SING TO THE POWER
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Children
SESSION 2: THE POWER OF ROOTS
BY REV. LYNN UNGAR
© Copyright 2012 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 11/8/2014 2:34:24 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
All things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted. — St. Theresa of Avila
The power of the earth is the power of roots—the power that comes from a sense of history and connection to our origins. Participants learn that we are grounded in all that has shaped our lives, from our own memories back through the experiences of our ancestors, and including the features of the place where we live—its geography, ecology, and history.
The children hear how Southern writer George Ella Lyons came to write a well-known poem describing her roots. They write their own "I am from..." poems, and use their memories to draw floor plans of their homes and add words or pictures that describe important events that happened there.
GOALS
This session will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
SESSION-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 5 |
Activity 1: Story — Where I'm From | 10 |
Activity 2: "I am From... ." Poems | 20 |
Activity 3: Roots Geography Game | 5 |
Activity 4: Living Space Memory Plan | 15 |
Faith in Action: Planning Our Earth Power | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Sharing Joys and Sorrows | 10 |
Alternate Activity 2: Research Congregational History | 25 |
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, release it, and create a deep silence for a moment.
Invite the day's opening worship leader to select a reading from the Opening Words Basket and read it aloud (or, to read aloud the reading they prepared after the previous session).
Place the earth symbol on the cloth, saying, "I bring this symbol of earth, the ground on which we all stand together."
As needed, assist the worship leader to light the chalice.
Sing "Sing to the Power." Include the zipper words from the previous session ("earth below") and add today's zipper words, "roots that hold."
Invite participants to hold hands in a circle. Explain, in these words or your own:
Each time the group meets, we will focus on ways we find and express our power. As part of each opening circle, we will 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 — WHERE I'M FROM (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.
You might say:
The story of this poem is not only a story about grounding—knowing where you are from—it is also a story about connection. The poem comes out of the connection between the people that Jo Carson listened to and the poems she wrote, and the connection between Jo Carson and George Ella Lyons, and the connection all these people felt to their families, their ancestors, and the places where they grew up.
Lead a discussion using these questions:
Including All Participants
Some children may know a lot about their family's heritage, while others may have little information. Some may be easily able to create a floor plan of their current living space, while others may have difficulty—perhaps they have not lived in their current home very long; perhaps visualizing and sketching a living space as a floor plan is difficult for them. Be sure to use language that includes all participants, particularly any who may be adopted or living with a foster family. Offer one-on-one help, as needed.
ACTIVITY 2: "I AM FROM... ." POEMS (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce this activity in these words or your own:
We are going to write our own "I am from... ." poems. Poems work best if they have concrete images—things, people, or events that the reader can picture in their mind. An example is the glistening dirt that tastes like beets in the poem we heard.
Before you start writing your poem, you might want to do what George Ella Lyons did. Write some notes about the things, people, or events that stand out in your memory and help to make you who you are. Then, on another piece of paper, write your poem, beginning with the words "I am from... ."
Optional: If you have found some online, offer additional guidance for writing the poems.
Allow about 12 minutes of writing time. Then, invite volunteers to share aloud what they have written. Acknowledge that the time may not have been enough to complete the poems. Encourage children to spend more time on their poems at home and bring them back to share again, if they wish.
Including All Participants
Participants with learning disabilities or limited coordination may do better dictating their notes and poems to a co-leader, rather than writing them out.
ACTIVITY 3: ROOTS GEOGRAPHY GAME (5 MINUTES)
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather the group in a large, open space. Tell the children to imagine the space as a map. Invite participants to think of themselves as pins they will stick in this map indicating the place where they were born. If all participants were born in the same county, state, or region, the map can represent that local area. Adjust the map if any participants were born in other countries. Participants will almost certainly need help identifying a location in the space that roughly corresponds to their birthplace.
If you have time, you might wish to repeat this game, with participants standing in a location that represents the birthplace of one of their parents, or one of their grandparents.
Including All Participants
Acknowledge that the map will be very approximate, so no one should worry if they do not know exactly where they (or other family members) were born. Encourage all participants to make as good a guess as they can.
If you play this game with the birthplace of parents, make sure you invite all the children to choose one parent. Suggest a mother, a father, a birth parent, or an adult who has been an important part of raising them.
ACTIVITY 4: LIVING SPACE MEMORY PLAN (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
The place where we live creates and holds our memories and our sense of rootedness. Participants draw their home as best they can, in an architectural floor plan style, then decorate the floor plan to show how they are rooted in the place where they live.
Distribute graph paper and pencils with erasers. Invite the children to sketch, as best they can, a floor plan of the place where they live. Explain that a floor plan shows how a building looks if you were in an airplane above and the roof had been removed. If you have brought sample floor plan drawings, show them to the group.
Emphasize that it is difficult to imagine and create a building as a floor plan. No one should worry if their plan does not come out looking like an architect's drawing. The point of this activity is for participants to visualize where they live as vividly as possible. Acknowledge that the place where a person lives now might not be the place that holds the most significant memories for them; participants are free to draw the living space which is most vivid or meaningful to them.
When participants have sketched out the floor plan, invite them to write or draw inside the rooms any particular memory they have associated with that room. For instance, the kitchen might say "smell of waffles on Saturday morning" or the living room might say "wrestling with my brother."
Give participants about ten minutes to work on their drawings. Encourage them to share with one another. Then, invite reflection with these questions:
Including All Participants
This exercise may bring up painful associations from children who are or have been homeless, children who have been abused in their homes, or children who have moved one or more times. Be sensitive to the level at which children wish to share, and turn to your religious education director or minister if you sense that any child is experiencing significant emotional pain at home.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain that the session is almost over and that 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, and then to 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 "roots" circle (Leader Resource 1) outside the "Earth" quadrant of the Circle of Elements mural, in the position shown on Session1, Leader Resource 3. Say:
Earth power springs from our roots, and helps us to honor and understand where we come from.
Invite each participant to take a bead and string it on the elastic and, as they do so, to briefly finish the statement "I am from... "
Ask 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).
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 earth for the centering space, as well.
Invite participants to put the bracelets they started in the Closing Words Basket. Distribute Taking It Home. Thank and dismiss participants.
FAITH IN ACTION: PLANNING OUR EARTH POWER
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
This Faith in Action activity follows the Session 1 Faith in Action activity, Exploring Ways to Exercise Earth Power, as the second step in a four-session process that leads the group through (1) identifying a way to exercise earth power, (2) planning how to exercise earth power, (3) engaging in the planned activity, and (4) reflecting on the experience. After selecting an earth power activity, the next step is to plan exactly how the project will take place: Who will take part? Who needs to be invited, and who will invite them? What supplies will you need? How much time do you anticipate the project will take? When is the best time to work on the project? Who needs to be contacted for the project to move forward? What resources do you have available? What resources will you need to bring in?
Define the steps to bring the project to completion. Make plans as a group. Identify and assign action items for co-leaders or participants to complete before the next session.
After the session, follow up with your religious educator to determine how to communicate the project details to families and, if needed, the wider congregation.
Including All Participants
Make sure that the plan is as inclusive as possible of the differing needs and abilities in your group.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Reflect on and discuss with your co-leader(s):
Approach the director of religious education for guidance, as needed.
TAKING IT HOME
All things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted. — St. Theresa of Avila
IN TODAY'S SESSION... the children heard about the poet George Ella Lyons who was inspired by a friend's describing a deep sense of place and roots to write the poem "Where I'm From." They explored their own sense of roots and place through writing their own "I am from... ." poems and drawing a plan of their living space, noting special memories that belong to different rooms.
EXPLORE THE TOPIC TOGETHER. Talk about your family roots. This might mean sharing stories about your ancestors or stories of different places you have lived. With children who have been adopted it might also mean talking about their domestic or international place of origin and talking about their birth families, even if it means offering guesses to fill in places where your family lacks information.
FAMILY ADVENTURE. Visit a place you associate with your family's roots. Possibilities include not only places where you have lived previously or where older relatives live, but also stores, restaurants, or cultural events associated with some part of your family's ethnicity or a place where a family member is buried. Online, search a family homeland on Google Maps.
FAMILY RITUAL. At a quiet time, such as before bed, gather in a circle as a family, and take turns around the circle completing the sentence "I am from..."
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 (!) in the bowl of water, and share aloud a joy or a sorrow which has affected their life in recent days. Say they may drop their stone in silence, instead; tell them 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: RESEARCH CONGREGATIONAL HISTORY (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Institutions as well as individuals have roots, and understanding these roots can be a source of power for the group and the individuals in it. Just as each person is shaped by their own personal history, organizations are shaped by the events of their past. Understanding important events in the history of a congregation can illustrate strengths of the group moving forward and can help in understanding what old assumptions might be standing in the way of the congregation expressing its power. One excellent way to explore the roots of your congregation is to bring in a member who has studied (and, even better, experienced) your congregation's history. Have the group prepare for this visit by brainstorming questions about the congregation. You may also wish to bring in historical items from your congregation, such as a membership book, old newsletters, photographs, etc. You may wish to create a time line of the congregation by writing significant dates and events on a long sheet of paper marked with the years your congregation has been in existence, and adding photographs or illustrations if you have some.
SING TO THE POWER: SESSION 2:
STORY: WHERE I'M FROM
Poem by George Ella Lyons, used with permission of the author.
Jo Carson is a Southern writer with deep roots—in her case to the town and even the house in East Tennessee where her grandparents lived before her. Her sense of place and roots led her to write a book of poems based on conversations she overheard around her. Jo Carson's friend George Ella Lyons was inspired by one of these poems. She jotted down her own images of where she came from, and then made the poem "Where I'm From." Since then, the poem has been used around the world as a writing prompt, helping both adults and children write poems made up of images of where they are from.
Here is the poem "Where I'm From:"
I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening,
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.
I'm from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I'm from the know-it-alls
and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I'm from He restoreth my soul
with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.
I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments —
snapped before I budded
leaf-fall from the family tree.
SING TO THE POWER: SESSION 2:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: "ROOTS" CIRCLE
FIND OUT MORE
George Ella Lyons' website (at www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html) offers ideas for using her poem "Where I'm From" as a writing prompt, and shares an "I am from... ." poem by an eight-year-old author.
Find templates for writing "I am from" poems on the Scribd website (at www.scribd.com/doc/5563771/Where-Im-From-poems) and on Fred First's blogsite (at www.swva.net/fred1st/wif.htm).