Jan–Mar
The examined self
What is a life worth choosing?
Attention, character, ambition, integrity, and the hidden life.
Host Resource Center
For Hosts
Bring the people together. We’ll help with the rest.
Everything you need for a lasting local community: the shared Sunday theme, a ready-to-deliver Host reflection, free printed cards, and an editing desk for the recordings you make.
New here? Read the four-Sunday playbookBegin here · Week 01
The Examined Life
Plato, Apology
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Most of us perform our beliefs; almost none of us have examined them.
One Sunday, three layers
- We share
One theme and anchor passage
This creates a conversation that can travel between every Human Canon room.
- We provide
A complete Host reflection, outline, and card
You can host well even in a week when you have no time to write.
- You shape
The voice, examples, and life of the room
Deliver it as written, adapt it, or write your own talk around the shared centre.
The covenant is simple: keep the week’s theme, passage, and closing practice. Everything else is yours.
The shared calendar
Different rooms. One conversation.
The calendar provides direction, not homework. Every room moves through the same large human questions while each Host keeps their own voice and local relevance.
Apr–Jun
Love & belonging
What do we owe one another?
Friendship, family, grief, mercy, loyalty, and the stranger.
Jul–Sep
Power & justice
How should we live together?
Power, inequality, courage, enemies, responsibility, and repair.
Oct–Dec
Mortality & renewal
What remains when certainty falls away?
Loss, endurance, wonder, forgiveness, endings, and beginnings.
Your first month
The founding four
- Week 01
The Examined Life
Plato
Begin by asking which of your beliefs are truly your own.
- Week 02
The Hidden Life
George Eliot
Turn to the value of the life no one applauds.
- Week 03
Poor Naked Wretches
Shakespeare
Move from the private life into our shared obligations.
- Week 04
The Enemy's Face
Homer
End by restoring a human face to the person across the divide.
Session library
Arrive prepared, not prescribed.
Start with the reflection outline. Use the full example when you need it. Open the session notes when you want to make the reflection your own.
Plato · Apology
The Examined Life
Open sessionClose
Plato · Apology
The Examined Life
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Where it finds us: Holding opinions because our group holds them; performing convictions we have never tested; outsourcing our thinking to the feed.
Closing practice: Name one belief you perform but have never examined. Examine it on paper, then say what you actually think in one low-stakes conversation.
Reflection questions
- —Which of your beliefs would survive if holding them cost you friends, status, or belonging?
- —What do you say in public that you do not quite believe in private?
- —Where have you let your group, or your feed, do your thinking for you?
George Eliot · Middlemarch (1871–72), Finale
The Hidden Life
Open sessionClose
George Eliot · Middlemarch (1871–72), Finale
The Hidden Life
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts.”
Where it finds us: The fear that an unwitnessed life is a wasted life.
Closing practice: Perform one unhistoric act of care this week, without announcing it.
Reflection questions
- —Whose unhistoric faithfulness is the reason your life is not worse than it is?
- —Where in your week have you confused being seen with being good?
- —Whose life could be less lonely this week because of one quiet act of yours?
Shakespeare · King Lear (1606), Act 3, Scene 4
Poor Naked Wretches
Open sessionClose
Shakespeare · King Lear (1606), Act 3, Scene 4
Poor Naked Wretches
“O, I have ta'en too little care of this.”
Where it finds us: The quiet calculus that you may be worse off than your parents: rent against wages, shrinking middle-class security, and wealth accumulating far above you.
Closing practice: Notice one person further out in the storm than you are, and make one concrete act of care or solidarity this week. Refuse the abstraction.
Reflection questions
- —Where do you feel the quiet calculus that you may be worse off than your parents?
- —What has the degradation of middle-class security made you see that you once missed?
- —Who is further out in the storm than you are, and what care have they been owed?
Homer · The Iliad, Book 24
The Enemy's Face
Open sessionClose
Homer · The Iliad, Book 24
The Enemy's Face
“I have put my lips to the hands of the man who killed my son.”
Where it finds us: The ease with which we now turn other people into enemy-images: the political opposite, the estranged parent, the stranger online.
Closing practice: Take one person you have reduced to a category or an enemy, and do one small thing this week that restores their face.
Reflection questions
- —Whose face have you allowed to flatten into a label, a side, or a grievance?
- —When grief has visited your life, what did it briefly make you stop caring about?
- —Could you sit in the tent with the person you most resent, not to resolve it, only to see them?
Get materials
We’ll send the session cards. Free.
Tell us which session you are holding and how many people you expect. We’ll print the cards, pack them, and send them to your room at no cost to you.
Need them now?
Every session above also has a print-at-home session card.
Send a recording
You make the room. We’ll help shape the story.
A phone in the corner is enough. Send the raw video or audio and we’ll help edit it, find the strongest moments, and return useful clips for your community.
- 01Record the spoken reflection in landscape when you can.
- 02Upload the raw file and tell us what you want.
- 03We confirm the edit before anything is shared publicly.
The full Host Resource Center
Log in for the shared calendar, reflection materials, free session cards, and recording uploads.
Log in to continue