Religious Education Ministry Blog
The regular column from Rayna Hamre, OCUUC’s Director of Religious Education.
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
March DRE Report
I am always proud to be a Unitarian Universalist, but there are times when I am exceptionally proud. One of those times was last summer at General Assembly when I went into the dining area at the Minneapolis Convention Center. All the cups, utensils and plates were made from corn-based products, compostable and biodegradable.
Another point of pride for me is our denominational Green Sanctuary movement and our upcoming Green Theology course at OCUUC. I was recently able to take a college level course on ecopsychology. Since that time I have been acutely aware of the difficulty we humans have in recognizing long-term dangers, like ecological threats, to our safety.
Here is an excerpt from my final project, on plastics in the environment, from that course:
As I was reading about pollution in the Pacific Ocean, I found information on the North Pacific Gyre. The Gyre is a point where several of the currents of the Pacific converge, creating a dead space for water movement. Conservatively, the Gyre is estimated at either twice the size of Texas, or at the other end of the estimates, as large as the United States. It lies between San Francisco and Hawaii. It extends down 30 feet into the Ocean. It contains two to three million tons of trash. Some estimates state that the contents are 80% plastic, and 80% of the trash originates on land, the other 20% is dumped by ships. Items such as computers have also been found in the junk. You can read more about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on Wikipedia.
Of course, the environmental impact of this sea of plastic is catastrophic. Since plastic photo-degrades, it doesn’t bio-degrade, the plastic just breaks down into smaller pieces of plastic. The tiny pieces of plastic absorb any toxins in the water and hold them in like a poison sponge. Birds and marine animals eat the plastic thinking it is food and either starve to death or send it up the food chain. Click this link to see the contents of one bird’s stomach:
I know that it is sometimes hard for us to take action. Here is an easy one we can all help with: Let’s declare our OCUUC kitchen a Plastics Free Zone. While it is best to wash our permanent silverware and plates, sometimes we do need the convenience of disposables. Please, no plastic cups, plates or utensils. Let’s use paper or corn-based products only. These products can be purchased for just nominally more at Smart and Final and other stores.
Take a look. Save some lives, big and small.
In Gratitude-
Rayna Hamre
Director of Religious Education
Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church
February DRE Report
One of the wonderful things about being a Unitarian Universalist is our appreciation for the world’s religions that is reflected in our Six Sources. In January, in addition to our regular classroom curricula, I read a Buddhist story for our all-church “Time for All Ages” by Buddhist author Jon J. Muth. Teachers and youth spent our fifth Sunday all-ages-together time in a further exploration of Buddhism.
Personally, I have strong ties to Zen Buddhism. I learned and practiced Zen at a local Zen Center as a young person. Those meditation techniques and the dharmic teachings that include the acceptance of all beings, learned as a teenager and on into my twenties, profoundly changed my life. I feel a deep appreciation for the gifts that the Zen tradition and Buddhism have given me over the years. I did not find Unitarian Universalism until my own children were born, and it was important to me to find a faith tradition that accepted and honored my previous religious journey and practices. Unitarian Universalism does that so well!
The story by Jon J. Muth, The Three Questions, is based on an older story by Leo Tolstoy. A boy tries to find an answer to the questions “What is the most important time? Who is the most important one? What is the right thing to do?” He learns that the most important time is right now, the most important person is the one who is with you, and doing good for those you are with, right now, is the most important thing. Those themes, the importance of paying attention to right now and truly helping those who are with us every day, are concepts for right living that young and older people can ponder and appreciate.
On our 5th Sunday in January, the teaching team was together with all of our youth in room Joan Gillan 3. We heard about how the Buddhist religion came into being, and some of our youth acted out a scene from the Buddha’s life. We learned about the eightfold path that Buddhists live by: right understanding; right thought; right speech; right action; right livelihood; right effort; right mindfulness; and right concentration.
After hearing some of the basic precepts, we tried a few minutes of meditation. Next we chanted the ancient Sanskrit words “om mani padme hum” which translates as “the jewel in the Lotus.” Then we were on to crafts. We had wonderful parent volunteers assist with our crafts and coloring activities. After our regular church time, our RE Youth Director, Merrie Lee Wooten, took some of our older youth on a field trip to a local Buddhist Temple. It was a busy day and we hope our youth enjoyed exploring a new faith tradition.
That Sunday was the right time, with exactly the right people, to do the most important thing.
In Gratitude~~
Rayna Hamre
January DRE Report
Our Seventh Principle directs Unitarian Universalists to have “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” There are many ways that parents and religious educators can help foster that respect in our youth. This year our Pre-Kindergarten/Kindergarten class is using a UU curriculum called We Are Many, We Are One, by Colleen McDonald, published by the UUA. Two of these sessions caught my eye this year, since I am working on deepening my ties to trees and the natural world. Session six of the curriculum is called “Each Tree is Special,” and session seven is called “We Must Care for Trees.” These two delightful class sessions allowed the children to get out and experience trees, and to make art projects inspired by the trees.
As adult UUs, I know that most of us care deeply about environmental issues, and most of us work for social justice in this area. I do wonder how many of us regularly take the time to deeply connect with nature. It is easy in our suburban setting to “forget” to take nature walks, spend time at the beach, to visit our bigger parks and wilderness areas, or to even make a fire in the backyard and sit outside. I know as I get older it’s a little easier to neglect taking time to make that important connection to the natural world on a daily basis. So I am enjoying noticing the trees around me, learning their names and just paying attention to them.
As we move into a new year, I would like to invite those adults who would like to connect/re-connect with the out-of-doors to love a tree in 2011 with our PreK-K class. Each of us can select a tree, identify it and enjoy it this year. You don’t even have to tell anyone about your tree. Here are some ideas from We Are Many, We Are One to help you with your tree experience.
Complete these sentences for your tree:
My tree feels like____________
My tree smells like___________
My tree sounds like__________
My tree looks like____________
Paint or draw your tree, make a rubbing from the bark. Sculpt your tree. Meditate on being a tree. Feel your roots going down into the earth, your branches going up.
Enjoy your tree as you let that inner wild child out to play this year. Here’s to honoring trees and to forging deeper connections with the Earth and each other in 2011!
In Gratitude,
Rayna Hamre
Director of Religious Education
December DRE Report
Who is the Messiah?
It has been one of my great joys over the past few months to teach and assist in our Grades 1-3 Religious Education classroom. We are using the UUA Tapestry of Faith on-line curriculum “Moral Tales”.
During a recent session I read the children the story The Messiah is Among You.* The story is about children in school who argue constantly. Their teacher, Mr. Cohen, after trying everything he knows, seeks help from his Rabbi. When the children file into the classroom one Monday, the Rabbi is seated at Mr. Cohen’s desk. She has only one lesson for them; she has had a dream from God that someone in the class is the Messiah, an individual who has come to save humanity. At first the children argue about who this might be, but soon they settle down and everyone’s behavior begins to change. After all, any one of the people in the class could be the Messiah, anyone. The arguing children begin to treat their classmates, the adults, and ultimately themselves with care and respect.
As we move deeper into this busy holiday season, let’s all remember to take a moment to look closely at those around us. Depending on your beliefs you might see the face of Humanity, The Goddess, The Buddha, or Christ in your children, your family, and your friends.
Be sure you look into the mirror each day, too.
In Gratitude~~
Rayna Hamre
November DRE Report
Fall is the season that deeply resonates with me. I have always loved the bustle of children heading back to school, beginnings tucked into the traditional harvest time, the seasonal time of endings. This year, as a new Director of Religious Education, I added the start of our fall Religious Education program to my list of joys.
There have been many joys and sorrows mixed into the fall days for me this year. One ending that saddened me was the death of my uncle. He was my last blood relation from my parents’ generation, my mother’s youngest brother. I was deeply moved by the tributes I heard to this gentle and loving man at his funeral. There was much beauty in the encomiums that he received from his family and from his community. His children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were there to say goodbye.
Within the same week, I flew to Washington D.C. with my husband to attend the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. What a wonderful event that was! Our first surprise was when we tried to ride the subway to the Washington Mall and huge lines of people were curling out of our Virginia metro station. Rally participants all crammed into the trains and made the 50 minute ride downtown. There were great signs that you can view on www.youtube.com, and it was a wonderful, friendly crowd. Unfortunately the sound system and video screens were not adequate for the huge turn out. Since we were standing toward the back and had trouble hearing the distant speakers, we enjoyed speaking with those around us. Our subway ride back was even more crowded, and I made several friends as we squashed together heading out of the downtown D.C. area.
What did I take away from this event? That there are many of us in this country, who, as Stewart says, work together every day to get things done. We don’t have to follow the drumbeat of hate and divisiveness that is getting pounded into our consciousness by extremist pundits. We met and saw so many wonderful young people who are worried and who care deeply about this country. It was a positive day, a multi-generational event that brought people from all over together to show that we care about America.
So against the beauty of the brilliant colors of the fall leaves, I saw a beginning. This was a rallying point for those of us with lives, with families, who are trying to make our world a better place without tearing others down in the process. For our sake, and our young people’s sake, let’s hope the momentum and spirit from October 30, 2010 continues forward.
October DRE Report
The education of our youth is a sacred responsibility. We, as Unitarian Universalists, are passing along our tolerance, love and ethics to our young people and helping them to navigate the wider world. Is this the responsibility of one person, group, or sub-group of a congregation? Of course not! This is the responsibility of everyone in a congregation and in our entire denomination.
Personally, I love the way our congregation connects with our youth. We have a caring community of parents, RE Committee members, and our larger church to hold and care for our young people. We also have an amazing group of youth who are looking for ways to connect with our adult community. Is there room for improvement, for more? Of course! That’s why we have a structure in place to assist with this process, to assess and strengthen our relationship with our young people. Helping out in our classrooms once or twice a year is a great way to be involved in this co-creative process. We would love to have your assistance and for you to get to know our young people. We need you to be involved!
In contrast to the warmth of our OCUUC community, this month I was called in to work as a substitute at my previous job in the public school system. What did I find? A system gutted by budget cuts, valiant teachers and classified staff struggling to keep their chins above water with crushing work loads after mass staff lay-offs over the past two years.
I have also been following the story of public school teacher Rigoberto Ruelas, an involved and devoted LA teacher whose value-added score for raising math and English proficiency, published on a web site by the Los Angeles Times, rated him a “less effective” teacher. While the facts are not completely in, his family reports that he was despondent over the publication of this score. His body was found at the bottom of a ravine below a bridge.
While I share the love and ties that we have as a community at OCUUC, and treasure our relationship with our young people, I still have one foot in a low-income neighborhood in Anaheim. I see a public that is hostile to the very people who we have entrusted to educate our youth, denying them the basic resources and respect they deserve to do their jobs adequately. What can we each do to help? Upstream, write your local, state and federal legislators and demand adequate staffing and funding for public schools. Downstream, see what you can do to help out. Volunteer to work a half day at a school in Anaheim or Santa Ana. You’ll come away with a totally different view of our public education system. Very sadly, it’s not the public school system we attended 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago.
In Gratitude,
Rayna Hamre
OCUUC Director of Religious Education
September DRE Report
We’ve gathered our SOS school supplies, we are wrapping up our summer programs for children and youth, many of our adult members are heading back to school and work at our local schools and universities. Fall has arrived! Even with our hot Southern California weather, we notice that the light is changing and the days are getting shorter.
Our children and youth have had a fun and educational summer. Children in the grades K-6 program have enjoyed a curriculum based on science experiments created and organized by our own Jennifer Abt. Thanks to Jennifer for the many hours of preparation, planning and scheduling she put into this effort. Our children explored icebergs and diving bells, radish vacuums, slime and quicksand, the water cycle, rocket science and more. We had guest teachers over the summer from the congregation, and many more parent volunteers to assist. It took everyone to give our children an exciting hands-on experience of the scientific experience. Thanks to you all. Lead teachers included Jennifer Abt, Maurice Giss, Dale Osborne & Tom Hogan, Keith Jenkins, Gabrielle Block, Jonathan Pearson Magoon, Jacques Kilchoer and Mary Lundholm.
Merrie Lee Wooten took our grades 7-12 youth on field trips and brought in guest speakers that allowed them to experience other faiths. Kudos to our talented youth and Merrie Lee for the full service they put on exploring our seven principals and giving us a glimpse at the church of the future. They did a beautiful job and we are proud of them.
We also thank Summer al-Bayati for her transition work with our youth this spring and summer. Her years of service as Youth Advisor are greatly appreciated.
I look forward to an exciting fall in our Religious Education program. We have many talented people who are here for our youth and children. More teachers would be welcome to the program. You are not asked to teach every Sunday, so you will always have some open Sundays to attend the adult service. If you are interested in getting involved with our wonderful young people, please contact me for more information.
In Gratitude-
Rayna Hamre
