LOVE CONNECTS US
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Children
SESSION 3: LOVE IS THE SPIRIT OF THIS CHURCH
BY MICHELLE RICHARDS AND LYNN UNGAR
© Copyright 2010 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 11/7/2014 7:42:21 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
SESSION OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Love is something if you give it away, you end up having more. — Malvina Reynolds (from the song "Magic Penny")
This session explores the essence of a beloved community as sharing the good times as well as the bad with each other; this is what creates a true spirit of love in a religious community. When people are tied together by the spirit of love, we share the ordinary moments of life as well as the momentous occasions. When love is the basis of a shared experience, we are motivated to overcome conflict and reach out to help one another. Therefore, when love is the spirit of the congregation, our religious community helps us, each and all, to grow and to support one another in both good times and bad.
One way people in Unitarian Universalist communities share with each other is by lighting candles of joys and concerns (Activity 4). If your congregation regularly engages in this ritual, this session will place the ritual for these participants in a context of how people in caring communities support one another. If sharing joys and concerns is not a ritual of your congregation, you may want to replace Activity 4 with one of the alternate activities.
GOALS
This session will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
SESSION-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Welcoming and Entering | 0 |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: Story — The Mish-Mash Heart | 10 |
Activity 2: Creating Our Own Mish-Mash Hearts | 15 |
Activity 3: Cat's Cradle | 10 |
Activity 4: Sharing Joys and Concerns | 10 |
Faith in Action: Multigenerational Mish-Mash Hearts | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Pyramid Building | 15 |
Alternate Activity 2: Song — Magic Penny | 10 |
Alternate Activity 3: Ranking Order | 15 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Find a place where you can be quiet with your thoughts. Close your eyes and breathe deeply for about five minutes, perhaps repeating a word or phrase to separate yourself from the activities of the day. When you feel settled and relaxed, think about the times you have felt a strong sense of belonging in your congregation. Consider what it is about your congregation that keeps you returning and perhaps brought you back after the very first time you walked in the door. Is it the people who make up the community? Is it the way you feel in the company of those people? Is it the support they have given you during difficult times in your life? Is it your sense of making a difference together through social action? Think about any times when your religious community makes you feel the spirit of love is truly the spirit of this church; hold these feelings close as you explore this session with the participants.
SESSION PLAN
WELCOMING AND ENTERING
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Give a copy of the scrambled word puzzle and a pencil to each participant as they arrive. Encourage children to decipher as many words as they can from the scrambled words. Do the words have a message they recognize?
Including All Participants
If any participants might have trouble unscrambling words on their own or writing down the words they find, group participants into teams of two or three to work on the puzzle together, inviting teams to choose one person to list the words the group finds.
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Love is the spirit of this church,
and service its law.
This is our great covenant:
To dwell together in peace,
To seek the truth in love,
And to help one another. — James Vila Blake
Description of Activity
The opening activity brings participants together for a chalice-lighting ritual which honors the coming together of this community in the spirit of love, and reintroduces the Blake covenant.
Invite a participant to light the chalice. Lead the group to read aloud the Blake covenant. Suggest participants begin thinking about what is meant by "love is the spirit of this church."
If the group has done the Welcoming and Entering activity, you might ask them if they unscrambled any words that also appear in the Blake covenant.
Continue this ritual of welcoming which honors the coming together of this community in the spirit of love, by saying something like:
We started our session this morning by saying together the covenant created by the Unitarian James Vila Blake. It starts with the words, "Love is the spirit of this church." Today we will further explore the idea of love as the spirit which ties us together in our community by considering some of the ways we help each other.
Invite participants to select a stone to drop in the bowl of water, and, as they do so, to hold in their mind one way someone has helped them. Invite them to share a few words about the person and the help they are thinking of, if they wish, or to silently drop their stone in the water.
Conclude the opening ritual with a statement such as:
Just as the stones we dropped in the water caused a ripple effect, so do the actions of others. When someone helps us, we feel the ripple of good feelings which comes from their love for us.
As participants move on to the next activity, a co-leader should remove the stones from the bowl and return them to the plate, if you plan to use the bowl and stones again in Activity 4, Sharing Joys and Concerns.
Including All Participants
If any participants are unable to select a stone and drop it in the bowl, ask one volunteer to drop all of the stones into the water.
ACTIVITY 1: STORY — THE MISH-MASH HEART (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Read or tell the story to the group. Show the participants the Mish-Mash heart you have pieced together at appropriate parts of the story, perhaps pointing to areas which are jagged or torn at the right times. Read or tell the story to the group. After the story, invite the group to be silent for a moment to think about it.
Begin a discussion by asking the children to recap the story in their own words. What they recall indicates what they found most meaningful or memorable.
Lead a discussion using these questions:
Including All Participants
Be aware that talking about sharing parts of our hearts may bring up painful experiences for some children. If any child who usually participates in discussions and activities like this appears withdrawn or uncommunicative, you might want to speak with your minister and/or religious educator after leading this session. Any participant who appears to joke around inappropriately or laugh at the responses of others may also be experiencing something painful but having trouble expressing feelings about it. In this case, it may be helpful to remind all participants that sometimes we laugh in order to cover up uncomfortable feelings, but it is not appropriate to laugh at the comments of others; everyone deserves to feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas in our community. Both sorts of instances may be worth a discussion with the religious educator and/or minister.
ACTIVITY 2: CREATING OUR OWN MISH-MASH HEARTS (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Encourage participants to create their own mish-mash hearts by cutting up the heart shapes and gluing together a new heart with a variety of colors. Explain they may add fabric, ribbons, or other decorative elements, as well as rips and tears, to make the mish-mash heart their own.
After everyone has finished decorating their hearts or time is almost up, invite volunteers to share what some of the elements on their heart mean and how they relate to any particular happy or sad moments in their life.
As with any activity which involves sharing personal thoughts, some participants may not wish to share. Remind the group it is always okay to pass. If needed, also remind them it is important to respect the person who is sharing by listening to their words without interruption, comment, or judgment.
When all who wish to have shared, lead the group to reflect on this experience with questions such as:
Including All Participants
If any participants have difficulty working scissors or gluing pieces together, invite participants to work in teams. Suggest one person do the cutting, someone else assemble the elements, and any other members of the team add decoration and/or help decide how to make the hearts.
ACTIVITY 3: CAT'S CRADLE (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Pair participants (if needed, make a group of three). Give each pair a loop of string. Invite the pairs to work together with their partner to create a cat's cradle, an old and timeless string game which has entertained children for years.
Start by asking if anyone has already done this activity and knows how it's done. If any participants volunteer, encourage them to show the other pairs how to do it. If no one has done it before, demonstrate (using Leader Resource 1, if necessary) how to create the Cat's Cradle shape out of the yarn or string, transfer it to their partner's hands without destroying the shape of the Cat's Cradle, and then transfer it back to the first person.
Besides Cat's Cradle, there are many more shapes which can be done by people playing string games together. If some participants know them and wish to demonstrate, encourage them to do so if you have time available.
After all partners have successfully transferred the pattern of Cat's Cradle at least once (or participants have had some time to create different shapes together), invite them to reflect on the experience. Ask questions such as:
Including All Participants
If any participant is unable to manipulate their fingers to exchange the string with another person, suggest they can serve as the "base" for their partner to build the Cat's Cradle shape. They can hold their arms still and their fingers spread apart while a partner loops the string onto their hands, and then off again to make a new shape.
ACTIVITY 4: SHARING JOYS AND CONCERNS (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
This sharing ritual is an important way many Unitarian Universalist congregations bring people together in community. It invites members to voice what is happening in their lives and hearts, and helps listeners understand who needs extra help and support.
Invite participants to come forward and either light a candle or select a stone to drop in the bowl of water. Encourage them, as they do so, to share a few brief words about either an important joy in their life or a recent sorrow which is troubling them. To conclude the ritual, light one final candle for "all the joys and concerns which remain unspoken but which we keep in our hearts."
Including All Participants
Make it clear that sharing is voluntary; participants who feel uncomfortable sharing in the group may choose to pass. If any participant cannot move forward to light a candle or drop a stone in the bowl, invite one participant to light all of the candles or drop a stone as each joy or concern is shared. Setting the candles or stones in the center of a circle rather than on a table up front might make it easier for someone with limited mobility to participate.
As with any activity which involves sharing personal thoughts, some participants may feel uncomfortable. Remind the group that it is always okay to pass and that it is important to respect the person who is sharing by listening to their words without interruption, comment, or judgment.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say in your own words:
The session is almost over and we will now work together as a community to clean the meeting space.
Ask everyone to first clean up their own area and the materials they were using, and then to clean another area or help someone else. No one should sit in the circle until the meeting space is clean.
When clean-up is done, ask the participants whether they would like to take their mish-mash hearts home with them as a reminder of today's session or would like to add them to the wall hanging. Invite anyone who would like to add their mish-mash heart to the wall hanging to punch a hole in it, loop a piece of yarn through the hole, and attach the heart to the wall hanging.
After everyone who wants to add a heart to the wall hanging has done so, bring participants back to the circle. Invite them to begin the closing ritual by crossing their arms in front of their body before taking the hands of the people next to them. Say "We are tied together in the spirit of love when we... " and invite volunteers to say a word or phrase to complete the sentence.
When everyone who wishes to has shared, open the circle by having everyone, while still holding hands, turn to their right, so everyone is facing out and no longer has their arms crossed in front of their body. (Be mindful of participants' physical mobility; use this closing activity only if you are sure all children can comfortably participate. As an alternative, simply invite the entire group to hold hands.)
Distribute copies of Taking It Home you have prepared. Thank and dismiss participants.
Including All Participants
If a child is unable to prepare and hang their own mish-mash heart, pair them with another participant who can help them punch the hole, string the yarn through in a loop, and/or tie the heart to the wall hanging.
A child who has mobility or balance issues can participate by sitting in a chair or wheelchair and having other children maneuver around them. This ritual does involve close physical contact, and children who are uncomfortable being touched may wish to opt out.
FAITH IN ACTION: MULTIGENERATIONAL MISH-MASH HEARTS
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
As part of a multigenerational worship service or program, read or tell the story to the group. At appropriate parts of the story, show the mish-mash heart you have pieced together, perhaps, at the right times, pointing to jagged or torn areas. Read or tell the story to the group. After the story, invite the group to be silent for a moment to think about it. Then, form small, multigenerational groups and encourage each group to discuss the story, using questions such as these:
After the discussion, encourage all of the participants to create their own Mish-Mash hearts by cutting up the heart shapes and gluing together a new heart with a variety of colors and adding fabric, ribbons, or other decorative items.
After everyone finishes decorating their hearts or when time is almost up, ask if anyone would like to share what some elements on their heart mean and how they relate to any happy or sad moments in their life.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Reflect on and discuss with your co-leader(s):
Approach your director of religious education for guidance as needed.
TAKING IT HOME
Love is something if you give it away, you end up having more.
— Malvina Reynolds (from the song "Magic Penny")
IN TODAY'S SESSION... the children heard a story, "The Mish-Mash Heart," about how love becomes richer when it is given away or shared. We talked about the ways we share our love with one another in our beloved community—our Unitarian Universalist congregation. We made our own mish-mash hearts as symbols of the love we have shared with others in our lives, played Cat's Cradle string games with a partner, and shared joys and concerns which we learned is one way Unitarian Universalists share their feelings and needs for support with each other in community.
EXPLORE THE TOPIC TOGETHER. Talk about... the ways you volunteer your time and efforts to help your religious community to "give back" some of the good feelings you get from participating in your congregation. Share some of the times you have felt the spirit of love in your religious community and how the people at your congregation make this happen.
EXTEND THE TOPIC TOGETHER. Try... volunteering in your congregation together as a family to "give back" some of the love you receive from your religious community. You might offer to pass the offertory baskets together as a family, light the chalice together at the start of the worship service, or spend a day cleaning up the congregation's building or grounds.
Family Discovery. Create a family heart together with different parts of the large heart symbolizing the good and bad times you've had together as a family. Without using words, colors and designs can depict experiences and reveal feelings as you represent the times of your lives together.
A Family Game. Obtain some string or yarn—or a pre-looped, elastic string, made just for this purpose—and play Cat’s Cradle together as a family. Find suggestions and instructions for playing a variety of string games including Cat’s Cradle on the Alysion (at alysion.org/figures/main.htm) website, Momsminivan.com (at www.momsminivan.com/article-stringfigures.html), and author Libby Koponen's website (at www.ifyoulovetoread.com/). String games are particularly good on long family trips, as they do not require additional supplies and can occupy minds as well as hands when sitting for long periods of time is necessary.
A Family Ritual. Share joys and concerns together as a family by lighting candles or simply joining hands and sharing the best thing about a particular day or what you are particularly grateful for on this day.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: PYRAMID BUILDING (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Form teams of four to six participants. Give each team six plastic cups. Set the cups on work tables, upside down, with space between them.
Challenge the teams to build a pyramid of cups without touching the cups or any other participants. Then give each team the rubber bands you have prepared with strings.
Teams will discover that with each member pulling and relaxing their string in cooperation with the other members, the will be able to stretch and manipulate the rubber band to pick up and move the plastic cups.
For a greater challenge, encourage the teams to complete the task without talking.
After all teams have managed to stack the cups into pyramids or time is almost up, take a few minutes to reflect on this activity as a group. Consider:
Including All Participants
If any participant is unable to manipulate their string to help their team, they can give verbal instructions to the team while the others remain silent and obey the commands. Do not change the game mid-stream to make such an accommodation. Rather, start out with a rule that each team must have one person lead with verbal instructions while the others follow.
Some children may want to shoot the rubber bands or play with them inappropriately. Minimize temptation by holding on to all the rubber bands until the teams are ready to begin the game, and collecting them immediately afterward. If a child misuses a rubber band, ask the child to sit out the rest of the game so others can enjoy playing it.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: SONG — MAGIC PENNY (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to listen to the song "Magic Penny." Then invite reflection on the idea presented by the song—that love is something that multiplies when it is given away. Ask the participants to share a time in their life when they gave away love and felt it multiply. To conclude, play the song again and encourage anyone who wishes to sing along to go ahead and do so.
Including All Participants
If any participants may be unable to hear music or discern the words of the song, distribute a handout with the lyrics for everyone to follow as the song is played.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 3: RANKING ORDER (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Divide participants into teams of three. Give each team a pencil and a copy of the committee list.
Say, in your own words:
Imagine that the Board of Directors of our congregations has determined there are too many committees. They want to eliminate some of them. Your task is to rank the committees in order of importance. Give a number "one" to the committee you think is the most important, a number "two" to the next important, and so on, until you have a ranking for each committee.
Let them know that this is a group activity and that each team member will have to agree on a ranking before it is officially determined. Tell them they will have ten minutes to accomplish this task and they may ask questions about any committee they are unfamiliar with. Say "Go!" to start the teams.
Watch the time and be available for any questions which may come up. Give the teams a one-minute warning. Then call "Time!" to signal the end of the exercise.
Ask the teams to share how they ranked the committees and why they made those selections. Encourage teams to explain how they decided which committee was the most important and which one was the least important on the list; lead them to articulate the criteria they used.
After each team has presented their rankings, note the similarities and differences in teams' responses.
Lead the group to compare the criteria used by the different teams to determine what committees are the most important to the congregational community. Did any groups get stuck, and not complete the ranking? If so, was it because they could not agree on criteria? Or, maybe they agreed that all the committees are equally important to the congregation.
Leave time to lead reflection on the experience with questions such as:
Ask participants if they would give you permission to share their findings with the minister and the Board. If they agree, make sure to follow up. Your congregation's leadership may find it enlightening to know the children's perceptions of various congregational committees and their understanding of different committees' value.
Including All Participants
If the group has non-readers or any who struggle with reading, take time to read aloud the list of committees before signaling teams to "Go!"
LOVE CONNECTS US: SESSION 3:
STORY: THE MISH-MASH HEART
Recently at a multigenerational event at a Unitarian Universalist congregation, everyone was encouraged to create a heart. They were given some construction paper and some glue and some markers to design their heart. Emily worked diligently to create the most perfect, beautiful heart she could. It even had glitter in the shape of diamonds all around the outside.
As she was helping to clean up, she noticed the heart of one woman who was around the same age as her grandmother sitting at a nearby table. It was a mish-mash mess of odd colors and had pieces which were ripped and torn glued haphazardly upon it. Parts of it were wrinkled and crinkled and there was even a little hole in it!
Thinking there was something wrong, Emily offered to help the woman fix her heart. But the woman merely smiled and explained that there was nothing wrong with her heart; it merely revealed all the things which had happened to her in her life. She said there were happy times here: the beautiful colors and designs represented when she first met her husband, their wedding and the birth of each of their three children. There were other beautiful parts, too, which stood for watching her children taking their first steps on their own, riding a bike for the first time and graduating from college.
"But what about all the rips and tears and wrinkles?" Emily asked. "Why are they there?"
These were for the sad times in her life, the woman explained. The time her best friend was stricken with measles, the time someone lied or did something to hurt her feelings and the hole was left when her husband died. "In fact, every time a person comes into my life that I care about," she explained, "they take a piece of my heart with them."
This was distressing to Emily, thinking of the woman having to give part of her heart away to others. "But what happens if you give it all away?" she asked. "You'll be left with nothing."
"No, I won't," the woman responded with a smile. "Because you see, they give me a piece of theirs as well."
Emily looked down at her beautiful, perfect heart with the glitter and the designs she worked so hard to make. Then she looked again at the woman's mish-mashed heart with the jagged colors, rips and wrinkles. Without hesitation, Emily ripped a piece off of her perfect heart and handed it to the woman.
"Thank you," the woman said as she placed it with her mish-mash heart and tore off a piece to hand to Emily.
LOVE CONNECTS US: SESSION 3:
HANDOUT 1: SCRAMBLED WORD PUZZLE
Unscramble the words to create a message about our beloved community.
VLOE
PTISIR
HHCCRU
RSVECEI
LWA
WLDLE
GTTOEERH
ACEEP
LEPH
TREAHNO
VCENNAOT
LOVE CONNECTS US: SESSION 3:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: PLAYING CAT'S CRADLE
Cat's Cradle images and text come from The Project Gutenberg eBook, My Book of Indoor Games, by Clarence Squareman.
To play Cat's Cradle, two or more people make shapes out of a loop of string as they pass the string back and forth between their hands.
One person takes the loop of string and places it around the fingers of both hands while leaving the thumbs free. Loop the string back around so that it goes all the way around each hand while still keeping the thumbs free. Using the middle finger of one hand, slide it inside the loop of string across the palm of the opposite hand. Do the same thing with the middle finger of the other hand. When you pull both hands apart, the string stretches to form the Cat's Cradle.
The second person should locate the two places in the cradle where the string makes an "X." With a thumb and forefinger, the second person pinches together those "X" shaped parts of the string. Keeping it pinched, the second person moves their hands farther apart until the string is taut, points their fingers down to gather the string, then scoops the string up through the middle. As they pull, the first person should let the Cat's Cradle slide off their hands. If it is done correctly, the string will keep the Cat's Cradle shape on the second person's hands.
Step-by-step instructions
Take a piece of string and knot the ends together to make a loop. Then, slip it over your hands:
Next wind the string around your palms, not including the thumbs:
Slip the second fingers through the string on your hands and you have your cat's cradle:
You must now ask a second person to pinch the "X" on the sides of the cradle, using their thumbs and first fingers...
... dive inside the middle from below, and pull the strings away:
Now curl the little fingers around the two, inside "X"s, slipping hands under the outside strings as shown to draw the string sideways and take it under the cradle:
Now curl the little fingers around the inside strings, slipping hands under the outside strings as shown, and draw out the side pieces:
Slip the thumb and first fingers under the side string, bring them up the middle, and you have your original cat's cradle again:
FIND OUT MORE
Learn about the singer and songwriter who was awarded a doctorate in 1939 despite the Depression and the fact that she was Jewish, socialist, and a woman, at this website dedicated to Malvina Reynolds (at www.wku.edu/~smithch/MALVINA/homep.htm). Reynolds' songs have been performed and recorded by Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger, and others.
Find suggestions and instructions for playing a variety of string games including Cat's Cradle on the Alysion (at alysion.org/figures/main.htm) website.