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Did You Know... ...that we have an online course starting this month on what it means to be a liberal? See www.clfuu.org/learn for information on this and other classes.
BY TIM KUTZMARK, MINISTER, UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH, READING, MASSACHUSETTS
The railroad bridge seemed to stretch out for a mile over the ravine. It linked the sharp rocky edge of where we stood to some far away, unknown ending. If you breathed deep you could still smell tar, steamy and sticky, that had long ago bubbled up on the bridge’s beams, heated by the late summer sun.
The paint had faded over the last few years, but the warning was still there: “No trespassing.” We laughed, and threw rocks at the other sign, the one proclaiming: “Do not cross.”
No one but us kids ever came out there during the day. At night, the teenagers would come. We would find their beer cans, cigarette butts, even, once, a pair of Fruit of the Loom underwear, waist size 28 inches. But by day, that edge of that bridge was ours. It was a great place to hide—from grown ups, and from the world that wanted us to be everything we were not. It was a great place to dream of everything we might become.
Shoes hung around our necks, with t-shirts tucked into the waist of our low slung shorts, we would walk a little way out onto that bridge, just out over the deep creek that ran below. The bigger, braver boys would walk forward along one metal rail, balancing and reveling in the heat that seared dirty toes, pain proving they were more than just boys pretending to be men. The smaller of us would cling to the sides of the bridge, holding on as we edged out over the water, cautiously reaching legs from railroad tie to railroad tie.
We always stopped a quarter of the way out. Screaming, and yelling, “Train!” we would turn and rush back to the dirt and rocks, laughing and rolling together till it was time to return to home. Home, that sometimes harder place, where dreams could drain away.
No one had yet crossed that railroad bridge, no one that we knew. None of us yet needed to know what waited at the far end. We’d heard stories. Ten years earlier the Nulandy twins got caught mid-bridge by the train. Jimmy jumped at the last minute, landing hard on the rocks. Kieran took the train full force on his back as he tried to outrun it. One bridge, two boys, two deaths. We always stopped a quarter of the way out and turned back.
But that day was different. Something had changed. That afternoon, we decided to cross over. We would claim the other side.
We walked out to where we always stopped. This time, no one yelled, “Train!” and retreated. In the shadows cast by the sun, edges were blurring and yesterday seemed done. And then, almost as one, we stepped beyond. We let go of something, something that was once strangely us, but now was no more.
We were in between. We were off balance. We were unknown to our own selves. As if on cue, the breeze picked up, whipping through the wooden beams. It tousled Terry’s hair. He smiled. Another gust, cooler, caused me to stop. Christian hollered and tossed his t-shirt high above our heads, and for a moment it rode the wind out beyond the bridge. I shut my eyes, threw open my arms, wide, and let that same wind rush across my skin. Then, with eyes open, we stepped forward.
And that’s how it can happen, how a day that seems so ordinary can somehow become a day of new beginning. Those moments do not come easily. We have to consciously claim them, create them. We have to dare them into being. In the end, we have to choose to cross over.
Each one of us stands on the edge of such a moment. No matter who we are, no matter how young or how old, no matter what our life circumstance. On this moment of the New Year we each stand before our own bridge, a bridge that somehow, some way, beckons. For some of us, that bridge is frightening or unwanted. For others of us, that bridge is exhilarating and anticipated. For still others of us, it is a combination of both.
What bridge calls us forward? Is it a newborn child with new rhythms to learn, a troubled teenager we are trying to keep safe, an empty nest with no kids at all? What bridge calls us forward: a spiritual search leading us to a new church, this church? What bridge calls us forward: a choice we might need to make, a career change, entering recovery, getting married in a month, an unexpected divorce, balancing work and relationship? What bridge calls us forward: a failure we need to move beyond, a joy we need to fully embody, watching our adult children and wishing they would make the right decisions? What bridge calls us forward: growing older, retirement, our first grandchild, our second grandchild, great-grandparenthood, scaling down and moving into a smaller place, losing someone, loneliness? What bridge calls us forward: the failing health of a parent or our spouse, our own illness, death, finding life again? What bridge calls us forward? What must we do to step into that place where nothing is sure, but we are closer to where life is calling us?
It was a late summer day. We were a trio of excited boys. There was a bridge and a beckoning. There was a safe crossing and a tomorrow claimed. May it ever be so.
BY KELLY J. CROCKER, MINISTER OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION, FIRST UNITARIAN SOCIETY OF MADISON, WISCONSIN
I’ve been at my parents’ home in Pennsylvania for the past week and a half celebrating the holidays. One of the things my mom wanted me to do while visiting was to go through all of the boxes of school paperwork that she has saved since I was in the first grade. Out of the large stack, one thing in particular caught my eye: my fourth grade spelling tests. These stood out because my mom had saved all of them from the entire year. As I flipped through them she proudly pointed out the 100% written on each page in bright red. But there was one, one single solitary test that had a different mark on its right hand corner—95%. I actually remember that test—I remembered the word I had spelled wrong—innocent. I had mistakenly spelled it with an s instead of a c. I remembered that day because I could still recall how I had beat myself up for weeks over that one simple word, that one test. I remembered because it was my goal at that moment to be perfect. I would study and study and study those words for hours because I needed to get that 100%, needed to have another perfect test in my folder. Because even if other areas of my life were less than stellar, less than ideal, this was one area where I could be flawless, seamless, perfect.
Desires for perfection always arise around the beginning of a new year. Many of us still make New Year’s resolutions in which we strive to improve ourselves in some way—either small and workable or, more likely, completely unattainable and destined to be forgotten by February. I usually resolve once again to never let white sugar cross my lips, to walk on that treadmill at least 30 minutes every single day, to practice yoga every night before bed, to read at least one hour a day and to make sure that all sermons are written and done by Friday evening. But not this year. This year I’m going to resolve to do something much more attainable— I’m going to resolve to be imperfect.
When our striving for perfection slips into perfectionism, the very things in our lives that might bring us joy can bring us torment. Everywhere we look—family, friends, jobs, hobbies— we see not the beauty but the flaws, the faults, the deficiencies, the imperfections. When we expect the various pieces of our lives to be flawless, our expectations will come up short every time. Instead of focusing on the good and being grateful for what we have and what we have done, we are unsatisfied, thinking only of our limitations and shortcomings.
But...resolving to be imperfect...what a liberating thought. We don’t need resolutions to make us perfect; we can find beauty and hope and comfort and peace as ordinary human beings. And we can feel grateful for what is already right and good. As we begin another year, may we rest in our imperfections. May we acknowledge their presence and rest in the power and possibility of loving what is. May we know that we are loved just as we are, remembering that in the center of our beings we are whole, good, no resolutions necessary. May we awaken to the imperfect perfection already around us and be at peace.
BY DAVID E. BUMBAUGH, PROFESSOR OF MINISTRY, MEADVILLE LOMBARD THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL, AND MINISTER EMERITUS, THE UNITARIAN CHURCH IN SUMMIT, NEW JERSEY
I suppose that every American of my generation has a “how Dr. King shaped my life” story. Here is mine. I had graduated from seminary in 1964 with a clear idea of the focus and shape my ministry would take. I spent my time reading and reflecting, and crafting sermons which shared the result of that effort with my congregation. Inevitably, in those times, much of my reflection focused on the enormous social issues which confronted the nation— racism, war, poverty. I regarded it as my job to enlarge their sense of responsibility and compassion as people experienced deep and disturbing challenges and changes. But in no sense could I have been considered an activist. Indeed, one of my colleagues, only half kidding, suggested that I was running a spiritual filling station— rounding people up once a week, pumping them full of the holy gas and then, tires and fluid levels checked, sending them out to confront the world, while I stayed home and kept the restrooms clean.
Then came the day that Martin Luther King sent out his invitation to the clergy to come to Selma, Alabama, to help with the drive for voting rights. Now, I knew about the invitation, but I did not for a moment believe he meant me. I had grown up in a community in which we had been carefully taught to avoid attracting attention to ourselves. We had been taught that even when the sign on the door said, “welcome” or “enter,” it probably did not mean us. It never occurred to me that an invitation to the clergy to come to Selma meant me, too. I did not go.
Then came the terrible news that James Reeb, one of our Unitarian Universalist ministers who did respond to that call, had been clubbed to death in the streets of Selma. Another call went out—this time from the Unitarian Universalist Association, urging as many ministers as possible to go to Alabama for the last stages of the march from Selma to Montgomery. I read the call, but once more, it never occurred to me that I was included.
The next Sunday, as I was about to enter the sanctuary, two members of my congregation stopped me and asked if I was going to Alabama. I must have looked very confused. I explained that we had a small child and another child on the way, and I really did not have the money to spend on a plane ticket, and.... They interrupted my ramblings to say, “We have the plane ticket; will you use it?” And suddenly I knew that all the sermons I had ever preached, and all the sermons I would ever preach, would be hollow and empty unless I walked through the door they had just opened for me.
And so I went to Alabama. I had never experienced anything like this—being part of a great tide of people flowing through the streets of that old city, marching from the outskirts, past the shacks and hovels of its African American citizens who greeted us with cheers and smiles, on into the heart of the city, to the very capital of the state, to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. electrify the crowd. He called for an end to the racist practices which condemned so many of our fellow citizens to lives of poverty, brutality and despair, and asked in his inimitable way, “How long?” and promised, “Not long!” It was an exhausting and exhilarating day, made somber by the news that after the march Unitarian Universalists had suffered another martyrdom: Viola Liuzzo, one of our lay-women from Michigan, had been murdered while driving some young Black men back to Selma.
Flying back to Illinois, musing over this incredible, overwhelming experience, I suddenly realized that my life, my ministry, could never be the same again. I could not march for civil rights in Alabama and then fail to be an active part of the same struggle in Illinois. And so, back in Chicago Heights, I found myself drawn out of my study and away from my books as I became a regular participant in the struggle for civil rights in my own town and in the communities around. I discovered that preaching could be dangerous when the mayor took offense at one of my sermons and threatened me with a charge of criminal libel. And I discovered that my congregation came alive, not only in its support of me, (concerned that the community could recognize the clergy of other churches because of their clerical collars, but might not recognize me, they gave me a sweatshirt with a great red flaming chalice printed on it) but also in its determination to engage in the struggle for justice and peace and equity.
We watched as Dr. King’s concerns and insights grew and deepened despite setbacks. He began to teach us that racism in the United States and war in Vietnam were, at some deep level, related. He helped us see that racism and poverty were, at some deep level, part of the same problem. He challenged us to enlarge the focus of our concerns, as he developed plans for a “Poor People’s Campaign” which would bring thousands of the nation’s impoverished citizens—white and Black, urban and rural—to the nation’s capital to confront the rich and the powerful.
No matter how difficult the situation, how intense the hatred he confronted, how subtle the powers raged against him, he seemed always to convey a fundamental faith in the humanity of others, a conviction that, as he said, “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He strengthened us in our determination, and by his very presence he guarded us against the temptation to hate and despise those who blocked our dreams and derided our hopes.
And then came the terrible news that Dr. King had been murdered in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was supporting a strike by sanitation workers—garbage collectors. I remember being submerged in my private grief when the telephone rang. A voice on the other end of the line asked me please to come to a special meeting in the African American community, and to come at once. I got into the car, and with tears dimming my vision, I drove across town. The leaders of the meeting hoped that this community gathering might prevent the rioting and bloodshed which were erupting elsewhere across the nation. Together we wept—for ourselves and for the nation and for the world. Together we reminded each other of the dream Dr. King had served, and how he sought to draw out of each of us our very best, and how he had sought to bridge the chasm between Black and white, between rich and poor, and how he had sought to remind us of who we were and the values which had made us a people. And the city of Chicago Heights did not burn or erupt in violence that night. Once more, somewhere in my mind, I could hear his voice and I knew again that if ever God had spoken to my generation, it was through this man.
The years have passed, and I have grown older and I have watched what has happened to the image of Martin Luther King, Jr. First, we made him a hero, andwe softened his message so that it would not challenge us in any fundamental way. Gone is his concern about the morality of an economic system in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, in which “the righteous are sold for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes.” Gone is his challenge to examine our cultural life in the light of enduring values, and in its place is a three-day holiday and an excuse for conspicuous consumption for those who can afford it. And then, having made him a hero, we have proceeded to find his feet of clay. We smile and poke each other in the ribs and suggest that he was really a womanizer. We cluck our tongues and point out that he was less than meticulous in crediting his sources in writing his doctoral thesis and perhaps he was a plagiarist, suggesting that maybe he did not really deserve his degree after all. And then we subject his career to critical analysis and suggest that while he may have been somewhat effective in the South, he was no match for the sophisticated northern cities. After a while, we have demythologized and anesthetized his legacy so that we need no longer feel or hear the challenge of his life and work.
I tell you, as one who was there on the fringes of this history, that all the critiques may well be true. Martin Luther King, Jr. was, like all human beings, flawed and imperfect. He was a creature of his culture and his times and he was driven by complex needs and fears and hopes and often his reach exceeded his grasp. But despite all of this, or perhaps because of it, he remains one of the few true heroes. He was a man who rose above his limitations, who felt a conviction about the nature of humanity which he was driven to embody in his life and work. He taught me and an entire generation about what it means to live a life of integrity and courage.
From him I learned that the invitation to be engaged in the life of the world, in the issues of the day, in the challenges of the times, is always addressed to me. From him I learned that personal limitations are no excuse for failing to engage the world. From him I learned that we are not required to succeed, or even to be right; we are required to serve the truth as we understand it. From a distance, Martin Luther King, Jr. added a depth to my life and my profession which has enriched me beyond any telling.
In many ways the superficial changes he sought have been accomplished. As one who grew up in a rigidly segregated society, I am witness to the fact that the world is now a different place and a better place because of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the struggle for civil rights. But I also know that the underlying, structural changes for which he lived and died, the fundamental values he challenged us to serve and advance, have not been so completely realized. The gap between the rich and the poor grows with every passing day. The gap between the favored and the desperate has never been so wide. The dream of a compassionate society no longer guides public policy. Vengeance has replaced justice in our courts and mercy is defined as weakness. And I am saddened beyond measure.
But in the midst of my sadness, I see him as he was that day in Chicago. I see his great, dark eyes, and I hear his voice thanking us for being part of the struggle, and I am reminded that we are not required to win, or to live to see the dream become reality. What we are required to do is to cherish the dream, to measure the world by its standard, to live our lives in service of that which is greater than we are, and to trust the unfolding process to bring light and hope where we had no rational reason to expect them.
In local UU churches people often chat about the sermon over coffee, sharing their responses and ideas. The CLF can’t provide coffee, but we do have a way to talk about the sermons printed in Quest. Here is a taste of the conversation that transpired on our Quest Forum in response to the Rev. David Pettee’s sermon “Claiming Our History—Warts and All.”
The discussion started this way:
The October issue of Quest features a sermon by David Pettee on facing his family’s history of slave ownership. Pettee believes he is complicit in the history of slave ownership by virtue of his family’s past. Do you agree that those whose ancestors benefited from slavery are complicit in racism? —Lynn Ungar, CLF minister for lifespan learning
The question seems to be whether we should in any way feel responsible for reprehensible acts committed by an ancestor. Theologically, it reminds me of the concept of what in Christian doctrine is called original sin. Since it is not known how to undo acts committed in the past, I do not see why we need either credit ourselves for deeds good or bad which were committed before we could do them or affect them. Should we, as American citizens, feel responsible for the invasion of Iraq and the slaughter of the people there when we opposed the invasion before it occurred, but had no power to affect the invasion? It may be frustrating to observe terrible mistakes and have no power whatsoever to prevent them. But, I do not think that we need castigate ourselves over it. —Arthur House, Franklin, West Virginia
Let’s assume my family is still rich from ancient slavery. I was born with a conscience, so I would have to walk away from the wealth. But not everyone would. It’s ultimately a moral thing, is it not? Could you live with yourself, knowing that your trust fund had its genesis in slavery? I could not, but I cannot condemn anyone else, either. I suppose I would say that there is a kind of peace that comes from doing the right thing (i.e., walking away from the money and all of the comforts it brings), and that only our own conscience can tell us what that is. To me, that peace is priceless. —Matthew Beleutz, Windsor, Ontario
Arthur writes of responsibility for our ancestors’ acts as “original sin.” But, could this responsibility be acting on the seventh principle: “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part”?
Since I’ve usually heard this principle in the context of acting green, rather than acting toward other people, what if David discovered his ancestors’ fortune was based on cutting down a forest? David would, I think, go, find the place where the cutting occurred, and plant new trees. Wouldn’t this conversation about what David did be different? It is the element of people, others like us, that makes the idea of responsibility for the acts of others more of a problem.
People are a part of the interdependent web. This connection is not guilt, it is not pride. This connection is spiritual, a part of my faith in the continuing omnipresence of God. —Elisabeth Booth-Barton, Danbury, Connecticut
Although I am in favor of slavery reparations, we need to be very careful about how we structure it. I am concerned about those who arrived in this country later than the problems discussed, those who are impoverished due to other problems, and those who are very recent immigrants. We can easily fracture the social contract if we apply it completely and broadly —we all have our own individual problems.
We need to redress these problems, and a lot of people grew very rich off the backs of other people, and that needs to be corrected. I do not have an idea about how to appropriately redress past difficulties, without imposing other hardships on people who were never responsible for the original wrongs. —Niles Ross, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
David asks, “What is the role of repentance in Unitarian Universalism?” I’m not sure I can answer his question. Reparation is not really the answer. As Niles points out, not everyone is guilty of the sin of slavery—so why should they pay? Today, many of the Blacks in the South are not only descended from the slaves, they are also descended from the slave owners. To whom will reparation be paid?
My great-great-great-grandfather, Dr. J. B. Whitridge, was not only a slave owner, he was a Unitarian. It was at his grave in Charleston, S.C. that I was first introduced to Unitarianism.
When we begin delving into the past, we will find that our ancestors were not perfect. They, like us, felt the weight of sin and the need for redemption. —John Tindal, Sumter, South Carolina
Find out how to join the Quest Forum conversation by going to the “Online Community” menu at www.clfuu.org and clicking on “Forums.”
BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
There’s nothing better than an epiphany. If I had to choose a favorite among traditional theological terms—atonement, confession, sacrament, grace, incarnation, repentance—that kind of list, I’d pick epiphany. Yet come January, when “Epiphany” shows up on the liturgical calendar, I hesitate to mention it. Who wants to hear about three kings, a star and a stable once the holiday season is over?
The word, of course, has changed in meaning over the years. No longer limited to “a celebration of the divine nature of Jesus as represented by the Magi,” these days anybody can have an epiphany over just about anything. Technically, divinity is not a requirement. Yet the foundational story still grabs me.
The Christian scriptures offer a good start. Though the wise men aren’t kings at the biblical stage, people later filled in the details, giving the wise men (three now in number) regal status, home countries, and physical descriptions. The three kings find the little baby, and they fall on their knees in wonder and awe. The first epiphany.
While religious purists surely lament that the word epiphany has wandered away from the crèche, I appreciate the opportunity to enjoy epiphanies on a more regular basis. Sometimes they’re little. Really very little. Like discovering that the yellow finches do show up if the thistle seed is fresh and the feeder’s in an auspicious spot. The spring turns the males as yellow as crayons. This epiphany is hardly on the scale of a divine newborn baby—yet it’s not altogether different. In my book, the sudden awareness of yellow finches qualifies as an epiphany. To meet the criterion, the experience has to point to the wonder of it all.
Sure, I’ve had my small share of sudden insights—flashes of lucidity whereby I unexpectedly overcome the software glitch, or it dawns on me in the nick of time that this person and that person are more than just friends, or I finally figure out how to extract the key from the ignition of a rental car. But those are merely moments where the brain kicks in; they are not apprehensions of anything like the divine, however defined—they are not epiphanies.
The poet Mary Oliver once wrote about her partner,
All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden I mean that for more than thirty years she had not whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds warbled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared. Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled through the house, whistling. “I know her so well,” I think. I thought. Elbow and ankle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too. And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with for thirty years? This clear, dark, lovely whistler?
All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden I mean that for more than thirty years she had not whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds warbled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.
Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled through the house, whistling.
“I know her so well,” I think. I thought. Elbow and ankle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too. And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with for thirty years?
This clear, dark, lovely whistler?
To be stunned into poetry by the whistling of a loved one is the kind of epiphany I’m looking for. That kind of jolt. Predicated on receptivity, openness, welcome.
Now that the first of the year is upon us, I wish I could sign up for twelve months of epiphanies, along the lines of the fruit-of-the-month club. Perhaps for January, the sudden sure knowledge that snowfall is unutterably striking. The newspaper story in February that knocks me over with the kindness implied. The smell of the mud that hits in March, catapulting me into an awareness of the earth below my feet. And so it would go without money-back guarantees, but a worthy program nonetheless.
They don’t have to be about kings, these epiphanies of ours, or Jesus. It’s enough that they glue us to something dear—the whistler, the yellow finch.
How You Know
Everyone first hears the news as a child, surrounded by money-changers and Pharisees; then later, from gray trees on a winter day, amid all the twittering, one flash of sound escapes along a creek—some fanatic among the warblers broken loose like a missionary sent out to the hinterland, and though the doors that open along the creek stay closed for the cold, and the gray people in their habitats don't look out, you—a homeless walker stabbed by that bird cry— stop mid-stride because out of a thicket that little tongue turns history loose again, and holy days asleep in the calendar wake up and chime.
by William Stafford, from Even in Quiet Places, Lewiston: Confluence Press, 1996.
BY LYNN UNGAR, MINISTER FOR LIFESPAN LEARNING, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
Usually this column is oriented toward children, but somehow January seems like a good time to provide adults with a little orientation to how you might do religious education with children as a Unitarian Universalist, and as a member of the CLF. Here are answers to a few Frequently Asked Questions:
What does “religious education” mean to UUs? Religious education, or religious learning and growth, is the life-long process by which we come to understand more deeply who we are in the world, what our lives and actions mean, and how we are connected to the past and future of humanity. It is the on-going process of maturing, of growing souls, of coming toward the fullness of our human potential. Religious education is classes, books and conversations, attentive walks in nature and prayerful moments of silence. It is all of the ways we come to appreciate more deeply our connections with “the interdependent web” of life, with the great teachers throughout history, with our neighbors and with the strangers whom we come to understand are our neighbors as well.
How do I do RE with my kids at home? If you’d like to do at-home RE every Sunday, use CLiF Notes: A Curriculum for Families and Small Groups. CLiF Notes provides a complete lesson for each Sunday, and is designed to be used with small, mixed-aged groups of kids (or parents and kid). This year our CLiF Notes sessions are centered on the great theological questions, such as “Where did it all come from?” and “What (if anything) is God?”
CLiF Notes is distributed free to CLF members monthly through our CLF-RE email list (contact lungar@clfuu.org to subscribe). (Those who are not CLF members can buy a year’s subscription to RE Express Plus, which includes not only CLiF Notes, but also access to our online index of CLF resources, for $129/year—click on “religious education materials” in the CLF Shop menu at www.clfuu.org.)
If you just want to make a monthly commitment to doing RE you could use the KidTalk page, with its monthly information on holidays, famous UUs, social action projects, and our UU principles, to shape a session that helps your children understand how we move in the world as Unitarian Universalists.
Or, RE might happen for you as “teachable moments” arise, as your child asks questions about God or death, or is working through the ethics of how to negotiate playground arguments. To figure out how to respond in these moments, see the questions listed in Between Sundays or the thematically arranged RE Index (contact bmurray@clfuu.org for the members’ password).
Or, of course, you can just browse among the CLF offerings to find something that works for you and your family. The RE Index mentioned above is a great way to find resources on just about any topic you might think of.
Can I give my children both a religious education and the freedom to choose their own beliefs? In a word, yes. Religious education, at least for Unitarian Universalists, gives people (both children and adults) the opportunity to learn about what the great thinkers of the world have taught us and to explore our own beliefs. Following a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” (one of our UU principles) should include learning from what has gone before, whether it is UU history, world religions, or sacred texts such as the Bible or the Koran. It should also include opportunities to reflect on our own experiences and beliefs, and to figure out how the teachings of the past inform those beliefs and experiences. People are only free to choose their beliefs if they know what they are choosing among.
Furthermore, most UUs regard ethics and values as being at the heart of religious life. Religious education provides a context for parents to transmit core values such as respect, honesty, compassion, and open-mindedness. Whatever conclusions our children may come to about theological concepts, they will need to learn to embrace and live out life-giving values.
What do I teach my child about God? The first, and perhaps most difficult, piece of talking with your child about God is to become clear about your own beliefs. Then you are in a position to say: “People have many different ideas about God, and many different pictures in their heads of what God might be like. Since God is not something you can see or touch, there’s no way to say for sure what pictures or ideas might be right, or even whether there is anything at all that it would make sense to call ‘God.’ I think …. What do you think?”
Do you offer anything for adults who want to continue their religious growth? The Online Learning Center provides a variety of online courses on topics ranging from social justice and ethics to spiritual practices and more at a modest cost. It also hosts Forum bulletin boards on various subjects. The CLF also offers email-based small groups designed to be communities where members can explore significant issues. You can find out more about online communities through the Online Community menu at www.clfuu.org.
The wintertime crows fly in at ten o’clock. They don’t fly the way they are reputed to. For them, no straight shot, no hint of stick-to-itiveness, no commitment to complete a journey as the crow flies.
They come from the woods to the south: a group of three beginning and ending their flight, free to improvise en route. They alight in different trees as their stopping places, varying the height and breadth of the branches they choose. If they caw, they topple and rebalance like a gyroscope. Some fly past their daily destination of the feeding station, looping back, as if to confuse all those who would shadow them, three large black birds conspicuous against the snow, pretending they don’t know each other.
I’ve been saving the best part, the very best part: the way they land and take off in front of my eyes. Feathered gymnasts, they do little forward rolls on pointy toes and propel themselves into the air again like dandelion seeds that can’t decide whether to stay with the grasses or rise to dance in the wind again.
The crow’s flight is a journey fueled by imagination, an improvisation of whimsy, by dancers who are not bound by gravity.
by the Rev. Cynthia B. Johnson, CLF member, from her book The Way Crows Really Fly.
Last updated December 18, 2007
Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF), 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108-2823 Phone: (617) 948-6166 · Fax: (617) 523-4123 · E-mail: clf@clfuu.org
