OUUC Religious Education

Last night the teaching team for the 1st-3rd grade met to get ready for the Fall classes.  Six wonderful volunteers have stepped forward to make up this team, and give the gift of their time to the children in the 1st-3rd grades.  I’m very excited about this team, and about the curriculum we will use this Fall.  It is “Spirit of Adventure” by Kate Tweedie Erslev, and in the introduction to the curriculum she writes “I challenged myself to write a curriculum that teaches UU identity without the usual arts and crafts projects”.  It is a curriculum intended for more active children, which should be fun and challenging and meaningful in unexpected ways.  We will be splinting fingers, dissecting computers, making pancakes, shooting balloon rockets across the classroom, and much much more.  Along the way we will learn about many notable UU’s, such as Clara Barton, Charles Dickens, and Frank Lloyd Wright, and discuss how the UU principles play out in their and our lives.

It’s going to be a lot of fun!  This class will be offered at both the 9:15 and the 11:00 services.

Last Saturday, I had my perspective on religious education in The Olympian.  You can read the article on their website here: http://www.theolympian.com/2010/08/21/1342658/its-about-questions-not-answers.html

Last Sunday, we held our first teachers training of the year, for the Spirit Play teachers.  I’ve also been putting the classroom together, and I’m so excited for the class to start again.  Spirit Play is a Montessori-based method, which we offer for our pre-K class at both first and second service.  In this class, the children are told stories and have time to make art, but truly the Method is the Message here, as it is a time of quieter and slower reflection on the Wondering Questions of this age group.  The first Spirit Play class will be on September 19th.

Chalice Camp is coming to a close, but watch for it next year!

Each day we have had a music class, with our fabulous guest music teacher Kerri Lynn Nichols.  Singing, dancing, and playing some very fun instruments – it’s been lovely.

Two days of Chalice Camp have been full of Outer Space and Evolution, and dinosaur bones!

I 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 4^th Music Sunday

July 11^th Dealing with Anger, Fear, and Sadness

July 18^th Body Awareness

Taking 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 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!