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