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RE at the UUSB April 2011 The religious education program of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor inspires all participants to grow spiritually, develop a sense of personal and social

1 RE at the UUSB April 2011 The religious education program of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor inspires all participants to grow spiritually, develop a sense of personal and social responsibility, and experience joy in a loving Unitarian Universalist community. Helping Hands As a former art teacher process was my product. I used to call my student s work the history of their creative experience. To me art work is the contrail, not the airplane, and certainly not the destination. Although the places you can go can be beautiful, and lovely! Recently, I had the pleasure of teaching the 4 and 5 grade class about Daniel French a sculptor who created the th th Minuteman at the Old North Bridge in Concord, MA and Abraham Lincoln who sits in the Lincoln Memorial. What I liked best in the curriculum was the sentence, Some people have gifts they have to share. EVERYONE has gifts they have to share; some people have different types of gifts to Caption describing picture or graphic. share and different ways to share their gifts. After the discussion we then dug our hands into clay to create our own sculptures! As an art teacher I have been told: I m not creative everyone is you have to be in order to survive! But one of my favorites is, I can t draw a straight line with a ruler. Now, that I happen to think that is very creative! There are so many ways to be creative and express your unique gifts. Using your hands to make something is a direct link -it is so concrete your brain thinks wow, look what I just did! In talking about the creative process we discussed what pressure can do to things What does pressure do to things? It ruins them. Creativity does not flourish under pressure, it caves and, our stress brains take over. If we are having a hard time it is an opportunity to use our creativity, but so often instead we dig in our heels, our habit, and our fear and stay there. Moving from that place is a space of possibility where something else can be. This is why being creative is so good for all of us in whatever form you choose, because we are reminded: you can make something out of what is, be it clay, pen and ink, flour, an instrument and some time, mud, friendships, social justice work. We create, and when we do we see ourselves transform. There is not just one way- ever- we all choose all of the time, and creativity is about making choices with what you have, the opportunities that are yours and the limitations that are yours. Remember to take time to make things pots of clay, bread of flour, laughter of tears, lightness of dark, pies of mud. Doodle in the margins and give life to all the reserved spaces, because your mark can remind you- we all have gifts to share with our hands, our hearts, and our minds working together helping ourselves, each other live this life. Hope you get your hands messy soon, Diane In this Issue: A Letter from our DRE! ~ A Letter from Rev. Becky ~ Taking it Home - UU Parenting The Month Ahead ~ IT s A CLOTHING SWAP! ~FAMILY SPIRIT BUILDING ~ RE Retreat ~ Thanks to Toby Jones! 2011 Volume 1, Issue 7 Jill Packard, Editor jillpackard@gmail.com,

2 COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS Hello! This year Easter is in the later part of April. Sometimes it is in March, so this year it seems very late. We expect that Easter announces the fact that Spring is really here and that we get to see new plants and flowers coming up from the dark, wet earth. We know that animals have given birth to their babies ducklings that waddle across the road stopping traffic, small chirping birds in nests high up, and even baby bunnies. All this speaks to how Spring is about a rebirth a being born again. Don t many of us feel more energy when there is light outside and we can actually play outside without heavy coats and mittens? Easter is a religious holiday for Christians. It celebrates Jesus being resurrected. Resurrected means being brought to life after you have died. Some people believe in this literally meaning that Jesus was brought to life after he died. Many people who believe that Jesus was a good and ethical teacher believe that Jesus was remembered by the people who knew him and, therefore, he was alive in their hearts. That is what most UU s believe. Nevertheless, we UU s celebrate Easter as a time of beginnings and birth and rebirth. We honor the life of Jesus and we honor the cycles the year beginning with Spring and the return of green and yellow and all the bright colors of the garden and forest. I loved Easter when I was a little girl. I always got my new Sunday dress for the warmer weather on Easter I particularly loved lavender and pink. When I was very young I even received an Easter bonnet which I proudly wore to church. Everyone seemed to dress up for Easter and I loved all of the spring colors on the women and girls. I miss those dressed up Easter Sundays now. Do you like to dress up for Easter? Do you like to dress up for other occasions? I would love to hear if you do. Happy Spring; Happy Easter. And I just can t wait to see my first ducklings EVERYONE! Please Come to our First Ever RE Retreat! (Rescheduled from April 9 th ) May 7, am-12:30 pm Potluck beginning at 11:30 Child Care provided / snacks RSVP Please an E-vite will be sent Join Diane, Rev. Becky, the RE Committee, parents, teachers, and other interested folks to discuss what our program is and what it might become! Through our time together we hope to build community, communication, and give the program further direction and focus. We will begin as a group and then divide into two discussion groups, one about the K-8 programming, the other about youth 9-12 programming. Youth are encouraged to join the discussion about youth programming possibilities. Potential Topics: Fostering spiritual growth, moral education, social justice work, how and why we do or don t discuss God and Bible, expanding OWL, (Our Whole Lives- which is human sexuality and relationship education) what you want your children to get out of the program, any / all issues, thoughts and reflections about the program as a whole or any specific part of RE including the whole Sunday experience. Hope to see you there!! Diane Yours in UU faith, Rev. Becky I like to dress up sometimes for church and when I sing with friends. Maybe consider sending Rev. Becky an or letter sharing what you like to dress up for! ~ Jill Page 2

3 COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS - CONTINUED What is going on Downstairs? The teachers tell us The Pre-K group We've recently been exploring doing nice things for the world, as well as our feelings and how we express them. We've read great books on these topics and the children have participated in related movement and art activities. We are planning many fun activities for spring and toward the conclusion of the RE class year - planting seeds, noticing the changes in our world, and recognizing the relationships with each other that have grown through the year! The K-1 st grade class, as always, is having a great time. Weekly, we ve had new friends visit and love sharing our special activities with them. In case you did not know this, if you ate the chicken noodle soup last Souper Sunday, you ate something we made!!! We made Chicken-Stone Soup, all homemade and made from free range chickens from Four Kingdoms Farm (the Packard s mini-farm). This month we will celebrate the sun returning, and Spring, and all things that grow and are connected. The 2 nd and 3 rd grade is talking about adventures and explorers. Vilhjalmur Steffanson, a UU explorer who lived with the Inuit people, and wrote about how they lived and survived in a cold climate. We ve also tried out a number of new and different foods, including anchovies, pickled ginger and candied ginger, cactus pear, sardines, seaweed, miso soup, and capers. And now, we are on to more adventures and fun! April is a short RE class month between vacation and exciting Easter and Earth Day activities. In our classes we will be finishing our unit on the connection between UUism and explorers with a class on treasure maps. Then we begin our unit on the web of life and it's links to us as UUs with a class on Henry David Thoreau and simple living/playing. The 4-5th grade is also talking about adventures and explorers. This past Sunday we explored new foods and discussed ethnocentrism, trying new things and understanding other people's perspectives. Next we will be exploring the interdependent Web of life. This group loves to talk and share their very interesting ideas with each other - what a pleasure! The 6-8 Middle School group The middle school group is moving ahead with the Neighboring Faiths class. After concluding our unit on Christianity with a 7:00am Mass at St. John s Catholic church- we started off the new year studying Islam. The class learned about Mohammed, the difference between Shi a and Sunni, and then made prayer rugs. We have been invited to the Islamic Center of Maine and will be spending time there on Saturday morning, January 16 th. After Islam we will be studying Hinduism. The Senior High class has been working on a new curriculum, A Place of Wholeness, which is a curriculum about spiritual journey. Soon, we are going to be starting to work on Beads of Blood, a project that will benefit HAM (Hemophiliac Alliance of Maine, mainehemophilia.org). And soon, we will be choosing the t-shirt design for our new UUSB tie-dye t-shirts! A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO ONE OF OUR YOUTH!!!! Hello! Recently I was so happy to receive a copy of the UUSB RE holiday pageant. Last year, during rehearsals, we were asked if we wanted a copy because Toby Jones was going to record the service and then produce the video and share it. THANK YOU TOBY!!! The Video is wonderful! It will be a treasure my family has for as long as it lasts and has been great to share with family that could not be there! Namaste! Page 3

4 Take it Home with You Make Unitarian Universalism an Integrated part of your family s daily life!!! The Value of Giving Up When I was growing up in a Catholic family, the Lenten season usually meant eating breaded fish sticks for dinner on Friday nights and more frequent church attendance as the countdown to Easter began. It also meant 40-plus days of giving up something meaningful to me, and although this could be quite challenging at times, I believe it taught me a lot about self-discipline, restraint, and overcoming temptation. The word Lent itself comes from an Old English word for spring that means lengthening, and has been used to designate the long time it may take for the arrival of Easter which for Christians heralds the resurrection of Jesus but also has significance for non-christians who eagerly wait for the Earth to come alive with the arrival of Spring. Unlike Easter, Lent is not typically observed by Unitarian Universalist families, but it could have sacred relevance to us in our faith tradition, too. Some families regularly observe the Advent season in a reverent way during the winter holidays, and so this year during Lent (which began with Ash Wednesday on March 9), I will be teaching my children the valuable lesson of giving up or doing without something in order to appreciate what we so often take for granted in life. There was some initial resistance from my eight-year-old son, of course, and I had to help him come up with something reasonable for him to do without for the coming weeks (giving up school, for instance, was out of the question). My teenage daughter was initially excited about the idea and full of enthusiasm, fully on board with the idea. However, as the weeks progress, I imagine her positive energy may very dwindle a bit as the challenge of the experience sets in. This is only to be expected. After all, if it s too easy, then it wasn t truly a lesson in setting limits and overcoming temptation. Continued on Page 5 ~Family Spirit Building~ Creating Rituals With Your Family Family ritual is pretty much anything families do together deliberately, as long as it s juiced up with some flourish that lifts it above humdrum routine. Repeated words or actions, special food or music, or a heightened sense of attention can provide the juice. I wouldn t call it a ritual if you sometimes sit on the front steps and blow bubbles with your kids, but if you do it every Friday and then have graham crackers and milk and call it your welcome-to-the-weekend party, that s definitely a family ritual. Ritual is not just for special occasions but also for every day, every meal, every bath, and every bedtime story. In ritual, little is big: Although dress-up holidays with lavish feasts are fun, it s the everyday traditions that determine how we experience our families and demonstrate handson love to our children. Intuitively, we know this is good, and consciously pass down beloved traditions from our own childhoods. But the power of ritual and the need for it are far stronger than we realize. Even the most bewildered new parent quickly realizes that a baby gets calmer with a settled routine for sleeping, eating, and other activities. And if you start singing a funny little song every time you get ready to dip her in the baby tub, she starts cooing in anticipation: The two of you are in a private society, and she loves knowing the secret handshake. Through rituals and traditions as simple as this, you are building the bond of your joined identity, defining your relationship by acting it out.* *Fox, Megan. Creating Rituals With And For Children. ml Accessed 3/31/11 Page 4

5 Take it Home With Continued If your family is already vegetarian or vegan, then the meatless Fridays will not have much value in your home. However, all families can gain a real sense of meaning by doing without to appreciate the greater good, particularly if a simple meal is connected with any possible monetary savings which can be given to a food bank or used to purchase food for a local food pantry. Families could also explore possible meal programs in the local area and make a meal to donate and prepare each week during the Lenten season. Even young children can assist with cooking a big pot of soup, chili, or Sloppy Joes and help with tossing of a large salad. What are some of the ways that you teach self-discipline and restraint in your family? Do you feel our faith tradition helps you with this process or gives voice to these values in your parenting? Are there ways you can incorporate a time of doing without or giving to others into your family s life Reprinted with permission of the Author, Michelle Richards Accessed 3/31/11 RE April Calendar POOL Party April 3 rd at 4:30 at the Lura Hoit Pool in Hampden - $4-$7 To RSVP, Call Connie at /3 Classes 4/10 Classes 4/17 Special Program- Earth Day 4/24 Easter Special Program - boxed food hunt - please bring food to be donated It s a clothing swap!! This May 14 th at 9:30 am, join us for some more swappin good FUUN! When you clean your closet this Spring, and are reminded of all the clothes you never got around to wearing this winter, or see clothes that you will never wear this summer, bring them on down and trade them in for some new ones! Women s, Men s, and Children s clothing will be part of the swap. All sizes, fabrics, colors, and vintage accepted. How it works: You come with a bag (or bags) full of clothes. You pay five dollars to enter. You lay out clothes into designated size/sex/style piles, you shop, and leave with the same amount you came with! For more information contact Jill Packard or Karen Childs. The mission of RE at the UUSB: To inform and enrich the lives of the children, parents, and families of the youth enrolled in the UUSB RE program; To make the RE Program more visible in the UUSB community; To make intergenerational connections within the UUSB community. Director of Religious Education Diane D Amour McClellan Phone: uubangorre@gmail.com Editor 2010~2011: Jill Packard Phone: (207) jillpackard@gmail.com Children need to learn Unitarian Universalism with their minds, hearts, and hands. They need meaningful integrated experiences that are anchored by soul-stirring narratives. They need to learn faith by doing faith. They need experiences that nurture a belief in the transformative power of justice and love. ~Unitarian Universalist Association The RE Program would not be the same without the dedication and hard work of the RE Committee. Karen Childs karenchilds75@gmail.com Laura Santilli - Laurabngr@aol.com Maureen Smith -maureens@maine.edu Susan MacKay -smackay@zmtrx.com Sueann Gaitings - sagaitings@toast.net Page Page 5 4

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children." ~Nelson Mandela

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children. ~Nelson Mandela RE at the UUSB November 2010 The religious education program of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor inspires all participants to grow spiritually, develop a sense of personal and social responsibility,