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.
Who was Buddha? What do Buddhists Believe?
Goal:
To learn about the life of Siddhartha Guatama (Buddha) and the religion that developed from his experiences and ideas.
Activities:
Read or enact “The Story of Buddha.”
A Free People
Long, long ago, the Hebrew people were slaves in Egypt. They were forced to make bricks out of straw and mud for the Egyptian Pharaoh (the king) for the large pyramids and monuments he was building. They worked hard and long and the pharaoh’s soldiers were very cruel to them. A man called Moses heard a voice speak to him from a burning bush. The voice told him to go to the pharaoh and tell him that God said he was to free the Hebrews and let them leave Egypt.
Many times, Moses went to the pharaoh.Every time, the pharaoh said the Hebrews could leave. And every time, he went back on his word.Many plagues–storms, blood, hailstones, frogs,wild animals–befell the Egyptians and with each plague, the pharaoh said the Hebrews could leave. Then when the storm or the terrible happening was over, he changed his mind again.
Finally, Moses told the pharaoh that if he did not let the Hebrews go, a tenth plague would happen to the Egyptians and it would be the worst of all. An angel of death would come and kill all the first-born children of the Egyptians.The pharaoh was frightened and said that the Hebrews could leave Egypt.
Moses told the Hebrews to kill a lamb and paint some of its blood on the doorposts of their homes. When the Angel of Death came, it would pass over the homes whose doorposts were painted with blood and their children would not be killed. The Hebrews began to make bread for their journey, but before the bread had time to rise, they started off, for they were afraid the pharaoh would change his mind again and not let them go.
All of the Hebrews followed Moses. They walked to the edge of the Red Sea, and there a great miracle happened. The waters spread apart so that the Hebrews could pass through to the other side. The pharaoh did change his mind,and sent his soldiers after them. But when the soldiers reached the sea, the waters closed over again. The Hebrews were safe! They sang songs of joy. They were free once again! Many years later, the Hebrews came to be called Jews.
Each year the Jews celebrate the holiday of Passover to remember the time when they became a free people. This is the special ceremony of the Passover Seder.
Background for Hannakah
The joyful Hanukkah celebration of the Jewish people occurs in December, usually at the same time as the Christmas season. Traditionally, it commemorates the rededication of the Temple at Jerusalem. Hanukkah was first celebrated over 2,000 years ago after the Jews, under the leadership of Judah the Maccabee (the Hammer), recaptured the Temple from the Syrians. Because the Syrians had occupied and defiled the Temple, it had to be ritually cleansed Also, the Jews needed to find oil for the sacred lamp. According to legend, the Jews found only one jug of oil which was enough for the lamp to burn just one night But it burned in the lamp for eight days and nights. These eight days and nights became the Hanukkah festival, which Jewish people have celebrated ever since in many lands and under many different circumstances.
The story also says that when the victorious Jews first entered the Temple, they found eight iron spurs abandoned by the Syrians in their flight. On these Spurs the Jews stuck eight candles and the light was the origin of the special menorah (candlestick) which burns during the festival.
Hanukkah has usually been celebrated more in the home than in the synagogue. On each night of Hanukkah, the family gathers around the menorah and lights and blesses the festive candle– one on the first night, two the second, and so on, until in the final evening all eight are burning. They exchange gifts, play dreidel games, eat latkes, and retell the story of the victory of the Maccabees and the little jug of oil that burned for eight days.
A Great Miracle
A long time ago, more than 2,000 years ago, the Jews had been defeated by a people called the Syrians.
When Antiochus IV became king of Syria, he was angry at the Jewish people for refusing to worship the Greek gods that he worshiped.
The Jews believed they should worship their own god, in their own way. (Ask the children,"What do you think? " Allow time for responses.)
Most of us don’t want anyone to tell us what to think, or what to say, or what we should consider important. We believe that we have the right to worship in our own way, and that others should have the same right.
But Antiochus didn’t believe that, and he decided to make the Jews worship his gods. He forbade them to read their holy books, pray to their god, and celebrate their holidays.
Antiochus even had Greek statues put in the Temple in Jerusalem, the holiest of all places to the Jews! He ordered the Jews to give up their Sabbath.
The Jews did not like this at all.
In the village of Modin, a leader rose up and his name was Mattathias. He and his five sons–Judah Maccabee, Jonathan, Johanah, Eleazar,and Simon–joined a band of patriots in the hills,and became guerilla fighters. On dark nights, they laid low the armies of Antiochus, one after another. When Mattathias died, Judah become the leader of the outlaw army, and it was under his leadership that they entered Jerusalem. When they reached the Holy City, their joy turned to bitterness when they saw the dirt and the desolation in the temple area. They started to work on restoring and scrubbing the Temple, and on the 25th of Kislev, they relit the Great Menorah with the small bit of holy oil they had found.Every year thereafter, the Jews celebrate this day as the Festival of Cleansing of the Temple.
From here, the story goes into a number of legends. The most loved story is one in which there is only enough oil for one day, but by a miracle, it burned for eight days, until more oil could be found and sanctified.
So for eight days, they celebrated the dedication of the Temple and their right to worship freely. And ever since that time, Jews everywhere have celebrated that great event that happened long ago. On the eight days of Hanukkah–which actually means "dedication"–Jewish people light candles, sing songs, play games, eat foods fried in oil, and give one another gifts!Even when Jews have lived in places where again it was against the law for them to worship freely,they have celebrated in this way.
(At this point, bring out the menorah and place the candles in it, one at a time, beginning at the right. Then, lighting the candles from the left, tell the children that one candle is lit the first evening of Hanukkah, two the second evening, and so on up to eight candles for each day of Hanukkah.)
Hanukkah is a celebration that we Unitarian Universalists can all appreciate, because we believe that all people should be free to worship in their own way.
How Are People Made?
Goal: to help children appreciate the uniqueness in each person and to give children a sense of their connection with the long chain of human evolution.
Preparation:
1. Collect some books from your local library such as: Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle, The Facts of Life, by Jonathan Miller and David Pelham, Where Do Babies Come From? by Margaret Sheffield and Sheila Bewley, and Me and My Family Tree, by Paul Showers. Have them available for your children to browse through.
2. Gather the following photos from family albums:
• Yourself as a baby, young child and at later ages (as you have them)
• A sibling of yours as a baby, child, teenager, adult
• One of your parents as a baby, child, young adult
• Your own children when they were babies
• A few non-family members—as children and adults
Activities:
• Read Some Wonderings of Our Own
• Family Snapshot Matching Game
Spread the photos you’ve collected on the floor or table. Try to match the baby/child pictures with the adult ones. Then identify similarities and differences in the physical attributes of members of your family.
Why do kids tease each other?
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?
Background for Teachers
The lessons with a bible theme aim to teach middle schoolers about our Unitarian Universalist approach to the Bible. In Unitarian Universalism, the bible is seen as a library, a collection of small books bound together. The word "Bible" is Greek for "books". The Bible is made up of 2 sections, sometimes called the Old Testament and the New Testament. We, as UU’s, want to honor the fact that the Jewish people do not refer to their sacred text as "Old Testament". Instead, we can refer to the 2 sections as the Jewish Scriptures, or Torah, and the Christian Scriptures.
We believe that the Bible is the result of many people and writing over centuries of time, a long time ago. These people were trying to answer some very important questions, such as "When did the world begin, and how?" "Where did people come from" and "What does it mean that men and women feel about each other the way they do?" Although some people believe that the Bible’s answers to these questions are the only right ones (and they often call the Bible "the Word of God" for that reason), UU’s believe that there is no one final answer. There is "truth" in the Bible, in the truth of the insights and stories that still speak to us today. There is beauty, and myth, and poetry, and compelling stories that are worth knowing.
We acknowledge that our world has changed, though, and these stories are the result of times that are very ancient. We must use our own experiences and think for ourselves as well.
-paraphrased from "What to Tell Young People About Unitarian Universalism… a guide for adults to help in answering large questions simply." by Charles S. Giles.
" (William Ellery Channing’s) defense of Unitarianism was also a defense of the Bible and of religion. He recoiled against "the contemptuous manner in which human reason is often spoken of by our adversaries, because it leads, we believe, to universal skepticism." His words remain important even today, because fundamentalism of the right has its whiplash in fundamentalism of the left. When the true believer proclaims that the Bible is the unique word of God – to be accepted without question – the true unbeliever responds by dismissing scripture as a figment of demented imaginations.
A handful of Unitarian Universalists boast that in their church the only time the words "Jesus Christ" are uttered during worship is when their minister trips on the steps. Channing would have found them as unreasonable as those in this day who read their Bibles without thinking. To him the Bible was written not by God, but by inspired people, drawing from both history and experience, who sought to understand better the larger meaning of life and death. Fundamentalists may trivialize the Bible by excluding reason as the principal tool by which it may be understood, but this does not mean that reasonable reflections upon the stories and teachings contained therein cannot markedly advance our own humble search for meaning and for faith.
In addition to William Ellery Channing, another Bostonian who had something new to say about religion was Theodore Parker. In his great sermon, "The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity, " Parker offered a dynamic resolution for those of us who wish to mine the Bible for its wisdom without sacrificing our critical faculties. Much of what the Bible contains is time- bound, he argued, and therefore of marginal relevance to us today. But it also contains eternal truths, which we can mine without ever exhausting. "The solar system as it exists in fact is permanent", Parker wrote, "though the notions of Thales and Ptolemy, of Copernicus and Descartes, about this system, prove transient, imperfect approximations to the true expression. So the Christianity of Jesus is permanent, though what passes for Christianity with popes and catechisms, with sects and churches, in the first century or in the nineteenth century, prove transient also."
…ln the Bible, when religion is defined, its requirements entail concrete duties, not abstract theological formulations. "What does the Lord require of you," the prophet Micah asked, "but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." That is as abstract and theological as it gets. …Like many other Unitarian Universalists, I mine the Bible for that which inspires me to be a better person, more loving, more neighborly. It is rich in such material. But the Bible is not a single, sacrosanct book; it is a whole library of books representing the history, legends, laws, wisdom, and poetry of a people. And even these have been edited and re-edited over the centuries; some are of lesser intrinsic interest, more dated by historical context and theological circumstance, than others; some are dramatically uneven in spiritual quality, the most sublime sentiments coupled with theological and ethical barbarisms in the same text. Thus, in drawing inspiration from scriptural teachings as one of the sources of our faith, most Unitarian Universalists approach them more critically than do some orthodox Christians and Jews. Biblical literalists claim that the Bible is the transcript of God’s word; biblical humanists are more likely to look beyond the letter to the spirit- the spirit of neighborliness, of kinship, of love.
…Some Unitarian Universalists, who still suffer from a religious education based on teachings from the Bible that inspired fear rather than love in their hearts, have little desire to return to the Bible and reclaim its essential teachings as part of their own faith. Others, Unitarian Universalist Christians, center their faith and their devotions on the scriptures. But however we gauge the nature of the Bible’s authority, nearly all of us can embrace the principle of neighborliness at the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition. From A Chosen Faith by Buehrens and Church, p. 131.
