Many years ago a baby was born and as that baby began to breathe for the first time, the spirit of God was in the baby’s breathing.
The baby nursed and slept and opened her eyes and nursed and slept some more and as time went by the baby could do more things. The baby learned to sit up and to crawl and soon the baby learned to walk. Now she could go all over, exploring everything. And the spirit of God was in her exploring.
Soon the baby was a girl who could run and talk and pedal a bike. And the little girl became a bigger girl who went to school and leanred to read and write and do arithmetic. And she could swim and ride a bicycle and row a boat. And she could play a piano. And she could make all kinds of things: bird houses, cookies, and gardens. And the spirit of God was in her learning.
Before long the girl was a youth who went to high school. She Iearned to drive. She began to think about what she would be when she was all grown up and she could decide more things for herself. And the spirit of God was in her deciding.
Now the girl became a woman. She found work to do and she found people she loved and she had her own home. One day she became a mother and had children of her own. She cared for her children, played with them, and taught them lots of things. And she worked to help make the world a better place for all people. And the spirit of God was in her loving.
Time went by and this woman grew older. Her children grew up and they had children and the woman became a grandmother. The time came when she retired from her work. She had more time to do the things she liked to do for fun, like playing with her grandchildren. And the spirit of God was in her playing.
This grandmother grew older and older until she was a very old woman. Some of her grandchildren even had children and she became a great-grandmother. Now she tired more easily and she moved more slowly. She couldn’t see or hear things as easily as before. And the spirit of God was with her in her aging.
And then this very old woman’s body became very tired and her family knew she was dying. As they went to visit her they did whatever they could to make her more comfortable, they talked with her about all the wonderful things they remembered doing with her, and they shared their sadness at the thought of losing her. And some of the time the very old woman was sad that she was dying and some of the time she was glad. And the spirit of God was with her in her dying.
And then the very old woman’s breathing became slower and slower and her breath became softer and softer and then she breathed her last breath out and she died. And the spirit of God was with her.
Later her friends and relatives came together and they shared their sadness and they talked with each other about the things she had said and done in her life. And the spirit of God was in their remembering.
Goal:
To learn the importance in both Judaism and Christianity of a day of rest and worship.
Materials:
Find a copy of the book The Creation, by Steven Mitchell
Gather materials for making a mural: long paper, markers, colored pencils, crayons etc. Label the section of the mural paper as follows:
First day: light and darknes/day and night
Second day: sky and earth and seas
Third day: all kinds of plants
Fourth day: sun, moon, and stars
Fifth day: living creatures of sky and seas
Sixth day: living creatures of earth
Activities:
Read Background
Introduce the story by saying something like:
The Sabbath is a very old Jewish celebration. Long, long ago, when the Jewish people worked hard for many hours every day planting in the fields and caring from their farm animals, the seventh day of the week was set aside so they could rest from their work and worship their god. For the Jews, the seventh day was their day of worship and they called it Shabbat. The Jewish Shabbat began at sundown on Friday and ended at sundown on Saturday. Today Jews celebrate Shabbat in many different ways. Some customs include setting the Friday evening Shabbat table in the home with the best dishes, with wine, with sweet braided bread called challot and with candlesticks. A blessing, or special words, is spoken to mark this time as holy before the meal is eaten. On Shabbat morning, the family attends services in the synagogue. On Saturday evening a special blessing is said thanking God for the Sabbath and a new week has started.
But others observe Sunday as their Sabbath, their day to rest and worship their god. Who are these people? What is their religion called? Making the seventh day of the week a day of rest and worship comes from an old, old story of how the world was made. We think that when this story says day, it is really talking about a long period of timemaybe even thousands and thousands of years!
Read The Creation by Steven Mitchell
Discuss: Why do you think things happened in that order?
Why do you think people were created last?
Why do you think God rested? Why should people stop work and rest?
Make a mural of the storya long picture that tells the story from beginning to end.
Goal:
To provide an opportunity to talk about differences such as mental and physical ability and to link common responses to these differences as a form of prejudice.
Activities:
1. Read the story Mark and Paul by Pia S. Muran-de Assereto
2. Discuss:
Have you ever known a boy or girl like Paul?
How did you feel when you first saw him or her? (Feeling scared or confused around people who are different from you is normal. But remember, underneath the differences that person is a person just like you.)
Do you think Mark could have said something more to Harry when he teased? What? Why would that have been hard to do?
The first five books of the Hebrew Bible include many laws and ordinances, often freely mixed with narrative passages that give the context or reason for the particular law. The Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, probably existed as an independent document before the E writer placed it in his story of Moses. Another almost identical version can be found in Deuteronomy 5, although in Deuteronomy the Sabbath is observed as a re- minder of Israel’s bondage in Egypt, that the slaves of the Israelites "may rest as you do," whereas in Exodus the Sabbath is observed because God rested after six days of the labor of creation.
The form of the Ten Commandments used here is common to most Protestant churches. Unitarian Universalists from other religious traditions may be more familiar with other forms.
The first four commandments refer to the relationship of the Israelites with their god, YHWH. The next six refer to relationships among people. Breaking any of the commandments was a breach in the covenant relationship–the two-way agreement that bound YHWH and Israel together-but the Israelites were told, "If you listen to these laws and are careful to observe them, then the Lord your God will observe the sworn covenant he made with your forefathers and will keep faith with you. He will love you, bless you and cause you to increase" (Deuteronomy 7:12-13a).
The golden calf mentioned in the story is believed by many to have been the central focus of Canaanite worship of this period. An excavation in Israel in the summer of 1990 uncovered the first "golden calf" archaeologists have ever found. Much smaller than the calf described in the story of Moses, it is slightly larger than four inches tall and weighs about a pound. Made of several metals and burnished to provide a golden sheen, the calf is thought to date from about 1550 B.C.E. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 25, 1990).
Goals:
To hear the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments
(for older kids) To examine the rules and responsibilities they experience in their own lives
Activities:
Read Background for the session
Be sure your kids know the meaning of the word repent (to be sorry for something youve done)
.
Read the story: The Ten Commandments
Discuss:
Which commandment do you think is most important? Why?
Some rules are easy to understand, like Dont run out in front of a car. Others arent as obvious, like Always say thank you when someone gives you something. If you were starving, do you think you should have to follow the commandment You shall not steal? Why?
If you could make up a new commandment of everybody, what would it be?
AFTER THE HEBREWS LEFT EGYPT, they traveled in the wilderness. It was a very hard trip, and they were hungry and discouraged by the time they camped, three months later, at the foot of Mount Sinai. Mountains were considered holy places then. So Moses went up on Mount Sinai to talk to God. God told Moses that the children of Israel would become a holy nation. When Moses reported to the people what God said, they replied, "Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do,"
The next time Moses went up on the mountain, God told him to have the people devote themselves to goodness for two days. On the third day Moses was to come back on the mountain and God would appear.
On the third day there were thunder and lightning and a thick cloud on the mountain, God had come down to the mountaintop in fire and smoke, and the mountain shook violently. God called Moses to come to the top of the mountain, saying, "Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commandments, which I have written for their instruction." Moses set out with his assistant, Joshua, while the people waited at the foot of the mountain. Moses was on the cloud-covered mountain for six days before he heard from God. Moses remained with God for another forty days and forty nights. When God finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, God gave him the two tablets of commandments, two tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.
While Moses was away, the people complained that they didn’t know what had happened to him. They wanted Aaron,Moses’ brother, to make a god they could worship. Aaron took all the gold in the camp and made a statue of a golden calf. When Moses returned, after forty-seven days, with the two stone tablets, he found the people dancing and worshiping the golden calf. Moses was so angry he threw the stone tablets from his hand and broke them at the foot of the mountain. This broke the covenant between the people and God. Then Moses took the calf they had made, burnt it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the people drink it.
Some time later, after the people had shown that they repented, God forgave them. God said to Moses, "Cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you broke." God was willing to renew the covenant because the people were now willing to follow God’s commandments. This is what the ten commandments said:
I. I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me.
2 You shall not make for yourself an idol to worship.
3. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of God.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and mother.
6. You shall not kill.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet anything that is your neighbor’s.
Goal:
Family fun with a Unitarian Universalist theme, UU principles, and some basic UU facts
Materials:
UU Game Board – Left Side (print on 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper)
UU Game Board – Right Side (print same as above, match to left side, & mount of cardboard)
Game Cards A (print and cut)
Game Cards B (same as above)
Instructions for Play are listed on the Game Board.
Links to Sections in this page:
Samuel Joseph May
Elizabeth Blackwell
Whitney Young
Amos Peck Seaman
Samuel Joseph May (1797-1871)
by Patricia Hoertdoerfer
"What crime have these men committed?" Samuel May asked the other stagecoach passengers as he looked out on 30 black men, who were handcuffed and fastened along a heavy chain that was attached to a wagon.
The man next to May turned and said, "They are only slaves some planter has purchased and he’s taking them home."
May thought about his situation and said, "I never fully realized before how great a privilege it is to live where human beings cannot be treated in this manned."
Samuel May was hardly ever away from his hometown of Boston, but when he took this trip South, it changed his life. He decided to dedicate his life to helping people gain their human rights.He studied and became a Unitarian minister, preaching the message of love toward all people.His religion was practical and active, making him work everyday to relieve the suffering and to free the oppressed. What concerned him most was the loss of human rights. He spoke out against slavery and demanded freedom for black people.
May led Unitarians and people from Syracuse, New York, to help black people reach freedom. They helped slaves escape from the southern part of the United States where people were allowed to own slaves and head north to Canada where slavery was forbidden. Samuel May’s home became a stop for many slaves along the road to freedom. The act of helping slaves escape to the North was called the Under-ground Railroad, and May was a good conductor on the Underground Railroad.
Samuel May worked most of his life to rid our country of its worst form of human oppression–slavery. It was not an easy goal for him, and it sometimes meant violent struggle to reach freedom. As he said, "May the sad experience of the past prompt and impel us to do all that righteousness demands at our hands–all that righteousness demands at our hands. Today people are still suffering and many black people are not treated equally. Yet many liberties have been gained and many people have been helped because of people like Samuel May and other Unitarian leaders who acted with dedication and courage.
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910)
by Elizabeth Gillis
"Elizabeth, it’s of no use trying. Thee cannot gain admission to these schools. Thee must go to Paris and don masculine attire to gain the necessary knowledge.
That is what Elizabeth Blackwell was told by a Quaker friend who tried to help her get into medical school. It was in the 1840s and young ladies did not go to medical school!
But Elizabeth did not go to Paris or dress up like a man. She thought she had the right to study medicine like any man. She applied to many schools and was rejected by all of them. Finally,she was accepted by a medical school in Geneva, New York. The faculty had presented her request to the students. If one student failed to agree, they said, she would not be admitted.They thought it was a great joke and voted to have her enter the medical school.
She completed her studies and graduated.Elizabeth described her graduation day:
"After the degree had been conferred on the others, I was called up alone to the platform. The president, in full academic costume, rose as I came on the stage and going through the usual formula of a short Latin address, presented my diploma. I said, ‘Sir, I thank you; it shall be the effort of my life, with the help of the Most High,to shed honour on my diploma.’ The graduates applauded. As I came down, I was much touched by the graduates making room for me, and insisting that I should sit with them for the remainder of the exercises.
What had begun as a joke to many ended in respect for the young woman who was so deter-mined to be a doctor. However, the medical school was censured for doing such a daring thing.
Dr. Blackwell, a Unitarian for much of her life, had a long career after becoming the first American woman to obtain a degree in medicine.
Whitney Young (1921-1971)
by Denise Tracy
"Where are you going!" his mother asked.
"I’m running away," said the child.
"Where will you go?"
The boy was silent. His suitcase was half full.He had put in some clothes. Now he was putting in the important stuff. His favorite books and a toy or two. He was leaving a lot behind. But where he was going he wouldn’t need much. You see, he was going to start a new world where everything was fair and equal.
"Where will you go? " asked his mother again.
"Somewhere where the color of my skin won’t matter replied the boy with a quiver in his voice.
"What happened?" the mother asked quietly.
"I was walking down the street and two white boys called me a ‘nigger.’ Then they made me get off the sidewalk so they could pass. I hate them."By now he was crying. "I wish I had never been born and I wish 1 had never been born black."
"Whitney, your color is beautiful. It’s lust that some people don’t see it that way. Do you know that when I was your age I wanted to run away from home thinking I could find a place where the color of my skin wouldn’t matter?"
"You did!" The boy was surprised by how well his mother knew him. Sometimes he thought she could even read his mind.
"Yes, I did. I thought I’d go start all over again in a new place."
"What happened?" asked Whitney.
"Well, my momma saw me packing my bag and said she’d tried to run away and that her momma had caught her and her momma’d remembered the time she’d packed her suitcase,too. All of us have had decisions to make about how to deal with the unfairness of the world."
"Why did you and your momma and your momma’s momma decide not to go?"
"Well, my momma’s momma told her and momma told me and now I’m telling you, we Youngs don’t run from evil, we face it unafraid, and we change it."
"How do you change evil?"
"Well, your momma’s momma, my momma, and me all understood that if you believe what some whites want you to–that our color is the problem–then hatred grows. It festers inside you and you grow up bitter. Your momma’s momma, my momma, and me all give you a heritage of pride. Those boys on the street feel small inside–that’s why they pick on you so they will feel bigger. If you know that their behavior comes from their own ignorance and smallness nothing they can say can hurt you. But let me tell you something else. For three generations our family has been watching the world change and we’ve been helping it along. It’s your turn to change evil."
"But what do I do?"
"You’ll know when the time comes."
Whitney Young began to unpack his bag. He’d live in this world and he’d change evil. He came from a long line of people who chose not to run away, not to hate but to change. He felt proud.
When Whitney Young grew up he became the dean of a small college and the director of the National Urban League. As the director of the National Urban League, he allied himself with other blackand white people who believed in equality. He started job programs to deal with the evil of unemployment. He wrote grants to train black people to be executives. He founded schools to help black youths who had dropped out of school to get their diplomas so they could find good jobs.
Whitney Young was a Unitarian Universalist. He worked at changing evil wherever he saw it- not by hating it, but by tackling it, understanding it, and changing it.
Amos Peck Seaman (1788-1864)
by Mary Hamilton
Amos Peck Seaman was called the "King" of Minudie, Nova Scotia, in Canada. From very humble beginnings he became a successful business man and generous Universalist leader.
Amos was born in a tiny hut in the small parish of Sackville in eastern Canada on a very cold January day. As Amos grew, he spent many evenings sitting beside his mother as she darned and re-darned their few clothes. Here he learned to read from the Bible, and to count sticks of wood for the fire. In later years, as he sat each evening to write in his daily journal, he would remember quiet hours with his mother.
By the time he was 8, Amos knew he must leave his parents’ home. He was an extra mouth to feed and there was nothing he could do in Sackville to bring extra food into the home. He found an old birch bark canoe, and he crossed the Bay of Fundy, arriving in Minudie, Nova Scotia, with no shoes on his feet and only the clothes on his back.
Perhaps it was his name that led Amos Seaman to the sea. He spent these early years working around the docks and shipyards and out sailing on the many ships. By the time he was 22 he was, indeed, a man of the sea. With his brother Job as a business partner, he began trading with the Boston merchants, and soon he was carrying goods between Nova Scotia, New England, and the West Indies in ships built in his own shipyards.
On May 12, 1814, Amos Seaman and Jane Metcalfe were married. With Jane’s help, Amos was able to attend school to further his education. Amos seemed to have a magic touch. He succeeded with whatever business he tried. In 1834 he purchased the 7,000 acre Minudie estate. He gradually enlarged it, even reclaiming some land from the sea, until it was the largest estate in Nova Scotia. The many sandstone deposits on the estate were excellent for the production of grindstones. Soon, thousands of high-priced grindstones were being shipped to American markets.
There was little in the town of Minudie that wasn’t touched by Amos Seaman. His businesses included the first steam-powered grist mill, a steam sawmill, and a coal mine. Along with all of this, he kept a fatherly eye on the people of Minudie, doing what he could to improve their lives. Of course, he liked to have things done his way, and soon became known as "King" of Minudie.
Because he never had an education until he grew up, he knew how important it was for his 11 children (seven boys and four girls) and their friends to go to school, even if they thought it might be more fun to play! He gave the town the lumber to build a fine schoolhouse.
On one side of the school, he built a very special church. He was a Universalist, and he believed that everyone could come and worship in his church, even if they didn’t believe as he did.Some of the people were happy to join him, but many of the others weren’t happy there. When he learned this, he made the town another gift — a Catholic church which was built on the other side of the school house.
Amos "King" Seaman lived a long time ago,but all three of the buildings — the school, the Universalist church, and the Catholic church — still stand today in Minudie, Nova Scotia. Amos Seaman was an important Universalist leader who believed that every person has the right to worship as she or he sees fit.
Goals:
To understand what religion is and why people go to church.
To become aware of what gives you good-to-be-alive feelings.
Materials:
Tubes from toilet paper or paper towel.
Red, orange and yellow tissue paper
Construction paper, colorful wrapping paper
Markers, crayons
Tape
Activities:
1. Make personal torches with the cardboard tubes. Tape crumpled tissue paper to the inside of one end of the tube. Decorate tubes with markers, construction paper, or wrapping paper.
2. While youre making the torches, discuss what makes people shine. What gives you a good-to-be-alive feeling? Make a list, or just whip around the room calling out all the things you think of.
You can usually categorize the answers into the following categories:
Times when you feel loved and important
Times when you see youve made someone else feel good
Times when you feel youve done your best
Times when you feel youve done the right thing
Times when you listen to yourself and enjoy being yourself
Explain that people come to church to find the light inside them and keep it shining. Religion is the important things they believe in that make their lives feel good and right. Church is the place where grown-ups come to think about the things you named that make people feel good. Its not always easy to keep the good feeling inside youlife is full of problems and obstacles, just like the game were about to play.
3. Obstacle Course:
If you have 4 or more people, you can make a human obstacle course in a large open area. Each person gets into a position and decides if the person running the course is to go over, around, or under them. As each person completes the course, he or she becomes an obstacle and another person runs the course. If you dont have enough people, or you just prefer to use objects, you can use furniture and other objects to set up a course. Take turns running through the course, carrying your torch under, around, through and between the obstacles.
4. Read The Grumps or The Little Brute Family by Russell Hoban (Its is out of print but may be available at your local library.)
We have been asking very large questions. How did everything begin? We have asked, how did people begin? We have asked, how did our earth begin,how did our solar system begin, how did our galaxy begin? And we have even asked, how did all galaxies and all suns and all worlds begin?
We have read the answers given by different people from different lands and different times. We have asked both primitive people of long ago and the scientists of today. It has been a stirring adventure. We understand now how other people have felt. We see why they thought as they did, and we know why the scientists keep asking more and more questions. For like Kofi in Africa, we too can "go on thinking and thinking and never stop."
But let us come back to some of the smaller questions. How did you and I begin? How will we end, or will we ever end? These intimate questions about ourselves may have been waiting quietly all this time behind big questions.
When did you begin? Ten years ago? Fifteen years ago, did you say? Do you mean you began to be you the day you were born? How can that be? Did you not begin nine months before you were born? Doesn’t the thought start a wondering in your mind? Nine months before you were born, you were a small one-celled gelatin-like ball of life– not as big as the period at the end of this sentence. Was that speck you? How could you come out of that? It took the human race at least two billion years to evolve from one-celled protozoa into people. How is it you could make such a big change from a small one-celled animal into a human baby with billions and billions of cells in your body in so short a time as nine months?
The answer is that your one-celled beginning had in it something that the first protozoa did not have. It had already in it a much larger number of patterns to grow by. Those patterns were strung together in tiny strings inside your one-celled egg. The biologists call these patterns genes. Very wonderful microscopic pieces of life these genes are! For they had in them all the patterns your egg needed in order to grow into you. It is a mystery how these very tiny specks can hold such patterns and how they make the egg follow the patterns. It is as if these little genes could talk and say, "You are to be a boy with brown eyes and dark hair and dark skin," or just the opposite, whatever was needed to make you. Yet who ever heard of a one-celled living thing talking?
Probably in that long-ago time, when there were no living animals except the tiny one-celled protozoa, each of these tiny living things had at least one of those wondrous genes inside its cell. It needed something to show it how to be even just another protozoa. But your tiny egg, that began growing inside your mother’s body, needed thou- sands of patterns or genes to grow by if it was to know how to grow and grow in order to become you.
And where, we ask, did that little speck of life, that was your egg in the beginning, get those patterns to grow by? They came from two germ cells, one a male cell from your father’s body and the other a female cell from your mother’s body.When you were conceived (nine months before you were born), those two cells blended into one cell–into the beginning of you.
And where,we ask, did your father and mother get those small containers of life that could form together and make you? These thousands of special kinds of genes that were needed to make you had been kept alive ever since your father and your mother themselves were single cells inside their mothers. Again it is hard to imagine (but the scientists have good reason for believing it).
And how did your father and mother get their genes that told their eggs how to grow? From their four parents, that is, from your grandparents. And where did your grandparents get their genes to grow by? From their parents, that is from your great-grandparents. And where did your great-grandparents get their genes? How far back must we go to find your very first beglnnlng? We cannot stop, can we, until we have reached the very first living things that were in the beginning of time.Had not these living things lived in the long, long line of ancestors before you, the small egg that began to be you would never have known how to become you. For it was from them that your egg had slowly gathered the patterns for making you.It was because millions and millions of years ago male and female creatures began joining their dlfferent kind of germ cells together that you began, rather than an amoeba. Each new baby creature that was born was a little different from its parents, and some began trying out new ways of doing things. After a while these new ways became firm habits, so firm that new patterns were given to the new eggs to grow by.
The writers of the Hebrew Bible had an interesting way to report how persons have been connected with the people before them. They used a word that we seldom use now: begat. It means brought into being. For example, we read in the Bible, "Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah, etc." So we might describe your connections with those who have lived before you in this way. But we must think of large groups of living things as if they were one single living thing in order to keep your very long story short enough to tell. So this, we may say, is the story of the beginning of you.
The Protozoa begat the Volvox. The Volvox begat the Worm with Brains. The Worm with Brains begat the Fish. The Fish begat the Amphibian. The Amphibian begat the Reptile. The Reptile begat the Mammal. The Mammal begat the Ape. The Ape begat the Human. And the Human begat You.
These are the chapter titles in the long, long story of you. We feel the wonder of it, but who can explain it? In some way, something in all these kinds of living creatures is still living in you, and in every person now alive. You- or a part of you- are much, much older than you seem. You feel young. You look young. You have no memory of the ages before you were born. Yet you brought with you on your birthday some tell-tale signs that you already had inside you a number of patterns to grow by. The millions of cells in your baby body knew how to do thousands of things you have never consciously thought about. Their ancestor cells had gotten used to doing these things "without thinking" thousands of years before you were born. You belong in a living chain, a spiral millions of years old and millions of people and animals long.
And will some of these patterns-to-grow-by that are in you go on living in your children and in your children’s children after your body dies? Surely, we cannot imagine this living chain as ending with you. What kinds of patterns for growing will you and your mate be passing on to your children? Can you do anything about improving these patterns? How?
The past has been long. The future may be even longer. We began with questions. We continue with other and harder questions still unanswered.
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Quest for Meaning is a program of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF).
As a Unitarian Universalist congregation with no geographical boundary, the CLF creates global spiritual community, rooted in profound love, which cultivates wonder, imagination, and the courage to act.