And Now For Something Completely Different

Today my minister and supervisor asked me quite frankly if I was preparing the congregation for the possibility of not having a DRE next year.

(Enter offstage sounds of bombs dropping from airplanes, terrible explosions, where before there had only been birdsong and breeze.)

What makes a community?  The kids answered and created this labyrinth mural.

I was caught, to say the least, quite off guard.  I mean I'm quite sure that isn't going to happen, ha ha, nervous laugh.  Not because I was suddenly afraid to be out of a job that I love, though that part would hit me later, a delayed drone attack that followed me to the car and targeted in while I drove home.  But because I had a moment where I rose up out of the very serious conversation in his study, through the beautiful vaulted roof, and looked down on a church, sitting among flowering trees and the unmistakably vibrant health of Springtime, like it was on a gurney and me above it, running alongside, not wanting to notice (but how could I not) its vital signs dropping. 

Annual stream cleanup behind our Fellowship

In the three years since I became DRE, my beloved community has struggled mightily, and seen our attendance, membership, and pledges drop.  The talk began to be of cutting programs.  All of which provided a very rational backdrop for the minister asking if I was doing enough to prepare the congregation to lay lead RE.

Through my shock and, now, sorrow at the question, I can't help but think about a very real response.

Here's my advice.  Should it come to it, here is what I think you should remember--for what it's worth.  Or what it's not, as the case may be.

Martin Luther King Jr. March

  
Look for the helpers.  Mr. Fred Rogers once said that as a child he heard about a troubling story on the news and asked his mama about it.  She told him that no matter how bad a situation was, to always look for the helpers--they are there.  When responsible for the religious education of children, it is even more important to remember this maxim.  You can't do it alone--it is too big and too important of a task.  Helpers may be the people around you, elders, leadership, parents, youth.  But don't forget that a web of resources exists to help religious educators and religious education thrive.  Reach out to them.

Look for the helpers--good teachers are worth their weight in gold.

A person's a person, no matter how small.  Remember that our children and youth don't get a vote.  They don't have a voice in congregational meetings or at the board meetings.  Families have varying degrees of involvement in the decisions of the church, but when you are responsible for the RE program, you take on the duty of being very clear and intentional in remembering that the religious education AND the spiritual, emotional, and physical health of children and youth is ESSENTIAL.  There is no political issue; no alliance or allegiance that should ever be perceived as more important than that sacred duty. Easier said than done, but done it must be, no matter what. 

Be shepherds to their growing spirits.

Haul water, chop wood.   Vision and leadership includes wiping up spills, getting the recycling together, and all the other little things that are part and parcel of a life with children and youth.  Hauling water and chopping wood means making the dozens of phone calls and sending the dozens of emails *that will never be responded to*.  It means sweeping up the glitter for the millionth time.  It means crunching the numbers every month and keeping the budget straight and well-documented, even when it's the last thing you want to do--even less than sweeping up the glitter again. It means doing the heavy lifting to build the garden beds when no one else is there to help and it has to be done before it rains.  And not being resentful about it.  It means taking responsibility. It means making the hard calls, and calling the parent about the teen you saw smoking. It means smiling and caring about the new family or the sad kid who can't handle class today, even when you have been up all night, and are needing pastoral care yourself.  Got all that?  Now do it all again, every day, as long as you have the responsibility for RE.  And learn to love it.  Because it has to be done, and you see that, and can and will rise to the occasion, because they deserve it.

Do the heavy lifting.  Smile about it.

Make memories with the children.  No lesson plan will embed itself more deeply in a child's identity and spirit than will watching a chick hatch, a seed sprout, or a snake shed its skin. Every good experience has something to do with our UU values and our principles.  A good teacher knows how to see the lesson embedded there, draw it out of the experience, and make it visible to the children--and s/he knows how to get them to see it and make it their own. Get them singing, dancing, digging in the dirt, watching bees pollinate, cleaning the stream, playing with babies.  Identity is formed around powerfully inspiring and engaging experiences.  Make sure they happen.

In the new RE organic garden, with a beautiful snake.  Making memories.

Protect the children and youth from politics, drama, and worst of all, a poverty of spirit and a spirit of scarcity.  Nourish their spirits, and their sense of who we UUs are, from a veritable wellspring of hope and joy.  Never let them see that providing their birthright, a religious education that inspires and nurtures them, costs the church, or the teachers, or the congregation.  Never put a dollar amount on what that kind of education is worth. Let them believe, a little longer, that this, providing this kind of experience, is what every child deserves, no matter what.  That it's just what we do.

Wise and magical people.

Always remember:  Everything we do is religious education. All we teach is Unitarian Universalism. The congregation is the curriculum. This includes the explicit AND implicit lessons we are teaching all the time, through our words and deeds, but also through what we do NOT speak of, and what we do NOT do.

An interest in the religious education of our young people receive is a vision of he future.  It is the very definition of stewardship--caring for precious natural resources today so that they will still be with us tomorrow.  So that they may still be us.

Guide them, help them grow--show them they are needed in this world.

For The Future

by Wendell Berry

Planting trees early in spring,
we make a place for birds to sing
in time to come. How do we know?
They are singing here now.
There is no other guarantee
that singing will ever be.