Our Children Ought To Be Grounded

I don't mean they should be sent to their rooms to repent, but that we owe it to our children to offer them a Unitarian Universalist identity. I share with my colleague in Concord, MA, the Rev. Gary Smith the urge to get to "the identification of a corpus of material we would like our children to know, to own in their beings, by the time they have come of age in our programs..." ("Taking Our Children Seriously," in the collection of essays on UU religious education, Essex Conversations: Visions for Lifespan Religious Education. Available from www.uua.org/bookstore).

We already provide a safe and supportive environment for creative interchange in our RE program, we're good at looking at the content of other religious traditions- what about our own?

The DRE and I have been in conversation about this. What are the foundational texts we want to emphasize this year? How will we perceive them through the 7 principles? What texts from the 6 sources shall we lift up? What 5 UU songs or hymns shall we emphasize? What 4 readings or prayers shall we ask them to write? What 3 projects? What 2 acts of spiritual risk taking? What 1 credo might they write?

Those of you who have come to Unitarian Universalism fairly recently from other religious traditions may find this desire rather unremarkable but in some ways it is a revolutionary confession. Most UU "Coming of Age" programs have been based on one of two objectives: helping a younger person become ready for membership in a particular congregation or in more clearly identifying their particular spiritual path and practice. Until recently, the idea that there could be a catechism, or standardized set of ideas about what it is important to know about Unitarian Universalism has been studiously avoided.

In many cases- this has meant our children growing up knowing less about Unitarian Universalism than what anyone can read in an encyclopedia entry.

A few weeks back when I sat in on a class of our own Coming of Age youth, I asked them to memorize the Principles & Purposes by Christmas. As our DRE reminded me, she and I will need to memorize them by then too! I ask them to do this not for rote recitation but as building blocks for their personal theology.

This path will help them to really learn the colors in our rainbow, the pieces in the UU puzzle, the notes in the scale. What life story will they paint? What justice will they fit together? What new hymns of meaning will they sing?

Only by thorough familiarity and deep engagement with the sources of our faith, can our youth wrest Unitarian Universalism out of our hands, and claim it as their own. I look forward to their educating me! And for you, gentle reader, what are you willing to do to gain more spiritual depth?

Rev. Dr. Daniel Ó Connell