Doing Lent as a Unitarian Universalist

The three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all have times of fasting and self-denial (Rosh Hashanah, Lent, Ramadan), and self-denial also features in Buddhism and Hinduism in different ways.  (If you want to think more about all that, try this.)

But I'm not any of those religions - I'm a Unitarian Universalist.  And UUism doesn't have a tradition of intentional self-denial or a time to intentionally re-focus your life.  Why we don't probably makes perfect sense if you look at the evolution of our traditions (part of the whole point was that both Unitarians and Universalists held up the idea that people were good, as opposed to the Calvinist ideas that are decidedly more pessimistic about human nature), but understanding why this is so doesn't change the fact that I feel drawn to some sort of fasting as a spiritual practice.  And, strictly because I come from a Christian family, if feels most authentic for me to adopt a modified practice of Lent (in other words, it would feel like cultural misappropriation to me to try and adopt a Jewish or Islamic practice, when those traditions are further from my understanding and are not present in my family).

So I will be observing Lent, starting tomorrow on the traditional Ash Wednesday.  The point of this, for me, is to practice self-denial, self-restraint, and self-control, or as Simple Mom beautifully wrote, "Say No, to Yourself". It's all about a pause to make sure that I am living the life I choose to live, in accord with the deepest callings of my heart, and not just living a life of unthinking drives.  Matt Kinsi had a nice perspective on Lent and UU's when he called this the triumph of ego over id.

I have done Lent in the past, and given up sugar, which at the time was a real addiction for me.  I wasn't sure I could do without it, and I was a cranky bear at first.  But it was liberating to realize that I did not need sugar, and that I actually felt much healthier and had a clearer mind without it.  I have a healthier relationship to sugar to this day, finding that I can partake in moderation but also can go without.

This year my husband and I will be giving up wine, and actually all forms of alcohol (with an exception for St. Patrick's day).  We will confirm to ourselves that we do not need to have a glass of wine in the evening to unwind.  We will spend this time practicing more intentionality in how we relax and how we unwind.  I'm glad we're doing it together, too, and this might be a great time to be more intentional in how we relate to one another as partners as well.

We will be donating the money we would have spent on alcohol to a clean water charity (World Water Day is in March too, and that seems like a nice coincidence).  Turning Wine into Water.

Self-denial.  Self-control.  Reflection.  Renewal.

It's all perfectly timed for this season, isn't it?

Our Little Play

This last week the kids were at the church camp I taught all week.  And I'm absolutely counting those days as "school" days. :)




The focus of the camp was "Peace Camp", and we used a non-violent communication curriculum (which I reviewed over on my other blog).

We also took the wonderful picture book The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig and turned it into a short play, which we performed during the Sunday worship service.  H. performed the role of the Little White Wolf, and C. was on set and prop design.

The performance yesterday went really well, the congregation loved it, and the kids were thrilled with the result of all their work.  It was great!

Our week in camp

(Terrariums with plastic animals)

This week I'm teaching a half-day camp at my church, for 4-7 year olds.  It has left me scrambling to keep up with domestic tasks such as cooking, cleaning, dishes, and laundry, and we've completely tabled our homeschooling for the week.

Meanwhile, my son is getting to be "staff" for this camp for the first time, and learning lessons from that, and my daughter is enjoying the camp activities and her friends.  I'm enjoying teaching, testing out some crafts that have been on my pinterest boards for a while, singing songs and playing silly camp games, and watching all the kids deepen their relationships to each other and to the church.  It's a good (if a bit tiring) week.




This astronaut picture craft worked out well, but my daughter just couldn't follow directions. :)

God?

Last Sunday I led a workshop on "God?" for our 8th graders at church.  It's one of the peculiarities of working for a Unitarian Universalist congregation that most of our youth are atheists, and everyone is more comfortable talking about values than they are about God.

I invited our minister to join us for this workshop, and to expound on the question "why should we bother engaging with this word - "God" - at all?  He did a great job of talking the question out and encouraging the youth to explore their ideas of God more, but most of the youth seemed disinterested - for now.

I'm studying for a Liberal Theologies course right now, and found these words by Bill Schulz:

It is not particularly important to me anymore whether I or anyone else uses "God talk".  What is of supreme importance is that I live my life in a posture of gratitude - that I recognize my existence and, indeed, Being itself, as an unaccountable blessing, a gift of grace.  Sometimes, it is helpful to call the source or fact of that grace God and sometimes not.  But what is always helpful and absolutely necessary is to look kindly at the world, to be bold in pursuit of its repair, and to be comfortable in the embrace of its splendor.  I know no better term for what I seek than an encounter with the Holy.

Seven Fun Things From Church Today

1. A class of 3rd and 4th graders who build their vision of Solomon's Temple out of Duplos and then are so excited to show it to me and get me to take a picture of it.  Features to note: a water slide, a book open for the Priest to read from, and out of the camera shot, a rainbow standing over it all.

2.  Four year olds who sit on the rug in their classroom alone while I have to run out looking for a teacher after a volunteer doesn't show ... and when I get back without anyone and realize I have to cover this class myself (along with supervising the six other classes going on) the kids say "we were Statues!".  Darling little ones practically ran their own class today.

3.  Getting to pop in and watch 5th and 6th graders do a little skit based off "clues" for the Cain and Abel story, and see them create a whole new scenario.

4.  Holding hands with good people in the High School group gathering.

5.  Having great advisors come in and enrich the Middle School lesson so much.

6.  Getting to introduce a new little one to our Nursery.

7.  Arriving in time to find my daughter is the last one in her class of 1st and 2nd graders and is valiantly still trying to hold their model Ark of the Covenant up "because all my friends left me when they heard there were cookies!".

A mixed view of legacy

The theme of the 30 Days of Love this week has been "honoring the legacy".  I've been getting the daily emails, the reminders to think about Martin Luther King, Jr., the 40th anniversary of Roe V. Wade, how proud Caesar Chavez's grand-daughter feels of her grandfather, and asking folks to nominate heroes and justice-seekers.  I should feel inspired.  I wish I felt like writing posts about my heroes.

But all this talk of "legacy" (and also, the field trip the kids and I took this week to hear about living Native Traditions), has me thinking about another kind of legacy.  The legacy of privilege, prejudice, and racism.  I think it's fair to say that I'm a 1st-generation justice-seeker.  And when facing the question of "legacy", I have to be honest and confront the legacy I inherit from my family.

My family aren't particularly prejudiced.  They are good people.  But no one has ever marched for civil rights, either.  And, as European Americans, we inherit the legacy of white racism and privilege.  Yes, a few generations back many in my family faced discrimination (No Irish Wanted, etc and my german-American family had a rough time of it during WWII), but then there is also this:

When I was in Army training, there were many other young soldiers with the same last name as I have, but I was the only white one.  One of the guys asked me how I got this last name .... told me I was the first white person with this name he'd ever met, that he'd thought it was a black name.  My name is from Wales.  However, this name has a long history in America - a whole county in Virginia was the original plantation-land of this family ... and they owned many slaves.

That is an awkward conversation to have with your fellow-trainees (all 18 year olds and what did we all know about how to talk to each other about this stuff?).  A couple hundred years ago, white people with my last name probably owned your great-grandparents.  I don't know how my branch of the family is related, but in all likelihood those were some of my great-grandparents who were slave-owners.

I'd love to be writing a post about my heroes.  We need heroes, we need to embrace our heritage of justice-seeking and honor those who came before us.  But we ignore the icky bits of our heritage at our peril.  How can we move forward to build the community and the world we dream of if we haven't dealt with the baggage of the world we inherited?

Mother-Daughter Bible Study

On Saturday my mom and my sister and I got together for our first Mother-Daughter Bible Study.  We discussed Genesis and Exodus, and traded little bits of research, understandings, questions, and impressions we had gained as we each read those books over the last month.

I've never read the Bible all the way through.  Most people I know have never read the Bible (perhaps at all).  My mother grew up Presbyterian and was a studious child and youth, so she actually has a background in Sunday School lessons and youth group Bible Study, but already she's noticing that they focused on "just the easy bits".

It's not a requirement of the Religious Educators Credentialing program, but as I was working on the Jewish-Christian Heritages section of my portfolio it occurred to me that I wish I had read the Bible.  I wish I had a better understanding of the primary text, and not just the interpretations that other (more conservative) religious people have put on it.  I wish there was a liberal-leaning Bible Study group out there.

I looked online at other area church websites and on Meetups, but all the Bible Study groups were clearly more conservative than I would be comfortable with.  I didn't want to start one at work, because then it would be "work", I'd have to convince others of the reason to do it, and I'd end up cast in the "expert/leader" role when I really want to be in the learner role right now.

During a phone call with my mom where I was complaining about the lack of liberal Bible Study resources, she said she'd love to do it with me, and the Mother-Daughter Bible Study was born.  My sister joined in, even though as a college student she doesn't really need any more studying to do - but we're a homeschooling family and this is the way we roll.

It's delightful to have a reason to get together once a month, a deadline that pushes us to keep up with our reading, and a discussion group that shares a similar way of looking at the subject matter, so I'm really happy to take on this project.  But this is going to take us a long time, if we only read two books of the Bible a month!  A long-term project, fitting for life-long learners.

30 Days of Love Day One

Today is Day One of the 30 Days of Love.  You, too, can sign the pledge to focus your next 30 Days on Standing on the Side of Love.  Just head over to their website.

Doing Church

I get up very early on Sunday mornings to get to church in time to set it all up.  Part of what makes that actually pleasant is that I listen to eTown which airs from 7-8am on Sunday mornings here.  In a lot of ways, eTown feels like church to me.  There is good, soulful music that frequently has a social or uplifting message.  There is conversation with the artists, usually focused on what inspires them and what their mission is.  They also honor someone every week with the "e-chievement award" and discuss the justice or environmental work that person does.

This feels like church to me.  I'm uplifted and inspired, moved, challenged, comforted.  So should I just get up and listen to the radio in the morning and then go home?

Of course not (even setting aside that not showing up to work would be a bad idea).  It wouldn't be enough, because passively listening to the radio is not Doing Church.

Listening is part of Church.  But, in much the same way that going into nature alone is not Doing Church either, listening and not having to give something back to those around you is a completely different experience and only half (or less) of the equation that is Church.

When we Do Church, we take our place in a community.  It means interacting with other people.  It means being open to experiencing the jagged peaks and valleys of other peoples' lives, as they bring into the church their greatest Joys and Sorrows.  It means passing a tissue to a woman who is crying during the sermon, even though you have no idea why she has been moved to tears.  It means singing the Birthday Song for the 6 year old and the 98 year old at the same time.  It means signing up for cookie service and for the march on the capitol building.  It means that new ideas will challenge you.  Sometimes you will change your mind, sometimes you will just have to agree to disagree.  It means offering to hold the baby for a little bit, or holding the door open for the elder with a cane.  It means being challenged to explain what you think and believe and who you are to other people, who are also engaged in thinking about what they believe and who they are.

Listening to the radio on my way to church is important to me, but it cannot be the whole experience.  For me, as a Religious Educator, the radio show replaces what I missed in the worship service.  But all the rest of it ... all the unpredictable, messy, human parts of it, are the real heart and soul of Church for me.

The New Jim Crow

This is the 2012-2013 UU Common Read: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.

Wow.  The subject matter is so compelling, and the more I read the more angry I felt that our society could be this unfair to people.  Alexander lays out a detailed and persuasive argument that the criminal system, especially the War on Drugs, is stacked against people of color, and that this unfair design to the system is every bit as much of a system of racial control as Jim Crow laws ever were.

Everyone should read this book.  That said, I did find that the book begins to repeat itself by the mid-point.  But even so, I still respected the sheer size of the argument Alexander has put together here.

An interesting article about the book here.

A discussion guide is available from the UUA.

In our congregation, our minister has given a sermon on the book, and we're doing a class in our Adult Education program.

Read it!

Reflecting on Christmas

Reading #621 from Singing the Living Tradition

Why Not a Star?

They told me that when Jesus was born a star appeared in the heavens above the place where the young child lay.

When I was very young I had no trouble believing wondrous things; I believed in the star.

It was a wonderful miracle, part of a long ago story, foretelling an uncommon life.

They told me a supernova appeared in the heavens in its dying burst of fire.

When I was older and believed in science and reason I believed the story of the star explained.

But I found I was unwilling to give up the star, fitting symbol for the birth of one whose uncommon life has been long remembered.

The star explained became the star understood, for Jesus, for Buddha, for Zarathustra.

Why not a star?  Some bright star shines somewhere in the heavens each time a child is born.

Who knows what it may foretell?

Who knows what uncommon life may yet again unfold, if we but give it a chance?

--Margaret Gooding

The Day of the Dead

Today is Dia de los Muertos, or The Day of the Dead.  It is a primarily Mexican holiday, in which people remember their loved ones who have died by cleaning their graves, bringing food and drink and flowers, and having what seems like a party.

Our congregation has marked the Day of the Dead with an intergenerational worship service on the Sunday before for as long as I have been here.  Originally, a member who grew up in Mexico began the practice, but after a few years she passed the leadership of the service on to the worship arts committee, and I have been involved in this service ever since I became the Director of Religious Education here.

A few things really jumped out at me last Sunday as I sat in the service.

When people are called to come forward and place mementos on the altar, almost everyone does.  Everyone is touched by death.

The pain of loss may lessen with time, but it's still there.  Some people are in tears for a loss that happened many, many years ago.  A twin sibling that died in childhood.  A baby stillborn.  A child or young person.  A spouse tragically killed too young.  Or other losses that surprise me that they are still so raw: parent, grandparent, aunt.  We will always mourn.

I know that some people avoid this service every year.  Not that many people bring their children.  But for many, this service is important.  They come to cry.  They come to see their tears as part of a larger picture of the cycles of life and the larger life of the community.  To truly engage with life means to truly engage with death.

Over the years my "list" has grown.  At first I was just placing a memento for my lost pregnancy (and no matter what some may say, that was a "real baby", and I still mourn it), then for my grandfather.  This year it was my unnamed little peanut, my grandfather, and my other grandparents.  More life also means more loss.  

It is real, it is unavoidable, it is part of the experience of living.  

It is the ultimate Great Mystery, the Final Frontier.

We live In Between (as our reading on Sunday by Richard Gilbert says).

Or, in the words of Tim McGraw, "I hope you get the chance to live like you are dying".

Living My Sermon

Our High School youth group decided they wanted to do something to support Yes on Referendum 74 (our state's ballot measure that asks us to vote to affirm the marriage equality law the legislature already passed).  Hypatia was hanging out with me last week as I led the youth group meeting, and she was inspired to join in.  This week she made this sign at home, and today she joined the group on the corner of a busy intersection as we all stood and waved our signs and our big Standing on the Side of Love banner.  (That's her dad behind her helping her keep her sign up in a strong wind).

I was struck by how her action today was just perfect with what my 1/2 sermon (I shared the morning with another speaker) this morning was all about:

Bringing Justice Home: Part 1

The story I told today was one that I saw done in a workshop at General Assembly this year.  General Assembly is the annual national gathering of Unitarian Universalist congregations, and this year it was a themed “Justice” GA in response to it’s location in Phoenix, Arizona. 

I think it is telling that in the story the first group to stand in solidarity were children.  This speaks truth to me, not because I think children are naturally always kind and just – in fact children and adolescents are sometimes incredibly cruel to each other.  No – it is not because they are better-natured than adults, but rather because they are not numbed to injustice yet. 

A couple years ago, my son hit that stage of reading where he was working out all the signs he saw as we drove around town.  As I was sitting at a red light, he was working out what the handmade cardboard sign being held by the person on the street corner said.  “Homeless – need help”, it said, and he read that out loud just as the light changed and I drove on about our business.  My daughter, the younger child, cried out “that person said they needed help – why aren’t you helping them!?”.

Indeed, why am I not helping them?  Because I don’t want to encourage street corner begging?  Because I am afraid that giving them money won’t actually help them?; because I am too busy, in too much of a hurry?  These are all possible reasons for any of us to pass by on any given day.  But the reason, the primary reason, I believe, is that we cease to notice the injustices and sad sights that we see too often.  We become numb to it all.

Our children and youth bring new eyes, and as such they can see more than we do.  They can also speak that truth which they see, much as the small child does in the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes when they ask “why is the Emperor naked?”.  Too often, the adults in the crowd are afraid to mention that the Emperor is, in fact, naked.

How do we get so numb, so blind, so afraid to act?  It seems that in fact this is not the natural state of the human brain, as recent studies have shown that when people look at images of others experiencing pain or violence, the viewers have the same parts of their brain activated as if they were looking at pictures of their own children.  In similar studies, when people acted to help another the same part of their brain showed activity as it would if they were experiencing personal pleasure.  These sort of studies have led some academics to propose that humans are naturally compassionate and cooperative, and that altruistic behavior has a biological foundation.

 And then other studies, such as that by Pearl and Samuel Oliner’s study of Germans who helped rescue Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, have found that memories of growing up in a family which prioritized compassionate and altruistic behavior had a strong correlation with future adult action.

With this in mind, I believe that each action I take in front my children – and every action that any one of us takes in front of a child – is important not just because of what that action can accomplish today, but because of what sort of future action will result from my modeling.  Realizing that it was not emotionally and developmentally appropriate for my children to pass by a person on the street asking for help, I helped them create care packages that we now keep in our car and can give to anyone we see on the street asking for help. 

As poet and activist Wendell Berry has written: “Protesters who hold out longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal.  If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance.  History simply affords too little evidence that anyone’s individual protest is of any use.  Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.”

I feel that action is needed to preserve those qualities in my heart and spirit, and also in the heart and spirit of all who look to me as a model, those like my own children.  And when I think about the ripples of influence that all those hearts and souls living into their best selves may lead to, I have to say that it is impossible to judge the success of anyone’s individual single action.

Going back to psychological research we find the phenomenon of learned helplessness.  Learned helplessness is the phenomenon of an animal or human who has repeatedly had a negative experience internalizing the idea that they are helpless to change that experience, and consequently ceasing to even try to make a positive change.  If we repeatedly experience ourselves as helpless to effect change, we may internalize this sense of learned helplessness and just stop trying.  Learned helplessness is, of course, a self-fulfilling prophecy, since we will never effect change if we don’t even try.

I realized at one point with my children that I have learned helplessness.  We were listening to an NPR story about a controversial death penalty case, which sparked a family discussion of the death penalty.  My son was horrified that we would think it was right to ever kill anyone, and I sympathized with his point of view.  But my knee-jerk response, the one that ran through my mind was, “yeah, I used to care about that too, but it’s hopeless.  Nothing will ever change, so we should just change the channel.” 

Fortunately, I remembered how important it is to empower children, rather than to downplay their natural impulses toward compassion and justice-seeking.  It can be so hard to hold onto our impulse toward justice, and there will be enough discouraging experiences for the kids in their lives – one of those discouraging experiences does not need to be caused by me.  Responding to his interest in this issue, I helped him write a letter that we sent to several political leaders.  Did his action make a difference?  Perhaps not.  Did it make a difference to him?  Yes.   It was one of those actions that sustained the qualities of compassion and justice-seeking in his heart and soul.

It is a well-worn cliché to say that “the children are the future”, but as with many clichés there is a core of truth in the saying.  Whenever you engage in justice-work alongside a child, you are making a double investment with your time and energy.  You are making the world better today through your efforts, and you are helping to make the world better in the future through the life-long values you are helping to instill in that young person. 

In General Assembly in June, I attended a workshop called “Justice as a Family Value”.  There were many people in attendance who had impressive resumes of activisim and justice-work, but we spent most of our time talking about our childhoods.  What did we experience in childhood that inspired us to live the values of justice-seeking?  One woman remembered Socks.  She remembered that her mother would always buy extra socks, more than their family needed, and would hand those out to homeless people.  Was that personal sock project huge?  I doubt it.  However, it turned out to be huge in the life of this woman who would grow up to do many many more actions to make the world a better place.

My daughter asked me this summer what I hoped the future would be like.  I gave her a description of my best and most hopeful version of our possible future, and she smiled confidently in response.  “Ok”, she said.  “Let’s do that.”  That youthful voice of optimism inspires me.  Yes, indeed, let’s all do that.

Welcome Back to Church

Many, many UU's take the summer sort of "off" from church, and so we drop down to just one All Ages Religious Education class in the summer.

Yesterday we went back to the full array of classes, and had a big crowd show up.  For the first day of class, we concentrated on playing icebreaker games to build community, and on writing a Covenant in each classroom for how the children or youth will be together this year.

It was pretty energizing to see all that activity in our classrooms again. I'm looking forward to a great year!

The recent UU World article examining "Obama's Childhood Unitarian Universalism", says:

Despite his childhood exposure to Unitarian Universalism, Barack Obama found his religious home elsewhere - just as too many of our young people do.

9 out of 10 Unitarian Universalist youth will leave UUism as adults.  I'm not sure how many of them eventually come back, but overwhelmingly we are a denomination made up of transplants from other faiths, as Seattleite from Syracuse recently described.  I, too, in many ways am a transplant, although I transplanted myself while still in my teens so sometimes I get counted in the demographic of "life-long UU" depending on where folks are drawing the line.

My family roots are in Presbyterianism, and I have attended my grandparents' church whenever we go back to visit.  But my parents both drifted from their family's religion and became part of the "Nones" - for "what is your religious affiliation?" "None."  I grew up with no church, plenty of skepticism and cynicism about organized religion, a very large dose of New Age dabbling, and an unhealthy vein of fear and paranoia about being persecuted for our religion or lack-there-of.

I found my own faith home when I first walked into a UU church, but I had a long road to travel before that home noticed me back.  A decade of attendance in UU churches, in fact, always feeling like an outsider, being asked if I was a Visitor even in a church I'd attended for more than 3 years, and existing on the periphery or church life.

In her article, Thandeka speaks of the age-fracture in our congregations.  We do a poor job of bringing people of different ages together, of creating multi-generational community.  And there is a chasm that our young adults fall into.  We have a warm and vibrant community going on for youth - CONS are a big part of that - and I think we've got a pretty good thing going for older adults.  But most mid or small sized congregations don't have much of anything for young adults.  A youth who has experienced a vibrant youth group community and then is just dumped into the big pool of adults is going to feel lost and alone.

Young Adult groups are part of the solution, I think.  More of an effort to invite young adults in and take them seriously - so they don't feel invisible for a decade like I did - would also help.  And changing the way our RE programs prepare children and youth for a future adult religious life would also help.

I, personally, think UUism is pretty darn awesome, and that it has a lot to offer as a life-long path.  It's worth the effort, I think.

Picture Books for the 6th Principle

Our 6th of the 7 UU Principles is The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

Following our Rainbow scheme for the kids it is worded (Indigo Promise)  Insist on Peace and Justice for All 

The books we read for this Principle this summer:

Why War is Never a Good Idea by Alice Walker is an unflinching, but beautifully illustrated, reflection on all the consequences of war.

Can You Say Peace? shows children from around the world saying "peace" in different languages.

What Does Peace Feel Like? has quotes from children about what peace feels, smells, tastes, and sounds like.  It's quite delightful.

Peace Begins With You is my favorite, being a simple explanation of conflict, peace, and how we can work toward peace.

This list of books about peace and social justice looks promising also.

Children's books for the 5th Principle

Our 5th Unitarian Universalist Principle is The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

For the kids we re-word that as Believe in Your Ideas and Act on Them, and Listen to the Ideas of Others or sometimes as Everyone Has a Voice

Books I love for this Principle:

The Day Gogo Went to Vote is about a South African grandmother finally getting the right to vote after the end of apartheid. 

Yertle the Turtle

Horace and Morris, but mostly Dolores

Heart on Fire: Susan B Anthony Votes for President

Henry Hikes to Fitchberg

Books about the political process here.

Related posts:
Books for the 4th Principle

Books for the 3rd Principle

Books for the 2nd Principle

Books for the 1st Principle

Picture Books for the 4th Principle

The 4th of the Unitarian Universalist Principles is A Free and Responsible Search for Truth and Meaning, which we word for the children as Grow By Searching for Truth.  Books I have found that go with this Principle are:

The Three Questions by Jon Muth takes a Leo Tolstoy story and reworks it as a magical fable for children.

Another Jon Muth book is also good for this Principle: Zen Shorts

The Hermit and the Well is a story from Thich Nhat Hanh's childhood.

The Empty Pot and The Greatest Power, both by Demi, are stories of how children search for truth and are rewarded with positions of authority because of their search.

Related Posts:

Picture Books for the 1st Principle
Picture Books for the 2nd Principle
Picture Books for the 3rd Principle

Picture Books for the 3rd Principle

Continuing with my series of Sunday posts of books for each of the Unitarian Universalist 7 Principles, we come to our 3rd Principle: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations


For the kids, we rephrase this as Yearn to Learn

How My Parents Learned to Eat is a charming story of an American sailor and a young Japanese woman courting each other and learning how to eat in the ways of each other.


Who's In Rabbit's House? uses a clever device of a play being put on, with a story of how all sorts of animals try to "help" rabbit, but all fail to listen to the quiet suggestions that actually end up solving the mystery.

Sumi's First Day of School Ever shows how a newly immigrant student, who doesn't speak English, experiences her first day of school.

Once Upon a Time tackles the subject of a child experiencing difficulty reading, and how people who accept and believe in her eventually help her overcome it. 

Picture Books for the 2nd Principle

The 2nd of our UU 7 Principles is "justice, equity, and compassion in human relations", or as we teach it to our children: Offer Fair and Kind Treatment to All


Our summer Religious Education program is Reading the Principles, and here are the books I've found for the 2nd Principle:

The Quarreling Book by Charlotte Zolotow

Horton Hatches The Egg by Dr. Seuss

There's a Nightmare in My Closet by Mercer Mayer

And there is a good list of books about compassion here.

And another good list of books about kindness here.