HEEDING THE CALL
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Youth
WORKSHOP 10: THE CALL FOR JOY
2010
BY NICOLE BOWMER AND JODI THARAN
© Copyright 2010 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 7:35:08 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference. — Audre Lorde
In this workshop youth explore the importance of joy, laughter and play in healing and nurturing our world. Joy might seem like an odd quality to link to social justice work. However, if we realize how important it is to have joy in our lives we see that giving joy to others can be a motivating factor in justice work. Participants are introduced to Sarah Foster, a lifelong Unitarian Universalist who is also a professional clown. She has traveled to meet and greet the children of Haiti, Swaziland, and South Africa as an ambassador of joy, laughter and play. Through this workshop, youth will not only understand the necessity of joy and laughter, but increase their capacity to share joy with others.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 5 |
Activity 1: Story — Clowning for Joy in Haiti | 15 |
Activity 2: The Roles of Laughter | 15 |
Activity 3: Joy to the World Mural | 20 |
Faith in Action: Spreading Joy | |
Faith in Action: Allies, Phase 6 | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Joy to the World Greetings | 30 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Take a few moments to relive joyful moments in your life. What events have brought you joy? Has your social justice work ever brought you joy? Were you able to share the joy? Joy seems to grow exponentially when shared. Consider how joy is expressed and shared by youth in your community. What does youthful exuberance look like in your congregation? Is youthful joy welcomed and celebrated? Maybe one or more of these questions will inspire you as you encounter the intersection of joy and justice.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather youth in a circle. Welcome first-time participants. Invite everyone to reflect on the word "joy." If there are new people present, ask youth to go around the circle and say their names and something that brings them joy. Ask if anyone would like to share anything noted in their Justicemakers Guide since the last meeting. Light the chalice, or invite a participant to do so, and recruit a volunteer to read the chalice lighting words:
The Hindu poet Rabindranath Tagore said, "And Joy is Everywhere." We light this candle to help us see the joy that exists in the world and ways we can work to spread more joy.
Ask the group to be silent for a moment as they reflect on the words. End the silence with "So be it," or other appropriate words.
Tell the group that today's theme is "joy." Ask for volunteers to share what they think joy has to do with justice.
ACTIVITY 1: STORY — CLOWNING FOR JOY IN HAITI (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Youth hear and discuss a story about the importance of joy, fun and humor in creating justice.
Tell or read the story. Start a discussion with these questions:
ACTIVITY 2: THE ROLES OF LAUGHTER (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Youth explore the roles of laughter and joy in emotional and physical well-being.
Divide participants into three small groups and give each group one of the activities from Leader Resource 1, Laughter Vignettes. Tell them they will have five minutes to prepare, explaining that their vignette should last no more than two to three minutes.
Some possible questions for debriefing the activity include:
ACTIVITY 3: JOY TO THE WORLD MURAL (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Youth are encouraged to think about the universal language of joy and laughter.
Invite youth to take a moment to think about what they shared during the chalice lighting as something that brings them joy. Encourage them to consider how youth and children around the world also find joy in similar experiences such as spending time with friends or family, or playing sports or musical instruments.
Have participants form small groups. Give each participant a copy of Handout 1, Words of Joy. Remind them of the graffiti that Sarah mentioned in her journal entry. Explain that art can be a universal way of sharing emotions, including joy. Invite them to create a Joy to the World Mural that includes the English word "Joy" as well as the translations listed on the handout spread throughout their mural. Invite them to use drawings to depict activities that bring them joy and that they imagine bring joy to children and youth around the world. After every group is finished, invite participants to talk about their contributions to the mural and then reflections on the finished product.
Including All Participants
Make sure the paper is accessible to everyone.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home. Invite youth to stand in a circle and do the hokey-pokey! Thank first-time guests for their contributions to the group. End the workshop with these words:
May we leave here laughing and hopeful, delighted and silly, ready to share our joy!
FAITH IN ACTION: SPREADING JOY
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants bring fun and joy to others.
Laughter is 30 times more likely to happen in a group situation than when alone. So find a group, create some laughs and spread the joy! Partner with a local theater troupe (perhaps you have a local chapter of Clowns Without Borders) and create a Joy For All Night for children in your area. Possible locations for such a night could include a school in your area that serves troubled youth, a childcare center that serves low-income families, or a children's hospital.
Performers could act out a couple of funny skits: remember to use humor that laughs with others, not at them. You could host game stations and craft stations, where children could make gifts to spread a little joy to those they love. If you hold this event during a holiday season (Valentine's Day or the winter holidays), you could create a card station. See Alternate Activity 1, Joy to the World Greetings for card station ideas.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Humor and joy are not always easy to bring into educational settings. Humor can be challenging but also liberating. How did humor and celebration work in this workshop for you as a facilitator? Are there ways you would approach humor differently in a social justice context in the future? Sometimes marginalized people are depicted as always downtrodden. Did this workshop make it clear that all people experience joy? Each of us is a wonder. Were you able to connect to the divine spark in each participant during this workshop? What did you learn from the youth?
TAKING IT HOME
The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference. — Audre Lorde
In Today's Workshop...
We explored the importance of joy and laughter and play in healing and nurturing our world. After all, how can there be justice if the children are not laughing? We learned about Sarah Foster, a lifelong Unitarian Universalist and a professional clown who has performed for children in Haiti, Swaziland, and South Africa. We worked together to create a joyful mural and talked about the health benefits of laughter. We discussed whether we considered the right to joy, happiness, and laughter a human right and basic need.
Joy
Laughter
Justicemakers Guide
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: JOY TO THE WORLD GREETINGS (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Youth create joyful greeting cards.
Invite youth to take a moment to think about what they shared during the chalice lighting as something that brings them joy. Encourage them to consider how youth and children around the world also find joy in similar experiences such as spending time with friends or family, or playing sports or musical instruments. Invite them to create two "Joy to the World" collage greeting cards using words and images that reflect the meaning or the effects of joy and laughter in the world. Explain that these cards will be given to the congregation's Social Justice Committee to be used as thank you cards or greeting cards.
HEEDING THE CALL: WORKSHOP 10:
STORY: CLOWNING FOR JOY IN HAITI
By Sarah Foster. Used by permission.
Sarah Foster is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist who wanted to make the world a better place while doing something that she loved. What she loved was performing and making others laugh, so she became a clown. As a professional clown with Clowns Without Borders, Sarah has traveled to Haiti, Swaziland and South Africa. Clowns Without Borders sends professional clowns to areas of the world with children who have experienced more conflict and injustice than any child should have to endure. "Laughter is a critical way to heal trauma," Sarah said. "Kids need to laugh and play. And all kids deserve joy. All kids. Everywhere."
Friday, August 21, 2009: Sarah's Journal
To get to our first show of the day, we are to parade for half an hour up an enormous hill. When we climb out of the car and into the heat of the sun at the bottom of the hill, a group of kids starts to form around us. I look at them, look away, and quickly look back again with wide eyes. They smile. I do it again and they laugh. I walk with a funny walk around to the back of the car and the women across the street laugh. They watch me put together my trombone, piece by piece. Tim hangs his battered bucket drum around his neck. Suzanne has the bubble-making bear. The rest of our gear goes up ahead us of in the car. We are off!
Today, we are going into Martissant, one of the most dangerous areas of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, rated by the UN as a "red zone" because of the lack of control their peace-keeping troops have here. As Tim noted, over 100,000 people live in houses made of cement blocks, tarps and rusty tin stacked up the hill as high as we can see.
In town there are two water pumps — two. Two pumps for over 100,000 people. When we got into the region we saw children playing all around the streets. In their hands were no toys, but water jugs. Each child had a water jug proportionate to his or her size and it was clear that people here rely on these children to do work and carry water for themselves and their families. A trek to the public wells is no simple task. We hardly encountered any level ground in all of Martissant—the community is nothing but steep hills dropping to sea level.
The high levels of poverty and violence here make it feel more important than ever that we do a fantastic show today: mainly because the kids here deserve a bang-up, hands-down hilarious show. Also because, although we do not feel in immediate danger, making people laugh keeps potential violence at bay.
Kids pile around us as we parade up the hill. They pop out of doorways and join the crowd. Some women dance to the music as we go by. When I dance they laugh. It seems important to look people in the eye and greet them as we go by, so that they feel a personal connection beyond just seeing a ragtag troop of weird sweaty white people parading past. I alternate between playing the trombone, greeting people, dancing, singing, and catching my breath. We are climbing the hot hill in a tide of kids now. They attach themselves, holding onto my elbows and the sides and back of my skirt. I feel like I am half pulling a pile of kids up a giant hill, half being supported up the hill by them.
"Ou bouke? (oo boo-kay)" says the girl who has attached herself to my right elbow. I just learned this creole word yesterday. One of the most common graffiti phrases on the walls of Port-au-Prince is "NOU BOUKE (new boo-kay)." It means "we are exhausted," or "we are fed up." When the words are spray-painted on walls it means that Haitian people are fed up with the way things are, with their ineffective government, with the lack of food and water. When this girl says "ou bouke? (oo boo-kay)" she is asking me if I am tired from the climb. "Mwen bouke! (mwe-ge (like the end of gara-ge) boo-kay)" I say, wiping the sweat from my face and pretending to lean on a little boy's head for support. Then I take a deep breath and look around. "No, m'pa bouke (mmpah boo-kay)" (I am not tired), I say. "Nou bouke? (new boo-kay)" (are you all tired?) "No!" they say. "Nou pa bouke! (new pa boo-kay)" (we are not tired!) I say. "Nou pa bouke! (new pa boo-kay)" they reply. We keep climbing. I start a new trombone riff to the beat of Tim's bucket drum.
More and more kids join in as we climb our way up. "Bon jou," I greet them. "Bon jou!" they reply to the beat of Tim's drum. Again, in rhythm, "bon jou!" I say, and "bon jou" they reply.
"Bon swa!" I say, which is the greeting for the afternoon and evening, and the wrong one to say for the morning.
"Bon swa!"
"No, bon jou!" I shout.
"Bon swa!" they say.
"Bon swa?"
"Bon jou!"
"Cuckoo!"
"Cuckoo!"
"Whoohoo!"
"Whoohoo!"
We continue this absurd call and response chant for a while, then more music and more dancing, all the while climbing. One of brightest rays of hope that I see in this country where so much is wrong is the way that people are so ready to laugh and to play. So, so often the joy is there, right under the surface. The smallest hint of a game becomes a massive game. Three clowns and a bucket and bubbles and a trombone becomes a parade. Women dance in the street.
Maybe a lot of people in Haiti are bouke a lot of the time. But right now we are on our way up a hill to a show, and despite all odds we are not bouke at all.
HEEDING THE CALL: WORKSHOP 10:
HANDOUT 1: WORDS OF JOY
For pronunciation of these words, refer to the Forvo website (at www.forvo.com/).
How do you say "joy" in...
Spanish — "alegria" (spoken by youth and children in Spain, Central America and South America)
German — "Freude" (spoken by youth and children in Germany, Poland and Austria)
Portugeuse — "alegria" (spoken by youth and children in Portugal, Brazil, China and Africa)
Italian — "gioia" (spoken by youth and children in Italy, Croatia and Switzerland)
French — "joie" (spoken by youth and children in France, Africa, Haiti and Canada)
HEEDING THE CALL: WORKSHOP 10:
HANDOUT 2: ALLY ACTION 6
I want to be an ally to _____________________________________________.
Phase 7 Date
What action do you want to take?
What resources or materials do you need and how will you get them?
What hazards or risks are involved?
What obstacles might you encounter and how will you overcome them?
What supports do you have or could you obtain?
HEEDING THE CALL: WORKSHOP 10:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: LAUGHTER VIGNETTES
Based on excerpts from "Medicine of Mirth" by Mary Desmond Pinkowish and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Office" by Nancy Mann Jackson in Ode Magazine, August, 2009.
Cut the sheet into three separate slips for three small groups.
Group 1
Decide on roles and act out the story for the entire group.
A police officer responded to a domestic disturbance call. As the officer walked to the front door of the house, she heard the sound of an argument inside between an adult male and an adult female. Suddenly a television crashed through the window, landing in the yard. She knocked on the door. "Who is it?" yelled an angry voice. "TV repair," the officer replied.
Once you are finished acting out the situation, explain that in real life this police officer had just completed a course in humor training, and the husband and wife ended up laughing after hearing "TV repair." Take a vote: how many people think laughter helped diffuse this situation. Why or why not?
Group 2
Draw the experiment explained below for the entire group without using letters or words. See how much of it they can understand.
Blood was drawn from volunteers (who had previously been diagnosed with cancer) both before they watched a funny video and again afterward. Researchers were interested in the activity of two cells in this study: the natural killer (NK) cells which work to kill cancer cells and the actual cancer cells. While watching the funny video, some of the volunteers simply looked amused while others laughed aloud. At the end of the video, both the "laughers" and those who were "amused" experienced decreases in psychological stress, but the results of the blood draws showed that NK cells from the laughers were more active against the cancer cells than those who simply looked amused at the video.
Once you are finished drawing the story, read it aloud to the group. Explain that this research was performed by Mary Payne Bennett, director of the Western Kentucky University School of Nursing. "Laughter is a good thing," she said, "with no major harmful side effects. This is a longstanding component of major belief systems around the world, but now we're documenting it."
Group 3
Decide on roles and act out the two situations for the entire group seeing how much of it they can understand.
1. You thought you recognized a friend in a crowded room. You attracted the person's attention and hurried over, but when you got there you discovered you had made a mistake and the person was a total stranger.
2. You arrived at a party and found that someone else was wearing a piece of clothing identical to yours.
To the leaders: Once the groups have acted out the situations, ask the whole group how they would have responded in the situations presented by Group 3: 1. I wouldn't have found it particularly amusing. 2. I would have been amused but wouldn't have shown it. 3. I would have smiled. 4. I would have laughed. 5. I would have laughed heartily. Explain that Michael Miller, director of the Center for Preventative Cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, led a study in which these situations were two of numerous situations listed on a survey that was given to people without heart disease as well as people who had suffered heart attacks or had other cardiac problems. The results were that people with no history of heart disease were 40 percent more likely than those with some history of cardiac problems to report laughing in situations like the two listed above. In other words, those who used laughter to deal with day-to-day frustrations were healthier than those who displayed anger or hostility in those situations.
FIND OUT MORE
Joy
Have you ever considered joy as a spiritual practice? Spirituality and Practice (at www.spiritualityandpractice.com/practices/practices.php?id=15) does and the website tells you why.
Clowns Without Borders (at clownswithoutborders.org/), the organization Sarah Foster works with, sends laughter all over the world. Check out their website and find out about upcoming events.
The Scholastic website of Parents magazine (at www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3746017) offers some ideas for using humor in parenting. Many of the idea also apply for using humor as a leader of this program.
AFI (the American Film Institute) (at www.afi.com/100Years/laughs.aspx) has compiled a list of the 100 Funniest American Movies of All Time. How many have you seen?
The Arlington Laughter Club (at www.joyofkidding.com/laughterclub/HealthWrArticles.html) has collected dozens of articles about the health benefits of laughter.
Music for Inspiration
"Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night
Songs of Joy and Peace CD by Yo-Yo Ma