RSG: I spend most of my time Sunday mornings in the pulpit as your Parish Minister.
HPC: And I spend most of my time Sunday mornings in our church school as your Education Minister.
RSG: The chief difference in our work is the average age of our students. I gladly preach and Helena gladly teaches.
HPC: And together we share the total ministry of the church.
RSG: Helena and I would like to share a Gary Trudeau "Doonesbury" cartoon with you. Michael Doonesbury and then-wife Joanie are talking with their pre-teen daughter Alex. Michael says, "Alex, honey, Mom and I have been talking, and we’ve decided it's time for us to start attending church as a family...
HPC: Alex responds: "Church? Church is boring!"
RSG: Michael: "Well, we thought you might say that. All kids think that..."
HPC: Alex: "Didn't you think church was boring when you were a kid?"
RSG: Michael: "Well, sure, I hated going. But church was good for me, so my parents made me stick it out. You may end up hating church, too, but you have to come by that feeling honestly. You have to put in the pew time, like Mom and I did."
HPC: There is a pause, then Alex asks innocently: "What if I like it?"
RSG: In the last frame a somewhat taken aback Michael asks: "Like it? What do you mean?"
HPC: Joanie says, "We'll cross that bridge when we get there, honey."
RSG: Evidently quite a few of our children "like it." Helena, I've been hearing you complain all week about crowded classes. What's going on?
HPC: during the eleven o'clock service last week, when I went down to the youth room, there I found 35 high school students and six advisors.....if you have been to the youth room, you know that forty one people don't fit!! And, of course, their first request was to paint the walls....then one of the adults said, after seeing my face...."see, I told you, look at her expression. " can you imagine, 35 paint brushes traveling over Louie Kahn's sacred walls?? And, most of the other classes are just as crowded...how about a new wing on the building?
RSG: Well, the children are here. Good. But what do we teach them? Because we have no creed or dogma or catechism people often think we don't believe anything - that we aren’t a church.
I recall a letter a few years ago from one of our church school graduates who was a student at Clarkson College. In the student newspaper there was a scathing indictment of liberal religion in response to an ad placed by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Canton, New York (my church during college and seminary days) . It assaulted the 'this world'ly nature of UUism and accused the church of having no moral principles. Our graduate fired off a sharp reply (despite the fact that she was so angry she couldn't study for an exam). Making reference to our own church and church school and how we helped her form her beliefs, she did us proud.
HPC: We certainly do have moral principles!! But one of our problems has been that we keep them too much of a secret. In the past, our teachers have been reluctant to tell our young people what they believe in fear of believing something different from other parents. Now, with the help of our purposes and principles, we ask that the teachers answer questions about their faith, but remind the students to go home to check out their parents beliefs and, then, value the differences. For our adults, we value the same process...respecting each other’s differing religious ideas.
RSG: I think of religious education as a cradle to grave process by which people grow their own meanings and values in community. It is a process that is embodied in our programs for all ages to explore and live our purposes and principles. Those principles are the operating values by which we live; they're the building blocks for our convictions. Out of them come specific points of view about the nature of God, humanity, right and wrong, life and death. We explore that not only in adult Building Your Own Theology classes but also in the high school years with our Religion in Life Seminar. I wish everyone here could be there.
HPC: Yes, I do, too. People ask us why the two of us take the trip to Boston with our Religion in Life Class. It is precisely because we want to live out our Unitarian Universalist principles. We value every age group in our church and traveling for four days with our ninth and tenth graders tells them loudly and clearly that we want to be with them. We, their ministers, want to know what they are thinking about this religion of theirs. As you read in the newsletter, our youth group interviewed the adults they chose to be with them this year. You have to meet the kids' standards to be their advisors. Many adults were intimidated!
RSG: Sometimes people don’t understand the difference between church school and public school, between religious education and secular education. Secular education now teaches children how to be intelligent consumers, and even how to be smart investors. And, we are awash in sports camps teaching them how to be athletes. We all know the public school emphasis on math and science - and, of course, computers. But in church school we emphasize the intangible - values.
In his book The Soul’s Code James Hillman turns the metaphor of growth literally upside down. He says that our goal for children is not so much to help them grow up to be adults, but to assist their growing down. By that he means humans should be like trees, sending down human tentacles so that we are rooted in existence, in what it means to be human. This he calls his "acorn theory," education in the invisible.
I like his metaphor. Growing up places too much emphasis on the physical - which can be measured. Kids love to see their increase in height and weight. Growing up today has to do with that which can be measured - IQ, SAT scores.
Growing down suggests depth - the spiritual. Growing down suggests that which cannot be measured - the moral. Our culture is obsessed with the measurable. In our church school we are engaged in the process of helping children grown down - into that which cannot be measured - their spiritual and moral development.
Children are not merely miniature adults, or living in a waiting room to become adults. Children are people in their own right. They are not merely products of genetics or environment. We all have a "something more," a unique sense of personal calling, a feeling there is a reason we are alive, a singular meaning to our own existence.
Hillman writes, "Consider this event. Amateur Night at the Harlem Opera House. A skinny, awkward sixteen-year-old goes fearfully on-stage. She is announced to the crowd: 'The next contestant is a young lady (who) is gonna dance for us.... Hold it, hold it. Now what's your problem, honey? .... Correction, folks. (She) has changed her mind. She's not gonna dance, she's gonna sing...' The skinny, awkward young lady gave three encores and won first prize. "She had meant to dance." Her name was Ella Fitzgerald.
Our job as religious educators is to evoke that uniqueness. To be sure, this learning cannot easily be measured. The important things seldom can.
HPC: Yes, our spiritual and moral growth. For all ages! I like to think that we never really mature in this religion. That we are always changing our minds, trying to grow better souls. Thomas Moore, in the re-enchantment of everyday life, writes that "some psychological theories equate childhood with paradise and conclude that to live as mature adults, we should separate heroically from childhood and enter this vale of tears called maturity. They're afraid that if we don't overcome childhood, we'll become stuck in infantile illusions. Some experts believe that life is fundamentally disenchanted and that those who think otherwise are naive or psychotic". May we all remain childish and enchanted with our being. Hope and imagination are inherent in this religion....and laughter, at life, at ourselves must stay with us in all we do here. As you'll notice in the survey in the UU world, one of our problems can be that sometimes we take life and ourselves too seriously. Part of our educating for the invisible is to keep a balance between making the world a better place and good old fashioned enjoyment of each other and living.
RSG: Now, Helena, you and Elizabeth Bock have assembled a teaching staff of nearly 100. Just what can they do, what can they accomplish, in an hour a week? And what about the rest of us? Do we have any responsibility for religious education?
HPC: there is an African proverb that you’ve heard. Hillary Clinton has even written a book about it. It takes a whole village to raise a child. I agree, but it also takes a whole congregation to raise a UU child - to provide education in the invisible - the convictions and values that mark liberal religion. Every person who speaks to a child in the lobby with a smile, with an interest in him or her , is telling the child that he or she is important....is living out our first principle. On the other hand, every time an adult frowns or is sending the message that our children and youth are in their way, a small notch is taken from that child's sense of spiritual self - and this leads to education in the invisible which detracts from an attitude of appreciation for self and others.
RSG: I recently read a column by Martin Marty, one of our top religious scholars which suggests our responsibility in a more humorous way. "I know a pastor who recently received a letter from a junior high student. "Dear Pastor: The seventh grade Sunday school is interested in doing a sermon on the Book of Revelations. If there is anything important I need to know, please call me. Tips would also be helpful." What tips can you give us?
HPC: share yourselves, your ideas, your values. When you see a child taking too much coffee cake, speak to them - don't ignore them because that's their parents' problem. Setting boundaries, with kindness, is yet another way to show our young that we are in community with one another and ought to be careful with each other. Also, remembering the pressureful lives all of us are living, just noticing our young because they are here, not for an accomplishment, is just great for them.
We want all of us to feel comfortable here. I have a wonderful story about a child and his great comfort level in the Schenectady Unitarian Universalist Church. Our church school building was a three story house and I usually asked Alan to help me to deliver the snack, just to give his teachers a break from him. We started out in the kitchen, preparing a pitcher of juice and a tray of crackers. Alan carried the crackers. On the landing of the second floor, he tripped. After cleaning up, we returned to the kitchen and fixed another tray. This time we almost made it to the third floor....upon another repeat in the kitchen, we started toward the stairs and Alan said "I don't think I should carry the crackers". And I said, why Alan, what a good idea! He said, "this time I think I should try the juice"!!
RSG: It seems to me that all of us are not only religious educators, but we are in the learning process itself. We are simultaneously teachers and learners.
HPC: Yes, there is much to learn. We are doing our best in this church to learn how to be more welcoming of differences. We adults are certainly concerned with accessibility and in the church school we are making great efforts to recognize and honor special needs.
There is a wonderful book entitled You Cannot Say You Can’t Play, by Vivian Paley, which describes how children worked with the plan that you can’t say you can't play. One eight year old in the book observes "the plan works with certain people, about half. But the point is, people are afraid the others won't like them anymore if they say yes to certain people." The author observes in her conclusion that "you can't say you can't play is apparently not as natural a law as, for example, I say 'You can't play." It appears that our first principle; "We covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person" will always need constant attention...if only it were more natural human behavior.
RSG: I found a poem recently that to me sums up the idea of education in the invisible, For the Children, by Gary Snyder:
"The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.
In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.
To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:
stay together
learn the flowers
go light."
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