Statements About Spirituality
Spirituality is the experience of a depth dimension to life, a dimension beyond the physical, the obvious, the provable, the universally shared.
Spirituality is a quickening, an evolving awareness of the depth dimension of one’s life and one’s connection with the universe. It arises from the search or longing for atonement – perfection- at-onement. It invites a way of living- an ordering of one’s life- which nurtures the evolving awareness- the quickening- for one’s self and others.
Spirituality is the faith that a depth dimension of one’s life does exist and the process one goes through to reach such faith.
Spirituality is the inner quickening that comes with a sudden or long sought awareness which touches the core of one’s existence.
Spirituality is the heightened awareness of oneself in relationship to humankind and the universe.
Spirituality is the relationship a person experiences with the universe and the meaning that relationship has for how that person orders and lives life. It includes personal experiences of insight and connection, interpretation and sharing of those experiences, and decisions to act in ways that bring one’s life into harmony with the meanings those experiences have evoked.
Spirituality. . .self-learning. practice, ripening …through reflection, interaction, and action . . will, grace, faith.
Spirituality is not a goal, nor a state of being, but the process of sell-learning, practice and experience of the awesome, which leads to a ripening of the self, of the soul.
Spirituality is what lies beyond our physical boundaries and mental capacity, beyond the limitations- and how it is bonded to our physical awareness and existence.
Spirituality Is a hazy, nebulous dimension of life that means many things to different people and at different times, and that they explain with many different vocabularies.
Spirituality is the expression of one’s relationship to God/dess and/or one’s connection with the universe.
Spirituality is at the core of meaning-making for those who experience it.
Spirituality involves the relationship between one’s consciousness and one’s soul- and between one’s being and the universe as a whole.
Spirituality is one’s inner self: soul (mind is not the self but a form of expression of the soul).
Spirituality is feeling and knowing- awareness and recognition and resonance.
Spirituality is the awesome, nonphysical aspect of life.
Spirituality is something (a capacity) that you develop. It is a way of ordering one’s life.
Spirituality is needing to be intentional (will) vs. needing to wait (grace).
Spirituality is the element of fate.
Spirituality is the search for ultimate meaning/ answers- birth, life, and death.
Spirituality is application or practice; hands-on, not in the head. It is very personal, intimate, and may be scary or it may be terribly common and matter-of-fact.
Spirituality is an evocation of feelings that leads into the spiritual; extrasensory, transcendent experience.
A Spring Haggadah–Telling Stories
Passover and Easter are both celebrations which highlight the spring season. How do Unitarian Universalists respond to these deeply significant religious festivals? Some respond by turning with the secular culture to flowers, eggs, lambs and bunnies–all ancient symbols of the renewal of life, which is also a central message of Easter and Passover. The rich layers of human custom and belief come together now, and as we draw our living tradition from many sources, UUs may serve forth a generous slice that includes all those layers.
What follows, inspired by the Jewish Haggadah, or "telling" of the Passover story during the Seder meal, is an attempt to bring all the stories together in a celebration for UU families. The dialogue may take place around the dinner table where symbols of the season have been placed. The menu is of your choosing, with a glass of wine or juice for each person. The first question should be asked by the youngest person present and answered by the oldest person present. After that, you may take turns asking and answering in any order around the table. If you like, make copies of the dialogue available to everyone ahead of time, or simply pass this one copy from person to person for an impromptu reading.
First question: Why is this time of year different from other times?
First answer: This is the time when we remember that death is a natural part of life on earth and that all living things renew themselves over and over, year after year. This is the time when Passover and Easter are celebrated. It is the time of Easter bunnies and decorated eggs.
All: We lift our glasses in celebration of life everlasting!
Second question: What is the story of Passover?
Second answer: Long ago, the Hebrew people were slaves in the land of Egypt. Because the Pharaoh refused to free the slaves, Moses and Aaron and their god, Yahweh, brought one affliction after another to the Egyptians. Finally Yahweh passed through the land by night, bringing death to the firstborn son of every Egyptian family. So that the Hebrews would be spared, Yahweh told them to kill a lamb and mark their doorways with its blood. When Yahweh came to a door marked with the blood of the lamb, he would passover that house. The Hebrews were able to escape from Egypt, and after wandering for many years, finally came to a Promised Land of their own. At the time of Passover, Jewish people all over the world celebrate their freedom with a Seder dinner.
All: We lift our glasses in celebration of freedom from oppression!
Third question: What is the story of Easter?
Third answer: The Easter story happened many, many years after the Hebrews left Egypt. It is the story of a man named Jesus, a Jew who lived during the time of the Roman empire. Jesus brought new inspiration to his people. He talked about love and non-violence and respect for every person. Some of the Roman rulers were afraid he might start a rebellion, and some of the Jewish leaders were afraid he might change their religion. It was just after Jesus and his friends had celebrated a Passover Seder together that he was arrested and put to death on the cross. However, his teaching lived on, and today Christians all over the world celebrate Easter in his memory as a time of love and hope reborn.
All: We lift our glasses in celebration of love and hope reborn!
Fourth question: What is the story of the Easter bunny and colored eggs:
Fourth answer: This is the oldest story of all. Ancient people who lived in northern lands waited anxiously each year for spring to return.They saw the egg as a symbol of new life, and they noticed that rabbits had large and frequent families. They watched eagerly for the first green shoots of spring, which meant fresh food for their own families. Many people in all times and places have decorated eggs for spring celebrations. A roasted egg is one of the symbolic foods of Passover. Baby animals and flowers and green, growing things are also symbols of new life.
All: We lift our glasses in celebration of life everlasting!
LIST OF STAMPS and their NUMBERS
UNITED STATES
2146 Abigail Adams
806 John Adams
811 John Quincy Adams
862 Louisa May Alcott
2010 Horatio Alger
784 Susan B. Anthony
967 Clara Barton
1683 Telephone (Alexander Graham Bell)
1399 Elizabeth Blackwell
1781 Boston State House (Thomas Bulfinch)
876 Luther Burbank
1551 Christmas (Nathaniel Currier)
1844 Dorothea Dix
871 Charles W Eliot
861 Ralph Waldo Emerson
818 Millard Fillmore
1030 Benjamin Franklin
887 Daniel Chester French
1177 Horace Greeley
2047 Nathaniel Hawthorne
1288 Oliver Wendell Holmes
870 Mark Hopkins
2177 Julia Ward Howe
1278 Thomas Jefferson
864 Henry W Longfellow
866 James Russell Lowell
869 Horace Mann
1050 John Marshall
2094 Herman Melville
890 Samuel FB. Morse
1281 Francis Parkman
2038 Joseph Priestley
1048 Paul Revere
2055 Charles Steinmetz
1275 Adlai Stevenson
1293 Lucy Stone
884 Gilbert Stuart
685 William H. Taft
1327 Henry D. Thoreau
1380 Daniel Webster
2170 Paul Dudley White
1280 Frank Lloyd Wright
1875 Whitney Young
CANADIAN
274 Alexander Graham Bell
518 Arthur Lismer (painting)
879 Emily Stowe
858 Robert S. Weir (Three composers)
Stefania’s Story
Explain that the story is about a girl the children’s age who had a hard decision to make. Then read or tell the following story.
Back in the early days of this century, a young schoolgirl and her family moved from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to a small town in the same province. Her name was Stefania. Her father had bought a general store in the town and sold groceries and candy, buttons and boots, paint and hammers, and all manner of useful and interesting things. He and Stefania’s mother and her brothers and sisters were considered important people in the town because of the store.
It was summer when the family moved to the town. Stefania found it easy to make new friends in her neighborhood. For one thing, she was a friendly person. For another there was the store with the bins of cookies and the penny candy in the glass case, and she was allowed to treat her friends when they came to the store with her.
When September came and it was time for school to start, Stefania did not feel like a new pupil at all, for she already had friends who would be at school with her, and she looked forward to making new ones. She also looked forward to going to the little Unitarian church on the edge of town. It had been closed all summer. Her family had been members of the Icelandic Unitarian Church in Winnipeg and Stefania had gone to Sunday school.
At recess on the first day of school all the pupils went outside to play. Soon they were busy with their games and Stefania was finding new friends. In a little while, though, she noticed a girl about her age in a dress that looked like a hand-me-down standing apart from all the others, not joining in the games.
"Why doesn’t that girl over there play with us?" she asked. "Oh, we couldn’t play with her," someone said. "She’s a Unitarian." It didn’t take Stefania even a second to decide what to do. "Then you can’t play with me either," she said, "for I’m a Unitarian too." And she walked away from the group and introduced herself to the other girl.
This is a true story. It happened at a time when some people didn’t like Unitarians because Unitarians believe that the search for truth is important in religion and don’t believe that Jesus was a God. Some people didn’t like Universalists because Universalists believe that love toward others is the most important part of religion and don’t believe that anyone will go to hell forever. It was sometimes very hard to be a Unitarian or a Universalist.
What does stereotype mean?
Goal:
To explore the concepts of prejudice and stereotyping and your family’s experience with them.
Definitions:
For this session define the terms as follows:
Prejudice: an unfavorable attitude toward or feeling about a person or group of people based on ignorance and/or misinformation.
Stereotype: a generalization about a group of people also based on ignorance and/or misinformation
Preparation:
Print the following statements on a large piece of paper:
All children are noisy.
I think people who wear glasses are dumb.
All African-Americans play basketball.
Everyone has a right to a free education.
No UUs believe in God.
I don’t like people who speak Spanish at home.
All old people are hard of hearing.
I don’t like people who are tall.
All adults are smart.
Activites:
Movement Game: Ask everyone to find a space in the room where they can stretch out their arms and legs without touching anything. Say something like: Our world is full of opposites like:wet—dry; little—big; hot—cold; old—young; night—day; short—tall; low—high. Can you think of more?
We’re going to play a game where we explore some of these pairs of opposites through the way we move our bodies. When I say a word, I want you to try it on like it was a piece of clothing. See how it fits you. The only rule is that you have to stay in one place, keep your feet where they are now all the time. We’ll start with huge. Let your body and your movements be as big as you can. (Pause for 5-10 seconds.) Now let your body and your movements get tiny, as small as you can. (Pause) Now let your body and your movements be all straight lines. (Pause) And now make curved lines. (Pause) Can you make your movements very loud? And now make them totally silent. Now, everyone explore moving like a boy. How do boys move? (Pause) Now switch and try moving like a girl. Now move like an old person. Now move like a teenager. Now move like a parent.
Did anyone make any discoveries while you were moving in different ways? (Be aware of movements that indicate prejudice or stereotyping about boys, girls, old people etc.)
True or False?
Read the list of statements you printed out above, ask your family to vote on whether they think the statement is true or false. When you’ve finished voting, discuss the statements with questions like:
What do most of these statements have in common?
How do statements like this make you feel?
Read the definitions of prejudice and stereotype. Then read each statement again and ask your family to say whether the statement is a statement of prejudice or a stereotype. (note that some are neither.)
Used-to-Thinks
Did you ever think something when you were younger and then, when you got to be a little older, find out it wasn’t that way at all?
For example, when I was in first grade, I used to think that children in the third grade were practically grownups! But then when I got to be in the third grade, I didn’t feel grown-up at all. But then I thought the sixth-graders were really old!
For some reason it’s fun to tell other people about your "used-to-thinks." I’ve been collecting "used to thinks" for quite a few years now — some of them are my own, some of them my children told me, and some of them other children told me. Here are some of the "used-to-thinks" I have collected. I wonder whether you used to think any of these things?
I used to think that we lived on the inside of the world ball, not on the outside.
I used to think that when you shut off the TV the program would stop, and then, when you turned it on again, it would begin right where it was when you stopped it.
I used to think you grew bigger on your birthday.
I used to think that when people said that Christmas was just around the corner, the people around the corner were having Christmas.
I used to think that when there were double lines down the middle of the highway, motorcycles were supposed to go in the space between them.
I used to think that ladies who wore high heels had heels on their feet that went down inside their shoes.
I used to think that after you’ve gotten as old as you are going to get, you begin to get younger again. When someone told me how old they were, I wondered whether they were on their way to older or younger.
Children are not the only ones who have "used-to-thinks." Almost every day, now that I have grown up, I find out something that makes something that I thought I knew into a "used-to-think." (Share some grown-up "used-to-thinks" of your own.)
Do any of you have "used-to-thinks?" (Pause while others in the group share their "used-to-thinks.")
But it isn’t just grownups and children who have "used-to-thinks." All the people who are alive together at one time think certain things that people living after them find out aren’t true at all.
The people who lived in Greece several thousand years ago used to think that it was the trees shaking that made the wind blow.
People used to think that tomatoes were poisonous.
The people who lived when my grandmother did used to think that it was positively dangerous to go as fast as fifteen miles an hour. They used to think that there never could be a flying machine — it would fall out of the air.
People used to think that we would never, never get to the moon, or to Mars, or away from our earth at all.
I guess that as long as there are people in the world there will be "used-to-thinks," because there is always going to be more to find out, and there are always going to be new things to find out about what we think we already know. Sometimes, as we get older, we understand things that we couldn’t have understood before — just because we have grown some and have had more experiences. Every time you find yourself with a new "used-to-think," you ought to feel pretty good, because it means you’ve learned something that you didn’t know before.
What do I say when someone asks me, “What do UUs believe?”
Goal:
To help kids learn how to respond to questions about Unitarian Universalism.
Materials:
The Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes in Simplified Language printout
Story: “Stefania’s Story"
What Am I? printout
Activities:
Show the simplified version of the UU Principles.
Read Stefania’s Story.
Discuss:
Was Stefania’s decision difficult? Why? What do you think happened next?
Have you ever been in a similar situation? What was your decision? Was it hard or easy?
What principle (or principles) does Stefania’s story fit?
Read the following situations, or present them in your own words. Invite responses. Discuss the different choices in each situation. Affirm your kids positive and confident responses and their search for their own answers.
You and your friends are sitting on the beach after a swim, talking a Sunday school. Someone says, “I know that Jesus was God.” You could: say nothing, say “No, he wasn’t,” or ________________________________.
Someone says to you that the world began the way it says in the Bible. You could: get mad and say they don’t know what they’re talking about; say, “I guess so”; or _________________________.
You and a classmate are walking home from school. The classmate says that going to church every Sunday is the most important thing about religion. You could: agree; say, “That’s silly!”; or __________________.
As you walk home from school you and your friend pass his church. He says “That’s my church, The Church of Our Savior. What’s yours?” You tell him____________. Your friend says, “Oh, I know about your church. My father says you don’t believe in anything.” You could: yell, “Oh yes we do,” and run off; say “I guess we don’t”; or _______________________________.
You and a friend walk by your church on the way home from school. You tell her that it is your church and give its name. She says she goes to Emmanuel Baptist. She asks you what your church is like and what you believe. You could: say, “I don’t really know what we believe,” say, “We have good parties at our church;” or _________________________________.
Can UU Kids Pray?
Using prayer beads can help us ‘talk to god’ or think about how our lives are going.
Some Unitarian Universalist kids believe there’s a God in heaven deciding how we live and when we will die. Other UU kids think God is the force of life and nature. Still others don’t believe in any kind of God at all. With all these different ideas about God, what would prayer (a kind of talking to God) be like for UU kids?
The Reverend Christopher Gist Raible, like all UU ministers, thinks that kids need to decide for themselves what their beliefs are about God, but he also thinks we can all benefit from prayer. Kids can use prayer to think about how their lives are going and to make plans for how to become the best people they can.
Reverend Raible says that when kids pray they might think about what they feel thankfu1 for, what they feel sorry for, and what they are hopeful about.
Virginia Steel, a UU Director of Religious Education added one more thing to the list of things Reverend Raible thinks kids can pray about: She thinks kids can also pray about what they want to improve in their lives. She used the word THIS to remember the four things we could pray about: being Thankful, being Hopeful, wanting to Improve, and being Sorry.
In some religions, people use a string of beads to help them count how many times they have said certain prayers. Catholics call these beads "rosary beads."
When Muslirns use beads to help them pray, they call it "tasbih."
Is war ever right?
Goal: To consider two opposing points of view about war: 1. that fighting leads to less happiness in the end and 2. that war can lead to lasting peace.
Activities:
Read: Two Selfish Kings and Krishna, Champion of the Oppressed
Discuss:
How useful do you think Buddha’s advice was in Two Selfish Kings? Would it work today?
What makes land belong to a country or to a person?
Have you ever had little “wars” of your own? Think of some examples. How have some of these been settled? What are some consequences and results of quarrels and fights?
How do you think Krishna felt, knowing that his dharma (his social duty, his fate) committed him to a life of war and struggle, when he was not really a warlike person?
How did he try to live out his dharma? (By championing the cause of the weak and the right.)
Why did Arjuna believe that even if he won and destroyed the army of the evil king, his own sin would be greater than theirs? (Because he believed killing was a sin.) Krishna gave him a response that was based on the religious belief that the real life (soul) within each person cannot be killed; therefore, he should not mourn those he must kill in order to achieve peace. What do you think of this? Is this the kind of answer you would have given Arjuna? What would be yours?
Can you think of examples today where religion is used by political leaders to promote certain policies, including war, and forbid independent thinking?
Reflect on the soul-searching of Arjuna and the words of the suffering widow and mother. Do you think the peaceful years following the war could make these women forget their husbands and sons? Could the results of the war been achieved another way?
Debate:
Divide your family into two groups. Discuss among yourselves the pros and cons of proceeding with this war. Then conduct a mini-debate: state, in your own words, the arguments for proceeding with this war and the arguments against proceeding with this war.
What Am I?
I believe:
that my religion is not just going to church and saying
prayers. My religion is the way I live–the good I can do and
the things I can learn. "I make my life a prayer each day–by
living and doing, in the very best way!
Here is a picture of me.
I know:
everything I say, everything I do is important. What my
friends say and do is important too-even though I don’t
always agree with them. Everyone has different ideas and I
respect them!
Here is a picture of my friend.
I believe:
that all religions have something good to teach, but no one
church knows all there is to know. That’s why in our church
we always try to learn more; by reading and talking and
making things, and by thinking about everything that has
happened since the world began.
Here is where my congregation meets.
