Celebrate!
This July we have bit on an international theme because, well, because we do. Why not?
Click on the links below to find out more about these holidays from around the world and how you might celebrate them in your family.
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We Honor… |
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| (in honor of Canada Day) Margaret Laurence, much-loved Canadian author, who was one of the great novelists of the twentieth century. Her stories feature strong women and their struggles for self-understanding and acceptance. She was known for her outspoken support of peace, women's rights, and other progressive causes.
Margaret (know as Peggy) was born and grew up in a prairie town in the province of Manitoba, but as an adult she lived for several years in Africa, and her first books are set there. Later, she and her family moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where they joined the Unitarian church. In 1961 Margaret wrote her lifelong friend Adele Wiseman, "this year (don't faint) I'm teaching Sunday School in the Unitarian Church." For her children and other Sunday School students she came up with a retelling of the birth of Jesus, in which Joseph and Mary don't particularly care about whether their coming child is a boy or a girl. The church used the story long after Laurence left. Much later, when she published her tale, The Christmas Birthday Story, 1980, she sent a copy to the Vancouver Unitarian Church with a letter crediting them for having "first inspired her" to write the story. Some Unitarian Universalist churches continue to use this story as part of their Christmas celebrations.
When Laurence moved from Vancouver she left the Unitarian church, but she never changed her questioning and searching attitude toward religious matters, and her commitment to working for justice. Many of her novels have characters who are actively searching to understand God and religion in their own ways, and after she published her last novel in 1974 she continued to write and speak as a peace activist.
Laurence did a great deal to encourage younger Canadian writers, and many people recognize her importance not only as a great writer herself, but also as the start of a real growth of Canadian authors.
Learn more about Margaret Laurence. |
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Nurturing Your Spirit
For many people, writing is the perfect way to center down and listen for what their spirit might have to say. Some people use a journal to process their feelings when they're angry or sad, or to focus on things they are grateful for.
One great way of getting in touch with your spirit and expressing the way your life and the rest of the world come together is writing poetry. Poems try to condense ideas or feelings or pictures of the world into a few words – kind of like the way orange juice in a can is condensed into really intense orange-ness. There's no such thing as right or wrong with poems, just your own special voice telling how you see the world. So why not give it a try?
Find some ideas about writing poems and some different kinds of poems to try. |
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Practicing the Principles
Our sixth UU principle is:
- The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.
In other words, UUs believe that people all around the world are one human family, and that everyone deserves to be treated with respect, and to have the chance at what everyone wants: safety; the freedom to learn, grow and choose; and to be treated fairly.
One fun way to expand your sense of how we are all one human family is to learn about the ways that people in other countries are different, as well as how we are the same. All people laugh, play, eat, create things of beauty and tell stories. But the ways we do it are as different as the many shapes and colors of flowers. Here is a place where you can find out all kinds of interesting stuff about how people around the world express their different cultures. |
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Act!
Do you have cousins who live in a different country than you? Maybe you do and don't know it. If you think of Unitarian Universalism as a family, then you could say that, like many families, some of us have emigrated – moved from one country to another. The first Unitarians and Universalists in the U.S. and Canada came from England and France. And the ideas that led to those Unitarians and Universalists came, in a complicated path, across Europe from an area that is now a part of the country of Romania , called Transylvania . So, wherever you live, you have Unitarian cousins in Transylvania.
Unitarians in Transylvania today face many challenges – and no, I don't mean vampires! (Really, there are no vampires, and there never were.) But the Transylvanians are what is called an ethnic minority – they are basically Hungarians who live in Romania. And for many years Romania had a very cruel government which was especially unfair to the Hungarians in the country. But the Transylvanians have managed to keep their bodies and spirits alive in part because of their proud tradition, going back hundred of years, of an open-minded faith. (Did you know that the first-ever government to declare religious freedom was that of Unitarian King John Sigismund in 1568?)
Many UU churches in America are now partnered with Transylvanian Unitarian churches, both so we can learn about each other and build friendships and so that the wealthier congregations can help out the poorer ones in Transylvania. There is an organization, called Project Harvest Hope, which grew out of this partnership between Unitarian churches. Project Harvest Hope helps Unitarians in Transylvania build businesses such as a dairy farm and a bakery so that people can have jobs in the villages and not have to move away from their homes and churches to find work in the big cities.
You can learn more about Transylvania and Project Harvest Hope at their website. You can also become a supporter of this great organization. Maybe you could have your own small business to help support theirs: make cookies and have a bake sale to support their bakery, or sell home-grown veggies to support their farms. Or have a garage sale or work out some other creative idea, and then contribute the money to Project Harvest Hope (which you can do online, which the help of a grown-up). After all, if you're going to remember your connections to people around the world, why not start with your cousins?! |
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