May 2003
Each morning, we must hold out the
chalice of our being to receive, to carry, and to give back.
-Dag Hammerskjold
Quest Archives
The Edge of the Moon
by Marjorie Rebmann, minister, The Unitarian Church of Montpelier,
Vermont
Last year my son John sold his beloved telescope. He wanted to raise part of a down payment on a new home for his wife, his daughter and himself. The awful irony of this was that John sold his telescope just as the comet Hyakutaki came by. And now Hale-Bopp was on its way.
It bothered me. I don't mean that it has been just in the back of my mind-it bothered me greatly at the center of my heart. My grief over my son's lost telescope lingered for over a year. He adjusted better to its loss than I did, although he seemed less interested in things, less engaging, less humorous and fun-loving somehow. I had some vague and unformed thoughts about buying him another telescope, but knowing how expensive they are, I quietly put them out of my mind.
But a couple of things happened recently that were catalysts for a sea change in me.
Last March, a parishioner named Paula bought a grand piano for our church. Paula and I like to trade shopping stories. Buying things is like wood that warms you twice; you have the thing-and then you get to talk about it. She told me on the phone that she was giving the church the beautiful grand piano as a gift in memory of her parents. It was the mother of all shopping trips, I told her. I was not even in her league. I could never compete.
And then something seemed to be happening inside me . . . as if an iceberg were shifting and melting a little.
The next day I picked up a phone book and started calling around. "It wouldn't
hurt," I said to myself, "to at least price some telescopes, even if
I definitely weren't going to buy one. I might need one someday. Who
knows?" The one I knew John always wanted was incredibly expensive,
and almost impossible to get without a two-month wait. I said to myself,
"I must have caught this fever from Paula." But I remembered the utter
joy in her voice when she told me about giving the piano to the Church.
Another shift, a little more melting. Then I came to my senses.
It's strange, isn't it, how event builds upon event, and, in an instant, we are not the same people we were even half an hour before.
A few weeks later, I drove home after work. My husband, Rick, was behind me in his car. In front of me was an ambulance. It looked like it was going to our house, but I wasn't afraid. Rick was right behind me.
When I got to the crest of the hill in front of our farmhouse, sure enough, I found several fire trucks, many cars and people, and another ambulance. I could see an automobile in our driveway mangled pretty badly. Another was on the road nearby it with its engine torn to shreds and its windshield smashed. Firemen manipulated the Jaws of Life in the twenty-degrees-below-zero wind, trying to pry a man loose from the driver's side. The driver of the other car had already been taken to the hospital, I guessed. My heart was pounding.
Rick and I parked our cars on the street and walked way across our snowy field, gasping in the freezing wind, to get to our back door and into our warm kitchen. For almost an hour, I sat at a window watching the terrible drama in our driveway.
I had a lot of time to think. I thought about the obvious, that life is short and precarious at best. I thought that we never know what's coming around the bend. I prayed for the man in the car and for the other driver.
With the clarity and insight which an overload of adrenaline brings, I realized that astronomy was my son John's religion. Through the eyes of a telescope, without saying he did so, he carried out his own secret sacred search for wisdom and understanding. Without going away from his own back yard, he had traveled farther than anyone I know: through time, light, space, eternity, and back again to thoughts. (Firemen circled the car in my driveway; some of them leaned on the Jaws of Life. I could see their frustrated and concerned faces.)
How could I have been so stupid never to have known this? A telescope was chalice, ritual, incense, candle. It was a means and method of worship for my son, who for years has irritated his wife by sitting in the yard half the night with his eye to the scope and a beer in his hand. Wendell Johnson, in his book of prayers God's Trombones, put it so well: "Lord, God, this morning," he wrote, "put our eyes to the telescope of eternity and let us look upon the paper walls of time."
The ambulance backed up closer to the car. They had broken through the steel. The man was being lifted out.
My hand moved toward the phone as if I were doing some sort of automatic writing. I dialed one of the companies I had located. My voice ordered the most expensive telescope I could not afford. And I borrowed my long-suffering husband's credit card. That's right, I bought this instrument to study eternity on time! But that's another sermon. I even paid extra to get it there in two days rather than two months. Life is short. The ambulance sped away. I was filled with love for the man
inside.
John called two nights later and cried when he thanked me. He asked me if I were going to die or something. "No," I said, "It's just that you haven't been able to practice your religion for a long time. No one should live like that." He understood what I meant. "But there are two strings attached," I warned. One was that he had to share his knowledge of the stars with his daughter, Sabrina. "I always do," he said. "We read about the stars every night. She counts the stars in her sleep." That was when he told me that his interest in astronomy began the night I took him to see the film 2001: A Space Odyssey when he was eleven years old. So I demanded that the theme song of that film, which is Strauss's Thus Spake Zarathustra, be playing when I took my first look through this sacred scope. He agreed to both terms.
Am I a good example of giving? Probably not. It took a dramatic convergence of events to make this iceberg shift. It was impulsive. My budget looks like it was hit by a meteorite. It ate up our vacation money for the next two and a half years. It took away some of my economic freedom and a lot of discretionary income. Every time I pass a dress shop, I feel empty.
When I finally woke up and tried to analyze why I did such a thing, however, I found some reasons. This whole chain of events began when Paula called to tell me that she had bought the Church a fine piano. Such generosity opens us up and makes us want to be generous, too. Maybe it's just the spirit of
competition.
But, after buying this chalice of light on time-this holy vessel of revelation, wonder and awe-I now understand an important truth: there are some things which can never be purchased but must be paid for. Like church life, a week on Star Island, the joy of raising kids, of nurturing our talents, of satisfying our intellectual curiosity-all those things which put our eyes to the telescope of eternity and let us look upon the paper walls of time. These kinds of gifts can't be purchased, but must be paid for.
There's something else. Looking through my window at the crumpled car in my driveway, not knowing whether the driver was alive or dead, I thought of some words by the psychologist Abraham Maslow, written after he had suffered a heart attack. He said, "One very important aspect of the post mortem life is that everything gets precious, gets piercingly important. You get stabbed by things, by flowers and babies and by beautiful things-just the very act of living, of walking and breathing and eating and having friends and chatting. One gets a much intensified sense of miracles."
Did I ever regret my impulsive purchase? Never. It was the best deal I could ever negotiate. It stopped me from frittering away my money. I bought a glimpse of eternity for my son, John, and a portion of the knowable universe and even a little beyond that for myself and my family. For the neighborhood kids who play and laugh beneath a field of stars, I bought a closer look at heaven itself, and a chance to learn that they can push the horizons back for themselves farther and even farther than that. It taught me to honor my son's approach to the ineffable, the numinous.
The night I went to look through the telescope for the first time, it was cloudy. At about nine o'clock a break in the clouds appeared around the moon. John was so excited that he couldn't find his 2001 tape, but I looked through the lens anyway, at a portion of the full moon. It hit my eye, as they say, like a big pizza pie. I saw craters like emptied lakes rimmed in moon dust. Clouds, nearer to us, floated in front of the moon like diaphanous veils. The edge of the moon is unbelievably jagged, like the intricate pattern that collected fragments of magnets make-a distant fractal of holiness. Words came to mind from the tenth century Japanese poet, Izumi Shikibu: "Watching the moon / at dawn, / solitary, mid sky, / I knew myself completely, / no part left out."
Both of the drivers in the accident are healing now, thank the stars above. I have learned that there are things that can't be purchased but must be paid for. The iceberg melts a little more and a little more, and I hope that I have become a more giving person than I was before this experience. My son John's in his heavens and all's right with the world.
Quest May 2003 Contents
Lest We Forget
by Kendyl
Gibbons, minister, First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, Minnesota
You never know when a spiritual experience may strike. I was listening to the Minnesota Chorale as they sang several pieces from the African-American spirituals tradition, including one called "Death is gonna lay his cold, icy hand on me." The imagery in the song is captivating, and as they performed it with great intensity and power, I found myself caught up in its message. One of these days, death is gonna lay his cold, icy hand on me. . . . Not on the writer of the song, for whom that event probably long ago occurred; not on the soloist or the choir, now voicing that claim, but on me. ME! This, by the way, is a claim that no one can argue with. Whatever you may think about what does or does not follow, the fact remains that death is gonna lay his cold, icy hand on each and every one of us, and we know it-but we don't know it. Most of the time we acknowledge the logical truth of this reality, and then we turn away from it to go on about our ordinary lives as if we had all the time in the world, as if we were functionally immortal. Every now and then, though, something catches our attention and reminds us, as this song grabbed me, and shook my everyday complacency. "Oh!" I thought, startled, "Oh, you mean me!" And as the insistent music poured through me, my shocked recognition shifted to a somewhat petulant reaction of "All right! I know that death is gonna lay his cold, icy hand on me-what do you want from me?"
That "you" has several possible antecedents, one of which is the choir, the most proximate source of the insistence to which I was responding. It may also have referred to a dialogue within myself-what does the me that recognizes my inevitable death want from the me that behaves as if it were largely oblivious to this knowledge? Or, in the more imaginative, poetic interpretation, it might have been Death, personified in the song as a figure with cold, icy hands, to whom I addressed my impatient question. You might suppose that the choir was in no position to give me an answer, to the extent that the question was addressed to them, but strangely, in a way they did. "Turn your fear and your finitude into beauty," they said. "Be one in a community of joint endeavor; make harmony in the world." That was one answer.
The answer from my reflective self to my more ordinary consciousness was what it pretty much always is whenever they enter into dialogue: "Wake up! Grow up! Be present in greater awareness, with more intention. Knowing that you are going to die, live! Pay attention." But it was from the imagined personification of Death that the most interesting answer came.
"What do you want from me?" I demanded, and Death replied, "You are doing it already. Fill your days with what you love best, with work that matters, with ideas that excite you, with people who give you joy. Use up your life in making meaning, in beauty and love and praise. The hand of death is dreadful only to the extent that you have wasted life." I do not know whether I will remember this remarkable moment when the time finally comes for the cold, icy hand of death to reach out to me, but in the meantime I know better what to do to make myself ready.
The same chorus posed a second question about our relationship with death. The Chorale helped to present a magnificent rendition of Verdi's "Requiem," a fitting performance for the beginning of Memorial Day weekend. I was struck not only by the evocative music, but also by the alternation of two images in the text. "Requiem aeternam dona eis,"-grant them eternal rest-is one repeated prayer. "Et lux perpetua luceat eis,"-and let perpetual light shine upon them-is the other. There is something paradoxical in this urgent request. To be in perpetual light doesn't actually sound very restful to me. Yet each of these images, I suspect, strikes a deeply atavistic chord in the human psyche. Verdi's text has much to do with the terror of the judgment that might follow death, so that both rest and light are contrasted with the wrath, destruction and ashes accompanying that judgment.
As I thought about the composer, creating this extraordinary beauty in honor of two of his own beloved and admired heroes, the composer Rossini and the writer Alessandro Manzoni, it seemed to me that he was not so much affirming an orthodox vision of the afterlife-the program notes observe that "Verdi's feelings [about religion] were at best ambivalent"-but rather setting forth the fundamental question: What do the living owe to the dead? Every tribute that we offer to those who have been our teachers and guides, those who have loved us and made it possible for us to become who we are, falls short of paying the debt that we owe them. And this brings me back to the original premise of Memorial Day: What can we now do for those who gave themselves in what they, at least, believed was the defense of freedom, and the land and people they loved?
How are we to manage our own terror of death, and what do the living owe to the dead? I am inclined to believe that the answer is the same to both questions, and it is this: that we live fully, and do not forget. What death wants from us, and what the dead deserve from us, is that we should create lives of courage and character, lives profound and resonant and abundant-and that we should remember. We designate Memorial Day in the service of that second purpose-lest we forget. What is it then, that we are summoned to remember? Let me suggest five truths.
The first and most specific thing to be remembered on Memorial Day is that war is always too great a sacrifice. The quarrels of kings and the stratagems of the rich, the ambitions of generals and the resentments of the ignorant-all these are follies that are not worth one drop of youthful blood or one parent's tear. War is always a failure of goodwill, good sense, and self-control; it is not heroic or glamorous, but ugly and wasteful and, in the end, pointless. If we could only know this all the time-enough of us, in every land-we would cease this tragic wickedness, and that would be the last, best tribute we could pay to those who never came to the fullness of their own lives, for the sake of guarding ours.
The second thing that Memorial Day calls us not to forget is the dead themselves. When the soaring chorus calls for "perpetual light to shine upon them," I think of the light of memory, for to be held sacred in loving and honoring hearts is to live on in the only way that we know for sure is possible. To be human is to live in a world that consists not just of those around us in the moment, but also that is created of the wisdom and folly of those who came before, and the needs of those who will come after. We live and move and have our being in the midst of a great cloud of witnesses, physical ancestors and spiritual forebears, as well as those whose sacrifices have made our lives possible. To fail to acknowledge this continuity, and our debt of memory to the dead, is to live in a shallow, rootless and fleeting present, unconnected to the dignity of our human heritage. The older we are, the richer and more intricately woven our lives, the more we are likely to operate in a community of the living and the dead, whose imperishable memory forms the foundation of our own being. Memorial Day urges us to call these presences explicitly to mind, lest we forget.
The third reality to which this day summons us is the remembrance of our own mortality. Death is gonna lay his cold, icy hand on me, and on you, and on each one of us. Whatever good we would do, whatever love we would share, whatever beauty we would create, let us be about it, for our time by any measure is short. Boredom, say the sages, is the prerogative of the immortal; we who confront the day when we shall perish have no time to waste. To remember our own death should not make us frantic, for there is no amount of production or accomplishment by which we can evade it. It should, however, make us impatient with our own half-heartedness, unwilling to spend the precious moments in pettiness of mind or spirit. "My hand is dreadful," Death told me in our imagined encounter, "only to the extent that you have wasted life." To remember our dead is to remember our death, and to be turned again to the fullness of our living.
Yet the oblivion of our own death may be easier to contemplate than the inevitability that everything and everyone we love also must die. This is the fourth truth that Memorial Day would have us ponder. All that we take for granted, and must take for granted if we are to function in the everyday world, all our networks of kinship and friendship, of love and common endeavor, are as perishable as we are ourselves. Every encounter has the potential to have been the last; every moment holds the possibility of loss. The poet Mary Oliver writes that "To live in this world, / you must be able to do three things: / to love what is mortal; / to hold it against your bones knowing / your own life depends on it; / and, when the time comes to let it go, / to let it go." To love what is mortal, and hold it against our bones, knowing that the time will come to let it go, is the act of courage that makes us human. To refuse the possibility of loss is to refuse life itself. It is only by letting mortal things matter that we measure the depths of meaning and being. Yet when we remember how fragile is each strand in the web of our connections, we also become aware of how precious they are. Let us cherish them now as we will wish to have done when they are gone.
Finally, Memorial Day invites us to remember and affirm that even in the face of all the folly, finitude and loss that confront us, life is good. If we are wise, we would not trade this tapestry of love and hope and memory for some unchanging state in which no pain could touch us. Our capacity for memory and for loss, as well as our own finitude, make life infinitely rich, so long as we pause, once in while, to remember. Requiem aeternam-eternal rest, but not absence from our hearts or our thoughts-et lux perpetua-and the lasting light of memory, shine upon those who have gone before and bequeathed to us the world.
Death is gonna lay his cold, icy hand on me-no doubt, for that hand falls upon each one of us, soon or late. That realization wakes us with a shudder every time, but it is a saving knowledge, and this is the point of such moments as Memorial Day. For that awareness gives our lives their poignant urgency, and bids us fill our days with the work and love, with the beauty and memory that matter most. Lest we forget how much we owe. Lest we forget how brief we are. Lest we forget.
Quest May 2003 Contents
As They Deserve
to Be Honored
by Katie Lee Crane, minister, First Parish of Sudbury, Massachusetts
May means Mother's Day. I'm going to trust Hallmark and daddies and six year-olds and grown-up kids who are mommies themselves to honor the mothers among us as they deserve to be honored-with brass bands, flags flying, breakfast in bed (and kitchens cleaned up afterwards). I wish for those mothers a memorable day full of love and laughter.
Sadly, I don't trust Hallmark to remember the feelings of the women who don't fit Mother's Day in quite the same wonderful way. There are no cards on the rack for the women who gave up children for adoption, never to see them again. No cards for the women who faced the painful and difficult choice to end a pregnancy. No cards for women who desperately want to conceive and bear children and cannot. No cards for women who have lost children of any age or for the women whose children have abandoned them in anger. There is little consolation for them on a day so full of "motherhood and apple pie."
I always feel a little awkward on Mother's Day. I suspect there are those among you who do too. For one thing, I have two mothers to remember: my adoptive mother (the one I knew and lost) and my birth mother (the one I lost and never knew). For another, there is no special day for women like me, women who love children and who chose, carefully and conscientiously, not to have them. Even now that I have stepchildren in my life, it's not my day. There are no cards on the rack to honor the special "grown-up friends" that women like me try to be to our nieces and nephews, to our friends' children, to the children and youth in our neighborhoods, our churches, our schools. It's not that we want a medal for doing something we love: it's just awkward. Sometimes not having children is a source of grief. Sometimes it's a choice, and sometimes it's a mixture of both.
Every year when Mother's Day rolls around I wish there were just a little less hype about traditional motherhood, and a little more acknowledgment of not-so-traditional "mothers" in our midst-people who come in all colors, shapes, sizes, genders and ages. And more than anything, I wish there were a lot more empathy for those who suffer because mothers are being honored and they don't fit in in quite the same wonderful way.
Let us honor them all on this day. Women who conceived. Women who bore. Women who reared. Women who lost. Women who let go. Women who made different choices. And people of any gender who mother. Happy day. May each of you know your worth to all of us.
Quest May 2003 Contents
Charging the
Activist Battery at General Assembly
by Eliza Blanchard, ministerial
intern, Church of the Larger Fellowship-an interview with Tom Luce, member, Church of the Larger Fellowship, Barre, Vermont
CLFer Tom Luce finds the UUA General Assembly, "a time to charge up my activist battery for another year." When asked how he got involved in General Assembly, he recalls, "One year after joining my local UU congregation I was sent as a delegate to my first GA in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2001. Now I was being sent as a voting delegate in what seemed to me to be an honest attempt at representative democracy within a religious institution. I had never experienced anything like this in my other religious affiliations.
"My focus having been on Faith In Action, I was totally caught up in the debates on the Statement of Conscience (SOC) on Responsible Consumption, and on the Study/Action Issue involving the war on drugs. To me this was the way a community of religious liberals should proceed in defining issues of conscience, debating the finer points, and then issuing a public commitment to social justice."
Last year, Tom represented the CLF as a delegate to the General Assembly in Quebec, Canada. "Working on the SOC on the War on Drugs and the Study/Action Issue on Economic Globalization were highlights. I attended annual meetings of the UU Service Committee and the UUs for a Just Economic Community. I also appreciated the balanced view on peace provided by the workshop on Palestine and Israel."
Raised Roman Catholic, he became an ordained Catholic priest over thirty years ago. During the liberal Vatican Council he spoke in favor of priests marrying. He then got married, fully expecting to be hired back as a priest. However, the opposite happened, and he left the Catholic church.
An inveterate seeker, "I joined the Quakers because they try to keep to the bare minimum of church organization and champion peace and social justice. Then my commitment led me to rejoin my birth parish to promote Catholic peace and justice beliefs."
His quest for justice led him "to testify in favor of the law promoting gay marriage and also revealed that my sexual orientation is homosexual, although I've been happily married for 32 years, and have three children. Barred from further participation in my birth parish, I began attending the local UU church and subsequently joined." Soon he was elected Faith in Action trustee of his church, and he produced a weekly social justice bulletin.
He recalls a disappointing break with his new church: "After the 9/11 crisis, while promoting open dialogue about the 'war on terrorism,' I discovered that my concept of liberal religion went too far for some." As a result, he resigned as FIA trustee and eventually also resigned his membership in the church.
Tom has found, in his current shift to CLF membership, a new home and a way to remain UU without compromising his principles. For those CLFers who'd like to try GA, he offers this advice: "Get some rest and then hit the assembly floor and live every moment right up to the culminating dance!"
Quest May 2003 Contents
 From
Your Minister
by Jane Rzepka, minister, Church of the Larger Fellowship
Take Joy
Most Unitarian Universalist ministers, truth be told, enjoy officiating at memorial services. In spite of the sadness of those affected, the personal pain, and the burden of all the arrangements, the pleasure of getting acquainted with the deceased, even in death, makes it all
worthwhile.
For me the best part is listening to the family and friends describe those things that made the loved one happy. "She was 91 years old and blind, but when the lilacs bloomed, the scent had her all but dancing. You could count on it." "What he loved was bowling: the shirts, the beer, the guys on the team, the sounds in the alley. Tuesdays were always the best day." "She was just a little girl, but the joy she took in that cat!" "As a volunteer, he faithfully tended the furnace at the church for 23 years though he really couldn't spare the time. It made him happy to be of use that way."
I am in favor of happiness. Of "guilty pleasures." Of taking joy. Indulgence. Anytime, really, but especially during difficult and disturbing times, when birdsong seems faint, humor farfetched, the perfect sonata drowned out by the news, and you wonder if peace will ever be possible. Chocolate springs to mind. Maybe it's new love or ukulele lessons or a frivolous lunch involving mussels diablo. Gratuitous delight. The kind of thing where, if someone were to take your photograph, we'd all say, "Now that's a picture of him at his best. Such a thorough-going smile-makes me happy just to look at him."
Unitarian Universalists are theologically descended from, among others, the Puritans, if you go back far enough. And Puritans were not notably pro-pleasure. For them,
religion was all about sin. The historic Congregational Library here in Boston houses dozens of 17th and 18th century books and sermons like "Disease and Remedy of Sin," "Children of the Devil," "An Essay on Native Depravity," "Hurdles to Heaven," and "Sins of the Saints." I have personally read "Testimony Against Profane Customs: Namely, Drinking, Dicing, Cards, Christmas Keeping, and New Years Gifts," and also 186 pages cataloging all of the sins mentioned in the Bible.
Ministers are supposed to hold your feet to the fire-we have a long and proud tradition of that, after all. And sometimes I try to. But hey! It's the month of May, and while I live in New England, USA, the land
of the Puritans, I also live near the spot where the Maypole preceded their crackdown. Whatever our location or background, I suspect we all have a bit of revelry and dancing in our blood. So I say, take joy. After all, it might just be a sin to miss out.
Quest May 2003 Contents
REsources
for Living
by Dan Harper, interim director of religious education, Church of the Larger Fellowship
The great end in religious instruction is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own;. . . to awaken the soul, to excite and cherish spiritual life.
- William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), Unitarian minister
As Channing suggests, the goal of Unitarian Universalist religious education is not to shape or mold our children's religious development according to some pre-set plan. Rather, we aim to introduce children to our religious heritage, cultivate strong moral character, encourage critical thinking and spiritual awareness, and help to nurture the unfolding of each child's unique religious being.
Most of the Church of the Larger Fellowship's families are isolated religious liberals, which means they have no local UU church or fellowship they can rely on for a comprehensive religious education program or for help in finding the most appropriate RE resources. Some CLF families are also active in a local UU congregation or group, but are looking for ways to supplement the religious education their local congregation can offer. I have developed a new curriculum plan for CLF families who are doing "home-schooled Sunday school." Designed to offer both a comprehensive program and a choice of resources, the curriculum plan covers approximately ages 4 through 13. The CLF curriculum plan culminates in a Coming of Age program for ages 13-14, a UU rite of passage that is parallel to bar/bat mitzvah or confirmation.
The CLF curriculum plan is designed to be used in small groups of 1 to 4 children of mixed ages. Of course, the plan can also be adapted for use by larger UU groups and congregations. Many sessions are built around stories, because good stories are a great way to reach children in mixed-age groups. A dozen or so sessions add up to a quarter, with each quarter devoted to a broad area of UU religious
education:
Oct.-Dec. - Unitarian Universalist identity
Jan.-March - Our Jewish and
Christian heritage
April-June - Wisdom from the world's religions
July-Sept. - Doing social justice
in the world as Unitarian
Universalists
Each year's plan represents a gradual movement outward, beginning with who we are (Unitarian Universalist identity), moving on to the tradition we have grown from (our Jewish and Christian heritage), then out to the wider religious world (world religions), and ending with ways we can act on our values in the world (social action and social justice). Succeeding years revisit the four topic areas using new stories.
I hear from CLF families about how busy many of you are. At the same time, I also hear from many CLF families that one of the main reasons you joined the CLF was to be able to provide religious education for your children. I hope you'll try the new curriculum plan. Its relaxed, low-key approach won't exhaust you, and it will help you provide solid religious education opportunities for your children. Whether you use the curriculum in its entirety, or whether you pick and choose based on the needs of your family or the interests of your kids, we trust that this will be a valuable resource to "excite and cherish spiritual life."
Visit the curriculum plan on the CLF web site at http://www.clfuu.org/recurriculum/.
Supplementary material is also available in "New Connections," CLF's
on-line publication for families (see http://www.clfuu.org/connections/).
For paper copies of either of these resources, please call the CLF office
at (617) 948-6166.
About world religions:
The topic area for April, May, and June in the new CLF curriculum plan is world religions. Here are some books from the CLF loan library that would be excellent supplements to the sessions in the curriculum plan:
For young people aged approximately 8 to 13:
What I Believe: Kids Talk about Faith by Debbie and Tom Birdseye, with photos by Robert Crum. Six kids, all twelve or thirteen years old, discuss their religious traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Native American spirituality. A great way to introduce world religions from a kid's-eye view.
For ages 6 and up:
Sacred Myths: Stories of World Religions retold by Marilyn McFarlane. Five stories each from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Native American traditions, with another five stories loosely related to neo-pagan traditions. Older children can read this book on their own, and parents can share this book with younger children.
For adults and older teens:
American Muslims: The New Generation by Asma Gull Hasan. Hasan began writing this book while in college to tell the story of today's American Muslims. Now in law school, Hasan gives insight into the liberal stances of many American Muslims. Easy to read and thought-provoking.
Quest May 2003 Contents
Announcements
There's still time to send a photo and/or a picture postcard for the CLF Member Wall at General Assembly in Boston in June.
Did You Know that there will be a CLF Gathering at the Mountain in
Highlands, North Carolina on Labor Day Weekend 2003. A weekend of worship,
crafts, fun together. Go to www.clfuu.org
for more information.
Quest May 2003 Contents
Last updated June 12, 2005
|
