- Carol and I aren’t married, so I call her mother my mother-out-law. And my mother-out-law sent me a link to an incredible online resource, the Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative (CDRI). What is CDRI? — “CDRI has assembled an impressive digital image collection that features woodcuts, coins, maps, postcards, sermons, and other ephemera.” For example, here’s a postcard of First Universalist in New Bedford (First Universalist merged with First Unitarian in 1930, and the old church is now an art gallery).
- Everett Hoagland, former poet laureate of New Bedford, turned me on to a great news story about the Presidential Scholars who, when they met George Bush, presented him with a petition asking him to cease illegal renditions, and to remove his signing statement to the McCain anti-torture bill. One student’s account of the event is here, and Amy Goodman’s interview with two of the students is here. Apparently, Mr. Bush was a bit nonplussed when presented with the students’ petition. Regardless of their political position, I am glad to hear that our educational system is indeed educating young people for democracy by teaching them how to genuinely engage with our elected leaders. Gives me hope for the future.
Meet Jesus: The Life and Lessons of a Beloved Teacher
This past year at First Unitarian in New Bedford, we gave the book Hide and Seek with God to every Sunday school family with children aged 5 to 8. Hide and Seek with God has twenty or so stories that present the concept of God from a variety of vantage points — feminist vantage points, non-Western vantage points, earth-centered vantage points, as well as various Western Christian (usually heretical Christian) vantage points. Having this book in the home proved to be very helpful to families, as they figure out how to engage in nuanced talk about religion with their children while immersed in a culture that doesn’t value nuanced talk about religion.
In looking for a new book to send home with families for this year, I came across Meet Jesus: The Life and Lessons of a Beloved Teacher, written by Lynn Tuttle Gunney, and published by Skinner House, the Unitarian Universalist denominational publishing house. It may turn out to be the book we send home this year.
As the subtitle implies, Gunney emphasizes the life and the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’s crucifixion and death take up only two pages out of the first twenty-two pages. Most of the text on those twenty-two pages simply tells the story of Jesus’s life, interspersed with examples of his teachings. We get two parables:– the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the parable of the lost sheep. We get some other teachings:– a snippet from the Sermon on the Mount, and of course the Golden Rule.
On page 23, we get a short summary of how different people interpret Jesus’s death, in the form of: “Some people say… [but] Some people say….” When reading this book for the intended age group, parents (and Sunday school teachers) will want to be ready to say say, “We believe that…” — and then either pick one of the options in the book, or present yet another option. Children aged 4-8 tend to be concrete thinkers, and they don’t particularly want to hear adults hemming and hawing about theological abstractions.
The prose is clear, uncluttered, and straightforward — perfect for children in preschool and up. In fact, the prose is good enough that I would feel comfortable using excerpts from this book in a worship service. The illustrations are fine, particularly for younger children.
The book is good enough that I will show it to our new Director of Religious Education, and if she approves we will find the money to send it out to every Sunday school family with children aged 4-8. My only complaint is that the book is pretty short, too short to satisfy a family for a whole year.
17 homiletical tasks
At one of my favorite used bookstores today, I came across a book titled African American Religious Studies (ed. Gayraud S. Wilson, Duke Univ, 1989). I’m always a sucker for books on religious studies, so I leafed through it, and in an article by Cheryl J. Sanders titled “The Woman as Preacher,” I came across a list of 17 homiletical tasks undertaken by preachers in the African American tradition.
Sanders was interested in figuring out whether there’s a difference between what women and men preach in the African American church tradition. But I was interested in the tasks in their own right, as a way to analyze the sermons I hear, and the sermons I write. Below you’ll find my paraphrase of Sanders’s 17 tasks. (In some cases, I have done a little translation from the African American church to the peculiarities of Unitarian Universalism.) Following Sanders’s original list, these tasks are listed in alphabetical order:
- Affirming — Speaking in positive terms to the congregation, especially about what the congregation is doing.
- Celebrating — Calling attention to the joy of worship.
- Criticizing the church — Pointing out the shortcomings of the congregation, the wider denomination, or more general categories of religious community/institution.
- Criticizing society — Especially, criticizing unjust social structures and social systems.
- Exegeting scripture — A critical analysis of religious scripture.
- Exhorting — Exhorting lsiteners to act or exhibit some virtue.
- Interpreting scripture — Different from exegeting scripture, expounding on the significance of a particular religious text, with an emphasis on the text’s application.
- Inviting hearers to commitment — In a traditional Christian church, this would be followed by an altar call; in a Unitarian Universalist context, this might be followed by a request for deeper financial commitment, volunteer commitment, etc., but more immediate than no. 6, exhorting.
- Observing a liturgical event
- Proclaiming an eschatological vision — Broadly speaking, a look towards ultimate, or last, things. John Murray’s words, “Give them hope, not hell,” would fall into this category.
- Quoting lyrics of hymns — Using hymn lyrics as authoritative sources, or as a summary of the sermon.
- Quoting lyrics of Negro spirituals — Negro spirituals can be considered as a repository of history and culture, as well as a cultural tradition, that goes beyond denominational boundaries. Predominantly white Unitarian Universalism has no homiletical task exactly like this; references to popular culture fall under no. 17.
- Quoting poetry or drama
- Storytelling — Telling the stories from religious scripture.
- Teaching — A more formal and structured presentation of information.
- Testifying — The preacher tells about her or his personal witness of the self-disclosure of the divine in her or his life.
- Translating religious scripture into the vernacular — Different from storytelling, insofar as stories have more of a timeless quality.
Looking over this list, I find that I tend to neglect some of these homiletical tasks — e.g., I rarely, if ever, engage in testifying. I also find that I have a tendency to favor certain of these tasks — e.g., I’m more of a teacher than a storyteller, and more interested in exegesis than translating scripture into the vernacular. Not that I believe that every preacher should exactly balance all of these tasks over the course of a church year. But this list of homiletical tasks does help me to evaluate myself, and better understand what kind of preacher I am — and it helps me to realize what sorts of churchgoers are not going to be satisfied by my sermons.
Eight things I noticed on the beach yesterday evening
Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine
A Herring Gull swooped down onto the beach a hundred yards in front of me, carrying something large in its bill. Through the binoculars, I could see that the gull was carrying a fish, maybe a flounder, that looked too big for it to swallow. A young gull stood nearby, watching and hoping the older gull would drop the fish. The adult gull tossed the fish in the air, dropped it several times, tried to maneuver it so the fish’s head was pointing down the gull’s throat, and then, so quickly I didn’t see it, swallowed the fish. I could see a bulge in the gull’s throat. It swallowed hard a couple of times, then flew away.
A light rain shower passed over the beach, leaving the sand pockmarked with tiny craters where the big raindrops had hit.
I looked out over Saco Bay as the rain showers passed. The sun broke through the clouds in the west, and lit up Eagle Island, which is a mile or so out in the bay. The island stood out, bright and green, against the dark blue clouds and the dark gray sea. More sun came out, and picked out the tops of waves as they broke against the beach, turning them from a dull color to brilliant white.
Bits of a rainbow appeared in the sky: two short, bright bands at the horizon, marking out the north and south points of the bay; and pieces here and there against the dark clouds, so faint that at times I wasn’t sure if I was seeing them or not.
A Common Tern hovered over the water. I managed to get my binoculars up in time to watch it break out of its hover, plunge into the sea, and emerge with a small fish in its bill. It flew up, tossed the fish back and swallowed it, and shook itself dry as it flew off looking for more fish.
Halfway out to Eagle Island, fifty or sixty white specks appeared in a sudden ray of sun, circling around, hovering, and plunging into the sea.
Through some odd optical effect that I don’t understand, broad rays of alternating light and dark appeared in the clouds, radiating out from Wood Island; or perhaps I should say, converging down towards Wood Island. If I wasn’t aware that the sun was almost directly behind me, I would have thought that the sun must have been behind Wood Island, as if somehow the sun were setting in the east southeast, instead of in the west.
A dozen Bonaparte’s Gulls stood on the beach, keeping an eye on me now and then, but mostly doing nothing. They were all molting, losing the crisply-defined black heads of their breeding plumage, losing the odd tail feather, looking rather bedraggled. Presumably, these were first-year birds that never made it all the way up to the breeding grounds in Canada, and so here they sat on the coast of Maine, molting and waiting for the fall migration to begin in earnest. It was a poignant sight, an anticipation of the end of summer.
Posted two days after the fact — I’m a little behind in posting due to spotty Internet access here in Cambridge.
Friday the 13th?
Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine
This was the last day of children’s program of the religious education conference at Ferry Beach. Lisa and I are doing nature and ecology with rotating groups of children in grades 1-6, and this morning we ended up with the 5th and 6th graders.
The morning did not start off well. The children were tired and a little cranky to begin with. Then they found out that they would not be allowed to watch the “Banathalon.” The Banathalon is a strange Ferry Beach tradition — a relay race where instead of passing a baton you pass a banana from one competitor to the next. Years ago, it started out like a triathalon, with running, bicycling, and swimming legs, and then at the end someone had to eat the banana-baton. Over the years, other legs have been added — pull-ups, solving a Rubik’s cube in 5 minutes, etc. And during the religious education conference, the banathalon is a competition between the high school youth and the junior high youth — which means that the 5th and 6th graders are very interested in it.
“This year, we can’t watch the banathalon,” I said. About half the group erupted. We can’t watch!? Why not? We always watch! (“Always” in this context means “last year.”) “It’s not my rule, although I agree with it,” I said. “It’s the conference coordinators who said we couldn’t watch.” They continued to be cranky and upset, so I said I would get one of the conference coordinators to explain why they couldn’t watch. Anne came, and explained why they couldn’t watch. At that point, some of the children said, Well, if we can’t watch, let’s do something else. Two days ago, we had all agreed that the group would spend alone time in the woods, so finally the group calmed down enough that we could walk over to the woods together, and get set up for spending alone time in the woods.
Tree Murals and Foxes and Rabbits
Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine
The children’s program of the religious education conference continued this morning. Lisa and I are doing nature and ecology with rotating groups of children in grades 1-6. Some notes on Thursday’s activities:
We started off with the 1st/2nd graders this morning. It’s a small group (only 8 children), with mostly 2nd graders. They have been a very easy group — lots of sunny personalities, and no conflicting personalities. The weather was finally clear and dry, so at last we were able to do one of the lessons we had planned out in advance — the Tree Mural project, a way to help children appreciate a living thing (a tree) while learning about the ecological concept of habitat.
First we went out and “adopted” a tree. We lay around the base of it while Lisa read a sort of guided meditation to help the children get a sense of the tree (the complete lesson plan is at the very end of this post). It was a little hard for children of this age to focus on this part of the activity, but they did pretty well — especially when we all sat up and started looking for living creatures on and around the tree. The children found spiders, ants, caterpillars, a hole that might be a chipmunk hole, and other small creatures.
Wait, what does this church stand for?…
Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine
This year’s theme at the annual religious education conference is how to spread the word about Unitarian Universalism. Which raises the interesting question — how do you tell a visitor to your church what “Unitarian Universalism” means, anyway? I interview Peter Newport, one of the ministers at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Unitarian Universalist church, and I ask him that very question.
Not to kill the suspense, but we don’t come up with an answer…. (1:24)
Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.
On film
Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine
The children’s program of the religious education conference continued this morning. Lisa and I are doing nature and ecology with rotating groups of children in grades 1-6.
This morning we had the grade 5-6 grade group for the entire morning. A film crew came to Ferry Beach today to film a short film to promote Unitarian Universalism. The film makers, David and Anne, felt that a key component of Unitarian Universalist religious education is our focus on Nature and respect for the interdependent web of all existence. They wanted to get some footage of children engaged in outdoors religious education, so they decided to film us doing religious education with the fifth and sixth graders.
Before the children arrived, I talked with David and Anne, and with one of the camera operators (also confusingly named David), about the kind of shots they were looking for. He wanted groups of children and adults close together, in a natural setting, looking at something together. Then I figured out how to adjust our lesson plan (we decided to use the same session plan as we used with the 3rd and 4th graders yesterday) so David could get the shots he was looking for.
All that was pretty straightforward. What really worried me was how the children would react with a camera looking over their shoulders all the time. When the children arrived, I started up my computer and showed them photographs I had taken of the Piping Plover sitting on her nest — I had promised a couple of days ago that I would do so.
We sat in a circle, and did everyone (including the film crew) introduced themselves. Then i reminded the children of the Piping Plover photos, and showed them my small video camera. I was sitting next to David with his big video camera, and we compared the two cameras. I told the children that I like to use my camera to help me observe and remember what I see in Nature. Then David talked about his camera, and the kinds of documentary work he does with it. These introductions allowed the children to become somewhat accustomed to the film crew.
We moved into the same basic lesson that we had done with the 3rd and 4th graders yesterday (“secret agents” and collecting things on the beach), and I set things up so that David got some great shots of children crouched on beach sand sorting through different kinds of seaweed. The film makers needed to do interviews with a couple of children individually, so to accommodate that, Lisa and I took the rest of the children down the road to see where the house had washed into the ocean last winter. I hadn’t really planned for these interviews, and this part of the session didn’t go as well as the “secret agent” activity.
After the snack break, the film crew was pretty much done. We all sat in a circle, and we went around the circle, allowing each child some time to talk about how it felt to be filmed. Many of the children said it was “distracting.” One or two didn’t really notice a difference. Several of the children pointed out how many in the group were kind of acting for the camera.
Then I gave them a couple of choices for activities that they could do in the second half of the morning. Nearly all of them wanted to spend alone time in the woods (just as we did last year). So we did that to finish out the morning.
Overall, I felt this morning’s session went very well indeed. The film makers were a little distracting, but in spite of that I felt that the children learned a lot, and had fun besides.
Piping Plover photos
Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine
This evening, I managed to take some photos of the Piping Plover nesting up the beach from the conference center. I know some regular readers of this blog might be interested, so I uploaded the photos to Flickr.
View six photos as a slide show.
View thumbnails of the photos, better for slow connections.
I’ve placed these photos in the public domain, use as you see fit.