"And How Are the Children?" Marian Wright Edelman and the Children's Defense Fund have been asking this question for many years. Her cry is, "Leave no child behind! Leave no child behind in America at this turn of the century."

Yet we do. Today and every day, countless children in America are left behind. Today and every day:

• 1,540 babies are born without health insurance;
• 798 babies are born at low birthweight;
• 13 million children are in below-standard child care centers;
• Nearly 5 million children are left home alone after school;
• 2,806 high school students drop out;
• 2,140 babies are born in poverty;
• 11.8 million children rely on food stamps for their meals;
• Nearly 12 children and youth under the age of 20 die from firearms;
• Over 100,000 children are in detention, correctional, or shelter facilities;
• 218 children are arresteed for violent crimes;
• 399 children are arrested for drug abuse.

These are not simply statistics to be deplored. These are the children of our human family in America; these are (in the words of many Americans) God's children; these are our children. This year's Children's Defense Fund campaign urges us to give to all American children what they deserve: a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, and a Moral Start. "Now is the time," Edelman exhorts us, "to end immoral and preventable child poverty, hunger, homelessness, and sickness in the richest nation on earth. Now is the time to stand up and show the children we truly value them. Now is the time to build a more just and compassionate and less violent society -- one where no child is left behind."

There is another prophet in our land, Sobonfu Some. She comes from Africa to remind us in America of the common sense we have almost forgotten, "that children hold the knowledge and gifts that ensure the survival of the village and community. Children complete the community! Without children the world would be a dead end and communities would not exist. Children are the life-givers, the healers, the messenger of the ancestors. They bring out the spirit of the community, they bring spirit home."

In our religious communities we offer one of the last places in our culture of intergenerational contact. As our nuclear families grow up and drift apart, here is the chance for grandparents and grandchildren and extended families and all kinds of families to come together in new ways. When we create the kind of religious community where our children feel loved and welcomed and safe, we heal one another and are the life-giving messengers across the generations.

Our Unitarian Universalist prophet, Sophia Lynn Fahs, preached and practiced her ministry with children. "Put the children in our very midst! Let us first give children opportunities to observe common things and happenings and stories that relate to their own experiences. Give them opportunities to sense for themselves the mystery in being alive and in growing and learning. We would be companionable and sympathetic, joining children in their own wonderings. Let us restrain oursleves from giving them answers in theological language, lest a name be too easily substituted for an experience no words can truly justify." This is respect for children.

Too often our religious communities reflect the social stratification of our society at large. Most of our society's institutions, workplaces, schools, recreation arenas, entertainment centers, congregations are segregated by age. When people enter many of our Unitarian Universalist churches and meeting houses, they are likely to be shepherded "upstairs or downstairs" -- adults in one place, children and youth in another. People are also ghettoized by age groups for the services and programs of the community, whether it's in worship, religious education, pastoral care, social action or service projects, social events, or especially governance and congregational decision making. This is not the right relationship!

How can we overcome this upstairs-downstairs syndrome? How can we best welcome, care for, and nurture the children and their families who choose to join with us in religious community? To move us beyond the prevalent American context and into a congregation built on mutually respectful relationships, I believe at least four conditions are necessary. The first condition is that our religious communities are informed by the experience of the child. This relationship recognizes the importance of a child's curious mind, trusting heart, and enthusiastic spirit. When do we listen to the questions of a toddler or experience the tears of a 12-year-old or catch the spirit in the story of a fourth-grader? The second condition is that congregations create and sustain hospitable space where families can worship together, play together, and learn from one another. Is there a place where people of all ages gather every Sunday and everyone knows your name? A religious community that provides a caring and competent adult presence in the lives of children is the third condition. An intentionality of continued adult presence in children's lives builds bonds of love, freedom, and responsibility. It takes weeks and months and years to truly listen to the unfolding wisdom of those whom we nurture. The fourth condition is a central celebration of memory and hope that encourages and nurtures the child's ongoing process of transcendence. It is communicating the hope-filled dynamic of justice in human relations and love stronger than death that defines our covenant with children. It is engaging one another with a sense of hope, suffering with, and standing by each other in times of transition and tragedy, joy and celebration. Through these four conditions we can begin to sense what it means to take children seriously.

There are wonderful examples of Unitarian Universalist ministries with children in which people of all ages worship together, children and adults serve together in their community's food pantry, youth serve on the congregation's governing board, children dance with adults at social events, and times of joys and sorrows as well as prayers and parades are multigenerational. Yet there are many more opportunities and possibilities to seize today and every day and the future beckons us onward.

As we glimpse into the future, I am reminded of a conference on the world's religions for the world's children, and the pledge we shared there. It begins with these lines: "The child has the breadth of spirit of life. The child, present here and now, is the past embodied and the future becoming. The child wants to survive, to be protected, to develop." These lines emphasize that ministry with children is a mutual principle of all religious people.

In conclusion please read these lines in the spirit of prayer: