Growing up UU
Rev. Daniel S.
Schatz
BuxMont Unitarian
Universalist Fellowship
December 3, 2006
“I don’t know.
What do you think?”
If there’s a single phrase that
encapsulates a Unitarian Universalist childhood, surely that is the one.
Growing up at Cedar Lane Unitarian Church in the suburbs of Washington,
DC, I heard those words over and over again.
If we asked a question in Sunday School beyond mere fact, the question
would inevitably be turned around. “What
do you think?” “What is your
opinion?” What does your heart
tell you? What does your mind tell
you?
The theme was constant
exploration, from the class of six year olds that imagined what it was like to
be born and what kinds of homes they would one day live in to the ten year olds
asking questions about time, to the group of teenagers sitting and talking about
life and love and politics and whatever questions challenged us.
“What do you think?”
Do you have any idea how
maddeningly frustrating it is to constantly have your questions handed back to
you? Do you have idea how freeing
it is to be taught to find your own truth?
This was my childhood, and it is
the foundation of openness, acceptance and community that formed the basis for
my life – and the lives of thousands of Unitarian Universalist kids just like
me.
I grew up in a large church –
Cedar Lane had over a thousand members and the senior youth group alone had as
many as ninety children at one time. Like
BuxMont, Cedar Lane prided itself on a strong Sunday School program.
Each week, my father would get me out of bed – or, if I was at my
mother’s house that weekend, pick me up – and we would drive down Cedar Lane
to the church, listening to “Stained Glass Bluegrass” on the radio.
Even at a young age, the contrast in approaches to religion was obvious.
Even at a young age, I found commonality and comfort in both.
We would go straight to our
classrooms for 45 minutes of wonder –“Haunting House,” “Festivals
and Celebrations,” “Travels in Time,” “How Can I Know What To
Believe?” “Growing Up Year,” “About Your Sexuality,” “You and UU,”
“Life Issues for Teenagers.” In
the Spring it was intergenerational classes – everything from “Movies With a
Message” to “Model Rockets” to “Mime.”
Even in these classes, not religious at all on the surface, we found new
ways to explore, new questions to ask, new ways of being in community.
We knew what we were there for,
usually we made it fun, and always we were expected to speak the truth as we –
not someone else – saw it.
Do you have any idea how
empowering it is to tell a small child that his or her ideas are important?
Do you have any idea how amazing it is for a child to hear “What you
think about the world is as important as what anybody else thinks?
I can’t actually tell you
much about what we learned in all of those classes, at least the ones from my
younger days. I don’t remember
what we talked about in “Travels in Time” or “Growing Up Year” other
than images – the big Chinese New Year Celebration, the sense of history, the
question always asked: “What do
you think?”
And I remember the
teachers. Tom, Susan, Ilse, Sally,
Maury and others – these were people who gave their time to us kids. Some of them were there every week, encouraging, goading,
inviting children to think and to ask questions about the world, our beliefs,
and our responsibilities.
Some of those teachers had
been there for years, and you could tell that they absolutely loved what they
were doing. I remember watching a
teacher appreciation ceremony one Sunday in the service. Normally the kids didn’t attend services, but since my
stepmother taught the You and UU class we would often stay for the second
service. Each teacher was given a
certificate, and those who had taught for five years or longer received a small
gift. Then the woman who was
speaking – it must have been the Religious Education Committee chair –
looked up and said, “We didn’t know what to do with this one.
Ilse Fleischman has taught Sunday School every year for 35 years.
She created the Festivals and Celebrations class and is constantly
bringing in boxes upon boxes of materials for projects.
Somehow a certificate isn’t going to do the trick.
So we are giving her – right by the back door to the RE wing – her
own parking space. And she hauled
out a beautiful wooden sign that said, “Reserved on Sunday Mornings for Ilse
Fleishman.”
It was a well chosen gift.
I remember Ilse and her husband Ralph – and it is teachers like them
who inspired a fascination with and appreciation for the religions of the world,
and helped inspire me and others to ministry.
Ilse died a few years back, after teaching for at least another decade
– and though I hadn’t seen her for years, I still grieve her passing.
After class we would file
into chapel – listening, every Sunday morning, to our Minister of Religious
Education, Rev. Ellen Johnson Fay, singing “Enter Rejoice and Come In,” and
leaving every Sunday singing “Shalom Havayreem.” This was our worship, and it was just that – worship for
children. Nobody told us what to
believe or how to believe, but we knew that we were important, what we thought
and felt mattered, and that we would make a difference in the world.
I don’t remember being
taught what to think about war, social justice, and equal rights, though I’m
sure we talked about these things in church.
I know that I had been a pacifist as long as I could remember, even when
adults around me tried to talk me out of it.
I tried not being a pacifist, but it just didn’t work for me. I know that when, at some point in my childhood, I began to
understand that some men loved men and some women loved women, it didn’t phase
me for a second. I don’t think
we’d ever talked about it in church – remember, I was still in elementary
school and this was awhile ago – but the Unitarian Universalist values I was
raised with guided me. In later
years I helped some of my high school friends, raised in less understanding
environments, to accept their own homosexuality or bisexuality and connected
them with resources that they needed. The
ability to do that was a gift that my church provided to me and by extension to
them.
It was one among many, many
gifts. Asked, years later, if
Unitarian Universalism had saved my life, I found myself replying that Unitarian
Universalism had made my life – it was the formation of my thought and ethics
and way of relating to people around me.
Unitarian Universalism
helped me through the most difficult life transitions – even coming to terms
with my own growing body and developing sexuality.
Back in those days the UU sexuality education program we now call OWL, or
Our Whole Lives, was known as About Your Sexuality, and at Cedar Lane we
didn’t even call it that. I think
there might have been some sort of cultural taboo against admit admitting we
were talking about sex – which in some circles was considered almost as bad as
talking about money. So we called
it “Close Encounters.”
At first I thought this would be incredibly cool
– an entire class about science fiction!
In 7th grade I was still young enough to be initially
disappointed that we were going to be talking about sex all year. Then I didn't know what to think,
and later I was immensely grateful, as I still am.
I knew more about sex – actual true information – than anybody else
in my junior high school class, and at the age of 13, those kinds of bragging
rights are more precious than money. When
I later started dating and having relationships, that knowledge helped me to
define limits, be safe, and respect my partner.
A few years ago a Newsweek article on the controversies surrounding sex
education in the schools included a picture of a woman holding a sign that said
“You can trust your daughter with my son – he’s been through Sexuality
Education at a Unitarian Universalist Church.”
In that sense, Unitarian Universalism has undoubtedly saved the lives of
countless youth who entered adolescence with real knowledge.
Of course, it wasn’t
always easy. The following year our
senior Minister, Ken MacLean, said in a sermon that “Junior High School was
Hell, because I wasn’t any good at sports, and I wasn’t popular.”
I told him in coffee hour that Junior High School still was Hell, and for
the same reasons. I’m not sure why I attended both services that Sunday, but
I was surprised to discover that my own experience of Junior High School Hell
became incorporated into the second version of the sermon.
Although I wouldn’t have put it this way at the time, it was one kind
of religious affirmation of suffering – even the ordinary angst of a 13 year
old is worth lifting up and giving its due.
We were important.
There were 400 or more kids in our Sunday School, but we all knew that we
each mattered. As teenagers, we
participated in shows, volunteered at the Special Olympics and the Zacchaeus
Soup Kitchen, gave readings or songs in services if that was our talent, and put
on special youth Sundays for the church. We
were accepted for who we were, as we were.
It didn’t matter if I had holes in my jeans when I got up with my
autoharp to sing “Angel from Montgomery” in the service – a special
request from Alida DeCoster, our Associate Minister (and a huge Bonnie Raitt
fan). It didn’t matter if youth
stretched the rules and challenged the assumptions of the adults from time to
time. We were fully and
increasingly part of a community of exploration and meaning.
Do you have any idea what a
gift that is?
I have many more memories
– lock-ins and pizza parties with the youth group, conversations about
everything from abortion to Unitarian Universalist history in our ninth grade
“You and UU” class, receiving the Growing Up Year Certificate that hangs on
my office wall today, the ninth grade trip to Boston during which I saw
my first glimpse of Harvard Divinity School and thought that the place looked
rather appealing, really, the doughnuts we sold all year during coffee hour to
raise money for that trip, three years of Youth Caucus at the General Assembly,
in which the voice of the youth was and still is considered one of the most
important and respected in our denomination.
There are so many memories, but they are not what is most important.
They are not what my soul most wants to tell you.
What I want you to know is
that the acceptance and spirit and excitement of ideas that brought me safely to
adulthood, that gave my life to me, are no less part of the lives of each of the
hundred and eleven children who are part of our Sunday School program this year
alone at BuxMont, no less a part of the four young lives to whom we have
dedicated ourselves this day.
When Rev. Ken MacLean would
dedicate babies a few times a year, he usually had a crowd at least as large as
the one we had this morning. And he
would give each child a flower, just as we have done today, and he would say
some words. I don’t remember most of what he said, but I do remember that he
ended his prayer for each tiny child with the words “May you know yourself.”
Seven years ago when I started performing child dedications at my first
settlement – of course these were the words that I chose.
May you know yourself.
May you have a love of life and a life of wonder.
May you find love and peace and meaning.
I believe in these words,
because they are what a Unitarian Universalist childhood at its best can give
you. A love of life; a life of
wonder; love, peace, meaning – the great blessing of knowing yourself, and the
wisdom to understand that this is important.
These gifts transcend all others; if our children remember nothing about
UU history or world religions, about the Bible or about the Buddha, they will
still have learned about themselves. In
our faith, there is no kind of knowledge more precious.
The gifts of a UU childhood
will not take away pain or suffering. Sometimes
they may contribute to it, as we face the frustration of having to find our own
answers all the time – but if we stick with it long enough, we learn that we
do not have to seek for these answers alone.
We may not always be popular with our peers, especially if we are more
interested in social justice than school dances, or if our views on anything
from gay rights to God are unusual. Junior
high school will probably continue to be Hell for generations of young people,
UU and otherwise. A UU childhood
will not change that.
What a UU childhood can do
is give the strength to be oneself, the freedom to explore widely and
responsibly and the sense of wonder that is the birthright of every child.
What a UU childhood can do is give a young person powerful relationships
with adults who are not parents or even teachers, but simply fellow explorers.
It can make a life.
It won’t be my life –
not all of us are called to ministry. (Fewer
still are called to play the autoharp!) Some
may not even choose to attend Unitarian Universalist congregations as they grow
into adulthood. Ministry with young
adults has not traditionally been one of our strong suits, although this is just
beginning to change. Some may
choose other religions and other paths – but many will return to our
congregations as they grow into adulthood; some will marry; some will choose to
have children of their own. All
will have grown up with the sense of freedom and the strength of self that is
the special gift of our religion.
Be ours a religion which, like sunshine, goes
everywhere;
its temple, all space,
its shrine, all truth;
its ritual, works of love;
its profession of faith, divine living.
-
Theodore Parker