“Your One Wild and Precious Life”
A Sermon by the Reverend Betty Jo Middleton
Unitarian Universalist Church of Loudoun
Leesburg, Virginia
September 14, 2003
“For acquiring human wisdom and
religious holiness, there is no substitute for age,” says Gabriel Moran in his
book Religious Education Development. “Life teaches much, if only
religious education can keep the door open.” He is clearly speaking of
something broader than “forty-five minutes downstairs” on Sunday morning” and
so am I. I have in mind all those influences that contribute to the development
of faith in children, and in adults.
Those 45 minutes this religious community sets aside for our Sunday
morning program for children are an important element in the mix, which
includes the powerful influence of the home, the school, peers, culture, the
whole of the world brought into our homes electronically, and the universe in
which we live.
The term “religious education” and the
concept it represents are a little more than 100 years old. It grows from the
same liberal roots as progressive education in the secular world. It was
embraced by mainstream religious groups for the first half of the last
century. Most Christian bodies have
gone back to a more denominational approach to church education. Even Unitarian
Universalists (usually cited in professional tomes as not having
abandoned religious education) have flirted with denominational education in
the recent past, by overemphasis on making big UUs out of little UUs. The meaning is little understood and the
term is not usually used in our congregations, but shortened to “r.e.”—which is
hard for children and adults alike to decipher! Many say “Sunday school” which
seems more self-explanatory but doesn’t reflect well what we are trying to do
in religious education.
The breadth and depth of the concept
is pointed to in this beginning paragraph of Mary C. Daly’s book Educating
in Faith:
rituals in response to the mystery of life, whenever
they have searched for truth and sought to do what is good, religious education
has been happening. Whether congregated around the fire in a cave, around the
dinner table, or in the town square, people have passed on their traditions of
faith.
I like to refer to what is happening downstairs now as “the Sunday morning program for children” of (at 11:15) “the Sunday morning program for children and youth.” But of course there is a need for a broader, more explanatory term.
Unitarian Universalist religious
educators and leaders of our Association, the UUA, are trying out some new
language for this century. You will hear more and more about faith development,
and less and less about “r.e.”
Now I do not use the word faith to
mean a set of beliefs, but rather in the sense of “engagement with life…”
Mary Oliver poses some of the questions addressed by the world’s religions in her poem “The Summer Day.” To read the poem, see her book New and Selected Poems, published by the Beacon Press in 1992, or click on www.loc.gov/poertry/180/133.html.
Not that we will answer those
questions, but rather than we might ourselves pose them to the children as
“Wondering Questions.” [This concept comes from the work of Jerome Berryman.] I
wonder how Mary Oliver came to use “the swan, and the black bear” in the same
line of poetry? The teachers and children in the “Home Planet” classes will
have such “Wondering Questions” each week.
By the way, the teachers and children in these classes are “boldly going where no one has gone before” in field testing a new religious education (or faith development) program that is being created as we go along. The concept: children living in space explore “the Home Planet” and its people from a distance that gives them a perspective we don’t often get.
What do we offer to help children (and adults) respond to the more pertinent question. I believe that this congregation and the larger religious movement to which we belong offer much to help our children, youth, and adults to make faithful choices for that “one wild and precious life” each of us has been given.
First, I will mention
models/leaders/exemplars/guides. There are many we may lift up before our
children, starting with the adults in this congregation. Those who serve as
volunteer teachers are especially significant models; most adults when asked
what they remember from their early religious education recall not the content
or the setting but one or more of their teachers. At our teacher ingathering we
talked about the importance of serving as guides who help children to find
their own way, rather than seeing our job as pushing them in the direction we
have chosen. And then there are those men and women whose stories we tell and
whose example inspires us.
At the age of eleven, fresh from the
revival at the Methodist church, I determined that before taking any action I
would ask myself the question Alabama voters were asked to consider last week:
what would Jesus do? I quickly decided that it was too hard for me to imagine
what he would do if he were an eleven year old girl growing up in a large
family in rural Arkansas during the second World War.
I did find in the teachings
of Jesus some words to live by and I have tried to do so. The Golden Rule
(found in various forms in a variety of religions) has proved to be a simple
rule for living, accessible and understandable to young and old alike. As a
young adult engaged in a religious search “you shall know the truth, and the
truth shall set you free” was powerful for me.
Because scripture was the primary text
of my religious upbringing, words from that tradition have stayed in my mind
all these days and years, but along with them influences from others:
Shakespeare, Poor Richard, James Whitcomb Riley (a particular favorite of my
mother), and so on. And even if we want
to be literary snobs, we have to admit that “it takes a heap o’livin’ in a
house to make it home.” I believe that “it takes a heap o’livin’ in” a church
to make it a religious home.
Living in the age of the
sound bite, as our children do, they have need of teachings—texts, stories,
words of wisdom—that speak to them and that will stand of the test of time.
This, too, we can provide. Our preschoolers at the 9:30 session and our middle
schoolers at the 11:15 session will hear stories of Unitarian Universalists who
may serve as models for them and focus on teachings and texts from our
tradition. The children in the “Home
Planet” classes both sessions will hear words of wisdom from “prophetic women
and men” of all times and places and from the religions of the world.
In addition to models and teachings,
we offer our children practices that enhance their lives. In her poem, Oliver
speaks of prayer: “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is,” she says. When “A Summer Day” was posted on the
Library of Congress website, it was preceded by this note: “Today’s poem holds
that the act of attention is a form of prayer.” We can teach our children to be
attentive, to be meditative, to reflect on all that they see, and hear, and
feel. The practice of attending worship is one that may serve them in good
stead later in life, as well as have meaning now. The lighting of a chalice,
the sharing of joys and sorrows, familiar songs and readings, images and
symbols, the ringing of the bowl, the many small rituals of our time together
become part and parcel of a child’s life. They will not be able to forget them
even if they try. And even the youngest children in our midst, like the poet,
“know how to fall down in the grass.”
While there, they will notice more than you or I
would…Flowers, leaves, sand, seeds, bugs, worms all merit their attention and
exploration. The young child comes equipped with a sense of wonder that may be
dulled or lost if not nurtured and encouraged.
One of the purposes of worship is to help us regain
our own sense of wonder. It is worth some effort to help our children preserve
theirs by providing opportunities for them to explore the natural world with
adults who are interested in them. Some of that exploration has to be second
hand due to the constraints of time and space. The “Home Planet” classes will
collect “things of earth” throughout the year, and although some of those will
be manufactured, many will be natural objects: shells, stones,
feathers—probably no living creatures, though! These groups will learn
something of the earth-centered
religious traditions.
Rachel Carson writes “If a child is to keep alive
his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the
companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him
the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.” I hope you had an
opportunity to look at the full harvest moon and Mars side by side in the night
sky last week. And I hope you had a child to share that experience with you,
helping you to rediscover “the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we
live in.”
In addition to models, teachings and spiritual
practices, we provide demonstrations of our shared values. Insofar as we show them that we have a
passion for social justice, and insofar as we give them opportunities for
exercising social responsibility, we help them to build a framework for making
choices and decisions for doing justice in the world.
And, as we provide all of these
(models, teachings, practices, demonstrations of shared values) in the context
of a religious community—a congregation and the larger community of Unitarian
Universalism, we teach them that there is a place to bring their wonderings and
their certainties, their questions and their opinions, their joys and their
sorrows, and to find a home for them all.
In William Ellery Channing’s famous discourse to the Sunday School
Society more than 150 years ago, he says “In a word the great end [in religious
instruction] is to awaken the soul, to excite and cherish spiritual life.”
Our religious education programs, our worship
services, our
participation
in the larger community, and all the things we do together may indeed help to
keep the door open (for our children and ourselves) to “that transcending
mystery and wonder…which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to
the forces that create and uphold life.”
***
with your one wild and
precious life?”