LOVE SURROUNDS US
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Children
SESSION 7: LOVE SURROUNDS US IN RITUAL
BY LYNN KERR AND CHRISTY OLSON
© Copyright 2010 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 11/8/2014 5:34:51 AM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
SESSION OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Ritual is the way we carry the presence of the sacred. Ritual is the spark that must not go out. — Christina Baldwin, in Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest
Not all Unitarian Universalist congregations use the same elements of worship, yet we often have rituals in common such as chalice lighting, flower ceremony, and water communion. We may use different words and different actions. Still, our rituals bind us together in Unitarian Universalist religious community.
The theme of this session is "Our rituals represent love and acceptance." The story describes the first flower ceremony and how a minister began the tradition. The minister, Norbert Capek, began a ritual with the symbol of flowers to demonstrate his belief that although everyone is different, they are all beautiful and he loved them just as they were. Story, discussion, and activities help participants understand rituals and see how they represent love in our communities.
GOALS
This session will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
SESSION-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Welcoming and Entering | 0 |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: What Is Ritual? | 10 |
Activity 2: Story — The Flower Ceremony, A Plain and Simple Beauty | 10 |
Activity 3: Flower Making | 15 |
Activity 4: Flower Ceremony | 10 |
Faith in Action: Leading a Flower Ceremony | 30 |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Flower Poem | 10 |
Alternate Activity 2: Altar Symbols | 15 |
Alternate Activity 3: Ritual Collage | 30 |
Alternate Activity 4: Poster — Third Principle | 10 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Not all Unitarian Universalist congregations use the same rituals, and the use of ritual within a congregation can vary. Your history of participating in religious ritual may be positive or negative. Use this spiritual preparation activity to acknowledge your feelings or memories of ritual in a religious setting:
Find a quiet space in the church. Relax into a comfortable position. Close your eyes and think about the rituals that your congregation uses regularly. How do they make you feel? Think about rituals you experienced in childhood. How do they make you feel? Are your memories pleasant or unpleasant? What makes a ritual positive for you? Is the flower ceremony different from rituals you participated in when you were a child?
Reflect on the children in this group. Today may be their first experience with a specifically Unitarian Universalist ritual. How can you help make this ritual a positive experience for them? Release any negative feelings you may have about rituals. Make yourself ready to conduct this ritual as a representative of our Unitarian Universalist faith.
SESSION PLAN
WELCOMING AND ENTERING
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Use this activity when children arrive individually—that is, straggle in—before the session begins. Welcome each child as they enter. Invite them to take their ribbon stick from the container by the door and move to the large group area. Invite each child to sit at a work table and draw and color any kind of flower they can think of.
Including All Participants
Give a ribbon stick to any new child or visitor and write their name on it.
Provide wrist ribbons for children who are physically unable to wave a ribbon stick. Help attach wrist ribbons to wrists, legs, or fingers according to the mobility of the child.
Provide a space at a work table for any child who is unable to sit at a chair. Offer to draw an outline of a flower for a child to color, if needed.
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite children to find their ribbon sticks and then come sit together. Welcome the children.
Optional: Lead the group to sing the song "Love Surrounds Me."
Have each child say their name and wave their ribbon stick above their head. Remind them that they will learn all the UU Principles and that each Principle will have a different color. Tell them yellow represents the third Principle. Have them find the yellow ribbon and say the Principle together: "In our congregations, we accept all people and we learn together."
Ask participants if anyone can remember the first Principle (Each and every person is important). Ask if they remember what color we assigned to the first Principle (red). Ask if they remember the second Principle (We believe all people should be treated fairly) and its color (orange).
Do the opening chant together:
Group chants "Love surrounds us everyday. The Principles show us the way."
Leader says "______ please, put your ribbons away." (Child named returns their ribbon stick.)
Guide children, as they are named, to return their ribbon stick to the container and then return to the circle. This is a way to acknowledge the presence of each participant. If the group is large, say only several names, then direct the others to put away their ribbon sticks all together.
When all ribbon sticks are returned and the children are in the circle, light the chalice. Lead the group to say together:
Love surrounds the chalice and we are included by the light of the chalice.
Including All Participants
Help attach wrist ribbons (Session 1, Opening) to children's wrists, legs, or fingers, and later, help remove them, if any children are physically unable to use a ribbon stick.
ACTIVITY 1: WHAT IS RITUAL? (10 MINUTES)
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
This activity prepares participants to learn about ritual in our congregations by first discussing rituals in their everyday lives.
Ask participants to sit in a circle. Say, in your own words:
We will talk about rituals today. Rituals are certain things we always do, usually at the same time. An example would be saying a prayer before a meal. Another example is our opening ritual here in our group. Now I am going to ask you to think about your morning routine at home, when you wake up and get ready to go to school. Then we will talk about a ritual that many Unitarian Universalist congregations around the world take part in.
Ask participants to sit comfortably, without touching their neighbors. Ask them to close their eyes if they are comfortable doing so and silently, in their heads, think about the answers to these questions:
Pause for approximately 20 seconds and ask them to slowly open their eyes. Ask participants if they thought about any things they do every day. Let them share their thoughts. After a minute or two of sharing, in your own words say:
Those are morning rituals. Just like how you get ready for school with certain rituals, people in Unitarian Universalist congregations participate in rituals, too. They light a chalice as we do here. What else do we do in our opening ritual? What is the difference between the ritual of brushing your teeth every morning and lighting the chalice in church on Sunday morning? Brushing your teeth is a personal ritual, but what the congregation does together in church is a religious ritual. We do it together because we are a religious community. Family rituals such as good night hugs and kisses, bring a family together; rituals in church bring all the people in the congregation together.
Affirm the elements of your opening ritual that children mention.
Including All Participants
If any children cannot sit on the floor, gather participants in a circle at approximately the same eye level.
ACTIVITY 2: STORY, THE FLOWER CEREMONY, A PLAIN AND SIMPLE BEAUTY (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Norbert Capek came to the United States from his native Czechoslovakia in 1914. He served a Baptist church in New York City but resigned and joined the First Unitarian Church of Essex County in Orange, New Jersey. This congregation was much more in keeping with his liberal religious views. Capek and his wife were prompted to join the church by the liberal religious education available to his children. When his country was liberated after World War I, he returned to Prague and built and led the largest Unitarian church in the world, and spread Unitarianism throughout the country. This story explains how Capek held the first Flower Ceremony while he served in Prague.
Gather the group to hear the story. Show and pass around the picture of Capek and explain that he invented the Unitarian Universalist Flower Ceremony. Tell them he died in World War II but he left this ritual for us. Invite participants to close their eyes if they like. Read or tell the story.
Ask everyone to slowly open their eyes. Process the story with these or similar questions:
Conclude with this question:
Tell the children you will all experience a flower ceremony today.
ACTIVITY 3: FLOWER MAKING (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Tell the children they will make paper flowers for one another. Say:
We will use the flowers in a flower ceremony. Then, everyone will go home with a flower that was made by one of their friends.
Have each child choose five pieces of pre-cut tissue paper. Demonstrate (and help, as needed):
1. Stack the rectangles in one pile, all going the same direction.
2. Accordion-pleat the tissue paper, working from the long side.
3. Wind one end of the chenille "stem" around the center of the accordion-pleated tissue papers. Allow the end of the "stem" to hang.
4. Gently separate each layer of tissue paper pulling upwards toward the middle of the flower.
If desired, bend another piece of chenille into a leaf shape and wrap it around the stem.
Including All Participants
Some participants may need help stacking their tissue papers and/or folding them into accordions. Tying the chenille stems and gently pulling the "petal" out may require adult supervision and assistance.
ACTIVITY 4: FLOWER CEREMONY (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants experience an abbreviated version of the flower ceremony ritual.
Gather the children, making sure they have the tissue paper flowers they made in Activity 3.
Invite participants who can read to volunteer to read parts of the service, and give each volunteer a handout.
Including All Participants
If any participants are unable to get to the centering table to place or choose a flower, give them a partner who will place and retrieve a flower for them.
Do not put anyone on the spot to read aloud. Give reading volunteers the handout well in advance of this activity, and be ready to read any part should a volunteer suddenly decide to pass.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Description of Activity
Invite everyone to gather in a circle and hold hands. Start by squeezing the hand to your right and saying: "Today I found love, today I gave love." Lead the group to move the hand squeeze around the circle until everyone has had a chance to say the words.
Then, invite the group to unclasp hands lead them to say the closing words in unison:
Be good to yourself.
Be excellent to others.
Do everything with love.
Including All Participants
If participants do not want to hold hands, invite them to just say the words to the person to their right. If needed, repeat the words aloud with each child.
FAITH IN ACTION: LEADING A FLOWER CEREMONY (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Meet at the chosen place. Introduce participants to one another. Set up a small centering table with a chalice and a vase for flowers on a table, night stand, or hospital tray. Conduct the service, using Handout 1, Flower Ceremony Service.
Including All Participants
If anyone, including the people you are visiting, has mobility limitations, partner a child with them to bring and then to choose a flower for them.
Do not put anyone on the spot to read aloud. Give reading volunteers the handout well in advance of this activity, and be ready to read any part should a volunteer suddenly decide to pass.
Arrange carpooling that leaves from your congregation so anyone wishing to participate has transportation.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Think about the participants who participated in the session today. What did they learn? Do they understand the idea of ritual? Are there participants who need more assistance in crafts, or in reading? Are there participants who could help others? Reflect on your effectiveness in presenting this week.
TAKING IT HOME
Ritual is the way we carry the presence of the sacred. Ritual is the spark that must not go out. — Christina Baldwin, in Life's Companion: Journal Writing As a Spiritual Quest
IN TODAY'S SESSION... the group learned about the Unitarian Universalist tradition of flower ceremony with a story about the Czech Unitarian minister, Norbert Capek, who began this ritual in 1923. They made flowers and participated in a flower ceremony service of their own. We introduced the concept of rituals in our faith and talked about how they bring us all together as one. The children learned about conducting a service and some of the worship elements common in our tradition. This session demonstrated how we each come to our congregations as individuals yet also become a part of a whole, when we worship together.
EXPLORE THE TOPIC TOGETHER. Many families say a blessing or light a candle before a meal. Some families have questions at the dinner table that everyone responds to such as, "What was the best part of your day?" Think about your own family and consider:
EXTEND THE TOPIC TOGETHER. Try...
A Family Adventure. Consider having an annual flower ceremony with family and friends, perhaps around Mother's Day or Memorial Day. Invite everyone to your home or a local park. Refer to Activity 4, Flower Ceremony in this session for words to use during a gathering. Ask each participant to bring a flower to the service.
Family Discovery. Online, watch a National Geographic movie about ritual and families (at www.nationalgeographic.com/weepingcamel).
A Family Game. Have every family member list as many rituals as they can that you have at your home. Use a three-minute egg timer and see who can think of the most. Discuss which are your favorites and why.
A Family Ritual. Once each month, your entire family will think of a different family member, neighbor, or friend who needs comfort or a demonstration of love. Decide as a family who will receive the flowers. Gather a small bouquet of fresh flowers (from your own garden, if you have one) or make tissue paper flowers. Put a note with the flowers that says, "Thinking of You" or "Happy Day!" Leave the flowers anonymously or deliver them personally. Make sure everyone in the family has a role; each family member should sign the note.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: FLOWER POEM (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Tell the children the group is going to make up a poem together about flowers. Ask participants to write down words after the instructions. Ask the participants not to put their names on any of the cards.
Ask them to write on one of their cards a color, any color they like.
Give them time to write. Offer to spell or write for any child who needs help; they can also ask a neighbor for help. Collect the cards and set aside in one pile.
Next, ask the participants to take another card and write a kind of flower. Offer to help them spell flowers that have long or difficult names. Ask them to try to think of flowers that are out of the ordinary. You may get a lot of "roses" or "tulips," which is fine. Give them time to write. Then, collect these cards and set aside in another pile.
Finally, ask them to write on their last card an action word—something they like to do, such as dancing, kicking, running, walking, or biking. Give them time to write. Then collect the cards and set aside in a third pile.
Without arranging the cards in any way, read one card from each pile in a row and keep doing this until you have read all three piles. For example: If the top card in the color pile is "red," the top card in the flower pile says "rose," and the top card in the action pile says "dancing," you would read, "Red Rose Dancing." You will have a free form poem that you may want to type and distribute to the children at a later session. Keep the piles in order so that the poem remains the same as you read it originally!
Including All Participants
Have reading/writing peers and adult leaders ready to help participants write the words they think of in this exercise.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: ALTAR SYMBOLS (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain that in addition to a chalice, people place other things on a centering table or an altar—things that are special to them. Sometimes people have something that tells everyone about what they are interested in.
Ask each participant to sculpt a symbol that represents one of their interests. It might be a book, some type of animal, a computer, or a sun. Let the participants know they will explain to everyone what their sculpture is, so it is not important to make it look exactly like the item it represents. It is only important that the person who made it recognize what it symbolizes. Let them know that the next session they come to, they can take their symbols home.
Including All Participants
For children lacking fine motor skills, have another participant or an adult leader ask them what they want sculpted and shape the clay according to their directions.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 3: RITUAL COLLAGE (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to make a collage or a series of pictures that represents a ritual in their life—for instance, their morning routine, setting the table, or how they feed their pet.
Ask each child to choose a sheet of construction paper. Then invite them to search the printed media for pictures to cut out that relate to the ritual they want to show and then glue them, in order, on the construction paper to illustrate their ritual. When they are finished, invite participants to share their ritual with the group. Invite them to talk about the art they made, prompting with these questions:
Including All Participants
If participants are unable to cut pictures, ask a co-leader to help them. If any participants finish well before others, invite them to help younger participants complete their pictures.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 4: POSTER, THIRD PRINCIPLE (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute the handout. Invite children to think about an example they can draw of the third Principle. Say the third Principle together: "In our congregations, we accept all people and we learn together."
LOVE SURROUNDS US: SESSION 7:
STORY: THE FLOWER CEREMONY, A PLAIN AND SIMPLE BEAUTY
Adapted from a story by Janeen K. Grohsmeyer in her book Lamp in Every Corner: Our UU Storybook (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 2004). Used with permission.
In the city of Prague, in the land of Czechoslovakia, in the year nineteen hundred and twenty three, there was a church. But the building did not look much like a church. It had no bells, no spires, no stained glass windows. It had no organ to make beautiful music. It didn't even have a piano. It had no carvings of wood or statues of stone. It had no candles or chalices. It had no flowers.
The church did have some things. It had four walls and a ceiling and a floor. It had a door and a few windows. It had some wooden chairs. But that was all, plain and simple.
Except... the church also had people who came to it every Sunday. It had a minister, and his name was Norbert Capek (pronounced CHAH-peck). He had been the minister at the plain and simple church for two years. Every Sunday, Minister Capek went to church, and he spoke to the people while they listened, sitting quietly and still in those hard wooden chairs. When he was done speaking, the people talked a little bit among themselves, and then they went home. And that was all—no music, no candles, no food. Not even coffee or doughnuts.
Springtime came to the city of Prague and Norbert Capek went out for a stroll. The rains had come, the birds were singing, and flowers were blooming all over the land. The world was beautiful.
Then an idea came to him, simple and clear, plain as day. The next Sunday, he asked all the people in the church to bring a flower or a budding branch, or even a twig. Each person was to bring one.
"What kind?" they asked. "What color? What size?"
"You choose," he said. "Each of you choose what you like."
And so, on the next Sunday, which was the first day of summer, the people came with flowers of all different colors and sizes and kinds. There were yellow daisies and red roses. There were white lilies and blue asters, dark-eyed pansies and light green leaves. Pink and purple, orange and gold—there were all those colors and more. Flowers filled all the vases, and the church wasn't so plain and simple anymore.
Minister Capek spoke to the people while they listened, sitting quiet and still in those hard wooden chairs. "These flowers are like ourselves," he said. "Different colors and different shapes, and different sizes, each needing different kinds of care—but each beautiful, each important and special, in its own way."
When he was done speaking, the people talked a little bit among themselves, and then they each chose a different flower from the vases before they went home. And that was all—and it was beautiful, plain and simple as the day.
LOVE SURROUNDS US: SESSION 7:
HANDOUT 1: FLOWER CEREMONY SERVICE
Adapted from Flower Communion by Reginald Zotolli. This author has given Unitarian Universalist Association member congregations permission to reprint this piece for use in public worship. Any reprints must acknowledge the name of the author.
Leader:
By exchanging flowers in this service, participants follow the example of Norbert Capek. He believed that each of us is different and unique and when we gather together to worship or learn, we create a bouquet of beautiful people.
Light the chalice.
Participant or Leader:
Today, we place our flowers in a common vase, remembering we are all individuals but we are also people of a common faith.
Leader:
Please come forward and your flower in the vase on the altar.
In silence, tissue paper flowers are brought up to altar and carefully placed in vase.
Participant or Leader:
Children of the earth and sky, we are given warmth and light from above and below.
Participant or Leader:
Supported by earth's strong, firm ground, we build homes, till fields, and plant gardens.
When we are aware of blossoms, birds, and sky, then earth is truly our home.
We are one with all earth's creatures.*
Leader:
The ceremony we are about to celebrate has taken place all over the world in Unitarian Universalist churches since 1923. Norbert Capek started this ritual to celebrate the beauty of our faith and the people in it. In each flower, Capek saw hope for humanity, even though he would later die because of his beliefs. Let us remember him and his principles and dreams.
Participant or Leader:
Spirit of Life, bless us. Remind us that we meet in fellowship and love. Even though we are all different, we gather as one in love. Remind us that we gather in friendship where we do and share.
Participant or Leader:
Friendship is the most precious gift. Let us remember that we all do what we can and we are all needed to make this beautiful world.
Participant or Leader:
Let's share in a flower ceremony. Each of you will come up in silence and choose a flower not made by your hands. Hold it with care. It is a gift someone else has made for you with love.
Have participants silently line up to go up to the altar to find a flower.
Participant or Leader:
We use flowers to help us symbolize the love that is hidden deep inside us.
Participant or Leader:
Flowers are beautiful and so are the feelings of love among us. We have brought our flowers and our love to brighten our church and make our hearts glad.
Extinguish the chalice.
*adapted from Alice Berry
LOVE SURROUNDS US: SESSION 7:
HANDOUT 2: POSTER, THIRD PRINCIPLE
Unitarian Universalist Third Principle
In our congregations, we accept all people and we learn together.
LOVE SURROUNDS US: SESSION 7:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: NORBERT CAPEK
From the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society's online Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography.
Norbert Fabian Capek, June 3, 1870-October 12, 1942
FIND OUT MORE
Flower Ceremony
The Unitarian Universalist Association online Leaders Library has readings, prayers, and ceremonial words for use in a Flower Ceremony (at www.uua.org/worship/holidays/174534.shtml).
Dr. Norbert Capek
For more about the life of Capek, see the biography, Norbert Fabian Capek: A Spiritual Journey by Richard Henry (Skinner House, 1999).
History of the Chalice
The story "Circles of Light: The Flaming Chalice" explains how Unitarian Universalist's came to have a chalice as their symbol. It can be found in the book Lamp in Every Corner: Our UU Storybook by Janeen K. Grohsmeyer (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 2004).