As an Association, the UUA is looking to reflect, connect, and become a platform for sharing between congregations.
In last September’s Call and Response Blog, Reverend Janice Marie Johnson, Shannon Harper, and Nao Bethea highlighted the Hindu and Buddhist teaching metaphor ofIndra’s Net. It emphasized our interconnectedness as a faith, and in particular, as religious educators actively co-creating a faith where revelation is unsealed, accessible, and invitational. In this way, our individual and shared faith continues to learn and grow. To this end, the UUA is actively inviting and honoring more input, resources, and wisdom from the field, to grow and evolve our shared curricula and resources for religious professionals and lay leaders.
From that post:
Ancient wisdom offers a powerful way to understand how our congregations and our association really work as a microcosm of the universe. Indra’s Net is a metaphor used in Hindu and Buddhist wisdom stories…described as an infinite web of jewels, each one reflecting all the others. This beautiful image captures how our lives connect and influence each other every day…The ancient wisdom of Indra’s Net reveals something beautiful about how we’re all interconnected. Our web of relationships is simultaneously extremely delicate and incredibly strong. We’re embracing our role this season as educators who are jewels in our treasured Unitarian Universalist network.
With this heightened synergy and awareness of our interconnections, there is a buzz when it comes to Religious Exploration in our UU congregations. New ways to build community, to develop faith across the generations, and to amplify the voices of our emerging adults are here, finding footing, and getting their flowers.
Deeper Joy, Whole Church Religious Education (WCRE), and Storytelling Through Online Narrative and Expressions (STONEs) are three new, exceptional resources that are already making waves in our UU communities. Read on to learn more and find links to contribute to our shared abundance!
The UUA wants to honor, learn from, and lift up creative, innovative ideas from the field. Some of the best examples of Whole Church learning are emerging from religious educators and congregations. We are deeply grateful for the ‘wisdom in the room’ that our lay and professional colleagues hold, and are sharing in this moment.
Community Submissions of Deeper Joy Activities
Grounded in a Whole Church approach, Deeper Joy is an evolving compilation of games, songs, activities and practices designed for community builders, activists, educators, and anyone interested in fostering inclusive, multigenerational communities centered in Love. Most of these games and activities are from the “folksphere,” who knows when or by whom they were invented, but they’ve been passed down by oral tradition in performance and movement circles for generations. Do you have a creative community building exercise or game you’d like to contribute to this growing resource? Submit to Deeper Joy here.
Field Guide for Whole Church Religious Education
Speaking of Whole Church RE, this practical, multigenerational approach to faith development gives real tools to connect and practice Unitarian Universalism—especially our shared values in community. The goal of Whole Church RE is to create vibrant and thriving UU congregations and communities with love — and Faith Development – at the center.
Whole Church RE has six embodied faith development practices, including sharing sacred stories, faithful conversations, creative contemplation, community making, public witness, and joyful connections. If you have activities, stories, or liturgy that intersect with these practices or are emblematic of good old fashioned intergenerational church, please consider submitting them.
Submissions will be evaluated based on alignment with Whole Church goals, embodied practices, and our UU shared values. Fill out the WCRE submission form for each item you want to submit. We aim to accept as many submissions as possible, so if you have any questions, please reach out to faithengagement@uua.org to schedule a chat.
(Mile)STONES: Storytelling Through Online Narrative Expressions
The last crowd re-sourced resource we’d like to highlight is one the National Emerging Adult Team (NEAT) has created called Storytelling Through Online Narrative Expressions, or STONEs, a follow up offering to Rev. Kayla Parker’s seminalBecoming anthology for emerging adults. It’s an “of this time” magazine to honor the milestones of emerging adulthood with writings, images, and other media by emerging adults. This ‘zine will be released yearly with the first edition already making rounds. It will also be up on UUA.org later this year.
We are currently collecting submissions for ‘26-’27 STONEs Zine. If you’re an emerging adult UU, aged 18-24, please consider contributing poetry, art, photography, spiritual practices, words for worship, interpretive dance or music videos, anything grounded in covenant and designed to inspire! Please submit a new STONE here.
There are a myriad of ways to contribute and elevate the wonderful work and highlight the spectacular gifts of the lay leaders and religious educators of our Association near and far. Through community building exercises in Deeper Joy to multigenerational faith development tools from Whole Church RE, to beloved offerings of inspiration from our young adults, we hope you find new ways to connect and access your faith through this invitation to partnership.
Thank you for helping our communities grow in faith, together!