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Did You Know... the CLF has worship services and RE materials for small UU societies? Contact bmurray@uua.org for more info about Church on Loan.
CLF Covenant Groups Interested in covenanting together in conversation with other CLF members as you explore topics of spiritual interest? Consider joining one of our online covenant groups. We are also looking for experienced leaders who may be interested in leading new groups. An online training course for potential covenant group facilitators is now available. If you are interested in the possibility of joining or leading a covenant group, please contact our minister for lifespan learning, Lynn Ungar, at lungar@clfuu.org.
Please Note In order to save printing and postage costs, the CLF office will generate printed 2006 giving statements only for individual gifts of $250 or higher. If you would like to request a giving statement, contact the office at ddudley@clfuu.org or 617-948-6160.
BY MARK STRINGER, MINISTER, FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF DES MOINES, IOWA
Several years ago, when we lived in Chicago, my wife was busy studying for a degree in landscape design. I'm grateful for the time she spent at the Morton Arboretum, for whatever I know about plants and gardens today has been a by-product of her learning. A few of the concepts and ideas were so striking to me that I continue to reflect on their deeper meaning. I remember Susan explaining to me the reason she had chosen a particular plant for the backyard of our two-flat apartment: "This one will have especially good winter interest," she said. I thought she was kidding. "Why would a plant be interested in the winter?" I joked. She explained that "winter interest" was how horticulturists describe the appealing wintertime features of plant material. Common examples of winter interest might include a particularly attractive or distinctive pattern or texture of bark, an intricate lacework of branches, berries that remain through the winter to provide little dashes of color in an otherwise bleak landscape—any feature that sets the plant apart from other dormant plants, and that helps create an aesthetic unlike what may be typically noticed during the warmer months of the year, when foliage or other growing things may cover the feature up or pull attention away from it.
For people who are drawn to the natural world, who find in the outdoors a place of worship and admiration in every season, the idea of "winter interest" may be obvious. However, no matter how in touch I thought I was with the earth, when I learned about "winter interest," it was as if my eyes had been suddenly refocused. I began to regard the landscape differently, searching for details amidst the white and gray of winter that I had previously overlooked, or maybe taken for granted. It's not that I had never seen these details before—I just don't think I had properly appreciated them. Tree bark, in particular, became fascinating to me. Like wrinkly elephant skin or tubes of intricate sculpture, the tree trunks caught my eye—and my fingers, too. Now, during my winter walks, I would frequently stop to run my hands along the torsos of the few trees in my neighborhood, searching in the cracks and crevices of their bark for the wisdom that I believed must come from simply surviving winter season upon winter season. Their bark, I imagined, was one way they told their survival tale, and now, more than ever before, I was ready to take in what they had to teach.
My developing curiosity about "winter interest" went beyond a new-found appreciation for plants, however. By the time I started interrogating trees, I was deep into my theological school studies, a time when I spent most of my days groping for meaning. At the heart of most of my school work were questions rooted, you could say, in their own winter interest:
What does it mean to suffer, to experience disappointment, heartbreak, loss, and still go on living?
Upon what can we rely when life gets messy and painful, as it most certainly will from time to time?
What does it mean to be alive in the midst of death?
Of course, asking these questions is not merely a result of preparing for the ministry. Each of us, from the moment we were first exposed to loss, and with each loss that follows, has had or will have ample reason to ask similar questions.
How do we make it through the tough times? What might be the deeper meaning in the losses we endure?
Asking these questions, in fact, is one of the distinguishing characteristics of being human. Plants don't have to grapple with the paradox of being alive while knowing that they will one day not be. To be human, it seems, is to yearn for answers to questions that are, by nature, simply without reliable answers.
Why do loved ones die? How do we go on in their absence?
The desire, if not the necessity, to wrestle with these questions is similar, I think, to the search for winter interest in a bleak January landscape. The search may seem unrewarding, if not futile. Indeed, the suggestion that there may be beauty or redemption to be found in our losses is only as convincing as our perspective allows. The collapse of an important relationship or the dismantling of our life due to abrupt career changes, unfortunate or unhealthy choices, or just plain bad luck can leave us unsure of where we have been and where we may be headed.
Life becomes blanketed in a white blur of meaninglessness.
How could this have happened? Why do we even bother to go on? How can we face the future when everything can change in an instant?
Our most profound losses tend to arrive as cold snaps that threaten to extinguish whatever hearth-light we had been enjoying. In the mid-winter of our losses, then, we are left to stumble around in search of the fruit still on the barren branches, the signs of life that remain in what feels like a world of death.
Joan Didion's book The Year of Magical Thinking is a true gift of winter interest to any of us who have struggled with the grief that accompanies a significant loss, particularly the death of a loved one. She spends a good portion of the book considering the question of self-pity: the tendency we have, when confronted with death, to dwell on it, to obsess about it, to wallow in what we have lost. She writes of how we have been encouraged to view this self-pity as something to wipe away, to harden ourselves against, to get over already. But writing from her own soul's winter freeze, she concludes that those who are grieving rightfully have an "urgent need to feel sorry for themselves," a need to indulge in some winter interest, one might say—a need that cannot and should not be ignored or taken away. In the poignancy of grief, it may be all they have.
She draws upon the reflections of C.S. Lewis, who grappled with the death of his wife:
I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an arrow to the string; then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead thought to H. I set out on one of them. But now there's an impassable frontier post across it. So many roads once; now so many cul de sacs.
In times of loss, these roadblocks of memory and habit leave us little recourse other than self-pity. Didion describes this as "the vortex effect," the inescapable pattern of remembrance that directs nearly every thought back to the loss, back to our aloneness.
I, too, have grappled with the question of self-pity, though I described it somewhat differently at the time. Reflecting upon the aftermath of my mother's sudden death, which occurred when I was in college, I noted a tendency I had to see life as if it were a movie—a movie in which I had become the star. Everything that happened was about me and everyone else in my life had become supporting players, acting out scenes related to my family's grief. I immersed myself in the pain I felt and left little room for much else. A few years after her death I had become ashamed of this period of my life, wondering why I had been so self-obsessed. Talking with a wise friend helped me give myself a break. I told him, "I'm embarrassed that I couldn't see beyond myself—that I had to be the focus, that I had to be the star." He nodded and then wondered aloud, "Don't you think we all may need to be the star sometimes?"
Don't you think we all may need to be the star sometimes?
I've thought a lot about his words since then, and about the need each of us may have to be the star of our own grief narratives—the all-too-human need that legitimizes our lives in the face of our losses.
The question of how we get through the tough times remains, but one answer seems as clear as any: maybe we do need to focus on the absence of life, to find a way to be enraptured by our life's garden even when it is blanketed with death—even when the closest thing to color may be a few scattered berries or a coating of snow. Maybe life does ask us to take some interest in the bleak landscape. Maybe the absence of color is not only a memorial to the color that was, but also an encouragement to the color yet to be found.
Last Sunday, I arrived home from church to a house touched by the beginnings of a winter we did not expect, an absence in the making. Our beloved cat Esther, our companion and friend for nearly 14 years, was struggling to stay alive. Within the next hour we had taken her to the emergency room and determined that it was time to end her suffering—a painful and compassionate decision that was much harder to stomach than I could have anticipated.
After we offered our goodbyes and made our way back out into the gloomy winter afternoon, I was struck by how piercing the loss was. We had said goodbye to an elderly cat. But we also had said goodbye to a piece of ourselves.
The world was different without Esther and it will continue to be. A painful reality to face, but also a lesson embedded in having to say goodbye to any loved one—the lesson that life marches on.
It is a lesson that teaches us to love despite the knowledge that our time together is only temporary.
To find interest in the occasional winter of our souls, as well as the summer, for each informs the other.
And to appreciate each moment that we still have—moments to love, to lose, and to love once again.
BY EDWARD FROST, MINISTER EMERITUS, UU CONGREGATION OF ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Some may remember a British television series from years ago, The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, written by Douglas Adams. It developed something of a cult following in the U.S. The premise of the series was that the earth was actually a mammoth computer designed on the planet Magrathea to discover "The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything."
The answer to this question had already been found by a computer called Deep Thought. Deep Thought, as I understand it, had been developed by an infinitely-advanced race of mice to discover the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. The answer—42—took seven and a half million years to calculate and was, to say the least, a disappointment. Douglas Adams—who took great pride in being what he called a "radical atheist"—delighted in making the attempt to find ultimate meaning seem absurd and futile.
No more absurd, perhaps, than many, if not most, of our more earth-bound attempts to understand what it's all about. Since our furry or fur-wearing ancestors stood staring uncomprehending at the night sky, or the dead cave-mate, or the fire racing through the forest, we have felt it necessary—as members of the human race and as individuals—to ruminate about what our lives, what the universe, indeed, what everything might mean.
Not everyone, of course. More than one sophomore in the midst of a philosophy lecture has groaned "who cares" into his armpit. For some skeptics, if all that ruminating about meaning were to come to an answer like "42," what does it matter?
According to some, "42" is as good an answer as any arrived at by the philosophers and theologians, and every bit as useful to live by. Others, their meaning attached to money, and losing that, have gone out of their office windows. Some, even with fortune and fame, have gone despairingly to their deaths leaving notes behind that say, "I can't go on. Life has no meaning." Does life have meaning? And, if it doesn't, what shall we do? And if we think life has meaning, does it matter what we think that meaning is?
It does matter. It matters because we live our daily lives and conduct our personal affairs and the affairs of the world on the basis of what we believe the meaning is. Another term for all that might be "Faith."
What is of tremendous importance is whether we believe that whatever meaning we live by comes from the outside in or from the inside out. Through the eons and for the billions of adherents of traditional western religion, Meaning comes from the outside in. Or, if you will, from the top down. In the traditional Western religious view, life, the universe—everything—has meaning because it was all created by a Supreme Being. Early on, of course, it was thought that everything was created by a lot of gods, but that thought got refined into the idea that one God is responsible for everything. One God created all that is and, more importantly, created all that is for a purpose.
The meaning of life, then, for those who believe, rests with God. To have meaning is to know the will of God. When I was a boy Methodist minister several lifetimes ago, I would delight in singing with my tiny country congregation, "O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the works Thy hands have wrought, I see the storm, I hear the rolling thunder. Then sings my soul, my God, how great Thou art!"
The Meaning of Life is in the mind of God. Our function, so the faithful may believe, is to attempt to find out what that meaning is, to live by whatever we can find out—by reading sacred texts, listening to the experts—priests and whatnot—and having occasional revelatory experiences. What often goes horribly wrong with this understanding of What It All Means is that those who live by it necessarily hold firmly to the conviction that the meaning revealed to them is not merely the meaning for them, but is, in fact, The Meaning by which all humankind must live.
Star Trek fans may have noticed that Captain Kirk and all the crew of the Starship Enterprise refer to all the other inhabitants of the universe as "aliens." Alien to what? Alien to us, of course. What is not-us is alien. What life means is reflected in our icons, our flags, songs, literature, sitcoms, gleaming sedans, rifles in racks inside the pick-up.
What we have to understand, if we are going to live in the world with others, is that we do not contend with reason, or with mere opinion, thought or idea. We contend with what others hold as the Meaning of Life; the Way It Is; The Way It Is Meant to Be. It is no more conceivable to those ensconced within their Meaning of Life that the values, principles, ideas and notions that are contained within their meaning could be anything less than absolute and universal than it is for us to conceive of the possibility that our sense of what is good, just, true and beautiful is twisted out of a maniacal nightmare.
At the other end of the spectrum of speculation, what if there is no Meaning, no Grand Divine Purpose behind it all? What if there is no Supreme Creator God? That certainly is a possibility (there are, at least, those of us who grant it a possibility), a possibility entertained throughout the history of thought by philosophers, poets, artists—even by theologians. The renowned Roman Catholic theologian, Hans Küng, devotes over six hundred pages of his book "Does God Exist?" to struggling with the question. Of course, in the last chapter or so he answers "yes"—but he really gets you going for quite awhile there.
Can there be Meaning without a Maker?
There was nothing—well, there was something, a little speck of something (I haven't heard much about where that came from), then there was a Big Bang and over a journey of billions and billions of years, here we are. We just are. And, for many, none of it—not Life, not the Universe, not Anything—none of it means anything.
Those of us who have turned—sadly or angrily, happily or fearfully—away from the Meaning embodied in traditional religions must live with the possibility of Meaninglessness. God or "42" was the answer given us and we have declared the answer wrong.
If we came here by evolution and not by design, then we are here, not by the grace of God or any gods, but by sheer dumb luck. And if that be the case, we have nothing more on our side to guarantee survival than our wit and will to win the race against the microbe and against our own tendency toward self destruction.
It happens that I do put my personal faith in a Meaning Maker—God, if you will, though God far removed in nature from that ancient meddler carried so clumsily, and so unnecessarily, into contemporary life. The working hypothesis I share with certain "process" theologians and philosophers is that at the center of all being there is that which is variously called God, Divine Creativity, or simply Creativity. It is this inherent Creativity that wills all things to the greatest fulfillment possible for them. One theologian says that Creativity "lures" all things to their greatest fulfillment. This is not a God that creates all things in finished form, but rather a creative force that intends that all things should be becoming—forever in the process of becoming.
For me this means that nothing is ordained. Nothing is as it must be. A child does not die because she should. The nation is not victorious because of its faith. There is no divine plan—except that all things move toward their greatest fulfillment. That's the essential difference between creationism and evolution. God the Creator fixes all things in their places. "God's in his heaven and all's right with the world," was an aphorism made up by someone whose world was all right.
Creationists abhor the idea of evolution because, for them, it removes the Creator, and in removing the Creator removes the Meaning by which they believe their lives and the world can make sense. But evolution is not without meaning. Charles Darwin—who married into the Unitarian Wedgewood family—was not an ungodly man by any means. But, for Darwin, all existence was in process and God was in the process. For Darwin, God was in the possibilities inherent in every form of life. What Darwin discovered about God—the discovery that changed what life means—was that God does not guarantee every form of life. Instead, the ruling principle is freedom. In freedom is risk. And in freedom is possibility. Who knows, the dinosaur could have lumbered on toward the development of a huge brain and opposable thumbs and we might have just come up with the idea of hitting each other with a stick when the meteor wiped us out. Darwin's God would have allowed such an outcome, so we ought not to think too highly of ourselves. The dinosaur's chances were as good as ours and the cockroach's chances are better.
But here we are. Here we are in freedom and in possibility. Not born in sin or predestined to be saved. Not imprisoned in the mind of a Divine Meaning-Maker but ourselves the makers of the meanings of our lives. For me, if God is that which intends all things to fulfillment, then I choose to regard my life's meaning as a commitment to live and act in the world in a way which supports all people and the earth in reaching toward fulfillment.
The poet said our "reach should exceed our grasp, else what's a heaven for?" For me, God is in the reach. A while ago, in the supermarket, I came across a woman seated in a motorized shopping cart, staring at an upper shelf. I asked her if I could help reach something for her. And as I walked away, I thought, "Yes. That's where it is. That's the Meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything for me." It's living for the reach—not just reaching for something on a shelf, of course, but in one person reaching toward another, in the reach of all beings toward fulfillment. God is in the reach.
We may formulate and articulate meaning in different ways. What is important is that we gather the courage to shrug off meanings that are not our own—that have come from the outside, not the inside. Meaning-making is crafting a way to live in the world. I am talking about arriving at our declarations of why we are going to be who we are going to be, and of why we do what we do. What we struggle to declare is the meaning by which we can live—live with reach, live toward fulfillment for ourselves and others, live, not in fear of life, but in love of the life whose meaning we continually create.
Are you starting to fall into January doldrums? Check out winter/early spring courses at www.clfuu.org/learn:
This course will provide you with tools for writing an ethical will (different from the common, legal will that disposes of property)—a personal document that will preserve for your family the legacy of your unique life and learnings. Colleen McDonald, the facilitator for this course, is a UU professional religious educator. This course starts January 8th and runs four weeks.
This course will provide you with tools for writing an ethical will (different from the common, legal will that disposes of property)—a personal document that will preserve for your family the legacy of your unique life and learnings.
Colleen McDonald, the facilitator for this course, is a UU professional religious educator. This course starts January 8th and runs four weeks.
In this course, you will learn a simple tool to look at your own life in terms of eight dimensions of balance. Then, after becoming clearer about your personal strengths and values, you will create at least one plan to move toward your vision of balanced living. Facilitator for this course is the Rev. Dr. Maureen Killoran, a UU minister and professional life coach. This course starts January 15th and runs four weeks.
In this course, you will learn a simple tool to look at your own life in terms of eight dimensions of balance. Then, after becoming clearer about your personal strengths and values, you will create at least one plan to move toward your vision of balanced living.
Facilitator for this course is the Rev. Dr. Maureen Killoran, a UU minister and professional life coach. This course starts January 15th and runs four weeks.
Using Bowen Family Systems Theory, this course will introduce the basic concepts and applications of Systems Theory. This work will offer ways to empower each family member to be less anxious, more self-determining, and more loving toward others. The Rev. Kenneth Gordon Hurto, district executive for the UUA Florida District, is widely recognized as an expert in systems theory as applied to family and church systems. The Healthy Family—A Systems Approach provides an introduction to system theory. All participants in Section I will use their own family of origin and a "geno-gram," as the basic learning resource for understanding family systems. The Healthy Family starts Feb. 5th and runs 4 weeks The Healthy Church —A Systems Approach applies family theory to church and organizational leadership. All participants will apply the theory to an extended system of relationships (church or other work setting) of which they are a member and develop a working model for their own leadership. The Healthy Church—starts March 5th and runs 4 weeks. The first class, or significant experience with Family Systems Theory, is a prerequisite for the second class.
Using Bowen Family Systems Theory, this course will introduce the basic concepts and applications of Systems Theory. This work will offer ways to empower each family member to be less anxious, more self-determining, and more loving toward others.
The Rev. Kenneth Gordon Hurto, district executive for the UUA Florida District, is widely recognized as an expert in systems theory as applied to family and church systems.
The Healthy Family—A Systems Approach provides an introduction to system theory. All participants in Section I will use their own family of origin and a "geno-gram," as the basic learning resource for understanding family systems.
The Healthy Family starts Feb. 5th and runs 4 weeks
The Healthy Church —A Systems Approach applies family theory to church and organizational leadership. All participants will apply the theory to an extended system of relationships (church or other work setting) of which they are a member and develop a working model for their own leadership.
The Healthy Church—starts March 5th and runs 4 weeks. The first class, or significant experience with Family Systems Theory, is a prerequisite for the second class.
BY LYNN CRAWFORD, CLF MEMBER, MYSTIC, CONNECTICUT
Written for CLF's online course "This I Believe."
As a new mother, at what I believed to be the mature age of thirty, I was cursed with fear. I had been raised to believe that doom and gloom were lurking around every corner. Several tragic deaths of loved ones over the years proved that to be true, or so I thought. I had not been raised to feel confident in myself, but had worked up to that point to develop a healthy self-esteem. I thought I was making progress until I brought my infant son home.
The day we left the hospital, as we got into the elevator, they cut the band that would alert the hospital if someone other than the parent was taking the child. It was similar to cutting the umbilical cord, because we would be on our own, no nurse to check in with, no doctor's reassurances, just two people with no special training. We were on our own, and I was afraid!
The fears mounted with each day. The most obvious fear was that James would die in his sleep. What would I do? I feared he wasn't getting enough food from breast feeding, but I feared bottle feeding more. What if the bottles weren't sterilized properly or he had a reaction to the formula? The more I feared, the more paralyzed I became.
The first month, Jim was working from home and my aunt came to stay. I seemed to be able to keep the fears somewhat at bay—or at least I wasn't alone, so it wouldn't be solely my fault if something happened. However, when James was a month old, my aunt returned home and Jim needed to get back to the office. I panicked! I cried, confident that I could not do this. Jim gently pointed to James and told me to "Look down." There in my arms lay James; eyes wide open with a trembling lip. Something inside me snapped. This being was a part of me, feeling my fear and I was creating a fear inside of him. Was this the kind of Mom I wanted to be?
I wiped my tears and bent down to kiss James's pink skin that was a bit ruddy from infant acne, yet still soft against my lips. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and inhaled the sweet smell of breast milk on his breath and the clean fragrance of the Ivory Snow that lingered on his yellow flannel blanket. I hugged him, feeling calm from all the love wrapped up in that soft bundle of a child.
When I opened my eyes I realized James's breathing had calmed. In that one brief moment I chose to love him more than I feared him. I had the power to soothe him with my love or cause him anxiety that stemmed from my fear. I realized that by loving him I was also being loved in the most unconditional way possible. I believe that fear stands in the way of love, but I believe that love is more powerful than fear.
BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
It was all about promises. In the old days of American colonial religion, if you wanted to establish a church, you gathered a group of people to covenant together, and you promised to walk together in fellowship.
Mind you, the details of the covenants varied. One group pledged to "renounce the Devil, the wicked World, and the sinful Flesh, with all the Remnants of antichristian Pollution, wherein sometimes we have walked, and all our former evil Ways." That was their deal. Another congregation promised to walk in "love, humility, wisdom, peaceableness, meekness, inoffensiveness, mercy, charity, spiritual helpfulness, watchfulness, chastity, justice, truth, self-denial, one to another and to further the spiritual good one of another, by example, counsel, admonition, comfort, and oversight…." One congregation even covenanted not to gripe!
Today's Unitarian Universalism is descended from this system. Metaphorically, we walk together—we join congregations with those who express their sympathy with the spirit of that church. And that's it. No creed, no doctrine—simply a modern version of the covenantal system they found in their reading of the Hebrew scriptures.
The Church of the Larger Fellowship is a Unitarian Universalist congregation that (metaphorically) walks together, too. Of course, one could quibble, noting perhaps that 3000 religious liberals scattered the world over who couldn't pick one another out of a crowd can scarcely "walk together"! At least not in the 17th Century sense.
When the CLF was established in the 1940s, our "walking together" was a figure of speech that required a good deal of imagination. Dependent on the mails, if we walked together at all, the walking was measured and the participants pretty nearly silent. That style continues to work just fine for many CLF members. But today there are more options for those able to access the Internet, and many CLFers click on computers together, forming communities as their fingers do the "walking" on keyboards.
The covenant to walk together recognizes people as promise-makers. In this century, our ability to participate readily in our covenantal theology can be more real. Resources and quick communication increase our ability to commit ourselves to a spiritual life, social justice work, a life of love and care. CLF members in Taiwan can join with others in Southern California and Saskatoon and take a meditation class, write to prisoners, offer personal support during tough times on a shared interest list, general electronic list, forum, or covenant group. For many of us, there are an increasing number of new ways of living the ethical and religious life we mean to live.
As we enter into 2007, our members can find Unitarian Universalist community if they want to. That's another part of walking together. Many don't want to, of course—thus the particular appeal of the Church of the Larger Fellowship for some—but others can't imagine congregational life without an interesting batch of people to share it with. Over time, we've found that many of our members get to know each other pretty well online. We tend each other, squabble, come to care deeply, misunderstand, exhibit incredible patience, hear the aha!s, urge each other on, laugh out loud, and all the rest. We even gripe. Historically, members of covenanting congregations move from separateness to community. For the many CLFers who enjoy that way of being religious, the option is there.
There's one more aspect of covenantal theology, beyond the promise-making and community, that I'd like to mention. It's one of my favorites. People choose to become members of congregations. The commitment is voluntary. Nobody said you have to join. You won't burn in Hell if you don't read Quest. You weren't baptized into CLF membership, no statute compels you to support us, no church authority grabs you with guilt, and few of you are pressured by relatives to maintain your membership and keep this congregation strong. The Church of the Larger Fellowship exists because we want it to.
One theologian notes that "the fundamental nerve of covenant is affection, not command or law." I like the softness of that statement, the sentimentality, because that's how I feel. I am touched by the image of CLF members covenanted together, strangers mostly, walking together in the service of religion.
BY LYNN UNGAR, MINISTER FOR LIFESPAN LEARNING, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
Usually this column is geared toward kids, but we're making an exception this month. The new year seems like a good time to review all the great resources that the CLF has at www.clfuu.org for religious education, both for children and adults. So, if you're a kid and you want to keep reading, great! You might find something cool online you didn't know about. Or if you just want to hand this over to a parent or other grownup and let them do the investigating, that's OK too.
Let's start with things we offer that are geared toward doing RE with kids. For instance, if you'd like to have complete lesson plans designed for UU families or for small, mixed-aged groups of children, already prepared and ready to go, week by week, what you want is CLiF Notes: A Curriculum for Families and Small Groups. This year we are focusing on the six sources of our living tradition that are given in the UU principles and purposes. If you are not a CLF member, you can subscribe to RE Express for $129/year, and have these lesson plans delivered to your email inbox each month, along with this column and the month's issue of KidTalk (see below). If you are a CLF member, you can subscribe to RE Express for free, or you can get CLiF Notes delivered to you via our CLF-RE email list. In addition to being a means of distributing the curriculum, CLF-RE is also a discussion forum for folks who are interested in religious education for children.
If you're not looking for a complete curriculum, but want a fun way to explore UUism and religions around the world with your kid(s), the place to look might be KidTalk. Designed for kids to explore by themselves or with adults (or for adults to mine for gems to use with kids), each month's KidTalk includes links to information on and ways to celebrate various holidays from around the world which occur during that month. Each month also features a profile of someone from Unitarian and/or Universalist history, a spiritual practice, a social justice project and/or a way to explore one of the UU principles or sources. In addition, KidTalk offers "Ask CLiF," a place for kids to ask any questions they might have about religious/spiritual/ethical matters.
Or, if you'd just like to find some cool stuff that you may be able to use, the Resources section of the Religious Education menu on www.clfuu.org has some great "printables," including posters with the UU principles and a whole UU alphabet coloring book. That section also provides a music section with the tunes of some songs that work well with children.
Want more? Did you know that we have an RE Index of all of the CLF's online resources that you can search by topic, age, and more? Very handy if you're planning a lesson on a certain topic, or if you're just wondering if the CLF has anything great to offer for Valentine's Day (we do—as well as some holidays you may not even have heard of).
So what can you search for in the Index? Well, for starters, there's a wealth of great lesson material in Between Sundays, which is searchable within itself. Don't let the name fool you. If you do RE on Sundays, you may very well want to use the great material offered here. You can see general listings by age or topic, or even search on a particular word.
The Index also includes material from KidTalk and from uu&me!, the CLF's magazine for kids ages 6-10. Published as a print magazine for several years, uu&me! is now included as an insert in the UU World magazine. But you can find all of their stories, activities and more online for easy access.
But wait, there's more! The RE Index also includes material from RE Connections. Published quarterly (or thereabouts) for a number of years, RE Connections was designed as a way to share ideas and CLF resources with parents. Although no longer produced, all past issues of RE Connections are archived online.
Of course, religious education is not just for children. The CLF is all about learning and growth for adults as well. Would you like to chat about issues that are raised in Quest? Or maybe there are other topics that draw your interest that you wish you could mull over with company. What you want is our Quest Forums and Discussion Forums. Once you go through the quick and free registration process at our Online Learning Center, you'll be able to sign up and join the email-based conversation with UUs around the world.
While you're at the Online Learning Center, have a look at our broad offering of Online Courses. Taught by a variety of experts, primarily UU ministers and laypeople, these classes offer the chance, for a modest fee, to take e-mail based courses on topics from social activism to meditation.
What else? Well, gee, there are email lists called Shared Interest Groups, which allow people who share a common life experience or theology to have sustained conversation and Covenant Groups, which provide more structured conversation and reflection in an intimate group. There's a Coming of Age program for youth and a Curriculum Outline for using UU print curriculum at home. And, of course, there's the CLF Library, full of enough great books and curricula to keep you going for years.
As the commercial says, "It's all inside." Just hop on over to www.clfuu.org and click on the Religious Education menu (or the Community menu for Shared Interest Groups and Covenant Groups) and start exploring.
You just might have wonderful surprises in store.
I once actually greeted the new year in Times Square. It was the beginning of 1954, when I was sixteen. We stayed at the Hotel Taft. The orchestra of Vincent Lopez was playing in the Taft ballroom, and I danced with my mother. Times Square was cold, crowded, brightly lit, noisy, and exciting. People spoke to strangers and wished them well. At midnight I was at the center of the world and at the center of time. I remember feeling that the discontinuity at the turn of the year was real, that time stopped at midnight and then started again, that the new year with its new number was really new.
Now my parents are gone, Vincent Lopez is gone, and Times Square looks different from the way it looked fifty years ago. I have danced and sung and hugged and kissed through many a New Year's Eve. I have made new beginnings, good ones, although I think none of them happened on a January 1st.
I wish for you in the new year as many new beginnings as you need, and no more than you can handle. May they come not with a particular turn of the calendar page or striking of the clock, but just when you need them.
In this year, may you remember old acquaintances, and may peace break out, even if only a little bit, in the world, and in your life.
By Robert Walsh, minister emeritus, First Parish Church UU, Duxbury, Massachusetts. From Noisy Stones, the 1992 UUA Meditation Manual, published by Skinner House and available from the CLF Library (www.clfuu.org/library)
Last updated January 14, 2007
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