TOOLBOX OF FAITH
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Children
SESSION 15: ATONEMENT (LEVEL)
BY KATE TWEEDIE COVEY
© Copyright 2008 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 11/8/2014 7:29:27 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
The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity. — Lord Byron
The level, a carpenter's tool, symbolizes the balance we need to restore when we make a mistake. The session focuses on the meaning of "at-one-ment." Participants will explore the difficulty in acknowledging mistakes and the sense of relief in acknowledging a mistake.
Allow time for participants to engage the issues of personal and community acknowledgments. Emphasize the feeling of being "at one" when there is reconciliation.
In Activity 3, the children make pretzel shapes out of frozen bread dough. Make sure the congregational facility has an oven you can use to bake the pretzels in.
GOALS
This session will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
SESSION-AT-A-GLANCE
ACTIVITY | MINUTES |
Welcoming and Entering | |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: Story — W.H.G. Carter and a Step Toward Racial Reconciliation | 10 |
Activity 2: Games | 10 |
Activity 3: Pretzel Prayer Bread | 10 |
Activity 4: "I'm Sorry" Cards | 10 |
Activity 5: Council Circle | 10 |
Faith in Action: Ideas | |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Take a moment and let your body and mind settle. If you are comfortable doing so, spend a few moments in peaceful meditation. In preparation for this session on atonement, reflect on times when you have made mistakes and sought atonement, when you were the victim of a mistake, or when someone else asked you for forgiveness. The Unitarian Universalist hymnbook, Singing the Living Tradition, includes readings for Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. One of these may help focus your reflections.
As an adult leader, your opinion may have more influence than those of participants. Therefore, your personal disclosure should not become part of the class discussion unless the participants ask you directly. In this case, be sure to preface your opinion by setting the context that each of us, adults and children, has differing opinions, and yours is one among many. It is recommended to guide the conversation away from your own opinion and allow participants to reflect on their own thoughts.
SESSION PLAN
WELCOMING AND ENTERING
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
This section is intended for the time before the beginning of a session when participants arrive individually over a period of time (that is, "straggle in").
Welcome participants. Tell them the two words on the sheets of paper, "atonement" and "reconciliation," will be part of today's session. Invite them to try to make as many smaller words as they can, on each sheet, from the letters of the longer word, and write the smaller words on the sheets.
You may also invite them to use the level(s) to inspect surfaces in the room. Show them how to use a level, if necessary.
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants will begin to explore the words, "atonement" and "reconciliation," and consider the metaphor of a level to symbolize the restoration of balance that comes with "at-one-ment," or atonement.
Gather the children in a circle, in your Council Circle space. Light the chalice.
Indicate where the opening words are posted, for any children who are unfamiliar with them. Lead the group in reciting:
We are Unitarian Universalists
with minds that think,
hearts that love,
and hands that are ready to serve.
Hold up a level. Tell the children what it is called and that it is the Tool of the Day. Pass the level around. Invite the children to share their prior experiences seeing or using levels. See if they have observations about using the level in the meeting space — for example, what surfaces seem to be level, but are not?
Ask, "What do you think makes this a Unitarian Universalist tool?" Allow participants to share ideas. Affirm that there is no one answer. Then explain, in your own words or these:
The level represents restoring balance when we have made a mistake. This is called "atonement." Another word that is used is reconciliation. This means that two parties who were apart and in conflict have come back together.
Hold up the sheet of paper with the word "atonement." Point out the three parts of the word: "at-one-ment." Then say:
When we are out of balance, when we have made mistakes, it can feel like we are separate from everything around us. So the restoration of balance is the restoration of oneness.
One of our Unitarian Universalism Principles affirms acceptance of one another and encouragement of spiritual growth in our congregations. We all need to accept that we make mistakes and cause bad things to happen, sometimes by mistake and sometimes on purpose. One tool we can use to restore balance is atonement.
It takes courage to admit mistakes. As Unitarian Universalists, one of our sources is the words and deeds of prophetic women and men who challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love. In our own Unitarian Universalist history, there have been people whose words and deeds we can look to. Their examples can inspire us to take on the challenge of admitting our mistakes, both individually and as a community.
Invite a participant to attach the sheet of paper that says "atonement" to the Toolbox of Our Faith poster.
ACTIVITY 1: STORY — W.H.G. CARTER AND A STEP TOWARD RACIAL RECONCILIATION (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants will hear a true story illustrating how some Unitarians made a mistake and how, decades later, members of a Unitarian Universalist congregation tried to restore balance, to atone.
Gather participants to hear a story. You may say:
This is a true story about Unitarian Universalists who sought to atone for a wrong that had been committed against an African American Unitarian minister.
Read the story, or, if you prefer, tell the story dramatically.
After the story, invite participants to share their reflections and initial thoughts. Have they heard about Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement) or the Catholic Sacrament of Penance (Confession) or Sacrament of Reconciliation? The Jewish and Catholic faiths each have rituals for atonement, of restoring balance, at-one-ness. Tell the group they may continue the discussion in further depth in Council Circle.
ACTIVITY 2: GAMES (10 MINUTES)
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Try these games to illustrate concepts related to atonement. In Human Knot, participants move together from disarray to unity. "Who Started It?" demonstrates the difficulties of assigning blame.
Human Knot
Experience being tangled and scrambled, then achieving unity by untangling and finding one or two circle(s) (at-one-ment!).
This game is for five to ten people. Form smaller groups if necessary. The game will put people very close to each other. Ask participants if they are comfortable trying this sort of game, and allow children to watch if they are not comfortable.
Stand in a circle. Everyone puts their hands in the center and grabs hold of two different people's hands. Try to untangle the knot into one or two circles without letting go of one another's hands.
"Who Started It?"
Assigning blame can be an impediment to restoring balance, when what is needed is grace and forgiveness. Play this silly game to illustrate how hard it is to determine "who started it." In this game, no one knows who is copying who, or who started it.
Have participants stand in a circle. Every person secretly picks a person to imitate. The imitator copies the movements of the person being watched, exaggerating them very slightly. (Hint: If no one is moving very much, suggest that each participant spin around once and start imitating while the group is still moving a bit on their return.) Everyone's movements will become larger and larger. Usually everyone will end up doing the same thing without ever knowing who started it.
ACTIVITY 3: PRETZEL PRAYER BREAD (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants experience a form of reconciling prayer in the process of handling and baking bread.
Tell the children:
In medieval times, Christian monks taught the people to pray by crossing their hands across their chest. The pretzel shape reflects this prayerful attitude. One Unitarian Universalist minister described a bedtime prayer as containing three parts: something you are thankful for, something you are sorry about, and something you are glad about.
Tell the group they each will make an individual pretzel prayer bread, to symbolize this type of prayer.
If you have purchased frozen bread loaves, divide each loaf of dough into eight pieces by cutting once lengthwise and four times across. If you have frozen dinner rolls, give one to each child.
Invite the children to flour their hands and the table surface (so dough will not stick). Show them how to roll their dough into a snake, lay the dough snake on a cookie sheet, and form the pretzel shapes. Do this by bringing the ends of the dough down and crossing one over the other once. Lift the ends up and push them lightly into the curved top of the dough to form a pretzel shape.
Invite children to sprinkle their pretzels with salt. Cover cookie sheets, and let dough rise for five minutes. Then, bake the pretzels for eight to ten minutes at the temperature suggested on the frozen dough package, or until golden brown.
Engage participants to help clean up worktables.
ACTIVITY 4: "I'M SORRY" CARDS (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather participants at worktables. Invite them to make a card which expresses an apology and a hope for something with which they would like to be back in balance. Ask them to think for a moment about whom they might give or send such a card.
Demonstrate how to fold the sheets of paper into cards that will fit in the envelopes. If you have made a sample card, show it to the group. Encourage participants to create a unique card to say whatever apology and hope they might like to express.
Because of the sensitive nature of apologies, do not force the topic with a child who is uncomfortable. Suggest he/she make another type of card. Tell the children they may use the envelopes to keep their cards private.
ACTIVITY 5: COUNCIL CIRCLE (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Each session closes with a Council Circle. The goal of the Council Circle is to share our stories, listen to each other, and grow in faith together. Listening to each other is a religious act. The Council Circle includes three rituals: Reflection, Sharing of Joys and Concerns, and a Closing.
Reflection
Gather the group in the Council Circle. Light the chalice. Offer words spoken routinely in your congregational worship, or these:
We are Unitarian Universalists
with minds that think,
hearts that love,
and hands that are ready to serve.
Using the Tool of the Day as a talking stick, invite participants to reflect on the story they heard today. Guide them to discuss their feelings on the value of restoring balance, at-one-ment, by making an apology. You may use these questions:
Sharing of Joys and Concerns
After discussion has closed, invite participants to share important things in their lives. What they share may or may not be related to the session topic and discussion.
Invite participants to light a council candle from the chalice flame as they share. If there are not enough candles, it is OK to snuff out and re-light a candle. Save the candle of a different color for last. When all who want to share joys and concerns have done so, light this candle with the words, "For all the joys and concerns that remain unspoken."
If you are using a glass bowl, water, and stones instead of council candles, invite participants to drop a stone into the bowl when they share. End the sharing by adding one, last stone for unspoken joys and concerns.
Closing
Extinguish the council candles. Gather participants around the chalice; if it has been extinguished, re-light it.
Share with the group this excerpt from a sermon, "AT-ONE-MENT," by Rev. Nathan C. Walker:
To be at-one is to witness how we fall down so that we may help others get up;
To be at-one is to ensure that no other human being will ever suffer like Ho Sy Hai and his family;
To be at-one is to ask the person whose life has been changed by AIDS or cancer: "How could anyone ever tell you, you were anything less than beautiful?"
To be at-one is to teach the world's scientists, inventors, and business leaders to never profit from the death of a human being;
To be at-one is to reform this nation from a once unilateral global power into a country whose commitment to freedom is not simply a political slogan but a way of life;
To be at-one is to acknowledge that redemption comes when we use our beliefs to affirm life and to protect life;
To be at-one is to rise and sing and imagine how we are responsible for creating a wonderful world.
You may like to mention that the line, "How could anyone ever tell you, you were anything less than beautiful?" comes from Hymn 1053 in Singing the Journey.
Close with an element (meditation, benediction, song) commonly used in your congregational worship, or use one or more of the suggestions below. Base your choice(s) on the needs and energy level of your group. With your co-leaders, you may elect to use the same ritual to close every session.
A. Lead the group in singing "Meditation on Breathing," Hymn 1009 in Singing the Journey: A Hymnbook Supplement to Singing the Living Tradition. Hear the simple tune online (at www.uua.org/publications/singingjourney/52328.shtml).
B. Have the group read in unison Reading 452 by Marjorie Montgomery in Singing the Living Tradition:
Life is a gift for which we are grateful.
We gather in community to celebrate
the glories
and mysteries
of this great gift.
C. Sing or say the words to "From You I Receive," Hymn 402 in Singing the Living Tradition. Teach the group the accompanying movements.
From you I receive | Scoop the air by reaching toward other participants, then bringing air toward yourself at chest level, that is, receiving it. |
To you I give | Opposite from above — scoop the air at chest level and push it outward to "give" to other participants. |
Together we share | All grasp hands. |
By this we live | Make fist of strength with each hand and stack one hand on top of the other at belly button level. |
D. Go around the circle — using the Tool of the Day as a talking stick again, if you like —and invite each participant to say one thing they will do to seek and act for justice. A higher-energy version of the above could involve the group repeating back, chant-style, the statement of each participant, and adding, "Go out into the world and use atonement to bring reconciliation!"
E. Sing a familiar song. Suggestions: "Thula Klizeo," Hymn 1056 in Singing the Journey; "I Know This Rose Will Open," Hymn 396 in Singing the Living Tradition; or "Rejoice in Love," Hymn 380 in Singing the Living Tradition.
F. Use this team spirit chant, "Pump It Up!"
Leader: Pump, pump, pump it up!
Group: Pump, pump, pump it up!
Leader: Pump that UU spirit up!
Group: Pump that UU spirit up!
Instead of "Pump it up!" you may use "Fire it up!" or "Keep it up!"
Pass the Tool of the Day around the circle and invite participants, one at a time, to voice a way they plan to use the quality of faith that was explored today. Guide them to say:
With my UU [quality of faith, e.g., atonement], I will...
Lead the group in responding to each participant's contribution:
Group: Go, UU, go!
If you have not yet done so, invite a participant to tape the sheet of paper with "atonement" written on it to the Toolbox of Our Faith poster.
Extinguish the chalice. Distribute Taking It Home handouts. Thank and dismiss participants.
FAITH IN ACTION: IDEAS
Description of Activity
Look for a project involving individual and/or community reconciliation.
A prayer can provide a context and structure to help people confront situations in their lives that call for atonement. Work with participants to help them — individually, or together — create and use a personal daily prayer including the following three parts: something you are thankful for, something you are sorry for, and something you are glad about. You may suggest the prayer might end with the words, "I am a Unitarian Universalist with a mind that thinks, a heart that loves, and hands that are ready to serve."
Participants may wish to investigate stories in their own communities about prejudice and oppression. Guide them to identify and interview a person involved in righting a wrong, and then write an article for the congregational newsletter.
TAKING IT HOME
The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity. — Lord Byron
IN TODAY'S SESSION. . .
The level symbolizes the balance we need to restore when we make a mistake. In this session, there are opportunities to engage in reflection about the meaning of "at-one-ment." Possible reflections may include the difficulty of acknowledging mistakes and the sense of relief in acknowledging a mistake. There is time for participants to engage in acknowledgement of both personal and community mistakes. The story children heard the story, "W.H.G. Carter and A Step Toward Racial Reconciliation," which told about a contemporary Unitarian Universalist congregation's effort to atone for a wrong done to an African American Unitarian minister by an earlier generation of Unitarians.
We emphasized the feeling of being "at one" when there is reconciliation.
We focused on atonement to illustrate that:
EXPLORE THE TOPIC TOGETHER. Talk about. . .
The congregations in Cincinnati apologized for a wrong that was 60 years old. They apologized to the descendants of the person who was wronged. Discuss the story together.
You may wish to talk about the difficulties of apologies and the feeling of "oneness" when there is heartfelt reconciliation. Are there any lingering family disputes that might be reviewed with an eye toward reconciliation?
EXTEND THE TOPIC TOGETHER. Try...
A FAMILY RITUAL
Prayers can provide a helpful context and structure for confronting situation that call for atonement. You may decide to create and use a personal daily prayer including the following three parts: something you are thankful for, something you are sorry for, and something you are glad about. A prayer might end with words such as "I am a Unitarian Universalist with a mind that thinks, a heart that loves, and hands that are ready to serve."
TOOLBOX OF FAITH: SESSION 15:
STORY: W.H.G. CARTER AND A STEP TOWARDS RECONCILIATION
Adapted from "A Step Toward Racial Reconciliation" by David Whitford, UU World, May/June 2002, permission pending.
You may wish to enliven the telling of the story by designating a few participants to read the words spoken by Andrew Carter, Leslie Edwards, Starita Smith, and Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed. Show the children which parts to read before you begin reading or telling the story.
Walter Herz was a church historian at Northern Hills Fellowship in Cincinnati, Ohio. He never knew how prejudice had shut down an African American Unitarian congregation, right in his own city, until the story was told in a sermon in 1998. When the Reverend Sharon Dittmar gave her talk that day, Mr. Herz learned about something that amazed him and made him sad.
Reverend W.H.G. Carter was a minister who founded a Unitarian Church in Cincinnati in 1918. It was probably the only Unitarian church in America at the time that was an African American Unitarian church. It was called the Church of the Unitarian Brotherhood. At the time, other Unitarians knew about the church and its founder, but turned their backs because the church was African American and poor.
Twenty years later, someone came to investigate, but the conclusion of the official report was, "I do not recommend Unitarian fellowship for Mr. Carter or subsidy for his movement." In other words, there was no ministerial degree for Reverend Carter, and no money for his church. Shortly afterwards, the Church of the Unitarian Brotherhood closed down.
Like Mr. Herz, Leslie Edwards was also surprised to hear about Reverend W.H.G. Carter in a sermon. "That's my grandfather you were talking about," said Mr. Edwards to a hushed congregation during the discussion afterward. "I never thought I'd hear his name mentioned in a Unitarian church." Mr. Edwards was a member of the board of Northern Hills Fellowship.
"We can't let this drop," Mr. Herz said. "We ought to find out more about this family." So Mr. Edwards and Mr. Herz decided to find out more. What they found out sparked an extraordinary act of reconciliation involving two mostly white Unitarian Universalist congregations, five generations of a remarkable African American family, a city scarred by police brutality and race riots, and Unitarian Universalism as a faith. Here's what they found out.
Reverend W.H.G. Carter was a big man with a big personality. Light-skinned, six-feet-two, a man of charm, energy, imagination, and learning, he towered over his wife, Beulah, who was only five feet tall, and their 15 children. He trained as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal church, following in his father's footsteps, but never served as a minister in that denomination. He disagreed with many beliefs of the African Methodist Episcopal church, starting with the divinity of Jesus. As an adult, Reverend Carter worked as a photographer, a mural painter, a teacher, a postal worker, a funhouse operator and a real estate speculator. He sold a tip sheet to horse race gamblers, kept a roulette wheel in his church (to make the point that gambling in and of itself was not sinful), and operated a friendly neighborhood pool hall (no swearing allowed).
Reverend Carter moved with his wife and children to Cincinnati in 1918. Like his maternal grandfather, William Henry Gray—a free-born African American— Carter was a political activist. Along with running the Unitarian church he founded in Cincinnati's West End, he ran four times as a Republican candidate for the city council, though he never won. He founded a club called the Grand Order of Denizens, whose initials spelled G.O.D. He was a dedicated provider of food, money, clothing, and advocacy to poor blacks in Cincinnati.
With his own family, Reverend Carter could be playful. One time, at the dinner table, he carved carrots into hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs. He could be generous, too. He took the whole family to the 1934 Chicago World's Fair. But he was also strong-willed, uncompromising and severe.
"You were supposed to come up to a certain standard," Mr. Edwards remembered about his grandfather. "And he'd make you know."
Among the forbidden phrases in the Carter household were ""I don't care" and "It's not my fault."
Once, Carter found two of his sons reading an anatomy book in their father's extensive library. They found the book so absorbing that they didn't hear their father coming until it was too late. "We slammed the book together," Andrew Carter remembered when he was an old man of 79. "He came in. He said, 'What are you looking at?' We were a little reluctant, but we told him. He said, 'I'm going to give you a whipping.' So he whipped us."
And then he told them why. "He said, 'I didn't whip you because you were looking at it. It's because you thought you were doing something wrong. Now open that book up and look at it!'"
Mr. Herz and Mr. Edwards shared with their congregation what they had learned about Reverend W.H.G. Carter — what he was like, and the whole sad story that had happened to his African American church. Other church members started wondering what to do. The most important part, they decided, should be an apology to the Carter family. They felt that, as a congregation, they wanted to admit what they called the "stain on the Unitarian Movement and on our local Unitarian Churches occasioned by our rejection of Carter's Brotherhood Church sixty years ago."
Mr. Herz and Mr. Edwards's church set up a weekend of activities. They invited more than 100 members of the Carter family. An African American minister, Reverend Mark Morrison-Reed, came down from his Unitarian Universalist church in Toronto and gave a Sunday morning sermon which he called "The Burden of Guilt." Here is part of what he said.
"Remembering the past with regret can strengthen the resolve to do the only thing we can do together to shape a more just tomorrow. For in that moment when the one person feels hurt and the other feels sympathy, a bond is established. That connection can be built upon. And as the relationship grows, we can move beyond avoidance, guilt, and self-hatred, and let go of the anger and recrimination to embrace the only things that can sustain us over the long haul — the love of God, which we find in one another, and our shared vision of tomorrow... "
Nobody knew if it would really happen, if one of the Carter family members might accept the apology. Then another person rose to the pulpit. She was Starita Smith of Denton, Texas, a mother with two grown children, and a great-granddaughter of W.H.G. Carter.
As she began to speak, people still were not sure. She said she was skeptical about "apologies to black people for everything from slavery to neglect of Africa. We read the headlines and we say, 'So what changes now?'" She said she expected more from Unitarian Universalists.
"You are supposed to be the most liberal of the mainstream denominations," she said. "It is very meaningful to me that you took the initiative to acknowledge a history that must be embarrassing for you, and to attempt to make amends in the present for what was wrong in the past....
"But we must also acknowledge that racial reconciliation, true racial reconciliation, requires commitment.... I hope you will reflect on this weekend often and let it galvanize you. I hope that it will cause you to go beyond the comfortable friendships you have with your black Unitarian friends to attempt to bring honesty, light, and compassion into the thorny arena of race relations beyond the boundaries of your church.
"We Carters encourage you to continue to look into your hearts, ask difficult and complex questions, and take action. We accept your apology."
The silence in the sanctuary was broken by a sudden burst of applause. Starita Smith found herself in the arms of the church's minister, Reverend Sharon Dittmar. The minister's black robe enveloped them both. "When the hug seemed to go on a beat or two too long," Starita Smith later wrote, "it dawned on me that she was crying and leaning on me for support."
FIND OUT MORE
The story, "Rev. W.H.G. Carter and a Step Toward Racial Reconciliation" comes from an article by David Whitford (at www.uuworld.org/2002/03/feature1a.html) in the May/June, 2002 edition of UU World online.
In 1995, the first post-apartheid South African government instituted a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A Wikipedia article (at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission_(South_Africa)) gives an overview of this large-scale attempt to facilitate national atonement and healing.
A sermon by Rev. Nathan C. Walker (at www.philauu.org/uploads/Sermons/at-one-ment.pdf), given on September 23, 2007, provided the Closing reading.
Accepting Responsibility for Wrongdoing: Jewish and Catholic Rituals
Find out more about Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement (at www.jewfaq.org/holiday4.htm), on the Judaism 101 website.
Learn about the Catholic Sacrament of Penance and Sacrament of Reconciliation (at www.americancatholic.org/features/Sacraments/Reconciliation.asp) on American Catholic.org, an award-winning Franciscan website.
Games for Unitarian Universalist Groups
The game, Human Knot, in Activity 2 comes from the online publication, "Deep Fun," (at www.uua.org/leaders/leaderslibrary/deepfun/index.shtml) in the Leaders' Library of www.uua.org (at www.uua.org/). "Deep Fun" also presents many additional games popular with Unitarian Universalist youth groups.