Tapestry of Faith: Exploring Our Values Through Poetry: A Program for High School Youth

Opening

Activity time: 5 minutes

Materials for Activity

  • Chalice and lighter

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 "funny" in silence. After about fifteen seconds, invite participants to speak freely into the space a word or two that they associate with the word "funny." 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,

Today we are going to read humorous poems, tell UU jokes, and have some fun. Some of your earliest memories of poetry might include humorous poems. How many of you have read books by Lewis Carroll, like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, or books by Eric Carle? Children love silly rhymes, and adults do too. We also enjoy poems that are not only funny, but have some deeper meaning. Many humorous poems have a message or a moral, like The Lorax and some other Dr. Seuss's poems. They show us that poetry can be both funny and serious. The question we face in this workshop is, can something be both funny and spiritual?