EXPLORING OUR VALUES THROUGH POETRY
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Youth
WORKSHOP 5: FINDING OUR MISSION
BY KAREN HARRIS
© Copyright 2008 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 6:50:40 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
To be tested is good.
— Gail Sheehy
As adults, many of us have questioned the purpose of our lives and whether we have a mission or a clear path in them. Youth are just beginning to engage in questions of this nature. Discussion of this workshop's poem, called "Perhaps," will help youth understand how it feels to be irresistibly drawn to an action—even though the action's outcome is uncertain. Activities that ask youth to identify what might be their own missions in life will have different levels of success, depending on the maturity of the youth involved. Even if participants are not able to define their own missions, these activities are valuable starting points for helping youth define a greater purpose in their lives.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
ACTIVITY | MINUTES |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: In Pursuit of a Mission | 20 |
Activity 2: Jazz Poems | 25 |
Faith in Action: Interfaith Prayers | 30 |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Poetry Collage | 30 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
This workshop focuses on personal missions or sense of purpose. The activities you will lead will help youth identify what might be a mission they already feel motivates their actions. You may have reflected upon lifetime missions, but have you thought about your mission related to leading this program? For what purpose are you working with youth? What do you hope to achieve by leading this program? Your mission might be to help youth appreciate poetry. It might be to examine the feelings that connect us as human beings. Whatever your sense of purpose may be, keeping it in focus while planning and leading the workshops might make the experience even more rewarding for you.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Use the Opening designed by your group or the one provided below.
Gather around the chalice. As a volunteer lights the chalice, ask the group to focus on the words "life's mission" in silence. After about fifteen seconds, invite participants to speak freely into the space a word or two that they associate with the words "life's mission." When everyone who wishes to speak has had a chance to do so, close by saying,
May the space we create here today be wide enough to hold all our individual ideas and deep enough to allow those ideas to grow, to fruit, and to provide seeds for new beginnings.
If you did not get a chance to share the poems that youth wrote during Workshop 4, Activity 2, Spiritual Guides Poems, share them now. Then introduce today's workshop by saying,
Even at an early age, we can feel a sense of flow, or rightness, when we are doing something in our lives that feels like it is meant to be; like it is simply ours to do. Whether playing a sport or music, making the right choices for ourselves, or just being with others in an authentic way, some things just feel natural. So how do we identify our talents? Will using our talents automatically lead us to the right path or mission in life? Must we look for our mission or will a mission find us? Does everyone have a mission? How do we "heed the call" to live our lives as authentically as possible and follow our own path?
Today we will use poetry, discussion, and writing to explore what it means to discover our talents and have a mission and to help us answer the question, How does having a mission in life affect your spirit?
ACTIVITY 1: IN PURSUIT OF A MISSION (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Give everyone a copy of the poem. Ask two or more volunteers to read it aloud, pausing for thirty seconds between readings and after the last reading. Then use these questions to lead a "What do we have here?" discussion:
Lead a "What's the big idea?" discussion.
Hand out paper and pen/pencil to each participant. Direct participants to list every aspect of themselves and their lives in which they "have no choice." Give the group two or three minutes to write.
Invite volunteers to offer a few items they jotted down. Then direct participants to think about the reasons why they "have no choice" for each item on their list, and provide these instructions:
The remaining items on the list will probably be things that participants feel they MUST do (as opposed to CANNOT do). Make sure the difference is clear to them.
Now let us look deeper into the things we have no choice about and MUST do. Ask participants to draw two columns on a blank sheet of paper and add these column heads:
I MUST... BECAUSE... .
Under "I must," have participants rewrite the remaining items about which they have no choice. Under "Because," have participants write the reason why they must do each thing. For example:
Give the group several minutes to complete the exercise. Then ask volunteers to share some of the things they MUST do and the reasons why they must do those things. Did anyone write "irresistible sense of mission" as a reason why she/he has no choice but to do something? If any participants identified something they MUST do for reasons that come from inside themselves, they may have discovered a mission. Examples might be:
Invite volunteers to share what they have discovered. Lead a discussion to further explore the nature of a "mission." Use these questions:
ACTIVITY 2: JAZZ POEMS (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants use their formative experiences, values, and ideas to create mission jazz poems.
Explain that this activity will help each person explore his/her own mission or path in life by using his/her own life experiences and thoughts as the raw material for a mission jazz poem.
Share with participants that Shu Ting is a contemporary Chinese poet whose birth name is Gong Peiyu. She started writing poetry during the Cultural Revolution when she was sent to work in the countryside. Her career has included periods of inactivity because of heavy criticism from the government and suspicion of subversion. Ask the group: do you think events in Shu Ting's life helped shape a sense of purpose or mission in her writing?
Distribute pencils/markers and three sheets of paper to each participant.
Give the following instructions, allowing one minute between each instruction for participants to complete the step. Refer to the words you wrote on newsprint or a dry erase board beforehand.
After reading the instructions, give participants several more minutes to complete their lists. Then ask them to spread their three lists in front of them. Ask participants what they notice, using these questions as prompts:
Next, invite participants to assemble a "jazz" poem using lines from all three lists. The whole poem does not have to make a single point or make sense. Participants should simply notice relationships among their list items and choose the lines they like and want to use. They may repeat lines if they wish.
Distribute the journals and pens or pencils for writing the jazz poems. If you are offering participants the option to make their jazz poems by collage, do not use journals. Instead, indicate where they can find scissors, glue, and paper.
Consider playing jazz music to set a jazzy mood.
If participants leave the room to work on their poems, tell the group when to reconvene. Allow ten minutes for reading and discussing the completed poems.
Challenge the group to overlay a jazz-like interpretation on the readings, complete with responses befitting a jazz recital. Each volunteer may read aloud his/her own poem, or you may pass the poems around for a series of people to read aloud, line by line. Invite the group—and yourself—to celebrate, laugh, applaud, and/or be wowed in response to the poems, as one might at a jazz recital.
During and after the readings, guide the group to connect the exercise with their ongoing search for a personal mission. Use these questions as prompts:
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Use the Closing designed by your group or the one provided below.
Recite together Reading 712 from Singing the Living Tradition:
Do not be conformed to this world,
But be transformed by the renewing of your minds.
— Romans 12
Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: INTERFAITH PRAYERS (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
One mission that some Unitarian Universalists take on is to help make our world a place that is more inclusive of religious differences. Hence, we often talk about the importance of interfaith work. Youth might not have the opportunity to engage in interfaith work as much as some adults, but there is one very simple way to help them further this work. It involves interfaith prayers.
Whether it be at a Parent, Teacher, Student Association meeting, a Thanksgiving meal for the homeless, or a vigil for a social justice cause, people of faith often participate in public prayer. Often, public prayer favors the beliefs in a Christian God. This can make participants who belong to other faiths feel excluded. As UUs, we can help by offering interfaith prayers that can bring together people from a wide range of theologies.
People generally address prayers to something or someone. To whom can your interfaith prayer be addressed? Brainstorm a list of addressees. The list might include words such as "spirit of life," "god of many names," "source of all life," "great mystery of life," "blessed spirit of all that is seen and unseen," and "loving spirit." Also pay attention to how the prayer will end. Will you say "amen," "we ask this in your name," or "blessed be"?
If your group is large enough, form two or three smaller groups and work on a short prayer. It could be a prayer for peace, justice, or wisdom or to help people work together toward a common goal. Groups can pick different purposes and different addressees. Use the hymnal and the books of meditation you brought as resources. Let groups work for ten minutes, then come together and share prayers. Ask if everyone feels included in the prayers and, if not, continue working on the prayers until they do.
Suggest that participants learn one of the prayers by heart so they can volunteer to lead a prayer should they find themselves in a situation where modeling interfaith is appropriate. By doing so, they will help spread our UU value of inclusiveness.
Including All Participants
Monitor groups to make sure all youth have the opportunity to participate, especially those who might be in a theological minority.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Review today's workshop with your co-leader. This workshop is the first in which participants were free to write their own poetry from just a prompt. What worked well and what activities need adjustment? How do the answers to these questions affect future workshops?
TAKING IT HOME
To be tested is good.
— Gail Sheehy
DURING TODAY'S WORKSHOP...
We read a poem and discussed what it means to have a mission or a sense of purpose in life. We examined possible missions that we feel compelled to complete and wrote jazz poems about them.
REFLECTION QUESTION:
Do you believe it is necessary to feel that you have a mission in life?
EXPLORE THE TOPICS FURTHER WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS...
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: POETRY COLLAGE (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Have participants neatly copy (or type on a computer and print out) their jazz poems. Invite each participant to make a collage that features his/her jazz poem, using whatever images, colors, and materials best represent the participant's ideas. Allow participants at least twenty minutes to create their collages.
As participants complete their collages, display them in a designated "gallery" space. As time allows, encourage participants to view and respond to the collages, using these questions:
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: THE POETRY OF HYMNS (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants search for hymns with poetry they find inspiring or beautiful.
Pass out hymnals. Ask participants if they have favorite hymns. As they do so, ask everyone to find the hymn in the hymnal and let the youth who suggested it (or a volunteer, if they prefer not to) read the words aloud. Look for hymns with poetic lyrics. If needed, turn to Hymn 34 "Though I May Speak with Bravest Fire." Discuss with participants how these lyrics reflect the poet's tools discussed in Workshop 1. Do the same for the favorite hymns of individuals or hymns sung commonly in your congregation.
EXPLORING OUR VALUES THROUGH POETRY: WORKSHOP 5:
HANDOUT 1: PERHAPS
Shu Ting (1952- ), translated by Carolyn Kizer, from Carrying Over: Poems from the Chinese, Urdu, Macedonian, Yiddish, and French African. Copyright 1988 by Carolyn Kizer. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
Perhaps...
for the loneliness of an author
Perhaps these thoughts of ours
will never find an audience
Perhaps the mistaken road
will end in a mistake
Perhaps the lamps we light one at a time
will be blown out, one at a time
Perhaps the candles of our lives will gutter out
without lighting a fire to warm us.
Perhaps when all the tears have been shed
the earth will be more fertile
Perhaps when we sing praises to the sun
the sun will praise us in return
Perhaps these heavy burdens
will strengthen our philosophy
Perhaps when we weep for those in misery
we must be silent about miseries of our own
Perhaps
Because of our irresistible sense of mission
We have no choice
FIND OUT MORE
Prentice Hall at School has information on the life of Shu Ting (at 209.85.215.104/search?q=cache:EznNDO6dyTQJ:www.phschool.com/atschool/literature/author_biographies/ting_s.html+Shu+Ting+biography&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a). The UUA website has a Worship Web (at www.uua.org/spirituallife/worshipweb/by_topic.php?topic=Prayers) that includes prayers that can be useful for the Faith in Action activity. A book that also can be a useful resource is For Praying Out Loud: Interfaith Prayers for Public Occasions, by L. Annie Foerster (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2003). Foerster is a retired UU minister.