Celebrate!
Wow, summer seems to be a break time for holidays! Usually we have lots to choose from, but this month we only have one. Better make it a good one.
Click on the link below to find out about the pagan (earth-centered) holiday called Lammas, or Lughnasad (loó-na-sah), which honors the time of harvest with the story of a Sacrificial King who dies and is reborn, giving his life to the crops as they are born and die.
Lammas/Lughnasad (pagan)
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We Honor… |
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| Michael Servetus, a man whose ideas contributed to what would become the Unitarian religion. Like the Sun King honored at Lammas, Michael Servetus (Miguel Serveto in his native Spain), sacrificed his life. The story goes something like this: Servetus was born hundreds of years ago, about 1510. At the age of 14 he went to work for a scholarly Franciscan (Catholic) monk. In working for this religious man Servetus studied the Bible carefully, and came to the conclusion that the Christian doctrine of the trinity—the belief that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are of the same essence, the same thing, but different—was not in the Bible and didn't make sense. This was at the time when the Protestant Christians were first trying to change many things about the Catholic Christian church. Servetus joined the Protestants, and did his best to convince them to accept his arguments that Jesus and God were separate and not equal, publishing a book called On the Errors of the Trinity. Well, to make a long story short, he got in big trouble for his ideas. He moved to a different country and took a different name, and worked for a number of years editing books and studying medicine. In fact, it was Michael Servetus who discovered that our lungs, not our hearts, put oxygen into our blood. But Servetus just couldn't keep himself from trying to put forward his ideas, continuing to publish under another name. Eventually, when he foolishly attended a church service led by John Calvin, a leader of the Protestant movement, Servetus was caught. He was tried for heresy, without even being allowed a lawyer, and was condemned to death by burning at the stake. He died, but enough people were horrified by the terrible way he was treated that it created a wave of religious tolerance in response. And we get the name Unitarian from the unity of God (as opposed to the trinity) that Servetus wrote about. |
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Nurturing Your Spirit
There are lots of ways that people put their prayers and good wishes out into the world. One way is the Tibetan prayer flag. If you go to the country of Tibet (near China) you will see that Tibetan Buddhists hang colorful pieces of cloth with pictures and words on them around their homes and in public places. They believe that every time one of these pieces of cloth flaps in the wind, it sends the prayers and good wishes contained in the words and pictures out into the world.
You can create your own prayer flags by asking a grown-up for plain-colored cloth that you can cut into squares (blue, white, red, green or yellow are traditional colors). Then use markers or fabric paint to write or draw your prayers or good wishes. Use a needle (get grown-up help if necessary) to put a thread through a corner. Then you can tie your prayer flag(s) to a tree or a fence or anywhere that they can flap in the breeze and send your prayers out into the world.
Or, if you want, you can do an on-line prayer flag here, or read more about Tibetan prayer flags. |
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Practicing the Principles
Our second Unitarian Universalist principle is "Justice, equity and compassion in human relationships." In other words, we believe that we should treat all people fairly and kindly.
One of the ways to make sure we treat people fairly and kindly is to make sure that we honor the ways that we are different as well as the ways that we are the same. Here's a session from Between Sundays (an RE section of the CLF website) for younger kids that celebrates the different (and same) ways we are.
And here's a session for older kids on children's participation in the Civil Rights movement which worked to bring equality and fairness for African-Americans, also from Between Sundays. |
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Act!
There are many great organizations in the world created to see that people are treated fairly and kindly. One of these important organizations is called Amnesty International. Amnesty International works around the world to protect human rights and help people who are being treated unfairly, often because of their political beliefs. Many people, even today, are imprisoned and even tortured without having committed any crime. Amnesty International is able to protect human rights because the organization helps people around the world call attention to these abuses, demanding that people be treated fairly. You can add your name to some of these petitions for fair treatment and be part of the solution. Or check out Amnesty USA for other ways that youth can be involved. Oh, and by the way, the Executive Director of Amnesty USA, the Rev. William Schulz, is a Unitarian Universalist minister, who used to be the president of our association!
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Ask CLiF
Ask CLiF any questions you have about religion or living
a good life.
Some kids at school say Unitarian Universalism isn't a real religion. I think it is, but sometimes I have a hard time explaining why. Can you help? Thanks.
I can sure try. What I say to people who tell me that Unitarian Universalism isn't a real religion (and people do say that—not just to you) is: Some people think that religion is about giving you a set of answers to religious questions, like What is God? What is my place in the world? What happens when we die? How do I live a good life? Unitarian Universalists believe that religion is about trying to find answers to these religious questions, but we think the questions are too important to just rely on what someone else says. We believe that each person needs to struggle with these questions themself, listening to the opinions of other people, and to the wisdom of the world's religions. But each of us is responsible, in the end, for making our own decisions about what we think is true and right. It's not that Unitarian Universalists take religion less seriously than the folks who believe they have all the answers—it's that we take our religion seriously enough to really engage with the questions.
Who is Mary and why do you hear more about Jesus than her?
Mary was Jesus' mother. Some Christians believe that, unlike most people, she was born "without sin," inherently good in a different way than other folks. Since Jesus is at the center of the Christian religion, the question might be why we hear as much about his mom as we do. Some Christians, especially Catholics, address their prayers to her, rather than God or Jesus. The answer is pretty interesting—before Christianity came along there were many religions which centered on a mother goddess. When the Christians wanted to convert these people to their religion they needed a way to bring in these folks who worshipped the goddess. So they kind of made a compromise, and talked about Mary, the mother of Jesus, which for them means the mother of God. So in various ways Mary took the place of the earlier goddesses and carried on the long tradition of a female image of the divine.
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