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.