Farewell

As you know by now, I am taking my leave of you in a few weeks. I will be going to General Assembly, taking personal vacation time out west and returning here in mid July to tidy up the office and clean out the files and generally finish up the odds and ends. You'll be in good hands. I promise. For the time being, you will have a curriculum consultant working with your curriculum committee on content and a Sunday morning go to person - either volunteer or paid. The search for a consulting or interim Religious Educator is on and I have no doubt that you will attract a top notch candidate. All will be well.

As I said last Sunday, everything and everyone has their place. Birds have their nests and the sky and animals have their burrows and their lairs. For a while this was "our" place, but "my" place is somewhere else now and this is again "your" place. I hope you will care for each other well within it. Many blessings and many thanks to all of you for making my time here so rich.

Thinking outside the box.

Quote du jour: "Broadly stated, a quantum superposition is the combination of all the possible states of a system (for example, the possible positions of a subatomic particle). The Copenhagen interpretation implies that the superposition undergoes collapse into a definite state only at the exact moment of quantum measurement." ~ Anonymous


(This is for Bonnie as a thank you for all those hours of singing!)

There's a very famous theoretical experiment in quantum physics. In it (the experiment is known as Schrodinger's Box) a cat is described as inhabiting a sealed box with a random explosive device. The device may or may not have discharged and the cat may or may not be alive. You don't know the outcome until you open the box. And in opening the box you may influence the outcome, causing the device to discharge. I read this one years ago and it still makes my head hurt to consider it. It's a kind of magic where we shape reality. That two possibilities exist until the moment when one is measured and defined.

In a more recent reading, I came across the notion of our human mortality as that kind of a box. And God, may or may not exist outside the box. The belief in the presence or absence of God is one which holds open the possibilities of both until we *know*in absolute terms if God waits for us outside the box. Does your head hurt yet?

Most religions hold space for belief. Belief in one god or many, belief in a cosmology which can explain the ills and woes of the world, belief in an afterlife and belief in the part of us that is undying and immortal. Religions offer comfort in the belief that we and those we love can transcend death and/or return to another embodied existence. There are other systems of belief, although one may be hard pressed to call them religions - I think they are, whatever label they use. Belief in a rational order to the universe, belief in an evolutionary trajectory that is guided by adaptive selection and a certain amount of luck. Belief in a time to live and a time to die. Those are very appealing beliefs, they have a certainty to them.

I find absolutes to be rather comfortable. My head doesn't hurt as much when I consider them. But in Unitarian Universalism we also hold room for disbelief, for uncertainty, for the possibility that in Schrodinger's box, the cat is both alive and dead until you open the box. We hold space for the possibility that outside my box, there is a God, and that outside yours there is not. I like that. I like the idea that my belief in God does not make you wrong or that your belief in no God does not make me wrong. I like the idea that as Unitarian Universalists it's all equally possible or equally impossible. I like the idea that whatever waits outside our respective boxes, it will be very familiar to each of us, because we taken this whole lifetime to become acquainted with it's nature and possiblity.

Now I'm going to go take an aspirin.

When Perfectly Lovely People Go Crazy

Quote du jour: Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. ~William James

Is it me? Is it spring? Is it the fact that we're overbooked, overextended, overcharged, overwrought? After all, not much has materially changed in the world. The economy still stinks, climate change is still making itself known, and nations are still at war with themselves or with each other. I'm honestly not sure why the dour moods, but perfectly lovely people are going. crazy these days. I made the mistake of asking one perfectly lovely man "how are you doing". He told me. In. No. Uncertain. Terms. He's stable, he's healthy, he's just really cranky. And a little crazy these days. Maybe it's allergies?

I asked another perfectly lovely person, "What do you think?" And she told me. In. No. Uncertain. Terms. She's prosperous, she's healthy, her ideas and opinions are considered helpful, and she was really cranky. REALLY cranky.

And then there are the kids. You'd think they had been imbibing an endless supply of sugared drinks and are now undergoing a heinous withdrawal. School is ending soon. They. Should. Be. Happy.

I don't get it. I used to be surrounded by charming, quirky types. Now I'm surrounded by dementors.

What's the solution? Well, since I am not prepared to renounce all human interaction, it's time to turn the dial on my sense of humor to high and use a variety of other means to keep myself sane and in relationship without needing to fix anything or doing damage to hard won trust. And tell myself that the pollen will diminish and the perfectly lovely people will cycle out of this phase and back to their perfectly lovely selves. And laugh. At myself. At our human foibles. Often.

After all, it's just common sense. . . dancing.

The Year Winds Down

Quote du jour: A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We're winding up the church year, with the grand finale of RE Sunday (more about that in this weeks calendar notes)on the 17th, but before we heave a sign of relief and check the box next to "church year 2008-2009" I had to share the above quote from dear old RWE. What we worship, we become. Wow. So simple and so true. If we worship a narrow parochial point of view, then we become narrow and parochial. I suspect he was not speaking of theology though, but rather how we spend our time, our energy, and ultimately our lives. I'm not talking about the variety of human experience we either need to attend to - like FOOD and LAUNDRY - or wish to experience, but rather what we WORSHIP.

Some people worship a perfect body to the extremes of plastic surgery and starvation. There are people who worship their various illnesses, defined by what's wrong with them, leaving out a whole lot of what's right with them. There are people who worship their childrens athletic potential. They parent for it, program around it, and eventually reduce their child to a single dimension rather than the complex messy human s/he might be. There are people who move from desiring and acquiring object after object, becoming a closed system of consumption, working, spending, working. (They are about the dullest conversationalists I can think of.) And as we watch the global situation unfold while feeding our appetite for shoot em up movies and bloodied video games, is it any wonder that we have increasing wars and violence?

It's not all bad though. Becoming what you worship can be a great thing. Do we worship, REALLY worship the planet we live on? Or the potential of every human being? Or the mystery of life? If I could become what I worship - I'd love to become a more environmentally active person, or a tireless advocate for leveling the planetary playing field, or a voice for the sacred.

So by now you may be wondering where I'm going with this and what, if anything it has to do with RE Sunday. Fair enough. I paraphrase Ralph Waldo What we attend to, whether anyone knows it or not, is what we are becoming. Only you know your motivations for attending church and involving yourself in the teaching ministry here. Only you know what annoys you about church and what you find transcendent. And yes, both aspects can exist in the same heart at the same time. But at the end of the year, take a few minutes and think back on our time together. Think back on the teaching ministry you've been part of. And among those memories, some will be of snowstorms and frustrations (oops that's mine) and some will be of cute kids and earnest adolescents and silly songs and profound insights. We could worship the snowstorms, disappointments and inconveniences and make those our church memories or we could worship the sunnier moments and bask in them all summer long.

So in closing, because I'm putting together a worship service on this year in Religious Education for RE Sunday, I am asking you all to respond to the question "What did I learn at church this year?". The question is for all kids and teaching adults. You can respond in the comments section or by emailing me privately. It's anonymous. No attributions will be made and yet, everyone will learn what you learned. See you in church!

Coincidence?

Quote du jour: "Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see all the levers and pulleys" ~ Emma Bull

I refuse to title this post "My Vacation" because it always seems like a boast. "Ha, ha, I went on vacation someplace fabulous and had a fabulous time". Although I did go on vacation "someplace fabulous" and there were moments of "fabulous time", temper those words with the knowledge that I spent two days holed up in the MiddleofNowhere, Colorado while several feet of snow piled up around us, the major east-west highway (our route) remained closed, and that I just happened to be all alone in the subterranean geothermal caves when the power went out. AND that there are rattlesnakes in the desert and bears in the back country.

The last morning of my travels, as I prepared to leave a campground in the MiddleofNowhere, Colorado II, I went on 7AM walkabout looking for someone to pass along unused propane and food to. (All those leftovers that weren't going to get used - not worth paying the extra air freight on, but criminal to throw away) So there I was in the Mancos State Park with my trusty cup of coffee, offering our leftovers to some of the few other campers - there was still snow on the ground - in the park. One of the campers, a woman, peered closely at me - what little was visible under hat and upturned collar. "Is that a Ferry Beach mug?" she asked Are you a Ferry Beacher?" It was indeed a Ferry Beach mug. And I was indeed a Ferry Beacher. And she, her spouse and children were Ferry Beachers, also visiting Mesa Verde, also from New England. She's someone I know from the Mass Bay District. That's some coincidence considering that this was low season in Colorado and that no one in their right mind would go camping in April less than a week after a record breaking snowfall.

Is it really a coincidence? Or are there levers and pulleys at work in our world?

I don’t believe in pre-destination, I gave that up a long time ago, but I wonder about unseen forces of attraction that draw people together. I wonder about the drift toward one pole or another, I wonder about the 100th monkey syndrome. I wonder about those perfect moments that find each of us. I don’t know exactly what they might look like, but I think there are levers and pulleys at work. Maybe one of those levers looks like a seagull logo and another one looks like a chalice. We talk about church growth and church welcome and all the reasons we can think of for engaging fully in growth and welcome. I’ve got another one. When a new family shows up, or a new kid appears on Sunday morning, perhaps, just maybe, something unseen is at work. Perhaps the levers and pulleys look just like the face you see in the mirror every day.

Churchiness and Accelerating Change

Quote du jour: If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.
~ General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff US Army


We are nearing the end of the regular RE year and a year of experimenting with all sorts of new configurations. We've collaborated with another church in the middle school group, extended the Coming of Age year to include all high schoolers, hired a professional pre-school teacher and implemented a trail of Rotation Workshop for the primary ages. It does seem like of lot of changes. Good. One of my ongoing frustrations with UU land is that we tend to stick with things for a long time. Perhaps into the time of irrelevance.

Even our most groundbreaking curriculum, Our Whole Lives, was written before facebook, texting and twitter. We risk irrelevence if we do not attend to the realities of the world our children inhabit or speak to them in the ways they most understand. And yet, because there are many things about church which are timeless, we risk losing the inherent 'churchiness' (I've been watching Colbert) of church if we reach for the 'hook' of technology at the expense of human community.

Church inhabits a constant tension between the contemporary and the ageless. And it's not new to our time, of course. Much of our religious thought and tradition have come from radical change, and resistance to the old order rules, whoever or whatever the old order was. What is new to our time is the rate of acceleration. We do not creep along in increments of weeks, months and years, but leap exponentially from one technological advance to the next. And our culture and our kids do likewise. Ten years ago at the Rochester General Assembly, I remember making a stink about assuming everyone had the wherewithawl to own a computer and communicate electronically. Today, even people who consider themselves poor have cell phones, and the most modest households have a computer. Communication technology has become that significant. If these technologies have become so ubiquitous in the past decade, what will the next decade bring? Many of the current ideas around accelating change and collapsing singularities sound like science fiction AND - as I remember it - the science fiction of my childhood could not begin to envision the reality of my adult years.

Technology begats technology at a faster and faster pace, and if we are to serve our own, as well as our children's needs, we cannot take ten years to develop a comprehensive religious education program. We must continually evaluate and shift, rewrite, reprogram, seek out new resources, and acquire the tools kids need to deal with the moral, ethical and social demands of the new technolgies they (and we) continually encounter. At the same time, we can never lose sight of the religious grounding of our Unitarian Universalist beliefs. There is a timeless wisdom in our history, our practices and our theolgies of reason, inquiry, experience and inclusion. Striking a balance between the two is the work of faith development in the current millenium. I have often said and it bears repeating, that balance is momentary. Once we acquire it, something shifts and we must reach for balance again. Thats the cost of living in dynamic interesting, changing times. It's hard work and these days, it's some of the most important work the church can do. These words from Alfred North Whitehead put it succiently, The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. Let our work be that art.

Long Time, No See

Quote du jour: When you meet up with a disagreeable person, never allow yourself to be upset. Say to yourself, if a dowdy like that can stand himself all his life, surely I can stand him for a few minutes. ~ Unknown


I've been absent from blogging for several weeks and now have wrapped my head back around thinking and writing. (I was thinking and writing, but most of it was nonsense, and considering the already low height of the bar, not worthy of the link)

I spent a few days last week at a pastoral care conference/training. When ever I go to one of these things, I find that along with the formal and explicit program content, the other attendees contribute equal or greater content. What people offer up for solutions, the situations they describe, and yes, the personality traits that drive me up a tree - all content. One of the reasons I took up knitting (and this does not apply to all meetings) was as a way of mitigating the frustrations of (often) pointless or endless meetings I attended in my volunteer and work lives. Whatever happened or didn't happen in a meeting was easier to take if I came home with a sock.

Because, face it - some meetings are glorious and productive and some are not. We can't have glorious and productive all the time, but at the very least I think we should strive for relational. If you are asking (as I think you must be by now) what this has to do with a teaching blog - think about the different experiences you've had. Some days, everyone is on. They are eager, attentive, thoughtful, full participants and you leave thinking "I'm so glad I did this".

And then there are the other days. The days when someone is off. Or everyone is off. Including you. You can't avoid it. Everyone has an off day, so sooner or later it's going to be your turn. Or your class's turn. And then there are the poor souls to whom every day is an off day. I watched a few in action last week swinging between the extremes of 'offness' in adults. Most of the extremes took the form of variations on the "look at me" theme, although there were a couple of "don't look at me" moments. Kids do this too. Their vocabulary is a less polished for most of it, but they either push for attention or push to be left alone. Both of those reactions in a classroom are ways of asking to be 'seen'. If you can remember that, it goes a long way to help you address "off" behaviors in a neutral, non-punnitive fashion and maintain caring relationships. Kids aren't always easy. Neither are adults. And there are some folks seem to pride themselves on being difficult. But look at it from their point of view. Poor things. They're stuck with the selves forever. We get to go home. And until then, we can knit.

(Need knitting lessons? See me!)

What should we do on Sunday morning?

Quote du jour: Thought flows in terms of stories - stories about events, stories about people, and stories about intentions and achievements. The best teachers are the best story tellers. We learn in the form of stories. ~ Frank Smith

The curriculum committee and I are busy working on the selection of core narratives (stories - but core narratives sounds so much more 'official') for next year's primary grades Rotation Workshop. We have developed a sequence and scope for the year, and on the surface it looks like a framework much as we have in secular education. But it's not. The questions we ask as we develop program content and lesson sets are as church centered as the answers to them.

What do we need from our church? What do we wish to have for our children? In answering those questions, I developed three core assumptions about the content of Sunday morning programs. First and foremost we must create community. And for the kids, that's not a one shot deal, but a weekly practice. Every time a group gathers, with even one new face, or one missing face – it's a new community to be built in that day! As adult leaders, we should consider ourselves leaders and guides, as we help children find ways to form relationships, see and be seen, develop awareness of the social contract and practice being with each other in whole and supportive ways.

Secondly, we learn to live as Unitarian Universalists. We don't have enough time with our children on Sunday morning to create religious scholars. What we do have time for is to recognize and guide people who can practice inclusion, accountability, compassion and a healthy curiosity about their world.

And thirdly, we must offer ways to make meaning. Few of us can find meaning in the pages of a book until we have the life experiences that make those pages relevant. We can create those life experiences with worship, with story, with service to others, and with encounters with the mystery (that some people call god and others understand differently). For our children, although I think it vital to include the religious questions of the faiths and the world they encounter every day, it is equally vital to help children become aware of their ability to ask their own questions, in ways that are responsive, not reactive. Notice I say very little about 'curriculum'. The curriculum we use is a tool, something to mine for wisdom, refer to for integrative and group activities, a structure for your morning, AND it is no wiser than your own good instincts about what it means for a child to be religious. What you can give a child - matters.

In just about every teaching workshop or orientation I've led, I've told the following story. Years ago I walked into a Sunday morning religious education room. The leader was valiantly struggling through a lesson on the 'inherent worth and dignity of each individual' while two kids were escalating a war of words into physical violence and the rest of the group sat uncomfortably observing this interaction. The leader told me later, that she 'had' to get through the lesson. As gently as I could, I asked, "and in that room, with two children practicing violence on each other and the other children silenced. ..what do you think the lesson was?"

What's it for?

Quote du jour: We hurry through our meals to go to work and hurry through our work in order to "recreate" ourselves in the evenings and on weekends and vacations and then we hurry, with greatest possible speed and noise and violence, through our recreation--for what?
�Wendell Berry

I was speaking with a colleague about loss. The big losses of siblings and parents as we who are lucky enough to have them at middle age begin to experience. It certainly puts the question asked by Wendell Berry in perspective. What is it for? If I were to ask this question of myself every time I took on a new project or commitment - and re-read the quote as I did so - what would my answers be?

I have noticed that in the past few years, much of my personal life has been about divesting. (Although I did acquire a new spouse last summer) Launching the kids, readying the house for downsizing, letting go of old dreams and hopes that no longer fit. Work is taking on that frame as well. As the church grapples with the realities of the economic downturn and the consequences to the endowment income, we are earnestly asking the question - what's it for?

But church isn't the only place where one might reflect on our relationship with time, money and effort. Years ago, I wrote a sociology paper on the Black Friday phenomena. To do so, I rose early and went off to Walmart where I observed and interviewed a number of shoppers. At one point, I saw a sleepy, overheated, cranky pre-schooler being roundly scolded by their parent. "If you don't stop crying, Santa isn't going to come to our house. Santa won't bring you anything at all." As you might guess, those threats had the effect of magnifying the waterworks. What was THAT for? Bringing joy into a child's life? Christmas spirit? Not so much. But church isn't the only place where one might reflect on our relationship with time, money and effort. And yet, the parent involved started with the best of motives - to manifest love - which ended up corrupted by the cultural messages about money, consumption and tangibles. What's it for?

My mood has always been an indicator of balance or lack there of in my life. If I'm so stressed that I snap at my family or am rude to perfect strangers on the phone, then something is seriously out of whack.

It seems like the whole world is talking about how to reconcile reality with wish. Each of us will have a different answer to that question and each family has it's own values around time, energy and money. I'm not going to tell you how to use those things, but rather invite you to consider your values first and let the richness of possibilities become apparent.

(and here are some links that may be of use in that process)



Unitarian Universalists for a Just Economic Community. http://www.uujec.org
Seventh Principle Project. http://www.uuaspp.org
Kids' Money. http://pages.prodigy.com/kidsmoney/index.htm
National Center for Financial Education, Children and Money. http://www.ncfe.org/index.htm
Take Back Your Time. http://www.simpleliving.net/timeday/
The Simple Living Network. http://www.simpleliving.net/
The Simplicity Forum. http://www.simpleliving.net/simplicityforum/default.asp
Free Our Time. http://www.shalomctr.org/freeourtime/
Time for a Four Hour Day. http://www.iww.org/projects/4-Hours/
Work to Live. http://www.worktolive.info/

Wisdom from the World. . .At the Local Starbucks

"There is a subtle difference between a mission and a promise. A mission is something you strive to accomplish - a promise is something you are compelled to keep. One is individual, the other is shared. When a mission and a promise are one and the same... that's when mountains are moved and races are won." ~ Hala Moddelmog (President and CEO, Susan G. Komen for the Cure)

Local and Starbucks? Not really. I usually patronize the little guy, the small locally owned business. Not the mega concerns chewing up the unique and unrepeatable small town shops. Like. . . ah . . .Starbucks.

But there I was with my 25 dollar gift card and a raging thirst for French Roast Sumatran blend. (Need you ask? Caffeinated of course.) And I found something very cool. A homily on a Starbucks paper coffee cup. It's my quote du jour, what they, in the land of Starbucks, refer to as "The Way I See It"

Mx. Moddelmog makes a very good point. Sometime in the eighties, the notion of institutional and personal mission statements became Very Important Transformational Work in our society, but somewhere along the way, we lost the sense of promises that guide our mission and vision. The words have become an end in themselves. "We now have a mission statement." Check. Next. Or when we use our mission and vision statements as another way of setting church goals, it feels more like a to do list, something we 'should' do, rather than something we are called to do as a living manifestation of our faith in the world.

As I pondered my coffee cup, I considered all the mission statements I've been part of writing - and realized that I no longer even remember most of them. But the promises I've made, now those are memorable. Not the social promises that I REALLY meant at the time, but the promises that seem to be linked to my DNA itself. The ones that make a difference to me, that failure to attend to cause me sleepless nights. I have never even named most of them, but they're there and I know they're there because I constantly work to fulfill them, understanding that big promises demand more than a one-off effort.

The promise to give the world another advocate for peace. The promise to create sanctuary for plants, animals and people on the land I steward. The promise to give every child I encounter, a welcoming place in the church. The promises to my beloveds - that I will be there for and with them - whatever life may bring our way. The promise to make my life count.

I wonder what our individual and congregational lives would be like, if instead of visioning 'processes' and mission writing 'work', we made promises to ourselves and to each other. What races could we win? What obstacles could we overcome?

Let's Put on a Show!

Quote du jour: The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life. ~ Oscar Wilde

Do you remember (and lest you think I'm THAT old - on cable classic movie channels in RERUNS) those Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland movies where the kids put on a 'show' to save the day, raise the money, bring the community together, forge understanding and sing and dance? Those ones? I do. I remember singing with my sisters as a child, performing for family and friends and church. I remember the magic of harmonizing, or making after dinner clean up a scene from a musical. I remember my teen years of aspiration, although I never got out of the chorus until my big break as a witch in the Wizard of Oz. (Not THE witch, rather a lesser light in the stage production. Looking back, I'm sure I got the role for my funky sock wardrobe rather than my star qualities. It saved on costuming expenses.) I remember recapturing the sweetness of our childhoods, as my sisters and I sang at each others weddings.

And then years later, I found myself bringing my own children into the magic of making music together. I no longer craved the spotlight, but what I had been longing for; an opportunity to come together with others and create something with very little more than our bodies and voices. To make magic that transcends speech, to sing, to tell a story to and with each other. In short, to put on a show. I was fortunate enough to live in a town where one of the churches put on an interfaith/intergenerational musical production every year. The musicals had some uplifting message, were (so rare these days) engaging for the whole family, and were an extension of the ministry of that church - to bring people together in fellowship.

We are doing that this spring at UUCGL. Bringing people of all beliefs, all generations, and diverse talents together in fellowship. Putting on a show. For no other reasons than our desire to tell a story to and with each other. The story (The musical is called 'Children of Eden') is an old one, as old as Adam and Eve - and coincidentally ABOUT Adam and Eve, and the generations until Noah and the Ark. It's a lot of story to tell, and a fair amount of work, but an extraordinarily rich opportunity to be with each other in ways that are not quite work and not quite play. Productions are like that - a little village that comes together with the tasks of singing and dancing and acting and painting sets and devising costumes and putting out publicity and where everyone from the production divas to the littlest 'animals' on the ark is an integral and indespensible part of the whole.

We are inviting you to think about moving into our springtime village. And bring the kids. Auditions are still open for leads, or you may join the chorus without auditioning. If you don't want to sing, you can be part of the village in other ways, with artistic talent, marketing savvy, or instrumental contributions. It's an opportunity for the staff to work together across program areas, and I hope it will be an opportunity for you, your families or for others you do not yet know; to connect with the song in each heart and to the longing for community.

What Makes a Good Teacher?

The groundhog - another name for rodent of unusual size - saw his shadow and bit the mayor of New York City. Perhaps the groundhog, like so many of us, cannot imagine six more weeks more of THIS winter. So onto more cheerful things.

Sally Patton is a Unitarian Universalist with a profound ministry. She has spent the past decade educating congregations and individuals in inclusion ministries for and with persons with special needs. She has designed a training "Involve" which I and another member of the Religious Education committee participated in. I have taken Sally's words for this blog post, because she answers the question "what makes a good teacher" beautifully. So hence a longish 'quote du jour'

Quote du jour: . . .The first is the development of self-efficacy and our perception of ourselves and the second is how we form and maintain attitudes. The first one seems obvious. The findings show that those areas in which we have achieved some mastery get reinforced into the image we have of ourselves. Those areas in which we have little experience and hence little reinforcement contributes to an image we hold for ourselves that we are incompetent in those areas even though we may have the skills. So if we believe we are good teachers, it is because we have achieved some success as a teacher. What often happens in our churches is that we have parents who have never taught formally or who have never felt they have been in any type of teaching role, so they have no experience to draw upon which says that they will be good teachers. Therefore they use the only model they can find which is the teachers they had in school. Most likely their teachers relied heavily on a lecture method of teaching which does not work in our RE programs. In addition, a child with a label whose behavior is different than what the teacher is comfortable with can totally wreck a first teaching experience. . .

In my Involve workshops I emphasize that the attitude of the teacher is the best predictor of whether or not they will be successful teachers. The psychologists say that attitudes are made up of three components: cognitive (our thoughts, beliefs and ideas about an attitude object), emotional (our feelings and emotions about an attitude object), and behavioral (our predisposition to act in a particular way based on the cognitive and emotional components). In order to change our behavior we have to change the thoughts, beliefs and emotions we have about the attitude object. Our attitudes about other people are formed and shaped by how we were brought up, culture, stereotypes, group associations to mention just a few. Our attitudes about the children we label are often formed by what the label implies about expected behavior. The labels bias us toward expecting certain types of behavior and teacher expectations have a lot to do with how children perform. For example, we expect a child labeled with ADD to be disruptive and that is what we get. There was a famous study demonstrating how teacher expectations affect children’s performance. One teacher was told they were getting a class of high achievers when they actually got a class of under achieving children. The other teacher was assigned the class of under achievers but was told she had the class of high achievers. The study showed that the children performed to the teacher’s expectations. The under achieving students performed well while the high achieving students performed poorly.

The attitude I promote is one based on seeing the world through the child’s eyes. This helps not to be so quick to judge behavior based on the pre-conceived beliefs we have about teaching, learning, and children, especially the children we label. But how do we change people’s attitudes? The psychologists say that when our behavior does not coincide with a strongly held belief we experience cognitive dissonance. In order to achieve harmony, we either change the behavior or the belief. For UU’s, most of us have strong beliefs associated with our seven principles. Therefore, working for the worth and dignity of every child who enters our churches should be a strong incentive for welcoming all children. I think what trips us up, are those labels. So even though we want to welcome all children, when it actually comes down to teaching them, we fear what the label implies and we expect the behavior the label implies. Seeing the world through the child’s eyes and seeing past the label to the whole child sounds good, but how do we actually do that? And how do we do that in one hour on a Sunday morning when the child is being disruptive? I was told a story recently of a school teacher who was assigned the “problem” child. The first thing she said to him when he started being difficult was, “It’s too late, I already love you.” I propose that being a good teacher is just that simple. We love the children no matter what.

- Sally Patton www.embracechildspirit.org

Logos

Quote du jour “For me,the kindled chalice is no sweet little ritual, but a perfect invitation to live out my life in daily response to our demanding and powerful heritage.” Mark Belletini

I had a wonderful moment with the curriculum committee earlier this week, when I referred to our religious symbol as a shipping logo. That is both the simple truth and only a part of the history of our chalice. Did you know where our chalice came from? And why chalice lighting ended up in Unitarian Universalist worship? In our virtual village, gather round and hear the words of that story. . . (with thanks to Rev Freeman's history)

Once upon a time in the land of Czechoslovakia, a man named John Hus earned his way through the University of Prague by singing in the streets. Working his way through school as a busker - a time honored tradition. . . Hus graduated, and was ordained a Catholic priest. In 1401 he was appointed Rector of his school, and became the University's minister. In those early years of the fifteenth century the questioning that eventually spawned the Protestant reformation was brewing in Prague.

Hus preached in the vernacular - not Latin - but rather the language of the people who listened to his homilies. In those homilies he spoke to the realities of their lives, rather than to distant theological constructs. He declared; "If God had intended himself to be revealed through theology, we would have all been born with doctors’ degrees." To add insult to injury he was a critic of priestly corruption. As you might guess that made him very unpopular with the church and University hierarchy. And since both of those institutions were inextricably bound up with the government, Hus ran afoul of the authorities. As Hus was delivering a Sunday service, the archbishop stood up and began to read a decree of ex-communication. The congregants took John and tossed him into the street, clerical robes and all.

Any books critical of Roman Catholicism were banned, followed by a papal edict threatening to execute ALL the clergy of Prague unless Hus stopped preaching. John had taught that the communion wine and bread did not magically turn into the blood and body of Christ, but that the Eucharist was a symbolic memorial meal. He passed the chalice - traditionally only used by the celebrant - among the church goers to demonstrate the equality of worshiper and priest. To this day in Czechoslovakia, the chalice represents the liberty and equality of the common person.

John went into exile, and his former church was torn down. Some of Hus’ braver parishioners gathered stones from the structure which, years later, were built into the walls of Protestant churches. In 1414 Hus was ordered to appear before the Church Council of Constance. Upon his arrival, he was shackled, imprisoned and tried - before the council, where the verdict was a forgone conclusion - guilty. John Hus was burned at the stake for his convictions and principals.

Hundreds of years passed, and then in the year 1941 the newly formed Unitarian Service Committee was working from Portugal to assist Eastern Europeans, among them Unitarians and Jews, seeking to escape Nazi persecution. They were also distributing aid as they could.
From his headquarters in Lisbon, Rev. Charles Joy, Executive Director of the Service Committee oversaw a network of couriers and agents in this mission. Establishing trust quickly across barriers of language, nationality, and faith could determine life and death. Disguises, signs, countersigns, and midnight runs were the staples of survival in this climate.

The USC had attracted the attention of Hans Deutsch, an Austrian artist, who had been living in Paris. Deutsch was producing critical cartoons of Hitler when the Nazis invaded France. He fled, and eventually maneuvered his way into Portugal. Deutsch wrote to Charles Joy; "I am not what you may actually call a believer. But if your kind of life is the profession of your faith- as it is, I feel sure- then religion, ceasing to be magic and mysticism, becomes confession to practical philosophy and- what is more-to active, really useful social work. And this religion-with or without a heading- is one to which even a ‘godless’ fellow like myself can say wholeheartedly, Yes!"

Joy commissioned Hans to create a symbol for their papers "to make them look official, to give dignity and importance to them, and at the same time to symbolize the spirit of our work… When a document may keep a man out of jail, give him standing with governments and police, it is important that it look important."

Deutsch designed a chalice with a flame. Joy wrote his board in Boston that the "the holy oil burning in the chalice is a symbol of helpfulness and sacrifice…The fact that it remotely suggests a cross was not in his mind, but to me this also has merit. We do not limit our work to Christians. Indeed, at the present moment, our work is nine-tenths for the Jews, yet we do stem from the Christian tradition, and the cross does symbolize Christianity and its central theme of sacrificial love."

The flaming chalice logo was made into a seal for papers,a badge for agents and as a packing symbol on relief supplies. Today the original design logo is still the emblem of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. The Unitarian church never had a visual symbol for itself. The Universalists did - a circle with an off set cross. And neither church had a single defining ritual, having gone the way of many Protestant churches in regard to the trappings of 'high church'. In a grass roots kind of way, it was in Religious Education Programs where the chalice lighting emerged as a liturgical element. Some creative type decided that a chalice lighting would make a very nice beginning to a gathering of young people, the idea took hold and has become integral to most worship gatherings in our faith. (In a similar fashion, Pagans have UU's to thank for the waters of the world ritual - but that's another post)

After the 1961 merger of the two denominations, the double chalice with an offset flame was designed and became the official representation of our association. The chalice symbol continues to morph and recently the Unitarian Universalist Association adopted a centered chalice with a sunburst around it. as the new 'official' chalice. I'm not sure why - it might simply be a rebranding effort. If you google 'chalice art', you'll see chalice hearts, cupped hand 'chalices', prink triangle chalices, goddess chalices, cross chalices and on and on and on. It's still an identifying symbol of our identity, still a logo, and today it is more, ever so much more.

Word warfare

Quote du jour:
"All philosophy lies in two words, "sustain" and "abstain."" Epictetus


Winter's long days appear to be taking their toll. I was at a meeting last night with a couple of community organizers and a couple of members of the congregation and at one point I and an organizer got into a quote match. Quote matches go like this: you offer one quote with attribution, then I respond with one of my own, then we repeat the exercise with brand new quotes. It is probably a lot easier with a younger memory; by the end of a short exchange my head hurt from retrieval efforts in the neuron library.

It's word warfare of the highest order. More like a tennis match. Unfortunately there's another form of word warfare - pernicious and soul destroying - and it's taking place at a school or program near you. Children are usually restrained in their physical behaviors toward each other but less so in their verbal ones. Bullying is not merely physical intimidation, but emotional and social intimidation as well. It's not comfortable to admit this fact of our children's experience. Although childhood may need protection from adult assaults on innocence and safety, we have a harder time protecting childhood from . . .children.

Addressing word warfare is not simply a matter of bullies and bullied but a matter of social norms that our children pick up in any number of venues. If you've every listened to a laugh track on a sitcom, it becomes quickly obvious that put downs get a laugh. If you've observed the deterioration of civility in public discourse, read the snark comments made about 'otherness' in online forums, watched our politicians turn policy differences into personal attacks, it's no mystery how our kids are finding role models for bullying words. Those may not be the role models we want for them, but they are the ones most often reported on and watched in our society.

My advice? As with so many other things, just say 'no'. Your kid is not a horrible awful human being because they're trying on a personna. Just say 'no'. You're not a lousy poor excuse for a parent because your child is learning about boundaries by finding where they are. Just say 'no'. And the universe will not shudder to a stop because kids make errors in judgement on their way to adulthood. Just say 'no'. * Your child will thank you. Well, maybe not, but they'll be happier and more confident. Really. So will you. Really. And so will we all.

* Teachingtolerance.org has a wonderful collection of anti bullying resources.

What are you doing on Monday?

Quote du jour: Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. -Martin Luther King

I just read that the Obamas are making plans for Monday. With hours left before they move into the White House and he becomes our next president, they are joining the national day of service in honor of Martin Luther King. This is not new to the office of president; Mr. Obama's predecessors have also participated in the "day on not day off" since it was initiated in 1994. What is new is the national spot light shining on the National Day of Service, courtesy of the presidential inauguration committee.

The committee has put up a website to connect people with opportunities to serve. It's here http://www.usaservice.org/page/content/eventsearch. I hope you'll take advantage of it, or of other electronic or local networks for volunteerism. I could say all sorts of things about how the world needs everything we can give, how the best ethical education for our children comes from the doing, how barriers to community dissolve when people work on common goals. Or (stop me if you've heard this one), "Yes, we can." I could say all that, but I won't. I'll just say this, "soooooooo0 what ARE youdoing on Monday?"


Now, of course, no one day is THE day when the world reaches it's tipping point towards justice, but you gotta start somewhere. Let's start here. On Monday, the 19th of January. Take a day on with your friends. Take a day on with your colleagues. Take a day on with your family. And change the world.