselves, perpetrating violence
and evil against one another?
Chapter 8: Body
"Women are raised to hate their bodies. I don't a know a woman
who doesn't wish she could change some thing about her body. What
don't you like about your body?"
- What about your body do you
wish you could change?
- What health conditions are common among the women in your
family? When was your last physical exam? pap smear? breast exam?
- What signals does your body send to let you know when you're
tired and need to rest? stressed? sick? in over your head on
something?
- What has your body been trying to tell you lately?
- When you think of growing old, who best models the kind of
the woman you wish to be like most as you grow older: . Why?
- Meditate on the words to this well known psalm (Psalm 139): "I
praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful
are your works, and my soul knows it very well." Write a
poem of praise and thanksgiving for your body, the one you were
born with.
Chapter 9: Sacrifice
Who wants to hear the words, " It goes everything you're feeling
right at the moment. This feels so real, so urgent, so right. But that's
precisely why we need the Shulammite's caution to help us maneuver through
the light-head world of love and romance. 'Slow down. Don't lose your
head,' she warns women. 'Don't lose your self because you're likely to
need her one day'"? But you would do well to heed the Shulammite's
warning.
- The next time this happens I will know it's the spirit warning
me to slow down and pray before leaping.
- How do you know when
you're in love? When was the last time you felt that "thrilling,
yet aching sense of yearning so strong that it causes everything else in
sight to blur in comparison" sort of love?
If love brings such joy, why does it tend also to bring so
much pain?
- How
do you know when you've fallen in love? What kind of woman are you when
you're in the throes of love?
- In what ways in the spiritual journey
similar to the journey of falling and being in love with another human
being? What does love teach us about
God and the cycle of life?
Chapter 10: Sex and Love
At the heart of What Matters Most is the statement found in this chapter, "Never
give up on finding the love you yearn after. To do so is to give up on
life itself. Finding love, however, won't cure all your aches, nor will
it protect you from the work of having to grown and learning to love
yourself, and develop into the woman God created yo9u to be. Not even
true love can rescue you from yourself."
- What characteristics about yourself matter most to you such that
you are no longer willing to sacrifice them for the world's approval?
- What characteristics matter most to you in a potential mate?
- What lessons should we be passing on to our daughters, granddaughters,
and goddaughters about love and sex?
- What was God's intention in creating sex?
- What do you now know at this stage in your life are the differences
between lust and intimacy, sex and love? How has your understanding
changed over the years?
- What is the positive principle God may be trying to teach you
about who you are and where God wants to take you?
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