Below are some suggested ways to use the article "Glorious Rivers," from the June issue of uu&me!, in small groups. Starting this fall, uu&me! will be available to purchase in bulk quantities at a reduced rate. Churches that take advantage of this offer will be sent a worksheet of suggested small group activities, similar to this sample, for each issue. See below for ideas on how to fund subscriptions and distribute the magazine in your church school.

Glorious Rivers
1. Focus on sacred rivers and holy water

Christianity and Judaism
Read the Jordan River paragraph. Locate it on a map of the world. Look up the passages in the Bible and read them aloud. Discuss baptism and other water rituals in Christianity (holy water found at entrance of RC churches) and Judaism (immersion in a ritual bath, called a Mikveh, when a person converts to Orthodox or Conservative Judaism).

Hinduism
Read the paragraph on the Ganges River. Locate it on a map of the world. Discuss the concept of religious pilgrimage. What other religions encourage believers to go on a pilgrimage? (note especially Islam) Discuss the concept of a sacred place. What makes a place sacred? Why do you think a river would be considered sacred? Do UUs have sacred places? Do you have a sacred place?

Shinto
The Shinto religion is the native religion of the Japanese people. Shinto gods and goddesses live everywhere-in the earth, sky, rivers, and mountains. Shinto shrines, where people worship, were often built near water, by a river, lake or waterfall. Just inside the gate of every shrine is a tsukubai, a stone bowl of water. Everybody entering the shrine washes their hands and mouths with the water in the tsukubai. In the past, people would wash their whole bodies in the nearby river before entering the shrine. This ritual was called misogi. Water rituals work in two ways: they give good luck (like health, wealth, wisdom) and they take away bad luck. Some say there is a water ritual to bring good luck to almost any event in a person's life. Japanese people often paint or carve the symbol for water on the roof of a house to protect it from fire.

Activities

• Make your own sacred water container (small bowl) using self-hardening clay. Paint after it is dry and fill with water from a special place in your life.
• Paint the Japanese character meaning "water" on any material suitable for hanging (paper, wood shingle, cardboard). Use black watercolor paint and thick watercolor brush to make the thick stroke lines. Hang in your house to protect it from fire.
• Make your own stone and water fountain (see June, 1999 issue of uu&me! for complete instructions).

• Find a map of a river in your area, from your local library or town hall. Do a little research on the history of the river, particularly its significance to humans. Find a copy of the Clean Water Act of 1968, or research its contents. Bring your research to the discussion.
• Read the Nile River paragraph. Was your local river used by people for crop irrigation or feeding livestock? Read the Hudson River paragraph. Discuss the Clean Water Act of 1968 that made it illegal for factories to dump toxic chemicals into water and required towns to build sewage treatment plants.
• Why do you think we need to pay so much attention to our water? Here are some startling facts:
  1. On average, each of us in the United States uses over 160 gallons of water every day (that's enough to fill three bathtubs!).
  2. Other than farming and personal use, list some other ways water is used (factories use water to make goods such as paper and chemicals, miners need water to get metals from the ground, power plants that make electricity use a lot of water.)
  3. Altogether, the United States uses 340 billion gallons or water each day (that would fill a swimming pool 10 feet deep, 100 feet wide, and over 8,000 miles long!!).

Activities

• Make a list of all the ways you can conserve water every day. Have each child make a poster of this list to remind family members.
• Make underwater spyscopes to explore the rivers near you.
• Check out www.epa.bog/OGWDW/kids for fun water activities.

Get uu&me! in your church!
Here are some ideas to help you provide uu&me! to the children of your church.

• Buy multiple copies of the September, 1999 issue to put in registration or new-family packets this fall. (1-10 copies @ $5; over 10 @ $3.50) Have uu&me! available in the pews, or in a basket at the entrance to the sanctuary, for use during adult services
• Ask the Women's Alliance, Men's Group, Youth Group, or other organized group in your church to "adopt" one of your church school classes, providing the children in that class with a one-year gift subscription to uu&me! (as a birthday gift, or at the time of registration).
• You may resell uu&me! subscriptions at whatever lower cost you choose to defray your cost, or you may ask parents for a voluntary contribution when you give a subscription as part of church school registration.
• Waive the additional shipping and handling costs ($4.50 per subscription starting 9/1/99) by purchasing 10 or more subscriptions, to be bulk mailed to your church. We'll pay the cost of mailing the copies of each issue to you; you can either send them on to individual children or deliver them through Sunday classes.

The Jordan River, or the "River Jordan" as some people call it, has been special to Jews and Christians for hundreds of years. There is a story in the book of Joshua in the Hebrew Bible (capter 4:14 to 17) that tells about the time when the waters of the River Jordan stopped flowing so the Hebrew people could cross it. A story in the book of Matthew in the Christian Bible (Chapter 3:13 to 17) tells how John the Baptist baptized Jesus in the River Jordan by pouring water over Jesus's head while he stood in the river. Since then, water from the River Jordan has been bottled and sold all around the world for millions of Christians to use when they baptize new Christians into their faith.

The Nile River in Egypt is the longest river in the world. Egyptaisn who lived along the Nile thousands of years ago were the first people to use irrigation as a way to get river water to crops trying to grow far away from the river itself. Every year the Nile would swell up with rain and floood all the land on either side. After the water drained away, the land that it had covered would be full of nutrients. At first the Egyptians just planted seeds in this rich mud, and they saw that the crops grew very well. As time passed, they dug canals so some of the rich floodwater could run on to land that was farther away from the Nile River. They let the water stay on this land for six to eight weeks before they drained it off and planted seeds where the rich floodwater had been. Today farmers all over the world irrigate their farms this way and have discovered many other ways to do it, too.

Many people think that the city of Varanasi on the Ganges River is one of the oldest cities in the world. The Hindus call the city Kasi, and believe it is a holy city and that the Ganges is a sacred river. Every year about on emillion religious Hindu pilgrims visit the city. There are stairs on each side of the river so people can get down to the holy river water and bathe. The Hindu people also believe that if you spread the ashes of people who died on top of the water in the Ganges, those people's spirits would go straight to Heaven.

In 1966 a group of people who live along the Hudson River in New York got together to do something about the terrible pollution of the river. Pollution in the river was so bad that the fish were poisonous to eat and the state was forced to ban fishing. This group believed that if local people learned to care for one boat on one river, then people everywhere might come to care for all the rivers that are threatened by pollution. So they built a large sailboat and called it Clearwater. They began to travel up and down the river playing music and teaching people about pollution and ways to stop it. And they helped people to support laws that would stop the pollution. Today, the Hudson River is much cleaner and the Clearwater is a "floating classroom" where kids and adults learn about rivers and how to protect them. Thousands of people enjoy the many waterfront festivals of music, dance, arts and crafts, and environmental education that are conducted by the Clearwater each year.