EXPLORING OUR VALUES THROUGH POETRY
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Youth
WORKSHOP 9: FAITH FOR THE JOURNEY
BY KAREN HARRIS
© Copyright 2008 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 6:54:41 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
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
Rabindranath Tagore
"Faith," a word we use in religious language, can have many different meanings. Within this workshop, participants explore faith in terms of the definitions "confidence or trust in a thing or person" and "making meaning out of life's experiences." Participants might know other definitions of faith. Try to be inclusive of everyone's idea of what faith can mean, but do not get caught up in semantics. Let participants use their own definitions to explore how faith plays out in their lives. You do not need to reach consensus on a definition.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
ACTIVITY | MINUTES |
Opening | 5 |
Activity 1: Ruby Slippers | 25 |
Activity 2: Mystery and Faith | 25 |
Faith in Action: Fun and Fundraising | 30 |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Faith Poetry | 20 |
Alternate Activity 2: Find Faith | 25 |
Alternate Activity 3: Journal Review | |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
In today's workshop, you will use the movie The Wizard of Oz as a vehicle to discuss life journeys and the lessons they teach us. What has been the tornado in your life? Who have been the Tinman, Scarecrow, and Lion? Who was your Glinda? What power or talent did you have to lose or leave before you learned to appreciate or wield it?
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (5 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 word "faith" in silence. After about fifteen seconds, invite participants to speak freely into the space a word or two that they associate with the word "faith." 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."
Introduce today's workshop by saying, "At the end of The Wizard of Oz, a perplexed and somewhat irked Dorothy finds out that, from the very start of her difficult journey dodging flying monkeys, the Wicked Witch, and laced poppies, she possessed the power to return home. She needed only to click together her fabulous ruby slippers. When Dorothy asks why no one told her sooner, she is met with an essential truth: even if someone had told her about the power she possessed, Dorothy would not have believed it and could not have used it. Like Dorothy, we each need to experience each step in our journey—including our crises of faith and our wonder—before emerging stronger on the other side.
"Faith of some kind seems to be an essential ingredient in the spiritual wholeness for which humans yearn. You, personally, may have faith in an entity greater than humankind, in the connectedness of all beings, or in a worldview that is uniquely your own.
"Unitarian Universalist tradition embraces both the doubt and the inherent wisdom we each bring to the development of our own faith. When it comes to faith, poetry and Unitarian Universalism have some things in common. Both can help us pursue spiritual wholeness, and both provide more questions than answers. Poetry appears often in Unitarian Universalist worship, and some renowned American poets have a connection with Unitarian Universalism. A poem has the power to celebrate faith, capture our difficulties in keeping faith, present a challenge to faith, or all three. The poems we share today will help us ask ourselves how our faith informs our spirituality and how our spirituality informs our faith."
ACTIVITY 1: RUBY SLIPPERS (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants explore notions of a spiritual quest and faith by finding parallels in The Wizard of Oz.
Start this activity with a review of Dorothy's experience in the movie The Wizard of Oz. If you have time, a fun and active way to do this is to ask for volunteers to perform a speedy reenactment of the story. Before starting, ask the group if they feel Dorothy's experience was similar to a spiritual quest. If needed, allow a few minutes for the group to discuss the notion of a spiritual quest.
Start the reenactment. Anyone in the group can yell "stop" when the story reaches a part that she/he feels correlates to a traditional spiritual quest. If time is limited, you could present this part of the activity yourself as a verbal review.
Write on newsprint the words and phrases participants use to describe ways in which Dorothy's journey parallels a spiritual quest. Listen for these words in particular: lost, confused, magic, persistent, determined, not sure, disappointed, enlightenment. Possible comments may include:
If you see that the group has missed important parallels, state them aloud and write them down.
Lead a discussion to help the group form a notion of what a spiritual quest is. Use these questions:
Ask the group whether faith helped Dorothy and, if so, how? In what did Dorothy have faith?
Lead a discussion to investigate what faith is and what part it plays in a spiritual quest. To spark the discussion, offer the metaphors below and ask the group to decide how well they work. Invite the group to tinker with one or more of the metaphors to arrive at a good description of faith and its role.
ACTIVITY 2: FAITH, MYSTERY, AND DOUBT (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants use two poems as the basis for a discussion about faith and prayer.
Distribute copies of Handout 1, "The Ancient Sage," and Handout 2, "Finders Keepers." Invite two volunteers to read the first poem aloud twice. Allow thirty seconds of silence to pass between readings. Repeat the process for the second poem.
Lead a "What do we have here?" discussion about each poem. Use these questions:
Lead a "What's the big idea?" discussion about the poems. Use these questions:
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: FUN AND FUNDRAISING (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants decide if they wish to use the Poetry Slam as a fundraiser for a good cause. Here is a list of potential questions you might ask:
One possible resource for projects in need of sponsors is DonorsChoose.org (at www.donorschoose.org/). Your group can pick a project based on a theme (such as poetry) and/or based on location; the project could benefit your community or your neighbors. Your congregation's social justice committee is another resource you can approach for ideas.
If participants decide to add a fundraising element to the Poetry Slam, make sure individuals assume responsibility for specific tasks. Use newsprint to create a list of the tasks involved, and include the name(s) of those who volunteer to complete each task. As you get closer to the date of the performance, especially if you are leading Workshops 11 and 12, remember to include updates on the planning efforts for the fundraiser as you plan other aspects of the Poetry Slam.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
With your co-leader, discuss which activities were successful and which ones were less so. Follow up on anything you need in order to coordinate the Faith in Action, Fun and Fundraising activity. If you did not have time to offer Alternate Activity 4, Journal Review, decide if you need to make time in the next three workshops for such a review. You will find that journal review is featured as an Alternate Activity in Workshops 8, 9, and 10. If there is not time to do such a review during a workshop, consider suggesting that youth take journals home and work on incomplete writing during their free time.
TAKING IT HOME
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
Rabindranath Tagore
DURING TODAY'S WORKSHOP...
We discussed Dorothy's journey in The Wizard of Oz and its analogy to a spiritual quest. We asked ourselves how faith helps us on a spiritual quest and talked about various definitions of "faith." We read a poem about faith and prayer and wrote our own faith poems.
REFLECTION QUESTION:
How do you think faith relates to religion?
EXPLORE THE TOPICS FURTHER WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS...
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: FAITH POETRY (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants craft poems as a way to examine the relationship between wondering, believing, and knowing.
Distribute journals. Divide a sheet of newsprint into three columns—or make three columns on a dry erase board—each headed by one of the following, in this order:
Invite participants to write a three-, six-, or nine-line poem or set of statements using these phrases to start each line. In other words, within each three-line group, the first line should begin with "I wonder... ."; the second should begin with "I believe... ."; and the third should begin with "I know... ." Allow ten minutes or more for the group to complete this assignment.
If time is limited, break into small groups for sharing. If time is not limited, invite volunteers to read aloud the poems or statement sets they created. As participants share their writing, spark reflective discussion with these questions:
Ask participants how The Wizard of Oz might have been different if Dorothy had known the power of her ruby slippers earlier in the story. What would she have gained? Lost? Did her faith go on a journey? Where did it end up?
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: FINDING FAITH (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Prompts that you read to participants spark individual explorations of faith concepts.
Make sure each participant has a pen/pencil and paper or a journal. Instruct participants to write an immediate, stream-of-consciousness response to each prompt that you will read, numbering each response. If they have no response, have them write NA for not applicable.
Tell participants that for this activity, the word "faith" is not necessarily connected to religious beliefs. It refers to your belief that something is true, whether or not you have hard evidence. One can have faith in a god, his/her own potential, the allegiance of a friend, or the ability of a particular baseball team to win the World Series.
Read each prompt, allowing time for participants to respond in their journals.
Invite participants to share their responses to the prompts. Ask the group to find trends and differences among responses, as well as any answers that sound surprising. Encourage the group to make connections where they can. The following prompts might help the discussion:
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 3: JOURNAL REVIEW
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants review their journals and complete unfinished work.
As the date for the Poetry Slam approaches, encourage participants to use any time that remains in each workshop to review the writing in their journals, with an eye to completing work they might consider performing.
EXPLORING OUR VALUES THROUGH POETRY: WORKSHOP 9:
HANDOUT 1: THE ANCIENT SAGE
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
This is an excerpt from the poem "Ancient Sage"
Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son,
Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in,
Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one:
Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no
Nor yet that thou art mortal—nay my son,
Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee,
Am not thyself in converse with thyself,
For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith
She reels not in the storm of warring words,
She brightens at the clash of 'Yes' and 'No',
She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst,
She feels the Sun is hid but for a night,
She spies the summer thro' the winter bud,
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
She hears the lark within the songless egg,
She finds the fountain where they wail'd 'Mirage'!
EXPLORING OUR VALUES THROUGH POETRY: WORKSHOP 9:
HANDOUT 2: FINDERS KEEPERS
by Patrice Vecchione, from Faith and Doubt (New York: Henry Holt, 2007)
Just what can be found with eyes open?
$10,000 in coins, anyway.
Enough to fill a few five-gallon jugs.
When his friend asked for a loan,
"Take this," said my father,
pointing to a bottle full
of the small money
other men leave behind.
A kind of fath in the possibility
a nickel has.
The wristwatch I wear daily
was left on a park bench
till my father came along.
Once, shortly after my mother left,
bills were due and Dad was down
to soda crackers and cigar butts.
In line to buy a cigar,
with his shoe,
he needed for a fifty.
Most people look in the wrong direction,
locating faith above them.
Pennies don't fall
from Heaven.
They're down below; more likely
to be found near sewer drains,
on the asphalt, beside dog droppings
and spent matches, worn shoes
even beggars leave behind.
FIND OUT MORE
Alfred, Lord Tennyson is a famous Victorian poet. A short, online biography can be found at The Literature Network (at nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1980/milosz-bio.html).