Religious Education Ministry Blog
The regular column from Rayna Hamre, OCUUC’s Director of Religious Education.
The Year of the Dragon and the OWL at OCUUC
The New Year is a time of reflection and celebration for many of us. Reflecting back on our growth and expanded activities over the past year is a great source of joy for me. The months of January and February also held so many fun and activities for our children, youth, parents and volunteers at OCUUC. Our families and volunteers make it all happen!
Our Year of the Dragon is off to a great start. Thanks to the help of our January volunteers, our children had the fun of putting together a dragon parade for Chinese New Year. Fittingly, this is the Year of the Dragon, so there were dragon stories and poems along with our dragon making activities in the Social Hall. The adults had a surprise when the dragon was waiting for them on the patio after the second service. If there were any evil spirits lurking about the building they should be gone after our parade. We welcomed in the New Year with plenty of noise and good wishes. February brought us our second craft night, with the evening focused on Valentine activities and a pizza dinner. Through the cooperation of several committees, our Spirit Grant money, and a private donation, we were able to replace the television in the Social Hall with a new model. With much clearer picture and sound available, RE will be able to resume family movie nights and to provide up-to-date equipment for trainings and classes.
If our Religious Education classes seem a little small during the months of February and March, it is because we have a large group of youth who are taking Our Whole Lives (OWL) at the UU Church of Long Beach. Our families and events will be back on track at OCUUC in May. OWL provides age appropriate information, in a caring environment with trained facilitators, about the human body, sexual health and positive life choices. OWL classes are scheduled at OCUUC for our 5-6 graders and senior high this spring.
Parents, please let us know asap if your children will be participating in OWL. We will be opening up the sessions to other churches in the area, so spaces will fill fast. Senior high OWL will meet for two intensives on Friday March 30 6 pm through Saturday March 31, 6 pm and Friday April 20 6 pm through Saturday April 21, 6 pm. 5-6 grade OWL will meet on the following: Sunday April 15, 1-3:30 pm mandatory parent & student session; Sundays April 22, 29; Sundays May 6, 13, 20, 27; and Sunday June 3, 1-2:30 pm. href="dre
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Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and the Four Noble Truths
Dear OCUUC Community-
Our December 2011 worship theme at OCUUC is world religions. Here is my Time For All Ages presentation that compares Unitarian Charles Dickens‘ A Christmas Carol and the Buddhist Four Noble Truths. Dickensians around the globe will celebrate his 200th birthday in February 2012.
Happy Holidays to All!
Rayna Hamre, OCUUC Director of Religious Education
~~~~~~~~~~~
Once upon a time there was a man named Ebenezer Scrooge. He has become famous, many of the grown ups know his story. He loved money more than anything. His business partner dies, and his partner comes back as a ghost on Christmas Eve. I always want to say Bob Marley, but it was Jacob Marley. He warns Ebenezer that he will be visited by three ghosts before the night is over, the Spirit of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future.
The Spirits do come and visit Ebenezer, and give him a good scare. The Spirit of Christmas Past shows him the person he used to be, that he used to be able to have fun and was in love with a girl, but his love of money became more important. The Spirit of Christmas Present takes him to his nephew’s, where hears how the others see him, that he is mean and only thinks of himself and his money.
The last Spirit, who shows him the future that might be, takes him to see the family of the man who works for him, Bob Cratchit. He has a little boy named Tiny Tim, who will die because his family is poor and not able to take care of him. Ebenezer sees his own death which really scares him.
After he wakes up in the morning he is very different. He realizes that we should be good to each other, that to take care of each other and to be kind is the most important thing. He tries to make all of his family and those who work for him happy. He learned an important lesson.
Rev. Ed has talked about a religion from Asia, it is called Buddhism. I saw some of the important things in Buddhism in this story. The Buddha told everyone what are called the Four Noble Truths. Charles Dickens lived at a time when many people suffered, and that is the first noble truth, that everyone suffers. Rich people, poor people, everyone suffers.
The second noble truth is that the cause of everyone’s suffering can be known and understood. Good news for all of us, and Ebenezer was able to find out what was caused his suffering in the story. He was greedy, he only loved money, he tried to keep everything he had for himself, and he never shared anything.
The third noble truth talks about greed, that is the way that all of us try to hold on to the good things in our lives, and worry if we will not be able to do that. It makes us unhappy that everything changes, that things never stay the same, and we worry about that and try to hold on to things and people. It can make us mean and crabby with ourselves and with others.
The fourth noble truth tells us how to live to have a happy life. We need to do what Ebenezer did, share what we have and expect things to change all the time. We can be happy if we accept that things are always changing and don’t expect them to stay the same, if we can let things change. We have to see that all the things we own can go away and even our feelings or other people’s feelings can change, and that all the changes are okay. We shouldn’t expect to keep everything forever. If we see that, it sets us free, and we can open up our hearts and stop worrying. Then we are free to love ourselves and each other.
Exploring Our UU Heritage, 1st Sundays, History with Some Zip!
Unitarian Universalists have a wonderful and inspiring heritage. We have many people in our denominational past who have been in the forefront and the background fighting for both public and private good. It is my pleasure this year to introduce our children and youth to some of those people during our Religious Education 1st Sundays together. Our 1st Sunday format is for all our children and youth to gather together for about 20 minutes, then to break out into smaller groups for activities.
Our first group of highlighted UUs includes Margaret Fuller, Hans Deutsch and Rev. Charles Joy, and George de Benneville. Margaret Fuller was a 19th century intellectual, mystic, war correspondent and early champion of women’s rights. Hans Deutsch and Rev. Joy designed the flaming chalice during the resistance movement of World War II. This symbol eventually became the symbol of our shared Unitarian and Universalist faith. George de Benneville championed our Universalist heritage in the 18th century, and preached that all people are loved and saved by God. He risked of his life to say these words in both Lutheran and Catholic Europe, and many of his friends were killed for these activities. His life was important, important enough for our UU Camp de Benneville Pines in the San Bernardino Mountains to be named after him.
One paragraph cannot do justice to the lives of these amazing and complex individuals. Below are UUA resources if you would like to explore further:
http://www25-temp.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/margaretfuller.html
http://www.uua.org/publications/pamphlets/introductions/151248.shtml
http://www25-temp.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/georgedebenneville.html
I am honored to share these brave and inspired lives with our children and youth. I hold an MA in history, so this is a true passion of mine. Presenting age-appropriate information and activities with enthusiasm can bring people from the past alive to young people. History shouldn’t be boring!
Of course 1st Sundays are only one week out of our month. Our regular curriculum Sundays are taught by a wonderful group of volunteers. As always, I am so grateful for our RE community! Thanks to all those who help teach and support our young people on Sundays and beyond.
I look forward to a year of learning and fun with our OCUUC children and youth!
In Gratitude~~
Rayna Hamre, OCUUC Director of Religious Education
Embracing Change
Fall is a time of change for most American children. Moving up a grade can be a challenge and can be fraught with a mix of excitement and anxiety. AT OCUUC we hope to help our children with transitions in their Sunday classes, and to create a warm caring environment for them to feel safe as they explore new UU territories with their classmates.
We have had a wonderful changes in the past year in our program. We have steadily increased our registration for church school thanks to hard work and planning by our volunteers and staff. Close to 30 children and youth attend our Sunday program on a regular basis. It is a thrill to see their enthusiasm and excitement as they participate. We have a team of dedicated volunteer teachers and coordinators who make it all happen. Our Religious Education for Children and Youth Committee (RECY) plans with the Director of Religious Education for our classroom activities and programs, with support from our minister, church administrator, Worship Committee and Director of Music ministries. Our parents and church members volunteer to make it all happen, and bring their suggestions and ideas to the community along with their caring and creativity.
With this dynamism and growth does come change. As planners for this religious community, it is our job to find, to listen for, and to evaluate and implement new ideas. It is then our responsibility to make these changes. This can mean streamlining some procedures or trying a new idea. Change can be a challenge, but it also can be exciting and dynamic. As one browses through our curricula dating back over 50 years, it is clear that change is vital! And young or old, change will find us. Embracing the new can bring vitality and energy to our lives.
I was able to attend one transitional event this month, a big change for one person and our Pacific Southwest District, that made me so proud to be a Unitarian Universalist. It was Rev. Tera Little’s ordination at the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles. The religious educators and the ministers, along with all guests and visitors, processed around the block of 8th Street, singing and waving celebratory wands. It was wonderful and invigorating. It was a true gift to see our Rev. Tera’s hard work and dedication rewarded at this loving event. A big congratulations to you, Rev. Tera
In Gratitude~~
Rayna Hamre, OCUUC Director of Religious Education
Summer 2011
The summer days are racing by for many of us. OCUUC Religious Educaiton has had some great moments for our Going Green Summer. Water day, recycling sorting, and mask making have been just a few activities our children and youth have participated in over the past month.
Some of us are able to travel and get away for a time. My husband and I were visiting Oslo about two weeks before the tragedies there began, and we were very saddened by the news of the bombings and shootings. Fun and tragedy, laughter and tears. Our lives are often made up of dualities.
As I work with our youth to create this week’s service, Faithful Fools: Standing On The Side of Love for the Homeless, some of those dualities from the trip I took with our youth come into focus. Four OCUUC youth, one youth from Fullerton UU Church, two Directors’ of Religious Education and two chaperons set out on a rainy April day in a rented van. Rain turned to light snow as we traveled over the Grapevine, but we were warm and comfortable in our van, able to stop for dinner along the way.
The next morning we went out on our Street Retreat. This was my second retreat, and I had a completely different experience than the first time, which I wrote about in a previous column. Our youth were in groups of two, with an adult chaperon close by at all times. I was a woman alone, not pretending to be homeless, but hanging out at the park and outwardly not doing much. I was approached by a man for sex while I was sitting by myself in the park (hey, I’m old, what’s going on here, I thought to myself!), which I declined. At that point, he opened up his coat, took out a glass pipe, lit it up and inhaled deeply. He then told me I looked like the type that ‘never got high.’ We were told by Rev. Denis Paul, the Faithful Fools coordinator, to say ‘no, thank you’ when presented with illegal or inappropriate requests on the street, so I was using my ‘no, thank yous’ quite a bit that day. I never felt unsafe, many people were close by including one of our small groups and a male chaperon, but the experience was an eye opener for me in terms of safety for homeless women.
Later in the day I was sitting in a different area and started talking to a homeless woman named Cami. She described her life to me. She could stay at friend’s house one or two nights a week. The other nights she tried to scrape up enough money to ride the rapid transit or the bus all night so she could safely sleep. She couldn’t sleep on the street alone, day or night, it was too dangerous. She said it was safer for a woman if she joined up with a mixed-gender group. Cami had lived with relatives her entire life until they all passed away, was sweet but was obviously not educated, and she had some physical problems. I bought her lunch, gave her $20, made sure she was plugged into a social service agency (she had an appointment the next day) and then had to leave her to return to the Faithful Fools office. My feeling of abandoning her was overwhelming as I walked away. A deep sadness for her and for an economic system that fails so many so regularly.
As a society, I know we have failed these people. A free lunch will not fix this problem; it runs so much deeper and is so much more complex. I was faced with the figure of a person who is realistically not employable in today’s economy. How many more Cami’s are there in the first world; how many are trying to function in the poverty and despair of third world countries? Far, far too many.
Our UU faith provides us with ways to help out in those deeper ways. Please take a moment and review information on our UU Legislative Ministry for California, and our UU Service Committee. Immediate needs are so important, but also we need to look for the root causes of social problems and work for long-term solutions, not quick fixes. The duality of rich and poor is fixable. It’s up to us to become educated and to work for social justice.
Standing On The Side of Love 2011 and 2012
Standing on the Side of Love. Powerful words, and I can feel the love and strength of our denomination when we sing this song together. One of the great things about being a Unitarian Universalist is that we don’t simply sing lines to our shared songs, we are called to live out the values of those words in our daily lives. And we are obligated to share those values with our young people.
As I return from this year’s General Assembly in Charlotte, North Carolina, I know that I am blessed to belong to a faith that asks its member’s to act on their shared values. On Friday June 24th I stood in Marshall Park in downtown Charlotte beside my husband and hundreds of our UU sisters and brothers of all ages. We were there to stand up for LGBTQ rights and marriage equality. Later I was able to cheer with a large group of UUs when the passage of the New York Marriage Equality Act was recognized and announced.
It is distressing that this type of activism is needed. Sadly, rather than declining, violent acts against this part of our community are on the rise. In the U.S. violence against victims because of real or perceived sexual orientation, HIV status or gender identity rose 13% in 2010 over the previous year, according to a report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lgbt-hate-crimes-20110713,0,3199857.story
At General Assembly in Phoenix, we will be asked to stand on the side of love for immigrant families. I hope to see many OCUUC families make the trip. This is a wonderful opportunity to show our children and the world that we stand on the side of love in response to immigration issues. We have one year to plan for this event.
Our voices are being heard. I was at the Charlotte airport and started chatting with one of the guards while I was waiting to go through security. I said I had been at a church conference at the convention center. He asked if “y’all are part of that yellow shirt group?” There was not a hint of displeasure in his tone, he was simply curious. I proudly said, “yes, we are the yellow shirt group.” We are being noticed as we stand on the side of love and justice: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/06/25/2405808/liberal-denomination-stands-up.html
Please pick up a yellow “Standing on the Side of Love” tee shirt or hat in the months ahead, and be ready for next June’s General Assembly: http://www.sslonlinestore.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=77&zenid=4c9ec254f165b7ddc3981ad3f51160ea
I hope to hold your hand, let our hearts beat as one as we Stand on the Side of Love together.
In Gratitude~~
Rayna Hamre, OCUUC Director of Religious Education
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Elie Wiesel
Religious Education Summer 2011
Please join OCUUC Religious Education for our 2011 Going Green Summer! We will take a look at ways to save energy, how we use water, what happens to the things we throw away and more!
Note our time change for summer services and Religious Education for Children and Youth. OCUUC will transition to our summer schedule of one service only.
RE will gather from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. Sunday mornings in July and August 2011.
Rayna Hamre, Director of Religious Education
Saturday July 23:
As part of our “Going Green” this summer, the Religious Education committee invites ALL to attend the Trail of Beauty at the Environmental Nature Center on Saturday July 23. The Trail is open from 10 am to 3 pm so you can attend anytime you’d like but if you want to join others from OCUUC, come at 11 am. Questions? Ask Merrie Lee Wooten (oceanmother221gmailcom) .
June DRE Report
June is the time of year to extend thank-yous to the many people who make our OCUUC Religious Education program vibrant and exciting for our youngest UUs. It takes many people to provide our Sunday RE classes and other activities throughout the year, and 2010-2011 was very busy.
Our social justice work took some of our youth and chaperons to San Francisco for the April Faithful Fools Street Retreat. We had other opportunities for families to have hands-on work with Big Sunday and Second Harvest. These activities required planners, coordinators, and chaperons.
We had four classes that required teaching teams that served throughout the regular school year. Our volunteer teachers and assistants planned lessons, read stories, assisted with art projects, set up and cleaned up classrooms, and served snacks. Our dedicated core group of teachers do this many Sundays out of the year, missing the adult service to spend time with our children and assist the larger community. We have assistant teachers who help when they can and step in to give our regular teachers a break. All of these people help to make our Sunday program strong and growing.
We had volunteers who assisted with special activities like our third Friday youth movie night, field trips, Time for All Ages and our first Sunday program. They stepped up when needed and so our children could experience the extra events that make our program interesting and varied.
Our minister, Rev. Karen, our Religious Education for Children and Youth (RECY) Committee and Chair (Merrie Lee Wooten) provided structure and leadership for our program. They made decisions, provided short and long-term planning, voiced concerns and provided encouragement. Their contributions were vital to the success of the OCUUC Religious Education program this year. The chair of the Worship Committee, Jason Cook, and our intern minister Patrick McLaughlin, collaborated with the DRE, sharing their time and talents for the intergenerational services in fall and spring.
As I complete my first year as Director of Religious Education at OCUUC, I am very proud to have worked with such a wonderful team of people. Our UU young people and the caring adults I am privileged to serve make my job a joy. I encourage everyone to take at least one Sunday and work in our program this summer or next year. I guarantee, you will get back more than you give.
In Gratitude,
Rayna Hamre
OCUUC Director of Religious Education
May DRE Report
Traditionally, when we weave a Maypole on Beltane, or May Day, we visualize and then weave in our intentions for the upcoming year. As I taught our OCUUC children to weave a Maypole on May 1, I found myself reflecting on what we have woven together as a religious community over the past months.
Our weave is something lovely. Our grades 7-12 youth group, led by Merrie Lee Wooten and Mike Scott, looked for the UU Messages in Music. Along with this musical exploration, some of our youth were able to participate in our Faithful Fools Street Retreat weekend in San Francisco in April. They experienced first hand homelessness for a day, and they were asked to take a critical look at the assistance provided to the homeless. Homelessness is a complex social issue, and free food is a necessity for daily sustenance. But our time with Rev. Denis Paul and Faithful Fools team asked us to look more deeply into the social ills that create this situation. We wove the ribbons of critical minds and kind hearts.
Our grades 4-6 class has been reading and doing projects using a Bible-based curriculum, Timeless Themes. Headed by lead teacher Gabrielle Block, this group has searched for the deeper messages in Old Testament Bible stories. As a part of the larger culture, the RE Committee and parents felt that this was an important part of any education. Our 4-6 teaching team handled this curriculum in a sensitive and enthusiastic manner. We wove the ribbons of the old and the new, of part of our history on this planet.
The ribbon thread for our grades 1-3 class was the UUA on-line Moral Tales curriculum. It was my pleasure to teach this energetic group with the teaching team during the fall. Lead teacher Christine Soriano and the other instructors used crafts, gems of wisdom and acting out the stories to reinforce the moral message in each tale. We wove the ribbons of treating each other well, with thoughtfulness and caring.
The ribbon for our PreK-Kindergarten group was unity. The curriculum that we use for this class is titled We Are Many, We Are One. Based on our Seventh Principle, our children learn about the Interdependent Web of Life by exploring their relationship to the earth, to families and to themselves. This team of teachers has been especially dedicated and helped out on our special first and fifth Sundays over the past RE curriculum year. We wove the ribbons of community and self knowledge.
Our very youngest ribbon weavers are our youngest UUs, our beautiful babies. Each baby in our nursery gives us a message of hope and new life. Our nursery caregivers are wonderful, and each child in our nursery is loved and nurtured. We wove the ribbons of regeneration through love.
I look forward to our upcoming year together in Religious Education, and in our larger church life together. I know that whatever brightly colored ribbons we weave together in the coming months, our design will be brilliantly hued and wonderful!
In Gratitude~~
Rayna Hamre
Director of Religious Education
Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church
April DRE Report
An umbrella. Six dollars. Dry shoes. These are items that middle class people don’t think very much about, that we can easily take for granted. After spending a day in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco on a Faithful Fools Street Retreat, I now see them very differently. The Faithful Fools Street Retreat program is designed for participants to step out of their everyday world and to directly experience the world of the homeless. I had the privilege of participating in a Street Retreat one Friday in March 2011 in preparation for our OCUUC youth to attend Street Retreat in April.
I arrived at the First UU Society of San Francisco at 9:00 a.m. I had made the decision not to chase down my car, which had been valet parked somewhere in the city by the downtown hotel I was staying at, to get my umbrella. There was just a slight drizzle, I had my coat, and figured I would be fine. I met with Rev. Denis Paul and the FF volunteers and we waited for the arrival of the group that I would be going on the retreat with that day. The rain began to pour down in sheets. By the time the group had walked from the UU Society to the Faithful Fools office on Hyde Street, I was soaked to the skin with the very cold rain.
At the FF office the high school students were assigned adult “shadowers” to follow them on their day-long retreat, three to a group. As an adult, I went by myself on my own retreat. We were given the boundaries of the Tenderloin, some information about the local services for the homeless, and then turned out to experience the day. Luckily the FF office had a spare umbrella to loan to me.
Where do homeless people go when it rains? I saw groups of people huddled in the entryways of little markets on corners. For a while I walked around, but even with my umbrella I was soaked and really cold. I felt a little uncomfortable walking into the stores, and there was no place to sit in them. I realized it was my own discomfort that was keeping me out in the cold and wet, so after mildly berating myself I resolved to go into the first coffee shop I ran into. It happened to be a Vietnamese owned coffee shop. The owner was very nice, but I was the only Anglo in the room, and the owner started to talk to me about where I was from, everyone seemed more than a little curious about me. We chatted just a bit, I was able to drink a cup of hot coffee and dry off for a little while. I spent one dollar for the luxury of sitting down in a dry room with a warm drink.
I then returned to the streets and walked around for a while. I knew there were two places that served lunch, and Rev. Denis had urged us to check them out and see how the social services side of homelessness plays out. I asked directions and found my way to St. Anthony’s church. In addition to lunch, there were restrooms available. Yay! The toilet paper was padlocked down, but there were restrooms. I then got in the free lunch line in back of a person who seemed to be mentally ill. He was turning around and speaking in repetitive statements to me while we waited. One of the things I noticed throughout the day was the prevalence of untreated mental illness in the homeless community.
The lunch was very filling, heavy on carbs. I had planned to talk to people during lunch, but the people around me did not make eye contact and seemed a bit shut down. I felt like I would be intruding on their privacy to just strike up a conversation with them, so I kept to myself. Food was traded around, and some people were stocking up on the leftovers and taking tangerines with them from the trays. It was very uncomfortable to just sit at the table, so as soon as I was done I left. There were occasional outbursts in the room, and many of the people at other tables seemed to know each other and be more gregarious than the people at my table, so the room had a lot of noise and bustle, not unpleasant.
I went back outside and continued to walk around on the streets, and realized I had a lot of time to kill before I went back to the FF office. I walked by the Salvation Army Recreation Center and tried to ask about services. At this point I looked pretty wet and bedraggled and not much different from many of the people on the street. The staff was not very helpful to me and seemed to be making derogatory remarks about the clients right in front of them. I finally figured out that you could purchase a day pass. So, that was where I spent a full five dollars. I hung out at the Rec Center for a while. It was dry and warm, and also had a restroom. After drinking coffee to stay warm, restrooms became very important. There are no gas stations or McDonald’s or any other obvious places with public restrooms in the Tenderloin, so you have to figure that piece out, too, on your FF Street Retreat.
After I left the Rec Center, I happened across the other church that offers lunch to the homeless. I went downstairs into the Glide Evangelical church kitchen. At this time I saw a woman in the corner, who looked exhausted. A staff member came over and told her she couldn’t sleep there. She kept saying she wasn’t sleeping, but she and her friends stayed put in the corner the entire time I was there. It looked like a cat-and-mouse game to try and get some rest without getting kicked out of the cafeteria by the staff. I could see both sides of the problem, the staff was trying to move huge numbers of people in and out for meals, but the woman looked completely exhausted.
The second thing that I noticed on my Street Retreat was that most of the homeless were people of color. I checked my observations against census data on poverty levels, and the anecdotal evidence is correct: While most of the people I saw on my retreat were men, the census data also shows that women are more likely to be living in poverty, as are young people.
After visiting the churches and the Rec Center, it was time for me to return to the FF office and reflect on my experience with the other participants. Our re-entry back into the middle class world was aided by a hot cup of tea and a chance to share with each other what we saw and how we felt. What I came away with, I realized once I was back in my cozy, clean hotel, dressed in dry clothes and warm socks, was how tough and resilient the homeless are just to make it through the day. I was exhausted spending one day in their world, dealing with the wet and the cold, navigating meal programs, trying to find a place to be, to just to sit or stand, that was dry.
The Faithful Fools Street Retreat gave me a whole new appreciation for owning an umbrella, having six dollars in my pocket, and being able to slip on a pair of dry shoes at the end of the day.
In Gratitude-
Rayna Hamre
Director of Religious Education
Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church
