Only one class for 4th-5th grade next year
July 28th, 2010Back from our Partner Church
July 21st, 2010I’m just back from visiting our Partner Church in Kissolymos, and what a wonderful visit it was! I have so many ideas for bringing more about our Partner Church into the RE classrooms, and I’m looking forward to this year’s Partner Church Sunday (usually in November) being a whole church experience.
And I can’t wait to see you all in class this Sunday!
The Next Three Sundays in RE
July 1st, 2010I am very excited to be going on a trip to Transylvania with my son this month. Transylvania is the historical birthplace of the first Unitarian church, and we will be touring many historical sights and staying in our partner church village in Kissolymos. I will be sharing pictures and stories of our adventures upon my return.
While I am gone, members of our wonderful Family Ministry Team will be stepping forward to replace me on Sunday mornings. Coming up:
July 4th Music Sunday
July 11th Dealing with Anger, Fear, and Sadness
July 18th Body Awareness
This Sunday’s Meditation Class
June 27th, 2010Taking it Home – The Six Wonderful Doors
The Buddha went into some detail about using the breath in meditation, which is a basic technique the children worked with this Sunday in class. Although most children would not care for a lot of detail about the “Six Wonderful Doors”, and most would not be reached until a practitioner had spent considerable time with a meditation practice, I thought you might be interested in knowing more. If you wanted to start a meditation practice at home with your child, a practice centered around breathing would be a very simple and easy way to start.
The first door is counting when the practitioner counts each breath. This helps the mind focus on the breathing, and the very act of counting tends to prevent distracting thoughts from arising, or from dominating the mind if they do arise.
Following is the next wonderful door, when you can cease to count and just follow the sensation of the breath as it flows past the nostrils, cool on the in-breath, and warm on the outbreath. Following does not mean that you “follow” the flow of the breath through the body, because that would dissipate your point of concentration. Instead, you just follow the sensation at the nose.
As concentration develops through following, the next wonderful door is stopping. Stopping refers to stopping distracting thoughts, and it will naturally happen as a result of following. It is not something to be striven for directly.
Next, the fourth door is observing. When thoughts have stopped, or at least subsided, the meditator can look objectively at things – that is, to observe without the intrusion of concepts. Anything can be observed, but it is most frequently your own body. Comfort and discomfort can be observed without judgment.
The fifth door is returning. This is part of a quite advanced practice, and is harder to explain. It refers to the ability to “return” to the source of the mind, or to look at your mind when thoughts are not capturing its attention. We are not our thoughts, and returning helps the meditator become aware of this fact.
The sixth door of meditation is calming. When the meditator has established awareness of body and mind, there comes a feeling of deep peace, born of a sense of unity and harmony within oneself. Instead of a separate, fragmented existence, there is a sense of wholeness and completeness. The distinction between the meditator and the object of meditation finally disappears, and there is only a peaceful and joyous sense of existence.
Summer Religious Education – One all-ages class, one service at 10am
June 23rd, 2010Summer is here! This summer we are doing a Meditation program for Religious Education, which we started last Sunday. Here is the Taking It Home from the first class:
Taking it Home – Mindfulness
Mindfulness, which means an alert awareness of what is going on around one and inside one’s own head, is closely related to concentration. Exercises in either will help the other, and both will also help memory as children are much less likely to remember things to which they didn’t pay attention. Meditation, which refers to a variety of techniques to enhance mind control and awareness, can provide these exercises and in the process touch most aspects of human experience, making them all potentially richer, profounder, and more meaningful. For children today, little is done to help them understand themselves, control their anxieties and thought processes, or discover harmony, balance, and tranquility within themselves. For these, and many more reasons, we are practicing meditation in the religious education classes this summer.
This Sunday we did an exercise to meditate on a day we remember as being particularly fun or joyful, and to concentrate on the step-by-step progression of that day (what we wore, what we ate, who spoke to us and what they said, what the weather was like). We also did the memory game where you study a tray of objects and then try to list them after the tray is covered. To bring this mindfulness home, you can practice really noticing the world around you this week, and if you like you can do the meditation on a day in the evening and reflect back through the day you just had. Adults can try this too!
Putting the new RE entry way to good use
June 15th, 2010The Building Dedication was wonderful!
June 8th, 2010Sunday evening we dedicated our new space, and it was a marvelous event. For those of you who missed it, here is the story I told to dedicate the RE classrooms:
A House for the Spirit
With this story, I am going to need your help. I’m going ask you all to participate as I tell the story, which is called “A House for the Spirit”.
First, I ask you all to look out these windows at the trees outside.
A long, long time ago, before there were houses, electric lights, or shopping malls, people lived out in and among nature. Out in nature they felt surrounded by the mystery, the spirit, what some of them called God.
And now turn back and look around, at each other.
Then there came a time when some people started living together in villages. They shared ideas about all kinds of things, about how to live together, and they shared their ideas about the spirit. They felt that spirit surrounding them when babies were born or when a loved one died. They felt the spirit when the crops grew tall, and also when the herds sickened and died. At times they loved the spirit and at times they feared it, but they felt it there with them.
And now I need just a few people to lift their arms to the sky, and stand tall like a tree.
As villages grew and buildings were built, special places were made just for being with the Spirit. Some of these places were out in nature, such as a grove of trees or in great fields cut into a spiral path.
And now I need a few folks to stand and link arms, like an arch.
Some were built of stone in ways that captured the light of the sun. Some were pyramids that seemed to have steps that went on forever, while others were little more than a tent in the dessert.
OK, you can all drop your arms for a bit.
But all of them were sacred, built as a house for the Spirit, a house for God, a place to think and feel deeply on the mysteries that exist within all life.
Today, there are many ways that people think of God, the spirit, and the mystery, and there are many different kinds of houses where people go to worship.
There are minarets. Can some of you make minarets with your arms?
And there are tall bell towers. Can someone tall pretend to ring a bell up high?
There are sacred caves. Can you all pretend to squeeze in somewhere enclosed?
There are tiny little wayside chapels. Now we need some kids to make themselves into short chapels.
And there are big old cathedrals. Now we need some grown-ups to hold hands and be a cathedral.
There are simple monasteries where time seems to have stopped. Everyone fold your hands down quietly.
And there are modern mega-churches as big as stadiums and full of noise and pizzazz. Everyone throw your hands up high!
But all these different places are for sharing ideas, being in community, and feeling the Spirit, whatever we call it.
If I can ask you to do one more, slightly silly thing with your hands. It’s something you probably know from childhood.
Here is the church
Here is the steeple
Open up the doors
And there are the people.
It is the people. We create sacred space whenever we come together. Please join hands with the people around you. This is how we build our church, by coming together in community, and this is how we make a house for our Spirit.
Spirit of Life
June 2nd, 2010For the last two months, we have been singing the hymn Spirit of Life as the children exit the service and head to their classes. It is a beautiful and well-loved hymn, which most UU’s know by heart so it is sung frequently at district or general assemblies.
For the last two Sundays, the preschool-3rd grade classes (and a few older kids and parents too) have been practicing the signs that go with this hymn. This coming Sunday, the 6th, during the Intergenerational Service that honors our childrens’ work in Religious Education this year, we will stand and sing and sign Spirit of Life as a whole congregation. If you would like to review the signs, there are two youtube videos that are not exactly how we will sign it, but fairly close.
Flower Communion This Sunday
May 27th, 2010This year, the annual Flower Communion will include the children! We are going to do the Flower Communion early in the service, where the Story for All Ages is usually told, and then the children will leave for their classes as usual (but taking their flower with them).
The first Flower Communion was held in Prague in 1923, so it is an almost 100 year old tradition. Norbert Capek, the founder of Unitarianism in Czechoslovakia, created the Flower Communion as a reimagining of the Eucharist, where beauty and community were celebrated in an experience meant to touch our hearts and not just our heads.
Many Unitarian churchs continue this tradition, as we do each year.
Please bring a flower (or more, for those who forget or were unable to bring any). In this Communion, all come forward with their flowers, which are then consecrated. Then people come forward and receive a different flower, literally giving and receiving to and from the rest of the congregation.




