Love is the Golden Rule

Twice a month during this past church year, the elementary children's religious education program has focused on allowing Love to guide us through life, just as stars in the night sky guide travelers along a journey.  As Unitarian Universalists we develop our belief systems, in part, from a wide variety of Sources that we think have important things to teach us.  By listening with an open mind and heart, we integrate the teachings that ring true to us into our own personal theology that can change and grow over our lifetime.

During the year we have explored stories from a vast array of different religions, beliefs, and cultures that have held important teachings about this central message of allowing Love to guide us.  In today's lesson, the final one is this series, children heard a story about the nearly universal message of the Golden Rule as the wisdom of ancient cultures and religions have all emphasized variations of the message "Love your neighbor as yourself."  We decided that if we had only one rule to follow, this would be a very important one.  We concluded that the world would be a nicer, kinder place if everyone let Love guide them.

As a culminating activity, children each made their own Night Sky poster using the UU "constellations" that symbolized each of our six Sources of Belief:

• The sense of wonder we all share;
• Women and men of long ago and today whose lives remind us to be kind and fair;
• The ethical and spiritual wisdom of the world's religions;
• Jewish and Christian teachings that tell us to love all others as we love ourselves;
• The use of reason and the discoveries of science; and
• The harmony of nature and the sacred circle of life.

Next Sunday the children will celebrate with the adults in the opening portions of the worship service for the formal robing, ordination and installation of Dr. David Newell as UUCR's new minister.  Children will then be sung out of the service to their own year-end celebration of games and a special treat.

As a reminder, there is no Religious Education or Childcare during the summer months as we transition from Sunday morning worship services to less formal discussion groups.  RE and Childcare will resume in September.

Coming of Age/Flower Communion/PEAK

Children participated in several special celebrations in today's worship service.  We celebrated a "Coming of Age" for our oldest middle school student, Margaret. The congregation pledged to walk with her as she enters young adulthood as a high school student, continuing a spiritual journey that will last her lifetime. 

We also celebrated a unique Unitarian Universalist tradition, the Flower Communion.  As everyone entered church this morning they brought a flower and added it to a communal bouquet, signifying that we come as unique individuals with a diversity of beliefs and talents, and form a beautiful bouquet when we share together in community.  As the service ended, each person took a flower different than the one they brought, signifying their acceptance of the gifts that others bring to our community.

We also enjoyed the wonderful sounds of our church choir joined by the choir from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Easton.  Looking at the children's faces, it was easy to see the awe and wonder they felt experiencing the power of song and harmony.

After the elementary children were sung out to their RE program, we wrapped up our year's PEAK (Promoting Environmental Awareness in Kids) program, reviewing the principles that we’ve discussed during the year.  We talked about all of the ‘life’ that is in and on the ground where we walk, hike, pitch tents, etc., ; how all life is sacred, in all of its forms, but that in order to live we must sometimes take the lives of plants and animals.  But by being respectful and not wasteful, we can minimize the damage that we do, especially when we are outdoors.  It led to a nice discussion about hunting, how it is ok as long as you eat what is killed, and don’t waste any of it – not ok to do just for sport.

Then we went outside, broke into two groups (younger and older), and stretched out a piece of string in a circle about 2 feet in diameter, and explored and identified all of the life forms that we found within the circle(s).  Identified were ginko trees, poison ivy, dandelions, rotting ginko fruit, spiders, gnats, mosquito larvae, algae, several types of lichens, grasses, as well as some ‘non-living’ items like litter, trash, dead leaves, etc.  It was wonderful to have a lovely warm and sunny day to do this activity, and the children enjoyed being able to ‘run off some steam’!

Love Builds Trust

Love is the strongest force the world possesses,
and yet it is the humblest imaginable.
     - Mahatma Gandhi

Today's elementary group learned about UU minister Rev. Margaret Barr, and how a casual trip to India in the 1930's to see Mahatma Gandhi turned into her life's passion to break down the religious and caste barriers between children there.  Barr's work to provide a non-denominational school for children in India exemplifies the words and actions that shape our UU heritage.  We discussed that while it is important to understand UU beliefs, what is even more important is being willing to take action based on one's beliefs, in order to make the world a better place.

We explored diversity by saying Hello in many different languages.  The children heard the story of Rev. Margaret Barr and her shock and horror upon witnessing the animosity and attrocities of children toward one another based upon beliefs taught in the different parochial schools they attended (Hindu, Muslim, or Christian) about who was superior and who was inferior, and how they should treat one another based upon those beliefs.  We discussed how Rev. Barr's UU beliefs guided her toward taking action to create a school where all children could learn together regardless of their religions, and where education was not only about academics but also learning to put Mahatma Gandhi's principles of loving kindness into the forefront of all their relationships.  We learned how Barr's school not only transformed the children of that village, but the adults as well.  The children were amazed to hear that Barr's school, founded in the late 1930's in the Khasi Hills region of northeast India, is still providing education and lifeskill opportunities for children and orphans today, and enjoys an active partnership with several UU congregations in the United States and Great Britain.  We ended the session by playing Pachisi, a classic game of strategy that children and adults have played in India for centuries.