EXPLORING OUR VALUES THROUGH POETRY
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Youth
WORKSHOP 2: SURPRISED BY BEAUTY
BY KAREN HARRIS
© Copyright 2008 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 6:47:35 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
The glory of youths is their strength,
but the beauty of the aged is their grey hair.
Proverbs 20:29
Today's workshop focuses on our experience of beauty. Taking time to appreciate the beautiful is one way to renew the sense of awe and wonder that our spirits need. This workshop includes a guided meditation, an activity option that will be offered in several workshops. It also includes an alternate activity to help groups that wish to design a unique opening and/or closing ritual.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
ACTIVITY | MINUTES |
Opening | 5 |
Activity 1: In Search of Beauty, Part 1 | 15 |
Activity 2: True Beauty | 10 |
Activity 3: Meditation on Beauty | 15 |
Activity 4: In Search of Beauty, Part 2 | 10 |
Faith in Action: Beauty Is as Beauty Does | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: My Beautiful Poem | 20 |
Alternate Activity 2: Designing an Opening and Closing | 10 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Often the spiritual preparation includes questions for reflection. Reflecting upon our lives is important, but sometimes it is good not to overanalyze. In preparation for today's workshop, spend a few moments soaking up beauty. Spend time in a place where you will be surrounded by beauty. The place you choose can be a public garden, an art museum, or a playground. You can listen to music or visit your favorite restaurant. Indulge in beauty with all your senses, and just enjoy!
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 "beauty" in silence. After about fifteen seconds, invite participants to speak freely into the space a word or two that they associate with the word "beauty." 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."
To introduce today's workshop, say,
Poetry is often linked with beauty: a poem may be about something beautiful, a poem may be beautiful in and of itself, or perhaps something is so beautiful it inspires poetry. Today we will cultivate our own awareness of beauty; we will pay attention to how poems speak to us about beauty and experience our own observations and thoughts on what is beautiful. Is there one single idea of beauty that everyone in the world might accept? How does experiencing beauty affect your spirit?
ACTIVITY 1: IN SEARCH OF BEAUTY, PART 1 (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
In this activity, participants search for beauty and report back to the group.
Give the following instructions to the group:
In a moment, you will go off on your own and explore your surroundings. Your mission is simply to look for beauty. Jot down everything you think qualifies as "beauty" in your journal. We will reconvene in five minutes.
Make yourself available to answer questions, but do not offer suggestions or in any way define what might be beautiful.
When participants reconvene, prompt them with a simple question: "What beauty did you find?" List responses on the newsprint. Resist reacting to the responses, and avoid analyzing trends, at least until you have collected the responses. Keep the list of "beauty" posted in the room; you may want to refer to it later in this lesson.
Use the following prompts to discuss the nature of beauty:
NOTE: This discussion can easily fill your lesson time. Set a time limit!
Including All Participants
If going outdoors is an option, make sure the area to which group members will go is accessible to all participants.
ACTIVITY 2: TRUE BEAUTY (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants use a poem to reflect upon what we call “beauty”.
Distribute Handout 1,”The Prophet on Beauty”. Invite two or three volunteers to read the poem aloud. Allow thirty seconds of silence to pass between readings.
Lead a “What do we have here?” discussion, using these questions:
Use these questions to lead a “What’s the big idea?” discussion:
ACTIVITY 3: MEDITATION ON BEAUTY (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants meditate on beauty and then make notes about images that came to mind.
Lead the meditation exercise outlined in Leader Resource 1, Beauty Meditation. After the meditation, allow a few minutes for participants to note in their journals any images or thoughts that occurred to them during the meditation.
ACTIVITY 4: IN SEARCH OF BEAUTY, PART 2 (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants find out if their sensitivity to beauty was heightened by the meditation and/or discussion.
Tell the group they are going on another hunt for beauty. Say,
This time, take with you the calm and awareness from our meditation and the gentle reminders from the poem(s) we have talked about today. Retrace your steps to the places you visited before. Your mission is the same as before: to look for beauty. In your journal, make a list of what you find. Return in five minutes.
When participants reconvene, invite volunteers to say what they found this time. Lead a discussion, using these questions:
Finally, help participants reflect more deeply on beauty, poetry, and faith. Ask:
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation 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: BEAUTY IS AS BEAUTY DOES
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants explore how art can be used not only to imitate life, but to hold up higher aspirations to people.
Invite participants to think about the common saying "beauty is as beauty does." What does it mean? Can participants think of someone who has acted in a beautiful way? The person can be someone famous or not. Perhaps participants read a news story about a pet saving a person's life. Perhaps they have an elderly neighbor who invites the neighborhood children to play in his/her yard.
Have participants write poems about the beautiful actions taken by such individuals. Instruct them to use a form of the word "beauty" in their poem or in a short introduction to the poem. By doing so, they will help spread an alternative idea about beauty by encouraging others to focus more on how we treat each other and less on how we look.
Consider submitting poems to Potato Hill Poetry (at www.potatohill.com/magazine.html), which publishes children's poetry online; or to the Louisville Review (at www.spalding.edu/louisvillereview/submission.htm) Children's Corner; or to your local literary magazine; or to your district youth and adult committee newsletter.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Discuss with your co-leader which activities flowed well and which needed adjustments. Was the level of movement in this workshop received well by the group? Did participants come back to the meeting space when asked or did it take effort to gather everyone back together? You will want to keep these logistics in mind for future workshops.
Discuss the guided meditation, as guided meditations are offered as activities in several workshops. If it was successful, why was it? If not, what could you have done differently?
TAKING IT HOME
The glory of youths is their strength,
but the beauty of the aged is their grey hair.
Proverbs 20:29
DURING TODAY'S WORKSHOP...
We searched for beauty in our surroundings and shared what we found. After discussing a poem by Gibran Khalil Gibran and participating in a guided meditation that was meant to increase our sensitivity to our surroundings, we searched for beauty again to see if our thoughts about beauty had changed.
RELECTION QUESTION:
Through which of the five senses do you absorb the most beauty?
EXPLORE THE TOPICS FURTHER WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS...
I am beautiful no matter what they say
Words can't bring me down
I am beautiful in every single way
Yes, words can't bring me down
So don't you bring me down today
(Full lyrics can be found at Lyrics007 (at www.lyrics007.com/Christina Aguilera Lyrics/Beautiful Lyrics.html) and other websites.)
Many of us have experienced hurtful words. Bullies use them, but sometimes we all say hurtful things, often without thinking about how our words affect someone's self-image. Why not make a pact, with your family and friends, to help each other try not to use hurtful words about other people's appearances? Perhaps you can say a code word when someone says something hurtful. The code word will let the speaker know she/he has said something she/he might want to retract or soften. Some UU youth groups say "ouch" if someone says something hurtful, stereotypical, or inappropriate. If you prefer to be less obvious, try a code word like "pudding," a common but not too common word with a meaning that is understood only by those who made the pact.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: MY BEAUTIFUL POEM (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants write a poem about beauty.
Invite participants to create poems that communicate something about their personal notions of beauty. For raw material, have participants draw from their answers to the “What’s the big idea?” questions in Activity 2: True Beauty, the thoughts and images they noted in their journals after the meditation, and the list of beauty they produced during Activities 1 and 4, In Search of Beauty, Parts 1 and 2. Allow ten minutes for participants to write. Then invite youth to share their poems by reading them aloud to the group.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: DESIGNING AN OPENING AND CLOSING (10 MINUTES)
Description of Activity
Ask if anyone has ever participated in an activity that opens with a chalice lighting. Many Unitarian Universalist worship services open with this ritual. Say that you would like this group to have both an opening and a closing ritual for their workshops. Having an opening ritual and a closing ritual will help those who are present know when you are starting and ending a workshop together. The rituals will also mark the workshop time as special and help everyone focus their attention on the here and now. These ceremonies need not be fancy; an opening ritual can be as simple as lighting a chalice, and a closing ritual can be as simple as extinguishing it.
Invite input from the group about the opening and closing rituals you used today and in the previous workshop. Decide if you will use the Openings and Closings that were written for this program or if the group wants to create others. If your religious education program has standard opening and closing rituals, consider using those. Other ideas for openings include ringing a chime, having a moment of centering silence, singing a short song, or sharing a prayer or meditation. Closing rituals you might consider include standing in a circle for a short blessing, sharing a reading and extinguishing the chalice, saying a one-word check-out, or singing a song. Use the hymnals Singing the Living Tradition and Singing the Journey, along with other meditation manuals that are available, for possible readings and/or songs.
After the group has decided what the rituals will be, identify the materials you need and who will be responsible for gathering them. Ask for volunteers to help so the activity truly belongs to the group, not to just the leaders. If the group decides to rotate responsibility, post a sign-up sheet and/or plan to send weekly e-mail reminders.
If the opening ritual includes lighting a chalice, be aware of the flame at all times. Having a lit chalice in the room during active lessons may not work. Also be aware that some building codes do not allow open flames. Check with your religious education committee to verify whether lighting a chalice is allowed, and—if so—be sure to choose a practical time to extinguish it. If chalice lighting is not allowed, consider using a battery-powered tea light instead or substituting the chalice with a bowl of water and stones.
EXPLORING OUR VALUES THROUGH POETRY: WORKSHOP 2:
HANDOUT 1: THE PROPHET ON BEAUTY
from The Prophet by Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)
Beauty XXV
But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions."
At night the watchmen of the city say, "Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east."
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, "We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset."
In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills."
And in the summer heat the reapers say, "We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair."
All these things have you said of beauty.
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.
People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
EXPLORING OUR VALUES THROUGH POETRY: WORKSHOP 2:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: BEAUTY MEDITATION
FIND OUT MORE
For more suggestions of websites that publish young people's poetry, visit poetryclass (at www.poetryclass.net/index.htm) on the Internet.
Cornell University has a short biography of Gibran Khalil Gibran (at www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/gibrn.htm).