The Greatest Generation

I was listening to NPR the other morning and they were interviewing Tom Brokaw about his new book Boom. He was on the air pimping his new book, but also telling stories about his career and the many crazy things he has reported on over the years. Naturally, talk turned to his book The Greatest Generation. Call me a Gen X whiner, but the nickname that Brokaw coined for the folks that lived as young adults through World War II irritates me to no end. I am in no way trying to diminish the sacrifices made by those who pulled us through those challenging years! But this title does leave me with a feeling of defeat - kind of a "why bother" attitude that my generation is famous for.

I've never read this book, so I am not sure of the context of the moniker's creation. It just seems so absolute, and since it is quoted so often, it caught on pretty fast. I wonder if Brokaw realizes how far-reaching the sobriquet would be when he created it. It certainly has colored my view of my own generation and others - and not for the better. Perhaps that is the bane of my generation.

The Golden Compass

I got one of those emails recently warning of this awful movie coming out that will damage me and my children permanently and seriously!!
The Golden Compass is a children's fantasy novel by an atheist and the characters kill god at the end. I looked it up on imdb.com, and no mention of killing god whatsoever. Hmmmm.

So I head into my 5th grade son's parent-teacher conference with his homeroom teacher who is also the reading teacher and a very liberal Southern Baptist. She laughed when I asked about the book and told her about the frantic email warning. She loaned me the book from the 5th grade library, and then emailed me the next week to share that she had just received her first email warning about the evils of fantasy literature, which apparently some people cannot identify correctly.

Having just finished The Position by Meg Wolitzer (a great read about a family whose parents wrote a groundbreaking book about sex), I am ready for another fiction read. My non-fiction task is currently a book recommended by Phil Lund - The Handbook of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence. This one will take a while for me to plow through.

check out for yourself the imdb info on the movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0385752/

The content of the email (from my fundamentalist sister-in-law) and the snopes comments are at:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp

Heaven forbid we teach people to discern fact from fiction and make decisions for themselves. SIGH

Pushmepullyou

I was having a talk at an event this last weekend with a friend who is also a member of the group that hosted the event. We limit attendance to 400 people. We feed them at this event and provide several live bands... this is a big event that requires TONS of coordination - all from volunteers who care about this event that we have now hosted for 12 years.

Our conversation had to do with him not knowing what was going on with meals, and my response was "well... I put it on the forum days ago that I was making food for Friday night for everyone," and his response was "I don't use that. I like my information pushed to me, not where I have to go pull it." I am the exact opposite.... I cannot stand getting tons of emails that have little to do with me. I want the info somewhere that I can easily get to to find it when I need it, and not sort through a barrage of stuff that clogs my mailboxes with everyone "replying to all" when really not all need to know their response, etc. I am a user of forums/discussion boards and not a lover of list serves or yahoo group-type arrangements for information sharing. I am about maxed out on all of it though.

I manage a portion of a website, have 3 email address accounts to deal with, numerous websites that I constantly glean info from for work, multiple discussion boards and blogs that I haunt, various newsletters that are "pushed" at me via email, a new forum I am trying to get up and running for PSD, and now I need to manage a facebook and/or myspace page for PSD work as well - probably both brands and probably more than one of each for different populations. And I am not even keeping up with all of the many forms that are being used currently and I don't use lots of these very well either. I am suffering from information overload ... too much coming at me and too much that I am trying to disperse. And good old analog technology... I have at least three phone meetings every month, and three committee meetings to attend in person.

And this is the kind of thing we are asking of our volunteers as well. How much of a spiritual home are we providing when we are practically deluging them, and our staff, with so much? It has almost gotten to where Sunday mornings are the slow portion of my work where I just have people wanting my attention in person, not in every form of technology I can think of as well.

Send in the Clowns

This is one of the best ways I have seen to deal with these hate-spreading freaks. Anybody up for getting some big red shoes and following Fred Phelps around? I could pretty easily be convinced to bring some pleasant silliness to his nightmarish protests and help make him the laughingstock that he is.

http://asheville.indymedia.org/article/107Clowns

Just click above to read about peaceful protest with a new style.

Play with your food!

Here is the Swamp Monster of Council Grove Reservoir that we discovered at the southern PSD camp planning weekend in July. I grew up going to this camp with UUC churches, and the site is very dear to my heart. Sadly, it is just not big enough for the rockin camp that we are planning for Summer of 2009. Be there!

Benevolent Neighbors to the North, eh

That is what I always call Canadians, and I recently had the chance to spend some time up North and enjoy a break from the 105+ heat of Kansas and send text messages home whining about the cold at night. No one had any sympathy for me dealing with the downright chilly weather near Honeywood, Ontario while they were having people die from the heat, but I was camping (insert whiney tone). I went up north to Unicamp, owned by the Canadian UU Council, for Concentric, the annual business meeting of C*UUYAN. What is C*UUYAN you are asking? Well, it is a practically unheard of organization of 18 to 35 year-old UU's rather like YRUU is for youth. Concentric is the annual business meeting at which the steering committee for C*UUYAN and the people who run the conferences are elected. The letters stand for Continental Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Network and I have no idea why there is an asterisk in there.

Elections were short this year since before they happened the current steering committee decided to re-assess its vision and goals and canceled Concentric and its partner conference for YA's - OPUS. OPUS (yes, always in all caps) is the spiritual retreat for YA's and C*UUYAN serves the entire continent as does YRUU. What has become painfully obvious to most people witnessing the progressively deteriorating network is that C*UUYAN has outlived its purpose. Let me explain... C*UUYAN members (any young adult is by default a member; no joining is necessary) claim that the purpose of their organization is to serve young adult UU's who do not find a spiritual home within a brick and mortar congregation. I argue that CYF (Church of the Younger Fellowship) now provides a spiritual home for that population and having existed less than two years is already doing a better job of it that C*UUYAN can. Please don't think of this as an attack on the individuals who love and support C*UUYAN and its events. They are amazing people who drive themselves too hard to try to work within a broken system. I am not sure that restructuring the system will do much good; I just don't think that C*UUYAN needs to exist any longer.

I described it as a very loyal dog who is sick and old and someone keeps shoving food and medicine down its throat while ignoring the healthy dogs and puppies that are hungry nearby. It is hard to put your loyal friend out of its misery, but you owe it to the friend.

The evolution of baseball and heirloom tomatoes

I have been rolling this around in my head for awhile, and the moment has finally come to put it on the screen. Baseball is like tomatoes. Barry Bonds just broke a record and the sports analysts are having a field day arguing about whether or not it "counts." Well, of course it counts, he hit more home runs than Hank Aaron... that is a new record. It counts, but it just doesn't mean the same thing anymore. It is not comparing apples to oranges, but more like comparing heirloom tomatoes to grocery store tomatoes.

Heirloom tomatoes do no travel well. They weren't designed to travel. They were designed to be eaten still warm from the sun, just picked, and delicious alone or maybe a pinch of salt and pepper. Grocery store tomatoes were designed to be placed into trucks and driven halfway across the country or further and get to their destination without being squashed. It doesn't matter that they are pink, bland, and pithy. They are not about flavor, they are about distance.

And ever since the baseball strike, baseball has been more about distance (metaphorically) and less about flavor (more metaphor). It is not the same game that it used to be, and I propose that Unitarian Universalism does not much resemble Unitarianism or Universalism as they were originally developed. I am not saying that this is a bad thing. Grocery store tomatoes serve their purpose, after all. Our Unitarian Universalist tradition is a Living Tradition, growing and evolving, serving different needs for different people. Some people would rather go to Hy Vee and pick up some hothouse toms or hydroponically grown ones, and that is fine. Me? I'd rather pick them from my own vines and sit on my porch slurping them up after wiping the dirt off onto my jeans. It's a religious experience.

Speaking of hunger

I am really excited about this Fellowship Year and working with the social action folks to get the kids involved. Especially since Carol E-D is into food and hunger as issues that the children can understand.

I have had this dream since I was director of ICAN and delivered people their gov't commodities. If you have never seen commodities, they are a weird mishmash of things that have potential. Canned meat, beans, rice, canned fruit and fruit juice, a cheese not unlike velveeta. Sometimes cereal. Dry milk. I was always a little stumped at how the gov't thought people would use these. We are talking about people who qualify for commodities, so they have limited resources already. Oh, but wait, we ARE talking about he gov't so they don't have to think about practical things like how someone might soak the beans in a pot they don't have so that they can make a delicious healthy soup for cold winter nights. Do they have a stove to cook it on? Do they have electricity? Water? Do they know how to read the label on the dang bag of beans? Gov't - not detail oriented!

My dream since I saw this cardboard box of odd foodstuffs has been to organize classes that teach people what to do with the box of things that the gov't gave them. Every month, they come to the imaginary center, where their children are cared for in a loving environment while they cook, and they learn what to do with their monthly allotment. A crew of dedicated volunteers helps cut and chop the vegetable adjuncts for the class demo while others collect lists of materials that people need in their home in order to cook the food (sharp knife, cutting board, cookpot) and people share ideas of how to make do when you don't have the tool or ingredient that you would most like to have. The basic tools that they need are procured for them so that they can use the resources that the gov't made available to them, and the program makes sense!

I keep hearing Marilyn and Forrest talk about Just Food, a local program having something to do with ECKAN and Ann Weick. And I have seen lots of people at the Fellowship bring in bags and boxes of food on Sunday mornings that people need, for their stomachs as well as their souls.

(My real dream is that this Miracle Kitchen evolves into a restaurant where people are trained to have jobs in restaurants and meals are served to homeless, low-income, and paying customers alike. Sort of a Paradise Cafe with a social action spin.)

Yesterday was my big brother's birthday, and I took my kiddo over to Liberty for dinner with my bro. He is a chef, and he runs the kitchen at the HyVee on 6th Street. I was telling him about my Miracle Kitchen and he shook his head. He said, "ya know, sis, we throw away so much food, and when other people see it, they say things about coming back to get it and getting it to LINK or whoever will take it and share it with those in need, but they never come back to get it. I guess they are just too busy to remember."

I will try to not get so busy that I can't remember to come and help get to people the sustenance that they need.

Volunteer Corn

I just read a blog from a friend who has had a pretty rough year. Apartment fire, mother dying, got married (not rough, but a huge change), and her ex committed suicide. Wow! And she keeps on keeping on.
She wrote about her little garden that she has been tending to this summer. Her hubby was irritated that she didn't pull each and every weed as soon as she could. One really caught her eye and she admired how it clung for life to the fence, and grew straight and tall. Her little weed now has one beautiful ear of corn on it.
Cynical people might be saying to themselves right now "volunteer corn? that can't taste good. Probably some weird hybrid or feed corn or nothing that a person ought to eat!"

Cynical people miss out on so much in life. Maybe her point is not to get something out of that feeds her stomach, but somehow it has already fed her spirit. And I think she was deservedly hungry.

post GA catching up

Why is there always so much to do when you are a "grown up?"
The Kiddo is constantly telling me he's bored and I long for a moment in which to be bored.

We had a party on the 4th and a UU family commented on my family's spinner game that you spin to determine what chore is going to get done and what the reward for doing it will be. They loved the idea, and I do too. But really, every chore that is one of the choices needs to be done fairly often or it wouldn't be a chore on our list, so why do we try to act like it is optional, or just a twist of fate (really of friction) that the spinner arrow would land on "clean your room" and not "help with laundry", when really, both are gonna get done?

Lots to catch up on from being gone to GA. Meetings for RE, meetings for the Board, meetings for the Spiritual Celebration Committee, telling anyone who will listen how unbearably dreadful the Service of the Living Tradition was at GA, and how great the workshop on Cultural Appropriation was . Had to fix the goat fence and chicken pen, since the goats got out and ate the garden and the chickens keep getting eaten by the puppy who really doesn't eat them but rather holds them in her mouth until they are scared to death.

Much to do, gotta go run my own UU kid and his UU pal around for awhile. They had a great playdate today and now we gotta get back to "I'm bored."

General Assembly 2007

Wow. Here I sit in my not glamorous hotel room (St. Louis had fancy hotels... Portland not so much) while I am about to miss the Ware lecture because after having gone to college forever, I can't bear the thought of sitting still for an hour and listening to a lecture. I DO have my knitting with me (which usually distracts me enough from my numb booty and my anxiety of not multitasking every moment of the day and is how I got through my MSW program), but I have sat through 2 workshops, plenary, a worship, and a catching up with old PSD and Lawrence friends Adrien and Elizabeth, and I just can't think about being in one more uncomfortable chair tonight listening to one more expert.

Plus, I am just not that interested in Palestine. I know... I suck for saying it. I feel like a crappy UU for feeling that way. I can only care about so many causes, and this just ain't one of them. I am glad that other people are excited about this lecture, and that they put their energy toward this work. If you asked many of them, they might not care about inclusion of youth and young adults in congregational life like I do, or maybe they don't realize the amount of pain being inflicted upon oppressed people within our own denomination by the uninvited appropriation of their culture, identity, and/or rituals. My point is that everyone cannot act on every single issue, or even give attention to learning about every single issue. Sometimes I feel that our denomination is spread too thin. We are small in numbers compared to many other religious groups around the world. Are we doing too much?

When I told Adrien I was probably not going to attend the Ware lecture, he looked shocked. My reply? "That is not my thing", meaning that I am not interested enough to put my waning energy into it, at least not tonight. It's not that I don't care, but that I care about other things more.

The Open Space Technology Statements from plenary this evening show a recognized need to make more effort to incorporating children, youth, and young adults into congregational life.

Making a space and time for young adults to lead a worship that is not up against at least 15 other activities at our "Meeting of Congregations" is one place to start.
Ask the 250 or so people who attended Soulful Sundown today.... most would agree.

Crazy time of year

Where did April go? It is that time of year where it feels like I am in that ride at 6 Flags over Texas where you stand in a cylinder that spins round and round and then the bottom drops out; you are going so fast that you are spun to the wall. It's fun for a little bit, then you beging to just feel squashed flat. When I was little, I crept down the wall to have my feet back on the floor, and when the floor pushed back up to its starting position, I was squished in a different direction.

About right now, with the kids about to get out of school, Mother's Day looming, family birthdays, district events, graduations and celebrations - I feel squished and squashed in about every direction. The scheduling oasis of summer doesn't even exist anymore - with day camp, swim lessons, baseball, soccer, General Assembly, trainings, new curricula to read, and the oppressive humidity of my beloved plains - whew! I am finding myself looking forward to the kids going back to school in August so I can have a moment to work in peace and catch my breath.

I have scheduled away the entire summer and have moved up to Thanksgiving. Anybody wanna talk Christmas vacation yet?

Where do We Come From, part II

This is the march Intergenerational Spiritual Celebration

Gathering Music: All These Atoms by Greg Tamblyn

Lighting of the Chalice

Welcome – Lara

Joys and Sorrows

Hymn: #21 For the Beauty of the Earth

Children's Story: The Tree of Life by Ellen Jackson, as told by Judy

Reading: Who Will Speak for Our Ancestors? By Jim Scott

Homily: Where Do We Come From? Part 2

Good morning. Welcome and thank you for joining us this morning for our 4^th Sunday intergenerational spiritual celebration. First, I would like to thank our volunteer teachers who spend time with our children in their classrooms. I am still looking for teachers for April, and if you can share your time with these amazing children for the first, third, and fourth Sundays, please let me know. In April, we will be learning about our 7^th Principle and how to better care for our planet. As is written by Jim Scott in the poem Who Will Speak for Our Ancestors: And who will speak for our mother earth? Who will hear her breath on the wind and her pulse in the night and day, and understand her needs. We will try to listen for the pulse of mother earth and understand her needs, please join us.

We tried something new this month, and had only two age group classes for our children. Roxie and Jake led our older group of children, while Tim, Terri, and Dana worked with our younger group. I am not sure how I liked the arrangement of classes, but it might be something we stick with. Since I have you here – I may as well tell you about what next year might look like, so you can begin thinking about it. It appears that we’ll keep part of our religious education classes so that they occur during the spiritual celebration. We’ll have 2 classes as we did this month, and kids older than 6^th grade will join the spiritual celebration.

Then, during the Program at 10:45, we will have a junior high class and a high school class, and the kids in 6^th grade and under will meet for a mixed-age group lesson or activity. This idea is NOT set in stone, but is an attempt to make regular attendance more attainable. The DRE’s that I meet with monthly laugh about the perfect curriculum – the one that everybody enjoys teaching and learning, the one that doesn’t cost a fortune to buy and then use, the one that grows an RE program. It might be called the stone soup curriculum, because rather like stone soup, it requires cooperation and a little giving from everyone in the community. We could make any of the UU curricula that are available to us be our perfect curricula if we had regular attendance. Please think about the RE schedule that I have suggested, and how you think it might affect your ability to have your children participate regularly. I’m not up here to scold anyone. I am asking you what solutions can we come up with that will make it easier to include coming here regularly, and not think of it as one more chore or like running the kids to soccer or guitar lessons. How can we make church a family ritual, and not just another of the many choices of how you can spend your time each week?

This month the focus in RE was on cosmic evolution. I chose the term cosmic evolution rather than just evolution because I wanted to make sure we addressed the origin of our universe, and didn’t just think about how much of the same DNA we share with apes or monkeys or meerkats for that matter. I’m calling this homily Where do we come from part 2 since we had part one in the fall, when we looked at several different myths surrounding the origin of everything that we know. I first became interested in cosmic evolution last April when I attended the LREDA/UUMA retreat that takes place every year after the PSD Annual Meeting. Our guest speakers were Connie Barlow and Micheal O’Dowd, whose work on this topic has been featured in UUWORLD, which is often a heady, stuffy, not so interesting take on our denomination. I try my hardest to plow thru it when it arrives, and I am finding some gems that speak to me amongst all the depressing political essays that are not my cup of tea. I implore you to look at it more closely if you don’t, and the kids magazine that is stapled in the middle is usually good. And if you are not getting UUWorld at all, Carol needs to know this so you can receive it from UUA. The online version is also good and allows for you to go back and check the archives.

So Connie is a UU and Michael is a UCC minister, and they have worked to create a way of thinking about the creation of the universe that is inclusive of the beliefs of all religions. Incorporating the ideas of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, they share what they call, The Great Story with groups of all ages across the U.S. and promote acceptance of other’s beliefs, while teaching a way for people to incorporate their own. One of the most fascinating things I learned from them is a way of looking at humans on earth. If we charted the history of our universe so that the 14 billions years we think it has existed were smushed into 100 years, homo sapiens – us – would only exist in the last 24 hours of those 100 years. That is how insignificant we are in the cosmic timeline. They use nesting dolls to unwrap layered ideas about our origins. They even suggest that we are made of stardust. And use an almost rosary-like string of beads to tell the universes creation story and timeline.

Our children made their own timeline beaded necklaces from beads they made of clay and from paper. I ask them to come forward and share a little with us about their cosmic necklaces.

Kids come forward. They were charming and hilarious, as usual.

We used three books by Jennifer Morgan and distributed by Dawn Publications that are a series of the Universe telling first our cosmic story, then our earth story, and finally our evolution story. I will leave them downstairs on the coffee table for the day and I recommend that you take a moment to look at them. They are interesting, beautifully illustrated, and have amazing references in the back. From the big bang to the use of tools and fire, the universe tells her story in a way that is engaging and stirring. This is NOT just for kiddos.

Would any of our teachers like to come forward and share their thoughts on this month’s lesson?

Hopefully some will speak up. And Jake and Roxie did!!

Thank you teachers, and thank you kids for sharing your experience with everyone this morning.

Please join me in singing hymn 343, standing as you are able.

Hymn: #343 A Firemist and a Planet

Closing Thoughts: Sherry

It seems natural to me to go from learning about how we came to be on our planet and how it came to be in our galaxy to learning how we can take better care of our planet. I am looking forward to next month’s focus on our 7^th Principle. Please remember that Easter in on April 8^th and we will only be having the 10:45 Program that day, with a special service about Spring and rebirth.

We are ending a little early because I wanted to make sure that there was time for people between services to think and brainstorm ideas of how we can make our Sunday mornings flow smoothly, provide what our members and guests are seeking as often as possible, and make sure that we are not burdening our volunteers. I am fearful that we will think of our new sanctuary space as a panacea to all that ails us. It will not fix everything. It may cause us more challenges for awhile than we think we can handle. We won’t know where anything is until things gradually fall into place – and that is very challenging for some of us. I doubt it will magically make people feel less stressed by busy schedules so that they come more regularly, but I hope it really can provide sanctuary for us when we need it.

I now ask my readers to come forward to share their verses in order, so that we may continue pondering our existence and the matter that can neither be created or destroyed of which were are made.

Link to the reading

I will extinguish our chalice with some words from Henry David Thoreau, that I find especially inspiring:

"The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted...There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."

Extinguishing of the Chalice

Postlude: When Carl Sagan Died by Greg Tamblyn

What would you ask if you had just one question...

This is the Februaury Intergeneration Spiritual Celebration:

Prelude: One of Us by Joan Osborne

Opening Words: Lara

Chalice Lighting (while singing #118)

Opening Hymn: #118 This Little Light of Mine

Joy and Sorrows

Children's Story: King Solomon as remembered by a very young Sherry
Story my mom told us from the very big, very special book, that lived in the octagon coffee table. I couldn’t understand why King Solomon would threaten to do such a terrible thing. He was wise indeed. This was the story of King Solomon threatening to cut the baby in half because 2 women were fighting over it. I took it very literally and was horrified as a child.

Choir Interlude

Reading: #642 from Psalm 23

Hymn: #37 God Who Fills the Universe

"Unitarian Universalism's Christian and Jewish Roots"

Roots. When I hear the word root I think of plants almost immediately. Roots that deliver water and nutrients to a living thing so that it can help sustain life on the rest of this big spinning ball. Roots that anchor enormous trees against the fierce winds that threaten to take them down. Deep root that provide energy from deep within the core during times of drought. Shallow roots near the surface that are easily tripped over.

My dictionary told me that roots are the parts of plants that grow underground and deliver life-sustaining necessities; the parts of hair and teeth that hold them in place; or that which is the source of something. I like to think of our Unitarian Universalist living tradition as all of these things: life-sustaining, holding us in place like an anchor, and a source. Our tradition draws from many sources – our own experiences, the words and deeds of very wise people, the ideas of other religions and spiritualities, Jewish and Christian teachings that call for us to love one another as we love ourselves, and humanist teachings that ask us to use our heads as much as our hearts.

This month, our children and their teachers explored some of the stories of our Jewish and Christian roots. I would like to share with you what they learned.

Our preschool and kindergarten class was led by SH and JW. They First learned about Valentine’s Day, and it’s origins in ancient Rome. The Romans celebrated a festival on February 15^th that honored Juno, the Goddess of women and marriage and Pan the God of nature. During this celebration, animals and birds were said to have chosen their mates. Following suit, young women would put their names on slips of paper in a jar and young men would draw them out to choose sweethearts. Eventually, Roman soldiers carried this custom to England. Years later, the first Valentine card was sent in 1415 y the Duke of Orleans who was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Two martyred Christian saints are also celebrated, both having been executed for their crimes against the churches on February 14^th.
This class also celebrated their pets with a lesson about St. Francis of Assisi, who was born in 1182 in Italy. St Francis is considered to be the caregiver to the animals. Francis had been born to a wealthy family, but gave away all his belongings and even his clothing so that he could help others – people and animals. Many congregations celebrate his memory by having a blessing of the animals day in which members and friends can bring their beloved pets so that they can be included in their family and have blessings bestowed upon them. I have been asked if we will do something similar, as we did a few years ago, and I hope that we can arrange to an animal blessing day, maybe in May.
This group also learned about Easter, and the events that are said to have taken place in Jerusalem that led to the crucifixion of Jesus. The Easter that we celebrate focuses on rebirth, and Spring, but we do our children a great disservice if they do not know that most Christians believe literally that even though Jesus died on Friday, strung up on a wooden cross under a scorching sun, he miraculously came back to life on Sunday, three days later.

Our 1^st thru 3^rd grade class was taught by RW and ML. They too learned about Valentines Day and made valentine cards, a tradition made popular in English Victorian times. The following week they studied Palm Sunday, the day that begins the Christian Holy week, which commemorates the last week of Jesus’ life. One week before Easter is celebrated is Palm Sunday. It is said that this is the day Jesus went to Jerusalem, riding on a white donkey. People were really beginning to know who Jesus was – he claimed to be the son of God on earth and was to be the great leader predicted to lead the Jewish people as their king - and cleared a path for him as he neared. It was very hot so people were fanning themselves with palm leaves, which they placed on the ground in front of Jesus and the donkey so that the dust would not rise up and choke all of them as the donkeys feet fell on the dusty earth. Also celebrated in Holy Week are Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Maundy means holy and this is the day that it is believed that Jesus washed his friends dry, dusty, dirty feet after their long walk to Jerusalem and had his last meal with them, because he was executed on Friday, now celebrated as Good Friday. As a child I thought it was strange that we would call it a Good day when someone was killed, but Christians call it Good Friday because of the Good that they believe came out of the crucifixion of Jesus – their salvation.
Last week the kid in this class learned about the crucifixion of Jesus and how it is said that he came back to life – a big word we call resurrection – 3 days later on a Sunday. They learned a version of The Lord’s Prayer along with a modern UU interpretation from Reverend Barbara Marshman which we would like to share with you now.

Call and response reading of this page…….150 from Special Times

Tim and Tom read back and forth

Our 4^th thru 7^th grade class, led by CR and DH, learned about Moses and the 10 Commandments. Think for a moment about how many of those you can name……

It is said that God wrote the 10 commandments, or Decalogue, into stone tablets with a finger. Moses took that tablets to the Jewish people, but they had grown tired waiting for him to return with them and had melted their gold into an image of a cow and were praying around the cow. This angered Moses and God and they tablets were thrown to the ground and broken. After a while the people felt sad about ha they had done and God forgave them, and made a new set of stone tablets with t he commandments, or rules, written on them. The first four rules are about how people should relate to god – whom they called Yahweh in their language, and the next 6 had to do with how they would behave with each other. Much later, when Jesus was going around preaching about how Yahweh wanted people to live kindly and lovingly, he added a commandment, sometimes called the Great Commandment. HE said that that people should love Yahweh with their hearts and souls, but that they should also love their neighbors as themselves. The teachings of Jesus were the focus of their second lesson.
Some of the teachings of Jesus that they discussed were the idea of turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, not to judge others, the Golden Rule, and the Great Commandment, that Jesus believed could keep people from going to war ever again if they truly loved their god and their neighbors.
Last week the kids in this group learned about Easter and the events that surround Jesus death. Easter is full of strange concepts that can be very difficult to wrap one’s mind around. It may seem strange to us that a kind man was murdered because of his beliefs, and even stranger still that he came back to life a few days later. Yet good people are punished every day for their beliefs by governments that fear losing control when these people speak out and try to make change for the better. Things have not changed much in 2000 years.

A moment ago I asked you think about how many of the 10 Commandments you could name. They are (read list).

The kids had a good time coming up with more commandments that they would add to the list. I invite you to share with us your own additions to the 10 Commandments. Just shout them out and I will repeat them into the mic.

People offered up great rules such as “thou shalt listen and speak carefully” and “though shalt be open and honest about one’s beliefs”.

I would like to thank all of our religious education volunteers who make it possible for our children to learn about what it means to be in this community. Without you , we could not help grow our living tradition. If you are interested in teaching in March – the first three Sunday, please contact me after the service. We will be learning about evolution and I need three more teachers. Don’t worry – you’ll have materials and support and great kids and adults to work with. I would also like to thank SH for her dedication to the spiritual growth of this community thru music.

Hymn: #123 Spirit of Life

Words to Spirit of Life go like this:

Spirit of Life, come unto me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion. Blow in the wind, rise in the sea, move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice. Roots hold me close, wings set me free; Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.

Responsive Reading: #639 Love One Another

Let us love another because love is from God.

Whoever does not love God, does not know God, for God is love.

No one has ever seen God; if we love another God lives in us.

God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God abides in them.

There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear.

Those who say “I love God” and then hate their brothers and sisters are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seem.

No one has ever seen God; if we love another, God lives in us.

1 John 4


Closing Thoughts from Sherry

In our prelude music, Joan Osborne asks some interesting questions that are in tune with my Unitarian Universalist views. You see, I have a hard time believing in the vindictive, cruel Creator-God that is often portrayed in the Jewish testament who let his son die to save the people on earth, even those who didn’t believe in him, and teach them a lesson, and I can’t relate well to the God of the Christian testament either. I find more comfort in believing (not knowing, that is different than believing) that somehow we are all connected, like our 7^th Principle says, in an interconnected web of existence. We are somehow all connected, and that to me is God. For me, God is love and the spirit of life. The stories of the Hebrew and Christian bibles serve as fables for me – offering me wisdom through metaphor, and I hope that they are useful tools for you as well as we make our way on this spinning rock together.

Joan asks in her song, what if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home.

What if God had a name – would you use it?

What if God had a face – would you look into it if it meant you would have to believe?

What would you ask if you had just one question?

You may not know this about me but I have taken more chemistry than I probably really need to get thru life. I returned to KU to take undergrad classes years after I had already completed a bacherlors degree in Latin American Studies and found myself in the first semester of basic chemistry again. I remember having a talk with my professor about how chemistry is taught. Without going into the details, I remember her talking about how students are not presented with the entire story of how atoms function up front, but rather a simple metaphor is used at first to describe the placement of all the little tiny parts of atoms. Later, the metaphor changed to something else, and I asked what has happened to the old one. “well, you weren’t ready for that one back then so we kind of lie until you’re ready to understand it more fully” was sort of the answer I got. How annoying was that!? I was just supposed to forget the other way I had learned it and suddenly embrace this new metaphor with gusto. I needed time to process this new metaphor, but also the concept of how chemistry teachers thought we learned. I wanted the real story, the second one, up front. I didn’t want to replace my old idea with something else, that I was not familiar with and that also was not comforting. I also didn’t like feeling that I had been tricked!

This experience reminds me of how we grow spiritually. I grew up in a United Church of Christ community that taught us the stories of the bible, and I believed that these events all happened exactly as I was told. Those WERE the days of miracles after all and doubt was for bad people – I had gleaned that much from sitting thru Reverend Best’s sermons. As I have aged, notice I said aged and not matured, I have been able to slowly replace those stories as literal events with an understanding that they exist as stories of wisdom, rather like Aesop’s fables, but I still feel a little tricked by that church. My gut tells me that many UU’s feel tricked by their former religious communities, and they seek solace with us. It is difficult for some of us to acknowledge our past experiences with other faith communities that maybe weren’t so positive, and while we might embrace Buddhist meditation as a spiritual practice to break the karmic cycle of death and rebirth, we find ourselves scowling and growing stiff when people pray in front of us or ask us to join them in communion. My goal is that our children don’t have to relearn as they mature, but that they learn from the ground up, deepening the meaning of the concepts they learn and not having to replace them. I challenge all of us to examine our rich heritage and traditions as a denomination, a Fellowship, as families, and as individuals.

Roots hold me close. Wings set me free. Spirit of Life - come to me. Come to me.

Postlude: Superstar from Jesus Christ Superstar

Preaching to the choir

January Intergenerational Spiritual Celebration

Prelude – “World” by Five for Fighting

(Some random announcements and candle lightings came in here)

Hymn: We are a gentle angry people #170

Opening thoughts:
Good morning. I am Sherry Warren, the director of religious education for 4.5 years. Welcome to the 4^th Sunday Intergenerational Spiritual Celebration. The 4^th Sunday intergen SC offers us the chance to learn what it was that our children were doing earlier in the month. This month was a little odd, and I might, within reason, be able to stand up here and have the kids show you how they made snowballs and snowmen and somehow relate that to Unitarian Universalism, because my guess is that is what several of our kids did this month on Sunday mornings. Instead of them sharing with you what they learned, I will share with you what they were going to learn had old man winter not come a knocking so loudly this month. Thank you for coming, and allowing me the opportunity to share with you what our children do. There may have been some skepticism about the frequency of these intergenerational programs when we first discussed this monthly format, and I hope that like the recent snow and ice, that skepticism has melted away before too many people slipped on it.

If the children would come forward, Dave will share with them one of the classics of children’s literature: Enemy Pie.

(this is a hilarious story about a kid whose dad tricks him into turning his best enemy into a good friend by making enemy pie, which is a normal pie. The trick is before you can have your enemy over to eat the pie, you have to spend a day playing with the enemy. You get the idea! My reader is a very theatrical guy who reminds me of a young Mark Twain - at least what I think a young Mark Twain would be like)

The theme for the month in Religious Education was Unitarian Universalism. January seemed like a good time, what with people resolving to make changes, hopefully for the better, and touching base with our roots seemed natural to me. Some Januaries see an influx of new faces thru our doors, as we promise ourselves to get up earlier, take better care of ourselves, get involved in our communities, and take time to think about what our place is on this planet.

Our faith, denomination, religion if you can stomach that word, is based around seven principles. I can usually recite 4 of those 7 without much trouble. I go back and forth between the adult's version with complicated words and concepts and the kid's version, which boils these ideas down to something easier to digest. "To affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person" becomes “every person is important”. I like that. It makes sense to me. It makes sense to the kids too, as one day in the car I was trying to explain something to my nine-year-old son using the principles, and I was getting hung up on them. He rattled all 7 off for me quite readily, and I am pretty sure he understands the concepts behind the words. He’s not my UU guinea pig, but he shows me often that what we do here works. We try to create a safe place where our kids can come have a good experience with like-minded people of all ages, and if they learn something about Unitarian Universalism on their journey here, that is gravy.

So we are pretty sure we can provide a good experience for them here on our own property, but what about in the larger world? In the prelude, Five for Fighting (which is really just one guy – not five) sings about the chance to start over and build a new world.

Got a package full of Wishes
A Time machine, a Magic Wand
A Globe made out of Gold

No Instructions or Commandments
Laws of Gravity or
Indecisions to uphold.

What kind of world do you want?
Think Anything
Let's start at the start
Build a masterpiece
Be careful what you wish for
History starts now...

Our history is being written as we speak. Someday when I have the honor and the need to sit in one of our cushy chairs, I hope a few of these kids are the people standing here, sharing their thoughts with us, telling their stories of how Unitarian Universalism has shaped how they function in this world. Our 7 principles may have changed by then. They really aren't very old – having been written and adopted in my lifetime. Our kids will sing hymns, possibly from these very hymnals, really knowing what it means to be gentle, angry people. Hopefully they will harness that gentle anger and be activists as so many of our adults are, passionately defending the rights of those who often can’t speak for themselves. They will work with coalitions, and alliances, and associations, and they will be Unitarian Universalists while they do this work. And if they aren’t, if they become, gasp, Methodists or Episcopalians, or pagans or whatevers or nothings, they will still have the knowledge and experience of having learned that this was a community that cared for them and expected them to make change happen during their tenure on this planet.

During yesterday’s workshop on change, there were the familiar faces of members and friends of the Fellowship who were able to give of their time to learn skills that will help us thru these challenging times of rapid change. Many were the faces that are seen at nearly every workshop or task force or committee meeting that goes on around here. She’s preaching to the choir I kept thinking, about S____ B____, our workshop facilitator. She’s preaching to the choir. I kept thinking about that phrase and what I think it means. I think it means that you’re telling a story that the listeners are already familiar with, and one that they agree with as well. You’re convincing people of something that they already are convinced of, you’re being redundant which can be annoying. It makes it sound like it is a negative thing. I imagined myself as the choir, and I decided that sometimes I rather enjoy hearing things that I already agree with. I don’t have the mental stamina to be challenged to think about all the things that go on that I don’t agree with in this world every single moment. Occasionally, I just want to sit back and hear something that doesn’t get my hackles all up and make my heart race and cause me to take action. Sometimes I want to watch the news channel that only has heartwarming stories of people doing good, or the one where they report that nothing horrible happened today, people went about their lives, did their jobs, hung out with their friends or families, shared pie together, and lost enemies. This morning, you may feel like the choir. But don’t worry, you will only have to sing one more hymn today, and that won’t be for a few more minutes.

Our preschool and kindergarten class, led by Janet and Lynne , learned about Mary Collson, a young girl from Iowa who had a pet hen. Mary pretended a lot, as children do, and liked to pretend that she was a preacher. She would marry her hen, preach to her hen, she even tried to baptize her hen. Maybe that is where we get the phrase madder than a wet hen. She confided in her hen that when she grew up, she wanted to be a minister, just like her 2 female ministers who also were her school teachers. When Mary became an adult, she did become a minister, she joined the Iowa sisterhood and helped spread liberal religion across the midwest. They also learned about Thomas Starr King, who as a boy wanted to ring the church bells on Sunday morning at the church where his father served as a minister. Thomas grew up to become first a Universalist minister, then served Unitarian churches in the 1800’s. Their last lesson was going to be about our local congregation, and we had several photographs of events that had happened here at the Fellowship over the years. They would’ve talked about how long before they were born, and even a little before their parents were born, a group of people, some of whom are still with us, got together to form our Fellowship. How they worked hard to organize and how they bought this building and worked on it and sweated and hauled water here to drink and went thru the challenges of life together as a community of people who chose to spend time together under the same roof even though they didn’t always agree with what was going to happen under this roof.

Our first thru 3^rd grade class was lead by Susan, Mariyln, and Graham. You may have heard about how they imprisoned your children in a dark dingey cell so that they could learn about Dorthea Dix. After hearing William Ellery Channing preach about the dignity and worth of all people, Dorthea had the words to describe what she had always felt. She worked with Dr. Channing and his friends to improve the living conditions of people in prison for having committed crimes and people who were mentally ill. She convinced lawmakers in Massachusetts to build one of the first mental hospitals in the united states. On ice storm Sunday, they would have learned about Jesus’ teacher Hillel, who summed up Jewish law with a simple statement that reflects our second principle – justice, equity, and compassion in human relations: he said “never do to anyone else the kind of thing that is hateful to you.” I like it when things are straightforward and make sense.

On snow day Sunday they were going to learn about Susan B. Anthony. Now I know this is a generational thing, and many of you may have no idea what I am talking about… but I can’t help but sing the school house rock ditty about Susan B Anthony. "We were suffering until suffrage, not a woman could vote no matter what age, but the 19^th Amendment shut down that restrictive rule". Susan didn’t live to see the day when women could finally vote, but her work lives on every day as women continue to challenge unfair treatment in the workplace and society in general.

Marie and John worked with our 4^th – 7^th grade group in January. They learned about Joseph Priestly, an inventor who became a Unitarian minister. Not only did Priestly discover oxygen, he invented carbonated water – thank goodness! Priestly fought in Britain for freedom of religion and eventually fled to the US where he preached in Philadelphia. They also talked about William Ellery Channing, who had a terrifying church experience as a youngster that included hellfire and brimstone and the world coming to a firey end. He was so terrified that when he later became a minister, he preached about a hopeful tomorrow, not one of doom and fear. Our last lesson was going to also be about our local history, with guest speakers from our congregation sharing stories of the early days of formation and how things have changed since then.

If you would like to know more about our local history, I suggests that you see Earl, our archivist, to learn more about what and where.

I’d like to quote one of my favorite philosphers – Uncle Ben. No - Not the rice guy.
Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben. You may know Peter Parker by his work name – Spiderman. Uncle Ben, right before his death, which actually spawned the creation of Spider man as a masked hero, Uncle Ben told Peter to remember, that with great power, comes great responsibility. As people living in the United States, we have an amazing amount of power. As Unitarian Universalists in the United States, we have the vehicle with which we can wield that power. There are many avenues available to us to responsibly use our power. We are blessed to have choices. With our great power comes great responsibility.

Please join me in singing a hymn we do not yet know very well, This hymn is about the choices we may face. Please stand as you are able.

Hymn: #320 The Pen is Greater

Reading: (Staci read this) by Lindsay Bates

If prayer worked like magic – if I knew the words that would guarantee prayer's power – I know what I would pray:

Let life be always kind to our children.
Let sorrow not touch them.
Let them be free from fear.
Let them never suffer injustice,
nor the persecutions of the righteous.
Let them not know the pain of failure –
of a project, a love, a hope, or a dream.
Let life be to them gentle and joyful and kind.

If I knew the formula, that's what I'd pray.

But prayer isn't magic, and life will be hard. So I pray for our children – with some hope for this prayer:

May their knowledge of sorrow be tempered with joy.
May their fear be well-balanced by courage and strength.
May the sight of injustice spur them to just actions.
May their failures be teachers, that their spirits may grow.
May they be gentle and joyful and kind.
Then their lives will be magic, and life will be good.

So may it be.

Closing thoughts: I’d like to close with a personal story. I have a good friend who knows about my spiritual beliefs. He knows that I try to good things not because they will get me into the heaven he believes in, but because they are the right thing to do. When I gripe to him about how someone hacked me off at the grocery store, or how my husband "purposefully" didn’t do the errand I had asked him to take care of, he would remind me with a pat on the arm. "Now now, We are all god’s children." This infuriated me! How dare he pat my arm and tell me something so ridiculous and contrary to my beliefs. After hearing this many times over, which might mean that I complain too much, I began to appreciate the meaning behind his statement. We are all God’s children. Hmmmm. We are all stuck here together and it is really easier to figure out how to deal with that fact than fight it. I now find myself sharing my friend’s simple wisdom with others who are struggling with someone else’s behavior. So before we hear one of my favorite singing groups – The Sesame Street Singers, I leave you with this reminder:

What kind of world do you want?
Think Anything
Let's start at the start
Build a masterpiece
Be careful what you wish for
History starts now...

Postlude: We are all earthlings (this is a great song about differences in creatures that share Earth.)

Dam(n) Run

Tomorrow I am participating in the Lawrence Dam Run 12K. Sherry runs? Riiiiight.

No, I don't run. So why would I waste my time, money, and energy on a beautiful Saturday morning wearing myself out for nearly 8 miles? Because I work for a church. Huh?

Friends ask me why I go to a "church" (and work for it) when I do not seem to be particularly religious. I have several answers.....
1) I like being in a purposeful community - and this congregation is made of like-minded people who choose to come together as a community,
2) These friends have an idea of what it means to "be religious" and I don't meet the criteria, rather like I do not meet most people's criteria of being a runner,
3) I like to push myself to do things that stretch me beyond my comfort zone - such as sharing my personal thoughts as the education director and as a parent with the people attending the early service, or walking further than I would ever really have to given that I live too far from town to walk to the store.

And for the first time in my working life, I am in a job and I am not looking for a different job.
So wish me luck in the run. I'll be with the other walkers, purposefully plodding along not to win, but to say we finished.

Go KU!

It is hard not to get caught up in the excitement of March Madness when you live near Lawrence, Kansas. Even though I seldom can hold still long enough to watch a KU basketball game, I am excited about the buzz in the air that settles over Lawrence every March. It is harder to focus on work this time of year. I want to start digging in the garden, I want to salute the hardworking men and women who make our St. Patrick's Day parade an incredible success that showers needed funding on local charities, and I want to watch basketball.

While trying to decide what to call my new blog, I was thinking about what traits I would want assocaited with me; What words embody my feelings about my life. I started humming the Kansas state song, "Home on the Range", one of the few state songs known by people from outside of the state that claimed it. I tell people I stink of Kansas, that I have it all over me. This is the kind of thing you can't wash off. It is part of who you are, and Kansas is a huge part of who I am, and how I function on this planet. The history of Kansas includes sordid tales of anti-slavery "free staters" and pro-slavery folks who lived just 10 miles down the road. Burnings of Lawrence, midnight raids to Missouri, the memory of which still feeds that particular college sports border war, and Lawrence rising from the ashes (our city seal has a phoenix rising from flames) to be rebuilt and remain the capital of liberalism in Kansas. Strong and brave pioneering men and women who brought so little with them to a prairie so vast. And a beautiful people - the people of the South wind - whose land they unwittingly took. Unitarian Univeralism was here through it all.

Fighting for the rights of African Americans while we helped trounce the culture of the American Indians who were already here. I know we meant well, and we helped keep Kansas a free state as it entered the union, but it just reminds me that we can't always see the big picture of our time on this planet. The first ever fortune I got from a fortune cookie was "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

In case you don't know my state's song, here it is:

Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope play.
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.
Home. Home on the range. Where the deer and the antelope play.
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.

Learn more here: click for cool info on the state song

I hope your skies are not cloudy all day, and that you seldom hear a discouraging word. And that you find some nugget of usefulness in the time you spend here with me.

Be well.