Cranes for Marina

As many of you know, our entire FUSS community is involved in making 1000 cranes for Marina. They will decorate her recovery room as she recovers from surgery. Melinda Perrin has led this effort and so many people have joined. In RE one week we had a guest family excited to come and share how to make cranes with our 5th and 6th grade class.

Parents as Spiritual Guides

This spring Religious Education is again offering an evening program geared towards parents. Parenting: Mindfulness: Spirituality, looks at the intersections of these three things.  The course is for building community and support for each other in the work of parenting, especially children and adolescents. It is discussion based with no reading required, although there will be handouts and suggested readings to deepen your perspective on the topics we will be exploring.

The program combines RE curriculum on "Parents as Spiritual Guides," with practices and suggestions from the book Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting. We will honor our own spiritual journeys as we consider faith development of children and adolescents. We'll look at the ways RE at FUSS can support parents and children. We will also look at a model for doing social justice work together in our community.

We will meet for 5 Sundays from 5-7PM: March 17 & 24; April 7,14 & 21. Potluck dinner for everyone, including children; childcare provided. Please e-mail or call Melissa MacKinnon, DRE with questions or to register.

SUNDAE SUNDAY

Tomorrow is Sundae Sunday! Our fabulous Religious Education Council has organized this annual event. It's set up so all ages get to mingle and, hopefully, you'll enjoy some ice cream with someone you do not know well, yet.  Our senior youth will scoop the ice cream.  They will be asking for donations towards the mission trip some of them are taking to Guatemala this summer. There are vegan options too.

Our Whole Lives for 5th&6th graders starting

Our Wholes Lives is an important curriculum we offer as part of religious education at First Unitarian Society Schenectady. In a culture filled with negative stereotypes about gender and sexuality, OWL offers a positive, life- affirming opportunity to link sexuality, social justice and spirituality. Here's a description from the Unitarian Universalist website,

Our Whole Lives helps participants make informed and responsible decisions about their sexual health and behavior. It equips participants with accurate, age-appropriate information in six subject areas: human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior, sexual health, and society and culture. Grounded in a holistic view of sexuality, Our Whole Lives not only provides facts about anatomy and human development, but also helps participants clarify their values, build interpersonal skills, and understand the spiritual, emotional, and social aspects of sexuality.

At FUSS we offer OWL at two points in religious education, between 4th -6th grade and between 7th-9th grade.

We are offering the 8-week Our Whole Lives program for 5th and 6th graders beginning January 27, at 10:30 AM, with a parent/child class. There is a parent orientation this Sunday, January 20th, in Waters House, beginning at noon. We will have lunch available and there is childcare.

The OWL course requires parental approval in order for children to participate. During these 8 weeks there are no drop -ins allowed.

Our OWL programs are run by trained adult facilitators. Our facilitators are volunteers from FUSS who get additional training to lead Our Whole Lives. They are incredibly dedicated to this program and the children they serve. If you are interested in being trained, please talk with Melissa MacKinnon, Director of Religious Education.

Helping out during the Holidays

Religious Education is collecting gifts, thru December 23, for the moms and children at Sojourn House during Christmas. Sojourn House is a homeless shelter for women and children, located nearby on Union St. Families stay for differing amounts of time and receive help finding permanent housing. Many are women escaping domestic violence and so they arrive with nothing.

Because of the nature of the shelter and the differing situations of the women and children who arrive, there is no way to know exactly which families will be there over Christmas. So we ask for an array of gifts for different ages. These are families that are not connected to any holiday adopt a family programs. so our gifts really do matter.

Most of the children who stay with their moms at Sojourn House are young. But occasionally there are older children and teens. I do check with Sojourn House staff a few days before Christmas just to see if there are any older children. When there are, I make an extra effort to see that there are appropriate gifts for them too.

Since this coming Sunday is Revels, we will have a basket, located near the church office, for donations. It is there all week so people can drop off donations any time the church is open.

The last Sunday we collect, December 23, we will have a table at the back of the Great Hall.

Gift Ideas for Sojourn House: 

For Babies: onesies, sleepers, baby lotions, baby body wash, baby powder,  rattles, teething and soft toys, sippy cups, clothing.

For Children: trucks, matchbox cars, dinosaur/animal figures, baby dolls in strollers, blocks/building sets, play dough, crayons, coloring books, magnetic letters, Puzzles, Books, non-toxic arts and craft supplies, board games, craft kits (bracelet making, mosaics etc), playing cards

For Moms: comforter sets/blankets, bathrobes, slippers, body wash/lotion sets, (no candles or anything that burns). gift cards to Price Chopper and Walmart, children’s dvds, notepad & pen sets, alarm clocks or regular wall clocks. Things moms spend a lot of money on: diapers (mostly size 4 and 5), wipes, bus passes for transportation, and snacks. Things to start up an apartment: Tupperware, pots/pans, dish towels/cloths, shower curtain...

Holiday Presence: the gifts of spiritual practice

For the past two weeks in religious education we have explored spiritual practices with our elementary- aged children. We practiced yoga with postures, breathing and meditation. We worked with labyrinths and snow globes! Last Sunday the children heard a story for Advent and created Advent wreaths to bring home. They learned a song to sing as they light a candle each week.

Spiritual practice take time. And the beauty is, when we slow down, when we practice slowing down, other things in our lives become more manageable. Time becomes a little more spacious. Spiritual practices can help to anchor us in trying times. They can help us slow down and focus on what is truly important. Spiritual practices center us and allow us to be of greater service to the world. They allow us to better live out our values.  

Practicing with your child/children can be a way to build and sustain a life-affirming habit. Make a habit of it when things are going well and it will be there for you when things are not. Cultivating spiritual practices with children can be a simple as practicing gratitude daily. Or pausing once during the day, maybe at the end of they day, to consciously breath. The practices and value of breath awareness are well- documented. Simple breathing practices can lead to meditation practices.

Many of us have some time off during this holiday season. Consider making mindful presence, starting a spiritual practice, a present of this season.

Here are some resources if you are interested in reading more. But the most important part is making time for a practice.

Playful Family Yoga, by Teressa Asencia
Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness With Children, by Thich Nhat Hahn.
Anh's Anger, by Gail Silver

RE-thinking Thanksgiving

As Unitarian Universalists we are called by our theology and our history to create beloved community. The work of creating community includes deep, deliberate and thoughtful consideration of the traditions and practices we teach and pass on. Re-thinking Thanksgiving, and the stories that are taught along with it, is an opportunity to consider some of these stories.

With Columbus Day and Thanksgiving, we have a strong cultural narrative repeated in many places. It goes something like this:  Columbus discovered America. Eventually, white Europeans settled here in what we know as the Northeast, aided  by Native Americans, who were acknowledged in the first Thanksgiving celebration.

For children, these stories are often the first stories they learn about encounters between different cultures and races. These stories are, by and large, narratives of “progress” and the “manifest destiny” of white Europeans to inhabit this space.  They are full of inaccurate, racial stereotypes that do a great disservice to Native peoples and to the actual stories.

Columbus did not discover a land any more than Romans discovered the lands they conquered. He committed genocide of the entire native population he first came into contact with. Based on the stories by historians and biographers who admired him, Columbus was brutal and cruel. Do we really want to celebrate this story in this way? Around the United States, many communities have begun celebrating Indigenous People's Day instead of Columbus Day.

The stories of European conquest and Native American resistance are far more complex and relevant to our lives today.  They are stories of resistance and endurance and connection.

There are stories of the Iroquois League of Nations as one of the first examples of democracy. The peoples who became known as the Iroquois united under a man called the Peacemaker. They continue even today to teach these stories that speak to peace as a way to resolve conflict and support the health of the earth and the next seven generations of humans to come.

We can acknowledge a troubling past as way to move forward. We can also acknowledge that Native peoples are still here, living in towns and cities, as well as some of their ancient ancestral lands.

In upstate New York we have a rich heritage, thanks in part to the Iroquois, of democracy and peacemaking. These are stories full of gratitude for the earth, the air, the water, animals and humans. 

2013 marks the 400^th anniversary of the first agreement between Europeans and American Indian Nations of Turtle Island (North America.) Recorded on the Two Row Wampum belt, is a covenental agreement that the peoples live in friendship, peace and in parallel, “as long as the grass is green, as long as the rivers flow downhill and as long as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.”

FUSS Religious education will be participating in the Two Row WampumRenewal Campaign: Honoring Native Treaties/ Protecting the Earth. We can learn the stories from this land and be grateful for all that we have here.