First Parish Cohasset

This past Sunday the children were in the Parish House. Upstairs, the pre-school and kindergarten children heard the Spirit Play story The Magic Seed. In this story, a poor man is caught stealing bread from the bin behind a bakery. As he is being led away to his punishment (which is death), he begs to tell the King about the magic pomegranate seed in his pocket, lest his treasure perish with him. This magic seed will sprout, flower and fruit in one single night, provided it is planted by someone who has never lied or stolen. The condemned man offers the seed to the King, who remembers something embarrassing from his youth and offers the seed to his General, who offers it to the Prime Minister…you get the idea. The King gives the seed back to the poor man, along with his freedom. The group (seven children this week) talked about the story and then explored the theme through play and art. Some of their art from this and prior weeks is on display in the upstairs classroom. Please feel free to visit and look around before or after RE class.

Meanwhile, the older children began the morning in the Atkinson Room with our usual chalice lighting and sharing ritual. They then heard the story of Miss Rumphius, written and illustrated by Barbara Cooney. (The link will take you to Bowdoin College’s Museum of Art, which holds the original illustrations for this and three of Cooney’s other books. Thank you, Penny Myles, for that information.) We talked about why it was so important to Miss Rumphius that she make the world more beautiful. We then moved to Trueblood Hall and considered motivations, what “makes us tick,” both through a thinking-and-writing activity and an “energy burner” that let us physically express what motivates us.

The children then considered what motivated some famous Unitarian Universalists to achieve their dreams, including Olympia Brown, Tim Berners-Lee, and Linus Pauling. In a related conversation, they decided that Miss Rumphius’s life exemplified 6 or 7 of our UU Principles (there was some debate over principle 5, “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process, etc”).

The children are getting ready to participate in a social action project this spring, by considering what in their community needs their attention and energy, and what activity or issue they might reasonably tackle as a group.

As time ran out we adjourned to the Atkinson Room for our closing ritual/extinguishing the chalice and a brief reminder about next week, when First Parish will be hosting Union Sunday.

I look forward to seeing you in church on Sunday, March 11, when the children will begin in the Meeting House.

Last Sunday the children were in the Parish House. The pre-school group heard the story of The Wise Men and the Elephant in the upstairs Spirit Play classroom. After the story, they engaged with the story’s themes through art and play.

Downstairs, the older children welcomed some new friends to class with their old favorite game, Name Toss. This game requires concentration and cooperation and is a fun way to learn each other’s names. Next was the opening chalice lighting and sharing ritual. We played and sang We are Free, a song by Nick Page, and talked about the 6th Principle — the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.

Conversation about the intangibles of peace, liberty and justice was pretty thin, to be honest. On the last morning of February vacation, these ideals weren’t sparking any debate. The goal of world community, however, was very engaging. The children (and their leaders and youth helpers, too) held a lively discussion (aided by a large world map) about people we know in far-flung places and the differing customs they encounter. We learned that even in other English-speaking places you might not understand the conversation due to local slang; that in large parts of the world things we take for granted like indoor plumbing is a pie-in-the-sky luxury and going to school is not an inevitable part of childhood.

While the children created two large collages that represented the world community, they talked about everyday, ground-level choices that have to be made to “wage peace,” like being deliberately welcoming rather than unfriendly or talking out a dispute rather than shouting or wrestling.

After the collage activity we held a closing circle, singing We are Free and extinguishing the chalice.

On Sunday 3/4 the children are in the Parish House again. Please note the change in our usual schedule, due to special events on March 11 (Union Sunday) and March 25 (Youth Sunday).

See you in church.

Last Sunday the children began the morning in the Meeting House, where we heard about a famous Unitarian Universalist minister, the Reverend Mark Morrison-Reed. Much of the information I shared with the congregation came from this article in the spring 2009 issue of UU World.

In the Parish House, all the children gathered in the Atkinson Room with their teachers and youth helpers for our opening ritual of chalice lighting and sharing time. I told the story The Butterfly Friends, from Elisa Pearmain’s book Once Upon a Time, which addresses the themes of friendship, loyalty and prejudice. After the story, the youngest children went upstairs with their RE leaders to talk and explore the story through art. Downstairs, the older children brainstormed situations where exclusion or inclusion can happen; times when they have felt welcomed or welcomed another; times when they experienced prejudice. It’s a privilege to be present for these conversations. First Parish’s children think and feel deeply, and generously share their experiences with each other.

This Sunday the children will be in the Parish House for regular curriculum lessons. I hope you are enjoying the school vacation week and are finding time for all the things you want to do.

See you on Sunday.

Last Sunday (1/22) the children participated in a “One-Room Schoolhouse” in the Parish House. Fifteen children aged 3-11 joined together to hear the same Bible story that the congregation was hearing in the Meeting House.

In the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman, Jesus has a “used to think, now I know” moment. Through an encounter with a not-Jewish woman in which Jesus and the woman speak to each other in riddles, Jesus realized that his message of love and justice was not only for the Jewish people, as he “used to think” but was really meant for everyone, everywhere. Knowing that, he went forth with new understanding.

Many of the children were able and willing (which speaks to their comfort with and trust of the group) to share a “used to think, now I know” moment from their own experience. Through the course of our conversation we covered several topics:

• that Jesus the Christmas baby is the same person as Jesus the grown-up man in this and other stories;
• that Jesus the grown-up man “went about doing good” (as Peter said of him) by helping sick people feel better and sad people feel more hopeful;
• that because Jesus often told stories or spoke in riddles in order to teach something people then and now have to think about the story and work out the message for themselves;
• that many of Jesus’s stories told people to be good and kind to everyone, not just the people that they liked, or that looked like them or liked the same things they did, but everyone.

We reviewed Bible stories from the last few weeks, inviting volunteers to act out the story of Moses leading the people out of Egypt and Jacob and Esau quarreling over Isaac’s blessing and later reconciling. I asked the children to begin thinking about which parts of these stories and our conversations they’d like to share with the congregation during the Time with the Children on February 5.

We also had a children’s worship in which we sang hymn #188 Come, Come Whoever You Are, lit our chalice, and observed our sharing ritual which involves placing a stone in a bowl of water. Quite a number of “shares” involved looking forward to that afternoon’s Big Football Game, often including (not surprisingly) a prediction for a hometown win.

We ended our morning together with a special treat of cocoa, conversation and drawing.

This past Sunday the RE children began the morning in the Meeting House. I told the congregation a version of the story of Jacob and Esau, who were the twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah. Their story is a long one, and is only part of an even longer story that includes their grandfather, Abraham and Jacob’s sons, Joseph and his brothers. The part we looked into on Sunday was the struggle between Jacob and Esau — to inherit Isaac’s estate, to soak up all their parents’ love, to outshine each other, to “win.”

In the course of their sibling struggles, Jacob stole the blessing Isaac intended to give Esau, then ran far away to escape Esau’s wrath and vow of revenge. Many years later, the brothers met again, Jacob overcoming his fear of Esau in his desire to be reconciled, and Esau “forgetting” his anger out of love for his brother. You can read Rev. Anita’s sermon on this topic, which explores some similar and some different aspects of the story than I did with the children.

When I asked the children what was the most important part of the story, they first focused on the brothers’ relationship: “be nice to your brother.” I pointed out that the story doesn’t tell us that either brother ever apologized, just that they met and were not angry. “You mean Esau just FORGOT about it?” one child demanded. They discussed that idea for a while, whether they would be able to forget such a transgression, whether they would want to, whether forgetting was the only option in this case. They did not reach a conclusion, which puts them in the very good company of centuries of scholars who have (and continue to) debate the meaning of these ancient stories and their implications for modern lives.

We also talked about the idea of “blessing.” What is it? Who can do it? Is it only for something big, or can a blessing be as simple as “good morning”? There were many opinions. Some thought that saying ‘good morning’ or ‘have a nice day’ does nothing; some suggested that it only has an effect on the person who SAYS something like that — “it doesn’t change the other person’s day, but it makes you feel good.” Some thought blessing is like magic.

When we reached the natural end of this discussion the children chose to play some cooperative games rather than do an art project. We played the Name Toss game, Would You Rather, Simon Says and a complicated version of hide and seek that requires patience, working together and trust. Even though this last game was designed for older groups, they showed thoughtfulness and real cooperation, and liked it so well we played it over and over.

Rev Anita and I try, whenever possible, to include similar themes in the “big church” and the “little church”. I hope that posting this recap of RE activities will foster conversations about what we as a congregation did together and separately on Sunday morning.