Thanks Be For These
UU Church of Ogden
5/18/2008
Rev. Theresa Novak
Gratitude is a very good thing. I am very grateful to those individuals that we have honored today because of the work they have done this past year in our religious education classes for children and youth. The children are our future, but they are our present too. How our community serves the children that come to us is a major way that we can live out our deepest religious values. Our teachers have been with our children, acting as mentors and role models for them. They have guided them in the ways of compassion and social justice. They have been on a journey of sharing and of love. Children and youth give so much back. Emma Goldman said that no one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. I think our teachers know that this is true, and that as a result they have experienced both awe and wonder when they have been with our children and youth.
All of our teachers are amazing. We thank them all. But Sandy, ah, Sandy, she has put in years of dedicated service, over a decade of working directly with our children and also of inspiring, enticing, cajoling, and occasionally pressuring others to help out as well. The honor of a plaque, an ongoing award in her name, is such a small thing compared to all she has done.
The stated purpose of our religious education program is to help our children and youth search for ways to understand and live our UU Principles throughout their lives.
The goal is to provide a safe, supportive environment in which young people can develop spiritually, while forming relationships with others and ideas about what is true and right for them.
It sounds good, doesn’t it? But what does it mean? What do we need to do as parents, as teachers, as a religious community, so that our children and youth receive what they need in terms of a religious foundation?
As UU’s we believe in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. It is one of our seven principles. Because of that belief, we may sometimes be reluctant to exert what might seem like undue influence over the hearts and minds of the young souls that have been entrusted to our care. Many of us may also be survivors of religious institutions that followed a rigid dogma that we found stifling, and we want our children to be free of that. Sometimes we can be tempted to simply offer them a potluck, a smattering of world religions, presented for them to pick and chose what appeals to their individual tastes at a particular moment in time. We might serve up Islam and Buddhism, and give them a taste of a variety of local churches and places of worship, all of which we hold up to them as worthy of respect. We add some seasoning with social justice activities, and they get of sense of our community while they attend the luncheons, and potlucks, but do they really get a chance to feast on what should be the main course? Do we leave them just a little bit hungry for a full serving of the marvelous and delicious dish called Unitarian Universalism?
Switching metaphors for a minute, how many of you know the Garden Song by David Mallett? “Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow.” Any gardener knows that it takes both a lot of work and a lot of luck have a good garden. It doesn’t happen just by scattering seeds upon the ground and coming back several months later to see what, if anything, has sprung up. It doesn’t matter how fertile the ground is, or how excellent the seeds are unless you make the ground ready, and add plenty of water and sunshine. It also helps to pull an occasional weed. So too with our children, although sometimes the wild unruly weed of a child can grow into a particularly wonderful treasure of an inspired and curious adult if they get a little gentle guidance along the way instead of a harsh clipping back of their branches. We are talking about UU gardening after all, and pruning is not our favorite way. We value everyone, it is a primary value of our faith. So we don’t want to do heavy weeding, and we want to help the rare and unexpected flowers to bloom.
We want to provide a rich soil, with a variety of different nutrients, so that all might be fed. One child might flourish in the quiet contemplation of nature, another’s spirit might catch fire in a whirling Dervish of a dance. Some of this will involve teaching about other religions, and a variety of spiritual paths that our children may want to explore. The sun shines in many ways. But their roots, their roots should be well tended too. We need to feed them on this solid faith that believes in human potential, a faith that believes that community is important, that believes that what we do makes a difference.
It is a faith that is not focused on some salvation that will come after we die, but on the salvation that we can create right here today for ourselves and for our planet. Our children need us to be true to that faith and we need them to understand it and join with us in the commitment to live each human life fully in the pursuit of love, of justice, of a planet transformed by care and by compassion for the earth and all of its creatures.
It is a big job, gardening, and a responsible job. So too is teaching our children, participating actively in religious education. Scientists have found that plants grow better they have found if they talked to, if they are loved. So it is with children. You have to engage, to meet them where they are, but at the same time to guide them. To help them change and grow and to also let yourself change and grow as you learn from them. You have to be willing to let them sample all the dishes at the potluck of life, but also to be so enthusiastic yourself about the main course that they just have to dig in.
Yes, I am back to the potluck metaphor because teaching is a little like cooking too. There are recipes, you don’t have to do everything from scratch, but you do have to like food and know yourself what tastes good. An appetizing “presentation’ is also helpful.
As I said earlier, I am very grateful for those individuals who have volunteered to teach our children. But teachers need to be fed as well. They need to live Unitarian Universalism outside as well as inside of our classrooms.
They need to be able to have the time to attend worship services regularly, to maybe take some classes themselves, to be more involved in other parts of our congregation’s life. Right now, we don’t have enough teachers to really do this well. We need more volunteers to teach classes and to assist the teachers. So I am calling on all of you metaphorical cooks and gardeners to think about volunteering next year to help teach our children. There will be training. The DRE from 1st church in SLC is willing to help with that. We have curriculum, lessons plans that you can use.
You also might think about volunteering this summer to spend a Sunday morning with the younger folks. That is only a commitment for a single day. You can get a taste, and I think you will find that religious education Unitarian Universalist style is both yummy and intriguing, for teachers as well as students. Our children deserve a religious community where almost everyone is eager to be with them, to help them, to teach them. Our adults deserve this too.
After the service today, we will have our annual meeting. We will hear reports, and we will vote on board and nominating committee representatives. We will also hear reports on what we have accomplished this last year and what we want to do in the future. You will discover more ways to be involved in this community, more ways to serve yourselves and the wider world. Maybe some of you have decided this morning that you will spend some time in religious education over the next year. I hope a lot of you have made that decision.
But there are other ways, and other opportunities. Church only works well if the members and friends give of themselves to make things happen. I know that this is the kind of church we are.
May our garden grow!
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