“EcoAdventures”: Day one

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine
Religious Education Conference

Once again, I’m at the annual religious education conference at Ferry Beach, the Universalist conference center in Saco, Maine. This year, I’m leading a 15-hour workshop called “EcoAdventures.” Group participants range in age from seniors in high school up to age forty or so. The workshop is on ecojustice.

Today was the first session. We spent the first half hour or so introducing ourselves and getting to know each other’s names. We played a variation of a well-known name game (sometimes called “The Grocery Store Game”), with a twist that ties it in to the local ecosystem (complete session plan is after the “Read more” link below). We also lined up by age, but we did it without speaking. I introduced my vision of the workshop, ending by saying: “If I had to sum all this up, I’d say this:– I think it’s time to really shake up Unitarian Universalism. Too many of our churches act as if it’s still the 1950’s. Too many of our churches are filled with white upper middle class Baby Boomers. It’s time for our churches to welcome all ages, and enter into the 21st century.”

Participants then had a chance to say their hopes and expectations, which ranged from “Have fun” to “I want to do something in ecojustice as a career and am looking for ideas.” Other hopes were to deepen knowledge of Unitarian Universalist faith, and to find activities and curriculum to bring back to a local congregation.

After the introductory bits, we went outdoors and found a tree. We lay at the base of a tree and looked up in the branches. What creatures might live up there? “Birds.” “Spiders.” “Squirrels.” “A mouse might run up the tree.” Do you see any creatures up there right now? “I see a spider’s web.” “I hear birds.” Then we turned over on our stomachs to look at the base of the tree. What creatures might live there? “I see a slug.” “There’s a hole here!” “Beetles.” “Ants.” “A weasel could live here.” Now imagine that you can see through the ground, and see all the roots of the tree. The roots go down almost as far as the branches go up. What creatures might live in among the roots? “Worms.” “Moles.” “Ants.”

We went back inside and drew a six-foot high picture of our tree. Abby drew a line half-way up the paper for the ground, and someone drew a blue line to show where the sky was. We drew the tree, and started drawing in all the creatures we had seen and imagined living on the tree. It was hard to get all 18 of us around the table, so we had to cycle in and out from drawing.

When the drawing was pretty well filled in, we hung it up, and all looked at it. We talked about how all the creatures associated with the tree are interconnected. We’ve drawn lots of creatures in this, but where are the human creatures? Lots of good conversation about this, and the final conclusion was that humans communities are interconnected with Nature, and with other human communities — in fact, it’s impossible to separate human creatures from Nature; there is no separation. “It’s arrogant to think that we humans are somehow separate from Nature.”

I summed up by saying that ecojustice is a concept, a tool, to build connections between human communities, and to help human creatures become aware with their connections with all living things.

Session plan follows. Continue reading →

Story

The train from DC to Boston was an hour late. After we passed New Haven, the car I was sitting in was two thirds empty. We hit Providence well after midnight, where a few people got on. I was sitting up trying to stay awake. A young man sat two seats in front of me. My attention wandered, and I realized that he was talking to the young woman in front of me.

“You think one of the hostels will be open?’ he asked her.

She wasn’t sure, so I said, “They’ll most likely be closed up at this hour.”

“Will they let me stay in the train station?” he said.

The young woman and I went back and forth on that question, trading opinions as two people will who both know a city pretty well, but who don’t know the exact answer to a specific question. We finally said we thought he’d be better off not trying to stay in the train station. So then he wanted to know, could he stay in the bus station? The young woman and I went back and forth a little bit, and said that would be more likely.

Then it turned out that he wanted to take the train to Maine, but that train doesn’t leave from South Station, so we had to explain to him the difference between North Station and South Station, and how you get from one to the other. He couldn’t quite wrap his head around the fact that one city could have two train stations. Then he went back to whether or not he could spend the night in South Station.

I leaned forward. “Have you ever spent the night in a train station?” I said.

“No,” he said, seemingly surprised that I would even ask.

“Well, take it from me, if you spend the night in a train station, don’t lie down and go to sleep,” I said, “because if you do, a cop will come around and think you’re some homeless guy and tap you on the feet and tell you to move on.”

He thought about that for a moment. Fortunately, just then the young woman remembered there’s an all-night diner around the corner from South Station. Neither of us could remember just where it was, but we told him that he could ask someone in the station for directions. At that point I realized that if we didn’t warn him, he was going to go around downtown Boston asking questions all night, because he wouldn’t realize that asking innocent questions could get him in trouble.

“I could be wrong,” I said, “but you don’t seem like a city kid to me.” He smiled, and acknowledged that he was not a city kid. “So when you get into the city,” I said, “don’t go asking questions like you’re asking us. Just make up your mind where you’re going, and go there, and try to look like you know exactly what you’re doing.”

“Oh God yeah,” said the young woman. We were pulling in to back Bay Station, and she was standing up to get her luggage. “Don’t trust anyone except us. And maybe you shouldn’t trust us,” she added, grinning at him.

We pulled into South Station at about one o’clock. I walked with him over to some security guards. He asked them where the all-night diner was. He was confident, as if he knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing. They told him. I walked him down to Atlantic Avenue, and showed him the bus station on the right, and where he’d find Kneeland Street and the all-night diner on the left.

I left him, and caught a cab for myself, because the subway stops running at 12:30. I still don’t know quite why he got stuck in downtown Boston at one in the morning. But by now, I’m sure he’s safely in Maine, telling everyone about his adventures in the all-night diner.

Microblogging 2008-07-02

  • Capitol Hill in DC: exquisitely beautiful examples of mid-Atlantic row house architecture. #
  • In front of the Air& Space museum: a boy flies a paper airplane. His dad isn’t interested. They go into the museum. #
  • On the Mall: plump tourists wearing pastels and big sun hats dragging bored, hot children. #
  • Folklife Festival: Bhutanese folk songs have lots of ornamentation and melisma and sentiment. #
  • Anxious young woman on a cell phone. Then she relaxes, smiles, waves. A young man walks up. They go to get lunch. #

Elevator speech #4

Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

The final elevator speech that I videoblogged at the General Assembly workshop on “Spreading UUism Using New Media.” I greatly appreciate the four people who agreed to talk in front of a camera — it’s much harder to give your elevator speech to a camera as opposed to a real person. I really liked each of the four elevator speeches.

Now it’s your turn. Videotape your “elevator speech,” summarizing your religious faith in a brief statement that lasts about as long as a ride in an elevator. Post your video online at YouTube, or Blip.tv. And please put a link to your video in the comments below, so we can all watch the various elevator speeches.

Microblogging 2008-06-29

  • People are raving about Van Jones’ Ware lecture. I watched it on the Web, too lazy to walk to the convention center #
  • Oops. Slept late, & am missing Sunday a.m. worship. Guess I needed sleep more than worship…. #
  • Already, people are beginning to leave GA. It’s starting to feel a little empty… #
  • Workshop on grassroots organizimg: he says “Use Web 2.0.” #
  • Waiting for the closing worship to begin, I realize how tired I am. #
  • Sinkford’s closing words: May we say with prophet of old, Here we are, send us. #