Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie

This question comes from Pablo Casals, one of the great cellists of the twentieth century. I originally found it in Matthew Fox's Original Blessing, his primer on Creation Spirituality. This question means a lot to me because it's responsible for my decision to become a religious educator and, eventually, a Unitarian Universalist minister.

Here's the story. Way back in 1995 I applied for the job of Director of Religious Education at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Bloomington, Indiana. Up until the moment I saw a notice for the position in the church's newsletter, I had no idea that a job like that existed. But as soon as I read the description, I knew it was the job for me. What's more, I knew that I would get the job and I had a strong sense that I had found my life's calling.

You see, I'd been working with gifted and talented children and youth (through the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University) for some time, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Additionally, I was beginning to once again hear a faint call to a life of service in a religious tradition, something I had considered when I was a very young adult. And finally, I had been reading Matthew Fox's book on Creation Spirituality, and this quote from Pablo Casals had made its way into my heart:

When will we teach our children in school what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you.... You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who, like you is a marvel?

If I could help children and youth discover who they really were, help them understand that they can feel "At Home in the Universe," (which was another book, this one by Stuart Kauffman, I was reading at the time), then I would be doing what I could with my gifts and talents to make this world a better place. It's the notion of "right livelihood," and it had never seemed so possible to me in my entire life.

So here's what I did. When the time came from my job interview, I walked into the room where the search committee was assembled and I sat down and said to them, "Before we get to the questions, I'd like to share something with you." And I read the quote from Casals and I said, "This is what I want to do: Help children learn what they are." I got that job, and several jobs since then.

I bring this up now because I think Casals' message is very close to the basic message of our tradition. And I've found a few less-than-favorable responses on the web to my posting of the Family Chalice group's explication of that essential message:

You are loved in this world (the simple message of Universalism) and
You are good (the simple message of Unitarianism).

Here's what people are saying: One blogger agrees that "Our children should know these things. Our adults should know them." However, "Watering it down to 'you are loved and you are good' is thin soup, indeed." Another commented that "I’m not a fan of watering down religious theology and tradition just to make it 'easy.' Those two statements utterly fail, in my opinion, to capture the heart and soul of either tradition."

I'd like for us to keep in mind that the goal of the Family Chalice group is to help families find ways to strengthen, deepen, and articulate their UU faith--as a family. This, I believe, is the great task before us simply because if we don't start doing this, we're going to see our adult numbers decline. Parents need to be able to say to their children what it is about Unitarian Universalism that makes it their family religion. And if they can say it in a way that their children will understand, they may even be able to say the same thing to their conservative Christian neighbors who, as you may know, have little trouble articulating the exact opposite of our message to their children and neighbors: we are all depraved and deserve to go to hell.

Telling our children that they are good and loved in this world is not a bad place to start. This isn't a matter of "watering down," it's a matter of "beefing up" ("tofu-ing up" for my vegetarian friends). Consider the current versions of these two essential messages from our Principles and Purposes and our Sources. "We affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person" (you are good), and "we draw from Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves" (you are loved).

These messages are there, but they're hidden, almost as if we're trying to be an occult sect that delights in making our take on the "truth" difficult for outsiders to find. In fact, I like to call these essential messages the "hidden truth" of Unitarian Universalism. Fortunately, folks like the Family Chalice group and the Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group at the UUA are making these messages a little easier for all of us--children, youth, and adults--to understand. My first post to this blog (which was roughly one year ago today) was the Vision Statement of the Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group. It begins like this:

We envision children, youth, and adults who: know that they are lovable beings of infinite worth, imbued with powers of the soul, and obligated to use their gifts, talents, and potentials in the service of life.

Sounds like "you are good and you are loved" to me. And it's something that I hope my son (who's due in July and already named Henry David!) will learn from his parents and his congregation over and over again, until he knows it's true, beyond a shadow of a doubt, in his heart and his mind and his soul.

Dan Harper of Yet Another Unitarian Universalist Blog commented on something in my previous post that I was already planning on addressing, namely, the place of "immersion experiences" in lifespan faith development. Dan believes (and I agree) "that immersion experiences like [those described in Children of a Different Tribe] can serve to do exactly the kind of education that Phil is calling for--sense of calling, discernment, commitment, all that good stuff. Let's be willing to be as innovative methodologically as we are theologically." I don't know if the following is necessarily innovative methodogically or even theologically, but I do think it might help us make these "immersion experiences" more meaningful.

First, here's how Sharon Hwang Colligan describes this sort of experience (and again, I'm using an excerpt from Kate Tweedie Erslev's Full Circle):

Colligan goes on to describe a Friday night conference during which the participants are sitting scattered in rows and listening to music but not interacting. Fifteen hours later on Saturday morning, the participants are now...

sitting close to one another, in groups or piles. Their bodies lean trustingly against one another. Hugs have become part of a normal greeting; reassuring or affectionate touch has become part of a normal conversation. Normal conversation is no longer the polite social chat of the evening before; now it is either a free-flowing sharing of the heart, of real life issues, or a free-flowing sharing of silliness, of spontaneous word games and free-association humor.... Walking into the conference after a morning errand in the outside world, I can feel the conference like a strong energy field that is warm, like a physical warmth; relaxing, like a bubble bath or a day at the beach. It's this energy field that the YRUU calls community.

A YRUU conference is a religious ritual. I think a closer word for that magical feeling that YRUU calls community is actually communion. Because it feels like a relaxing bath, I've been calling it "The Magic Pool of Communion." The Magic Pool of Communion is a powerful ritual and a powerful spiritual experience. As far as I can tell, it is the UU conversion experience. Not only youth converts, but also young adults, ministers and lay leaders will tell you that intellectually, they think the ideas are nice, but they first knew they were really a UU when they attended certain conferences, summer camps, assemblies or retreats. That's why our adult lay Leadership Schools last for a week and focus so much on bonding: we know that once someone has been to the Magic Pool, chances are high that they will serve this movement for life.

Even if they still can't explain what it is.

Okay, yes, experiences like this can have a lasting effect. We here in Prairie Star call them "a-ha moments," moments when a UU first feels that they are part of something larger. Yes, these moments are good, and we definitely want to encourage them. Two things, though. One, moments like this are not specifically Unitarian Universalist moments (I know that I felt many of the same things Colligan describes when I attended the summer music clinics at Indiana University when I was a teenager). And two, why don't UUs feel they are part of something larger in their home congregations?

I'll deal with the second question in a later post. For now I'd like to point out that experiences like this are so memorable and intense because we are social animals, and, according to University of Minnesota's School of Social Work,

When stressed, human beings seek relief. A well-documented positive coping mechanism is to seek a safe haven; that is a person and a setting where the youth experiences a sense of welcome, well-being, and acceptance. These behaviors are observed across the life span, from very young children to very old persons.

Being a liberal religious teenager in a conservative religious culture can be stressful. And the place where our youth are most likely to experience "a sense of welcome, well-being, and acceptance" is with other youth. So it's no surprise that YRUU conferences, with their emphasis on connecting youth with other youth, are experienced as something powerful, even as "a religious ritual," to use Colligan's words.

If our goal is to make individual youth feel like they are part of something larger, a "magical pool of communion," then YRUU conferences are doing their job. What they aren't doing is helping us raise lifelong UUs. If what Colligan wishes for were true--that experiences like these would lead to serving "this movement for life"--we would have a much larger percentage of youth staying in our movement. Just because I had an immersion experience at a music clinic when I was fourteen didn't mean I'd play the French horn for life. I'm still a musician of sorts, but not a serious one--I can bang on a guitar with gusto, but I'm certainly not a French hornist. And I think the majority of our youth who've come through the YRUU experience may still be religious people of sorts, but not lifelong UUs.

So, how do we make these experiences more meaningful? First, we shouldn't let our standard be whether or not youth enjoy the experience. I'm not saying that we should plan unenjoyable experiences for them, but we should acknowledge that odds are most youth will find a peer-centered gathering a generally enjoyable thing. Take worship for example. Dan Harper and Meg Muckenhoupt have pointed out that some youth worship experiences have pretty low expectations. In their essay "How to Kill a Religion...Or Help It Grow," they offer a formula for disaffection (read "youth" for "Booster" in the following passage):

Lead small-group worship services where each Booster gets to talk about his or her own problems but isn't required to respond to what anyone else has to say. They'll get used to concentrating on themselves instead of learning how to listen and worship as part of a congregation.

I've personally been moved by youth-led worship experiences from time to time. More often, however, the worship at YRUU conferences seems more like what Harper and Muckenhoupt describe. But the youth love it. Why? Because they're with their peers.

In the early 1980s, Kevin Rathunde set out to identify what made teenagers feel happy (the entire study is part of Optimal experience: Psychological studies of flow in consciousness, edited by Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi). Rathunde found that the one place teenagers consistently reported the highest level of happiness was when they were with their peers. More interesting, however, were the elements of the family-related activites that youth found relatively satisfying (that is, offered a "flow" experience). Here's how Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described those components in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience:

There is ample evidence to suggest that how parents interact with a child will have a lasting effect on the kind of person that child grows up to be. . . . The family context promoting optimal experience could be described as having five characteristics. The first one is clarity: the teenagers feel that they know what their parents expect from them--goals and feedback in the family interaction are unambiguous. The second is centering, or the children's perception that their parents are interested in what they are doing in the present, in their concrete feelings and experiences, rather than being preoccupied with whether they will be getting into a good college or obtaining a well-paying job. Next is the issue of choice: children feel that they have a variety of possibilities from which to choose, including that of breaking parental rules--as long as they are prepared to face the consequences. The fourth differentiating characteristic is commitment, or the trust that allows the child to feel comfortable enough to set aside the shield of his defenses, and become unselfconsciously involved in whatever he is interested in. And finally there is challenge, or the parents' dedication to provide increasingly complex opportunities for action to their children.

Replace the word "parents" with "congregations" and "child" with "youth" and you have a guideline on how to plan "immersion experiences" for youth that go beyond the "magical pool" of peer-centered "communion" to experiences that "will have a lasting effect on the kind of person" a youth will be. I believe we need more clarity, centering, choice, commitment, and challenge in our youth programs--especially in our congregations. I'm working on a model for this. I can't tell you the specifics right now, but I will tell you that it's congregationally-based, peer-centered, and family-friendly.

Last summer I ran across the following passage from Sharon Hwang Colligan's Children of a Different Tribe--UU Young Adult Developmental Issues quoted in Kate Tweedie Erslev's Full Circle, and it's been troubling me ever since. (The troubling part isn't specifically about youth and young adults--it's about Unitarian Universalism in general...but more on that in a moment). Here's the passage as quoted by Erslev:

I met with some district YRUU leaders who were aging out and interested in talking about creating conferences for UU young adults. Because, they said, "There is such a deep need."

Their eyes, their body language, were full of urgency and yearning and the fear of unbearable loss.

"Yes," I said. "I know. I understand. But, um--just for the record--can you tell me what, specifically, you think is needed? So I can have it in your words. So I can make sure that UUYAN works to meet it."

"Conferences," their leader said. Her body language put a universe into that one word. But then she stopped.

"But what kinds of things at conferences?" I persisted. "What kinds of activities? What kinds of qualities, what kinds of experiences? What would fill that important need?"

She didn't know how to answer me. I was a fellow UU; I was supposed to just know what the word conferences meant. She tried more meaningful glances, more urgent body language, more vivid energy exchanges. I persisted in asking for words.

Someone else tried. "You know. Community." Someone said, "Workshops." And then, "And uh, you know, worship and stuff." I tried, but that was as far as we ever got. Four words. Conferences, Community, Workshops, Worship. These were intelligent, beautiful young people trying to communicate to me about experiences that formed the emotional, spiritual, and social center of their lives--about a community program in which they were considered to be the leadership--and they could not find more than four words to say what it was.

That conversation stayed with me, haunted me. Their urgency, and their inability to speak. "There is such a need," they told me. That part they were able to say. "There is really an urgent need. Such a need for it." But what is "it"?

How is it possible that young adults raised in the UU tradition (presumably in UU congregations and hopefully in UU families) are so inarticulate about what they need as persons of faith? Well, the big question presented here gives us a clue, I think: What is "It"? I've heard this question raised before in a slightly different context. It was at a LREDA Fall Conference, I believe, and someone mentioned that nowhere in the hymn "It Sounds Along the Ages" is the word "it" ever defined (for some reason I have Helen Bishop's name attached to this conversation). At any rate, I took a look at William Channing Gannett's words for that hymn, and yes, indeed, the "it" there is about as vague as the indescribable "it" mentioned by the youth in Children of a Different Tribe. Here are those words:

It sounds along the ages,
Soul answering to soul;
It kindles on the pages
Of every Bible scroll;
The psalmist heard and sang it,
From martyr lips it broke,
The prophet tongues out-rang it
Till sleeping nations woke.

From Sinai's cliffs it echoed,
It breathed from Buddha's tree,
It charmed in Athens' market,
It hallowed Galilee;
The hammer stroke of Luther,
The Pilgrims' seaside prayer,
The testament of Torda
One holy word declare.

It calls--and lo, new justice!
It speaks--and lo, new truth!
In ever nobler stature
And unexhausted youth.
Forever on resounding,
And knowing nought of time,
Our laws but catch the music
Of its eternal chime.

What this confirms for me is something that I've suspected for quite sometime, namely, that whenever we've identified a problem in our youth (and now young adult) programming, it usually reflects a similar--and perhaps more acute--problem in our programming for adults. So, for example, if some people feel that the youth group in their congregation has become a clique which has separated itself from the rest of the community, I willing to bet that there is at least one group of adults--and probably more--who are behaving in a similar manner. And if it's difficult for youth to describe exactly just what they need as persons of faith (what the "it" is), it's not surprising to find that they are part of a tradition that has had trouble articulating the same needs in the past and continues to have trouble in the present (although to be fair to Gannett, he also wrote "Things Commonly Believed Among Us"). I hear a lot of talk about the "good news" of our liberal tradition, but I'm still not sure just what that "good news" is.

Now I know I said that this wasn't specifically about youth and young adults, but.... Erslev suggests that "immersion experiences" like YRUU Cons are crucial for developing lifelong UUs, that these Cons are where youth and young adults get some sense of what "it" is. While that may be true, Cons shouldn't be the only--or even the primary--place where they are getting a sense of what it means to be UUs. That's the work of our congregations. And that's why I was so thrilled to read about an exchange Frank Rivas, senior minister at First Universalist Church in Minneapolis, had with some young adults there. Here's what Rivas heard (and I'm reprinting his entire column here since the First Universalist website doesn't archive "The Liberal," the congregation's newsletter):

Not every church has a large, committed group of young adults, but we do, and we would do well to listen to them. I spent just one evening listening, and I heard in our conversation a vision of the future of our church, a future that includes:

a continued celebration of our religious diversity,
a desire for a religion that we take home—and take to work and take to the demonstration—with us,
a profound sense of calling, as well as an ongoing need for discernment,
a strong sense of commitment—not just joining the congregation for the good times, but staying with us as we struggle to find who we are, and
a need for ongoing, shared spiritual practice, particularly meditation.

There was more, of course, but these were some of the themes. I went away from our meeting with the thought that I have seen the future, and it is good.

We who signed up for Unitarian Universalism as a way to escape another tradition would be surprised at the extent to which these young people see ours as a positive, lifegiving faith. We who were content to
define our tradition as not Catholic or not Lutheran would be surprised at the ease with which these young people express their faith. I was surprised at their sense of calling and their desire for shared spiritual practice.

The stewardship campaign comes around each year. Each year we’re asked to pledge to a future that isn’t yet clear. It’s not entirely clear what our own financial condition will be in the year ahead, nor is it clear what decisions the church community will make. But with the directions articulated by the young adults, we can’t go too far afield. With the directions they articulated, we really can make a difference in the world.

Now, nothing against Cons and "immersions experiences," but I have to say that the vision put forward by the young adults at First Universalist is much more encompassing than a lot of our current youth and young adult programs. Any vision that includes a sense of calling, the need for discernment, a sense of commitment, and a need for ongoing, shared spiritual practice is a vision that I think we all can live with, no matter what our age. This vision may not define what "it" is, but I definitely think it points us in the right direction.

This evening I'll be leading a workshop for parents at Unity Church-Unitarian called "What Does a Unitarian Universalist Home Look Like?" Since much of what I'll be covering comes from previous posts to this blog, I thought I'd take the opportunity to "release two birds with a single gesture" (as former Meadville Lombard Prof. Carol Hepokoski used to say) by gathering my thoughts for the evening here, where they can also serve as a summary of some of my thinking on lifespan faith development.

Prairie Star District is one of the few places in the world of Unitarian Universalism that has officially announced its intention of keeping a majority of the children who are currently in our congregations as lifelong UUs. As far as I know, this was never the goal of the old Religious Education Department of the UUA; and while it is implicit in the Vision Statement of the current Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group there, it still hasn't been made explicit. In Prairie Star, however, both the professional and lay leadership have said that their highest priority is: "Consistently, a majority of children move through RE and stay in the denomination" (Report of the Seventh Year Review Task Force).

I've looked into what it takes to keep children and youth in a denomination, and I was surprised by what I found. According to Roland Martinson of the Luther Seminary in St. Paul, the eight key faith factors for developing lifelong members of a religious tradition are (in UU terms):

Faith integrated into family identity and practice;
Three or more adult mentors of vital faith;
Three or more months service in the name of justice, equity, and compassion in human relations;
Apprenticed early into leadership in their church;
Engaging, meaningful church experience in which youth are valued;
Excellent senior high/young adult ministry;
Encouraged by strong Unitarian Universalist friend(s);
Support within an engaging Unitarian Universalist community during a personal crisis.

Clearly, the family is the place to start if we want to keep more of our children in our tradition. So, how is faith integrated into a family's identity and practice?

This question lead me to a book by Robert Wuthnow called Growing Up Religious, and his identification of six "deliberate religious activities" that, when practiced at home, reinforce the religious tradition of the family, thereby engendering a strong faith in individual family members. They are:

Sharing family meals and saying grace;
Spending a few moments before bedtime to share the joys and worries of the day;
Having real conversations about what matters most in life;
Adorning your living spaces with symbols of your faith tradition;
Celebrating holidays in ways that the religious significance comes through;
Participating in your community of faith in ways that make it part of your family’s emotional support system.

While the first three activities may include religious symbols, numbers four and five are obviously related to what a religious home might look like.

At this point in the workshop, I'll ask the participants to identify some of the specifically religious things someone might find in a Jewish or Catholic household: a Mezuzah, a reliquary, a book of scriptures in a prominant place, a photograph or painting of an important religious figure, etc. Once we've come up with a few items, we'll move on to how one's home might become distinctively Unitarian Universalist.

First of all, a chalice--either homemade or purchased from an artisan. That one's pretty simple. But I wonder how many UU households actually do have a chalice that can be lit as a symbol of our faith? I know that some of our UU curricula--both for children and adults--have instructions for making and using a chalice. Still, I'm not aware of a single congregation that consistently encourages its families to have and use a chalice at home.

If the majority of UU households with children made lighting a chalice part of their daily or weekly routine--at dinner, perhaps, or before a family meeting--I'd bet that we would begin to keep more than 10% of our children and youth in the UU tradition. But that's just the beginning. What I'd do now in the workshop is propose using the Six Sources of our Living Tradition as a guide to making a household explicitly Unitarian Universalist:

Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit;
Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

What I like about using the sources is that they cut across our theological differences. So, for example, a family could try to find one object from each of the sources that would remind them of their faith. What object might point one toward a "direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder," or remind one of the "words and deeds of prophetic women and men"?

(I'm thinking here, by the way, of Kenneth Patton and the Charles Street Meeting House in Boston. I love the story that Charles Reinhardt recalls of "coming into the Meeting House one morning and finding [Patton] on his knees painting a mural of the Andromeda Galaxy for the proscenium. Says Reinhardt, 'He looked like a happy kid building a terrific model airplane.'")

Think of some of those astounding images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. At last month's Meadville Lombard Winter Institute, Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow covered the front of the conference room with some Hubble posters--a constant reminder of just how amazing this universe is. Of course these images say a lot about humankind's use of reason and intelligence to understand the interdependent web of all existence.

As far as prophetic women and men go, there are thousands of posters available that convey in words and images the principles of people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dorothy Day. Here are just a few of the quotes I found on posters from Donnelly/Colt's Progressive Resource Catalog.

From King:

...We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together.... you can't really get rid of one without getting rid of the others.... the whole structure of American life must be changed....

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral...

From Gandhi:

The Seven Deadly Social Sins:

Politics without Principle;

Wealth without Work;

Commerce without Morality;

Pleasure without Conscience;

Education without Character;

Science Without Humanity;

Worship without Sacrifice.

And from Dorothy Day:

Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy rotten system.

Wisdom from the world's religions is fairly easy, too. Consider this Golden Rule poster:

THE GOLDEN RULES
Gathered for the Golden Rule poster by Paul McKenna

Aboriginal Spirituality
We are as much alive as we keep the Earth alive.
- Chief Dan George

Baha'i Faith
Lay not on any soul a load that you would not wish to be
laid upon you, and desire not for anyone the things you would
not desire for yourself.
- Baha'u'llah, Gleanings

Buddhism
Treat not others in ways that you yourself would find
hurtful.
- The Buddha, Udana-Varga 5.18

Christianity
In everything, do to others as you would have them do to
you; for this is the law and the prophets.
- Jesus, Matthew 7:12

Confucianism
One word which sums up the basis of all good conduct. . .
loving kindness. Do not do to others what you do not want
done to yourself.
- Confucius, Analects 15.23

Hinduism
This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would
cause pain if done to you.
- Mahabharata 5:1517

Islam
Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others what
you wish for yourself.
- The Prophet Muhammad, Hadith

Jainism
One should treat all creatures in the world
as one would like to be treated.
- Mahavira, Sutrakritanga

Judaism
What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is
the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary.
- Hillel, Talmud, Shabbath 31a

Sikhism
I am a stranger to no one; and no one is a stranger to me.
Indeed, I am a friend to all.
- Guru Granth Sahib, pg. 1299

Taoism
Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain and your
neighbor's loss as your own loss.
- T'ai Shang Kan Ying P'ien, 213-218

Unitarianism
We affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web
of all existence, of which we are a part.
- Unitarian principle

Zoroastrianism
Do not do unto others whatever is injurious to yourself.
- Shayast-na-Shayast 13.29

We often see posters like this in the religious education classrooms of our congregations. Why not in our homes? And there are plenty of decorative items that feature symbols from the world religions, including those that integrate our flaming chalice.

Of course this is only the beginning. A fruitful (and fun, I hope) exercise would be to take each of the sources and try to come up with as many symbols as possible. Then think of the books and magazines that one might have around the house that could help deepen each family member's appreciation of the sources of our tradition (how many of you leave your copies of the UU World out on the coffee table?). The same is true with music and videos. I bet that almost every UU family could quickly come up with a list of 20 objects that would remind them of their faith. Some might be relatively cheap and easy to acquire (yes, you can make a chalice out of a flower pot!). Others may require a little money. Either way, the end result could be the same: a lifetime commitment to a life-enhancing faith...or as we say at Unity Church-Unitarian, a life of service, integrity, and joy.

A few weeks ago I mentioned a book called Connecting: The Mentoring Relationships You Need to Succeed in Life, by Paul D. Stanley and J. Robert Clinton. (I supposed the "D." in Paul D. Stanley is to help distinguish him, the International Vice President of a Christian leadership ministry called The Navigators, from Paul Stanley, the guitarist/vocalist of KISS.) The original post (The Real Meaning of Empowerment) dealt with the important role mentors play in the faith development of youth. But the book is really about the importance of mentoring relationships for adults. While the book if full of good information (albeit from a Christian perspective), I found the last chapter particularly useful.

You see, ever since I started as the Lifespan Program Director for the Prairie Star District of the UUA, I've been toying with the notion of a Unified Field Theory for Lifespan Faith Development. ("Unified field theory," according to Whatis.com, "is sometimes called the Theory of Everything [TOE, for short]: the long-sought means of tying together all known phenomena to explain the nature and behavior of all matter and energy in existence.") I'd really like to see us come up with a theory of Lifespan Faith Development that would explain why it is we teach the things we do--for children, youth, and adults.

I haven't been able to tie everything together...yet. But when I reached the last chapter of Connecting, I did realize one important piece that was missing: the ending. You may have heard of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (I confess to using a Franklin/Covey planner myself). I won't run through them all here, but I will mention Habit #2: Begin with the End in Mind. The way I see it, other religions definitely have an end in mind. Eternal Life...Nirvana...Bliss...Paradise. But as I noted in last week's post, our tradition seems to end where it starts: Are You a Unitarian Universalist Without Knowing It? Our tradition, it seems, is one of the only religions I can think of that expects converts to already be a fully-functioning member of the community when they first arrive.

Sounds like the opposite of beginning with the end in mind. If becoming a Unitarian Universalist is something that happens when you first notice that you share certain beliefs (enter "Unitarian" into the search engine of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion website if you need some help figuring out what those beliefs might be), then just what the heck are you supposed to do once you join the club? Starting a UU blog seems to be the latest trend.

No wonder Adult Religious Education is so hard to do in our congregations. (I'm sure many of you do it well, but my experience has been that it's exceedingly difficult). I think that if we did start with the end in mind, we might be able to offer a little bit more than Great Decisions or BYOT to adults who come through our doors. So, here's what Stanley and Clinton offered in the last chapter of the book: Finishing Well. Now, remember, I'm just starting to work on this, but I think that if we made helping people finish their lives well the goal of our religious education and faith development programs, we might be able to come up a faith development process that could consistently change lives.

So here are five traits of those who finished well (that is, who reach the end of their lives with a vibrant faith):

They had a perspective which enabled them to focus.
They enjoyed "an original relation to the universe" (to use Emerson's words) and experienced repeated times of inner renewal.
They were disciplined in important areas of life.
They maintained a positive learning attitude all their lives.
They had a network of meaningful relationships and several important mentors during their lifetime.

I don't know about you, but I'd like to end my life that way. And, perhaps more importantly, I want to hang out with people like that now. Imagine what our Adult Religious Education or Faith Development programs would be like if these were our goals.