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