SING TO THE POWER
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Children
SESSION 15: THE POWER OF GATHERING
BY REV. LYNN UNGAR
© Copyright 2012 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 11/8/2014 2:54:33 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
One of the greatest and simplest tools for learning more and growing is doing more. — Washington Irving
The power of water is the power of moving forward, of gathering information as you go and sharing it with others, as a river carries stones downstream. The children learn how the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry educates young adults about water issues in California and how the participants carry forward what they learn. Participants gather information about their local water supply, brainstorm how to conserve water and protect water sources, and share that knowledge by distributing reusable water bottles with others.
GOALS
This session will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
SESSION-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 5 |
Activity 1: Story — Water Justice Tour | 10 |
Activity 2: Investigating Where Your Water Comes From | 10 |
Activity 3: Water Conservation Brainstorm | 10 |
Activity 4: Decorating Water Bottles and Posters | 10 |
Activity 5: "It's the Little Things" Poster | 10 |
Faith in Action: Planning Ways to Exercise Water Power | 30 |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Sharing Joys and Sorrows | 5 |
Alternate Activity 2: Congregational Scavenger Hunt | 15 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Find a place where you can be quiet with your thoughts. Close your eyes and breathe deeply for several minutes, perhaps repeating a word or phrase to separate yourself from the activities of the day. When you feel settled and relaxed, consider:
SESSION PLAN
OPENING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
The opening ritual for this program invites children to practice leadership and experience the power of a group coming together in sacred space.
Gather the children in a circle around the chalice. Invite them to take a deep breath and release it, and create a deep silence for a moment.
Invite the day's worship leader to select a reading from the Opening Words Basket and read it aloud. Place the water symbol on the cloth, saying, "I bring this symbol of water, of flexibility and creativity, of always moving forward, whatever the obstacles might be."
As needed, assist the worship leader to light the chalice.
Sing "Sing to the Power." Include the zipper words from previous sessions and add today's zipper words, "flowing deep within."
Invite participants to hold hands in a circle. Explain, in these words or your own:
Each time the group meets, we focus on ways we find and express our power. As part of each opening circle, we send a pulse of energy, or power, around the circle.
Begin the power pulse by squeezing the hand of the person to your left, who will then squeeze the hand of the person to their left, followed by each person in rapid succession. Send the power pulse around the circle several times.
Conclude the power pulse. While still holding hands, ask the group to take a deep breath together, bringing their hands up as they breathe in, and bringing their hands down as they breathe out.
Return the reading to the Opening Words Basket and extinguish the chalice.
Including All Participants
Some participants may be uncomfortable being touched. Offer the opportunity to opt out of the circle during the time when participants are holding hands for the power pulse.
ACTIVITY 1: STORY — WATER JUSTICE TOUR (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Read or tell the story to the group.
After the story, invite the group to be silent for a moment to think about the story. Then, ask participants to recap the story in their own words. What they recall indicates what they found most meaningful or memorable.
Say something like:
Often, people think the first step of changing the world for the better is to plan your action—to figure out what you're going to do. But there's an important step that goes before that: Learning just what the problem is, who is affected by it, how they are affected, what's causing the problem, who does not want a change because their needs are being served by the way things are. Learn everything you can. As activists, we need to be constantly moving forward, but the best way forward often starts with taking the time to really learn about the problem and all the people involved.
Lead a discussion using these questions:
ACTIVITY 2: INVESTIGATING WHERE YOUR WATER COMES FROM (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
The first step in making change is to understand the situation you are hoping to affect. Participants learn about the source(s) of their local water and issues that may affect access to safe drinking water.
For efficiency, you may be the best person to type queries into the computer, or you may designate a participant to do it. The website of your local water company will probably have information on both the source(s) and the quality of your water supply, and is likely to have conservation tips as well. You can also search "[your community] water issues" or use the watershed locator on the EPA website. Have volunteers take turns reading aloud what you find. Invite suggestions for other search terms that might be helpful.
If it is difficult for everyone to see the screen, have participants trade locations every minute or two.
Record, or have a volunteer record, noteworthy information on newsprint.
After you have gathered information, invite participants to reflect:
Including All Participants
Remember that the participants may come from different communities with different water sources and different water problems. Try to be inclusive in the discussion.
ACTIVITY 3: WATER CONSERVATION BRAINSTORM (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
The first step of inviting others to join you in a cause that you care about is to know what exactly you would like them to do. In this activity participants brainstorm ways in which people they know can help conserve and protect their water supply.
Invite everyone to share (by raised hands or another method) their suggestions for how people might use less water, or protect the water supplies in your area. Write suggestions on newsprint.
Point out that they will invite people in the congregation to join them in taking these actions in the next two activities: decorating water bottles and making posters.
Including All Participants
Make sure that quieter participants and ones who take longer to process, have a chance to share their ideas. You might have each person who speaks choose the next person to speak, or just go around the circle.
ACTIVITY 4: DECORATING WATER BOTTLES (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
While single-use water bottles can be a huge source of garbage and wasted energy, this activity allows participants to turn plastic bottles into attractive, reusable reminders to conserve water.
Direct children's attention to the list of conservation tips they have generated. Tell them they will decorate water bottles in ways that remind people to take care of our water supply. For example, they can write messages such as "Pour leftover water on a plant" or "Shorter showers." They can also add any decorative touches they like.
Have participants remove and recycle any paper labels on the bottles before decorating the bottles with permanent markers.
As participants work, discuss to whom they might give the bottles. Who do they think needs to change their actions around water use? Who do they think would be most receptive to the message? What do they hope the recipients of the bottles will learn? What could the children learn from the recipients? Then, how could they use new information they learn?
ACTIVITY 5: "IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS" POSTERS (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Remind participants of the quote from Wangari Maathai at the end of the story:
It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.
Invite participants to create posters with water conservation actions to display in the congregation. Have them work collaboratively in small groups. Some volunteers might copy the quote at the top of their poster and then write several "little things" people can do, from the brainstorm newsprint. Other children can provide illustrations.
Optional: Invite congregants to share their ideas by asking, "What's Your Little Thing?" Provide sticky notes near the display so that congregants can add to the posters and share the tips in the congregation's newsletter.
Display the posters where the congregation can view them.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain that the session is almost over and the group will now work together as a community to clean the meeting space. Ask everyone to clean their own area and put away the materials they were using, then clean another area or help someone else. No one should sit in the circle until the meeting space is clean.
Gather the group in a circle. Tape the "Gathering" circle (Leader Resource 1) outside the "Water" quadrant of the Circle of Elements mural, in the position shown on Session1, Leader Resource 3. Say:
Water power is power that gathers as it goes, as a river brings what it finds along the way with it, to share with those downstream.
Invite each participant to take a bead and string it on the elastic and, as they do so, take a deep breath in and let it out.
Ask the the day's closing worship leader to choose a reading from the Closing Words Basket and read it aloud (or, to read aloud the reading they prepared after the previous session).
Extinguish all flames.
Ask for (and record) volunteers to lead the opening and closing readings for the next session. Offer the volunteers a copy of Session 1, Leader Resource 1, Opening Words for Basket or Session 1, Leader Resource 5, Closing Words for Basket that they may take home to choose and practice their readings. Tell them they are also welcome to choose their reading from a basket when they come next time.
You may wish to invite the opening worship volunteer to bring a symbol of water for the centering space as well.
Invite participants to put the bracelets in the Closing Words Basket. Distribute copies of the Taking It Home handout. Thank and dismiss participants.
FAITH IN ACTION: PLANNING WAYS TO EXERCISE WATER POWER (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
By this session, the group should have identified a project and planned the elements needed in order to complete this project. This session, then, is when the group will actually do the activity that expresses their own water power.
Including All Participants
Make sure your transportation plan is accessible for all participants, and that all will have full access at any off-site location.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Reflect on and discuss with your co-leader(s):
Approach your religious educator for guidance, as needed.
TAKING IT HOME
One of the greatest and simplest tools for learning more and growing is doing more. — Washington Irving
IN TODAY'S SESSION... the children learned about the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry's work to educate young adults about water use and water problems in California. We learned about our local water supply, brainstormed how to conserve and protect water, and created posters and reusable water bottles to share with others.
EXPLORE THE TOPIC TOGETHER. Look together at your household water bill. Do you know where your water comes from, how you use it, and where it goes? What choices does your family make to conserve water? What new choices could you make?
FAMILY RITUAL. Create a water-pouring ritual to honor this precious resource. As you fill water glasses or a water pitcher at meal times, say "We give thanks for water, source and sustainer of life."
You may wish to add water to a special jar throughout the year for a September Water Communion (if that is a practice of your congregation).
FAMILY ADVENTURE. Take a family trip to a local reservoir. Note what activities are allowed in/on the water, and which are not, due to the need to protect the water source. What resources does the reservoir provide to plants, animals, and the environment?
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: SHARING JOYS AND SORROWS (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say:
Our community is like a bowl that holds all of our lives. The joys and sorrows which affect each person's life send ripples through all of our lives.
Invite participants, as they are moved, to pick up a stone, drop it gently (!) into the bowl of water, and share aloud a joy or a sorrow which has affected their life recently. Say they may drop their stone in silence, instead; it is okay to keep their joys or sorrows private. You might go first, to model.
Once all who wish to have shared, affirm all the words people have spoken and the thoughts and feelings that remain inside each person's head and heart.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: CONGREGATIONAL SCAVENGER HUNT (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Children use the water power of gathering as they seek people in the congregation who can supply different kinds of information.
Form pairs or small groups to identify adults in the congregation specified by the questions in Handout 1. If participants may not be able to approach the "answer people," have teams take their best guesses as to who these people are, then share and compare with other pairs or small groups.
Including All Participants
Some children will be more familiar with adult members of your congregation than others; you may wish to do this activity as one large group or two teams.
SING TO THE POWER: SESSION 15:
STORY: WATER JUSTICE TOUR
By Ellen Gold.
Can you imagine not having running water in your home? How would you and your family drink, cook, bathe, or go to the bathroom? Sadly, more than a billion people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water. In addition, about 2.5 billion people live without proper sanitation systems like toilets. Most Americans probably think these kinds of water issues happen only in poorer parts of the world. That's what Glenn Farley thought too. He was one of ten UU young adults who went on a "Water Justice Tour" in California to learn more about water problems and what could be done to help make things better.
Glenn grew up UU in the Cedar Lane congregation in suburban Maryland. Then, he went to Starr King School for the Ministry. He said "I am embarrassed to say it now, but before these trips, I thought problems with access to safe and affordable drinking water only happened in so-called third world countries. I did not know thousands of Americans don't have access to safe drinking water. I know better now."
On the trip, participants discovered many things about water, including how to conserve this precious resource and how to more evenly distribute it.
In Long Beach, California, the group saw wetlands. A wetland is an area where water covers the soil for all or part of the year. It is very important for people to protect wetlands because they help the environment with things like water purification and flood control. Furthermore, wetlands are biologically diverse and are home to a broad range of plant and animal life.
Then group visited Yosemite National Park, where they saw a valley that was flooded, on purpose, in the 1920s to create a lake. The purpose of this project was to provide water to the people of San Francisco. Another stop on the tour was the San Joaquin Valley, located in the center of California. Unfortunately, water in this area contains a lot of pollution due to people overfarming the land. This is very big problem for the water supply of those who live in this region.
The young adults on the tour also got to enjoy the beauty of water while rafting on the Kern River and canoeing on Mono Lake. At the end of the trip, the group led a worship service about water at the Emerson UU Church in Canoga Park, California.
Throughout the tour, participants spoke with community leaders who are working hard to help improve various water issues. These inspiring discussions, and the trip as a whole, had a big impact on everyone who took part. But learning about the issues and gathering information is only the first step. There's a saying that "knowledge is power," and the power comes from what you DO with your knowledge. The young adults all planned to bring what they learned on the water tour back to their communities, to help others learn about water concerns and inspire people to work together for change.
Lauren Eaton, who grew up at a UU congregation and served a small congregation as a religious coordinator, said the Water Justice Tour was "epic." She added, "It made me a different person. I knew something about water before, because my father directs a water quality lab, but this trip took things to a whole different level. Up and down the state we talked to community leaders who are working hard on water issues. This all fits with our First Principle [the inherent worth and dignity of every person], for everyone to have clean water. And the Seventh [respect for the interdependent web of all existence]. Water is part of the web of all existence."
Lauren was so inspired by the tour that she participated in another tour a year later. While earning her Master's degree in Social Work, she talked to her friends and fellow students about water issues and also led a water justice workshop at a UU young adult camp at DeBenneville Pines. She and other water tour participants have been working with the UU Legislative Ministry on a Human Right to Water bill (at www.uusc.org/content/human_right_to_water_bill_passes_through_senate_committee), which was defeated the first time around. But the "spiritual activists" in the UULM did not give up; they created five smaller bills covering the same issues and, as of Fall 2011, four of the five have passed in California.
Sierra Sukalski, another participant, planned to study environmental science in college. After the trip she said, "Water has become a much larger issue to me. Now I'm interested in how we build houses so that they fit the environment. I'd like to eventually help people find ways to live more sustainably."
"A lot of what I saw surprised me," she added. "We seem to be just starting to implement what we know about how to capture storm water runoff, for example. And there are so many things we could do to conserve water, including xeriscape plantings. If everyone does them they're not small things".
Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai once said "It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees."
Small things... little things... They add up to change the world. What things will you do?
SING TO THE POWER: SESSION 15:
HANDOUT 1: CONGREGATIONAL SCAVENGER HUNT
Who, in your congregation…
Knows how to run the sound system?
Knows how run the irrigation system, or where all hoses are located?
Knows the date of your congregation’s annual meeting?
Knows where the art supplies are kept?
Knows how to check messages on the congregation’s answering machine?
Knows where to find a bucket and mop?
Knows the date of the UU General Assembly?
Knows the year in which the Unitarians and Universalists merged to form the Unitarian Universalist Association?
Knows all the words to the hymn “Spirit of Life”?
Knows how to make coffee for the congregation?
Knows the address of the UUA headquarters?
Knows the location of a first aid kit?
Knows the topic of the current UUA study/action issue?
Knows where to find a copy of your congregation’s by-laws?
SING TO THE POWER: SESSION 15:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: "GATHERING" CIRCLE
FIND OUT MORE
Visit the website for the California UU Legislative Ministry (at www.uulmca.org/main.html) to learn about Water Justice Tours and other UU faith-based efforts. A UU World magazine article (at www.uuworld.org/news/articles/174615.shtml) discusses the UU legislative ministry movement; there are now UU legislative ministries in 15 states.
The UUA offers resources promoting stewardship of water which you can use to enhance this session. Gather the Spirit (at www.uua.org/re/tapestry/multigenerational/gather/index.shtml) is a multi-age Tapestry of Faith curriculum focused on water ecology issues. The Tapestry of Faith Family pages in UU World magazine (at www.uua.org/families/uuworld), Summer 2010, begins with a story about musician/activist Pete Seeger and his project to clean up New York's Hudson River.
The website Water Use It Wisely offers 100 tips for saving water (at www.wateruseitwisely.com/100-ways-to-conserve/index.php) and
games (at www.wateruseitwisely.com/kids/) to learn about saving water.
The Clean Water website offers 10 ways to protect water sources (at www.cleanwater.org/files/publications/ca/10_Ways_to_Protect_Our_Water.pdf).