RE Sermon
Our Religious Education A Sermon by Kirsten Kunz, Director of Religious Education

Busy people, that's what we are. Every hour of every day is given over to one important task or another. Even our socializing and our fun are expected to yield some meaningful result. We network. We attend fund-raisers. We are building a better community. Our young children's activities are designed with improved gross-motor or fine-motor skills in mind. As they get older we promote in our children social skills, citizenship, an appreciation for math and science. We live lives that are stuffed full of meaningful activities, all designed to help us reach our greatest human potential.

So, why bother with religious education? I mean, on top of everything else you have to do, you come to church and we ask you to prepare animated stories and elaborate crafts for children. These children who can easily use up your whole day's supply of adrenaline in one hour. Imagine, after a long hard week of committee meetings, car-washes for youth soccer, selling cookies door-to-door, taking the physically challenged on a ski trip and teaching anger-management at the prison you come here and we want you to make Christmas ornaments out of juice lids and dig up violets to make money to save the rainforest.

Why bother, what were you thinking? And on top of all this, you will be asked routinely what you have to offer in the way of adult education. Then and only then, we will come to you and tell you how much all of this costs and couldn't you please just give a little bit more.

Why bother, and we do bother. We bother a lot. And is the reason we bother simply because of what we personally get out of it? Yes, we do get something out of it. But there are other activities that enrich our lives, some of them surely require less effort.

Is it because we feel that church-going is essential to the moral development of today's youth? Perhaps, somewhat. But children learn moral lessons in scouting and even on the ball field. I am told that baseball contains all the great metaphors for life. I've forgotten what these inspiring truths are. You'd have to ask my husband. I am assured over and over again that involvement in sports is a wonderful way for children to learn self-discipline, self-esteem, teamwork, goal-setting, you name it. And there are children who do grow up to be moral, responsible citizens without a church.

Maybe our dedication to religious education is a matter of preserving and passing on religious history. After all, church is the only place that children get a formal introduction to religious history. Perhaps we want for our children and ourselves a certain cultural literacy. I would like to be able to sit through a Catholic wedding or a Jewish naming ceremony and have an appreciation for the elements of those services. Someday I would like my children to know that redemption means something other than taking your bottles back to the store, that there is another way to say "Jesus got nailed." (Although that is more descriptive than the word crucifixion.)

There is a well-known UU joke that goes like this: There was one UU who said to another one, "I bet you can't say the Lord's Prayer." And the second one said, "I bet you five bucks I can." "OK," said the first, "You're on!" So the second one recited, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." And the first UU looked at the second one and said, "All right, you win."

It's very funny, except that one UU minister told this joke to his Sr. Youth group and no one got it! Some may find a lack of Biblical knowledge no big deal. After all, what we are really after is a conveyance of moral lessons, isn't it? And the stories of American Indians or Buddhists might be written without the inclusion of any offensive patriarchal god or sexist language. Wouldn't it be better to stick to only politically correct moral lessons? Maybe, but Unitarian-Universalism grew out of a Judeo-Christian culture and it is our history. It ought to be recognized and respected; archaic language, patriarchal God and all.

This is not to diminish the importance of the histories of Buddhists, Muslims, pagans and others who become UU's. It is not to say that Bible stories should feature in our religious education more or less prominently than stories from other cultures. It is simply to say that Judaism and Christianity are important pieces of our heritage. And in church school, unlike in scouting or baseball or carwashes or other worthwhile endeavors, we come to make emotional connections with our past. I'm not even so much interested in the actual knowledge of the facts, although a certain cultural literacy is important. I am most concerned with the FEEL of the facts-the emotional connection with stories our parents heard, and their parents before them. This emotional connection to the past is what separates Religious Education from scouting or sports or even a college course in religion. And I believe that all people need and are entitled to this emotional connection to the past. A sense of heritage promotes honor and self-esteem. It gives a person's life meaning beyond their own lifespan. There is a certain immortality here regardless of what you believe about the after-life.

Our seventh UU principle states that we respect the interdependent web of all existence. Sometimes this is interpreted as a concern for ecology and the environment but I would suggest we look for a moment at the human aspect of this web. Last week some of you came to discuss community. This community is a web, a mass of sinews and threads that tie us together to provide comfort and support and to stretch us toward growth. It is our participation in this web that is what God or humanity asks of us, demands of us actually. Yes, we often ask what we get out of religion, but here is what is asked of us. It is a gift and a responsibility and essential to the survival of humanity. Participation in this web that sustains us and promotes growth. And I think we forget sometimes that this interdependent web has a temporal as well as a spatial component.

Creativity and discovery are human gifts that we cherish. We are invigorated, find meaning and purpose in life when we create for ourselves, start anew. But the present is only one slice of our sprawling web. Writer Frederick Turner writes, "Our cultural myth is one of liberation, of the present breaking the shackles of the past. But what if it is the past that breaks the shackles of the present?"

"When we tread in the steps of the ancient poets and sages, we may sometimes reach where their steps could no longer go-and there we stand at the edge of the radically other, the truly shocking." Turner cites civilizations which he sees as the most creative and truly innovative ones as being those who set out to imitate the past: the brilliance of Japanese culture following from devotion to classical Chinese culture, the European Renaissance fired by the recapture of ancient Greek and Roman art, the American Renaissance-works of Hawthorn, Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman that were based on the conscious use of classical European models. Our ancestors were great adventurers and discoverers. It is a gift and a responsibility uniquely human that we can call them into our midst. We can make them part of our web.

I went to a Jewish temple several months ago. For two hours, I sat through some songs and prayers in Hebrew, watched people go through motions and rituals I knew nothing about. And yet I could feel the presence of something truly ancient there and it was overwhelming. Comforting and inspiring at the same time. I felt elevated to a spiritual plane that quite honestly I don't reach every day. I was ready right then and there to sign up. Make me Jewish. That was until the Rabbi came to the part about Jews being God's chosen people, and then my Universalist heart sank. I can not be Jewish. I don't believe that God has a chosen people. But, what I wanted to take with me that day, to keep for myself, and to share with our children, is the amazing feeling of being connected, truly connected, to all the people who have come before. How comforting. How inspiring.

The psychologist Robert Kegan describes the evolution of the self as a spiral. The individual growing by at first being firmly planted in some culture. Kegan refers to it as being embedded. At some point the individual reaches a crisis where he or she must emerge from this embeddedness, this familiar way of being, and hold oneself and one's web, if you will, at arm's length to be examined. Having assessed the situation from a new vantage point, the individual comes to some revelation about their relationship to self and others and is able to reform the links with the web in a new way. Take the rebellious preschooler or the adolescent for instance. How many times are we told that these are phases we must endure? Some important growth is happening here, evolving out of a struggle. It is our job, our responsibility to remain a stable web for them to return to when their crises have passed. It is what my God expects of me; to maintain a culture and sustain human bonds.

Culture is made up of individuals all on their own spiral journeys returning again and again to familiar struggles at ever increasing levels of complexity. A child takes a toy out of someone else's yard and brings it home. She says to her father,"I think someone left this by the side of the road and there is no harm in me keeping it." The fact that she has come to him to discuss the issue is a sign that she is struggling to find truth here. A crisis, an opportunity for growth.

We have learned through education theory that if the child is ready for growth, we foster that growth not by issuing commands but by listening to her evolving instincts and eliciting a revelation that is coming. And so the father says "do you really think no one will miss this toy?" "How would you feel if someone took a toy that you left in your yard." We must watch carefully for potential moments of revelation and provide consistent boundaries until the evolving self is ready to emerge from those boundaries.

A woman returns from a business trip having been given an honorarium for a speech she gave. Her company does not allow her to keep such awards, however. They are to be turned over to the fiscal office at work. The rule is meant to discourage employees from taking up work time in search of lucrative side-lines. But what harm is there in keeping the money? No one will know, there is no peer pressure here, there is no threat of damnation, certainly it is not like taking another child's toy away. A moment of crisis, a moment of growth. It's the same problem the child had at a new level of complexity, a new level in the spiral.

We return to the same problems at new levels of complexity again and again in our moral meaning-making. In the words of Edna St. Vincent Milay, "Life is not one damn thing after another, it's the same damn thing over and over." And so our adult education ought to continue to foster the bonds to present and past that help us in our self examination.

And then what of solace. All this growth is exhausting. I watch my five year old get on a school bus for the first time and feel an anxiety, a sadness, a fear. It seems to me sometimes that life is one long series of separations starting at birth and ending with death. The separations that you are undergoing at the moment might be more or less complex than mine, might be more or less severe than those separations told about in ancient history, but the shared experiences form a web, a spatial and temporal web, which sustains us and prompts us to grow. My soul, my god resides not within me and not in some ethereal place but in the sinews and threads that are the bonds with people past and present.

I think of starting children on their path like growing morning glories that creep up around a pole in their lovely spiral form. They might do all right with two inches of topsoil, but how much safer, how much richer to grow your flowers on layer upon layers of rich humus. Some of you may have another word for your own religious histories, but take heart and remember, good stuff grows in manure too!

So now you know why I feel that religious education is so important. Just how do we accomplish this education? What are its elements, its essential features? Certainly we must start with the importance of forming relationships. Intergenerational relationships. Relationships that are substantial and sturdy. These relationships develop over time and require heroic effort sometimes. These relationships help keep rules and boundaries when necessary and still help growing people develop their own moral codes as they are ready. We make our own human web here, from which all our people, children and adults, can learn to comfort and inspire one another. We promote creativity and discovery not in spite of our past but in concert with it.

And what of the content of our education? Our curriculum? We in the business of curriculum planning like to talk about the pillars of religious education for children. These are the categories of subject matter to be taught. And in an effort to be well rounded we might think of these pillars in a circle like the form of an ancient Greek temple. Our pillars have such names as Unitarian Universalist Heritage and Philosophy, Judeo-Christian Heritage, World Religions, Self, Family and Community, Social Justice, and Universegodwonder (that's all one word).

Just as our growth spirals return again and again to familiar spots, we move around the pillars, returning to familiar subject matter at ever-increasing levels of complexity. Do we always spend equal time at all the pillars? No. One year some current event like war or famine might draw more attention to elements of curriculum that speak to social justice or world community. Another year the religious right lays claim to the Bible and morality. We stand right up and say, "The Bible belongs to our children too, and we teach moral lessons." We do however keep an eye on balance and try to make sure that every child gets a well-rounded exposure in some ways to all of our pillars.

These pillars, it seems to me, are all made up of the same "stuff": our seven UU principles, our mission and covenant, our communal value system. The same granite, if you will, carved in different forms. Whether or not each pillar gets completely equal time each year is not of concern to me. What is of concern is that children get some exposure to all of it and whatever it is we give them, it is meaningful and helpful to them at their own levels.

And what about adult religious education? How do we promote the bonds to present and past that help us in our self-examination? I look over the spring curriculum and I see "Living the Liberal Religious Life--Then and Now," "Spiritual Autobiography," "Living on the Cheap", how to get the most out of coupons. Yes, it's Religious Education!

And why is that? Well, we're gathered here in the mystery of the hour. We're gathered here in the struggle and the power. Finances are a struggle. Coupons must be the power!

We gather here in one strong body: adults and children, past, present and future.

This week we host a Unitarian family from Transylvania; a family who practices Unitarianism much as it was practiced in this country a hundred years ago. Here is an opportunity to make bonds with past and present at the same time. Our teaching methods, our ways of reaching out are not confined to a rigid structure, but flow with the rhythms of our lives.

I leave you with this, from the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke:

"I live my life in growing orbits,
which move out over the things of this world.
Perhaps I never can achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.
I am circling around God,
around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years.
And I still do not know,
if I am a falcon,
or a storm,
or a great song."

© Kirsten Kunz, DRE, March 19, 1995
First Parish in Bedford
On the Common
75 The Great Road
Bedford, MA 01730
(781) 275-7994