Questions from the Children

Presented by Julie Caran
August 30, 2009

Adapted from a 2001 service by Rev. Enid Virago and Julie Goldman Caran presented at First Unitarian Church of Richmond.

Good morning. I’m Julie Caran, and I’ll be directing the Children’s Religious Education program at HUU this year.  Those of you who are new to HUU and even some of the current members might be curious about what we teach the children in our church, being that we are a non-creedal congregation and do not require people to subscribe to a specific statement of faith.  If you take a look at the yellow paper in your hymnal, you’ll see the list of seven principles that the Unitarian Universalist Association espouses, as well as the sources from which our tradition draws its lessons and principles.

This year our youngest members, ages 0 to 4, will be in the nursery with Pax Helferstay and parent volunteers.  The older nursery kids will be using a curriculum called Celebrating Me and My World.  The curriculum does not tackle major theological stories or debates, but rather speaks to the children where they are at this age.  As psychologist David Hay explains in the book The Children’s God, “All children are interested in the fundamental questions of meaning: ‘Who am I?’ ‘Where have I come from?’ ‘Where am I going?’ ‘What am I meant to do?’” (Crompton 51).  Celebrating Me and My World helps to address these questions.  Its lessons emphasize our first principle, the inherent worth and dignity of all people, and lead the children through activities that teach them to appreciate their own unique abilities.  As the year progresses, they will gain understanding of how their actions impact the world around them, and begin to figure out what kinds of choices make a positive impact.

Children ages 5 and up will begin an imaginative exploration of “God.” Tabatha LaFreniere, Robin McNallie, Angelina Gonzales, Kevin Caran, Jenn Spiller, and I will be leading them on this journey.  As UUs are particularly aware, “God” can be a hot button word because it can mean so many different things, depending on who is saying it, claiming it, and using it.  The curriculum Stories About God will give our children the context they need to have meaningful dialogues about God with people of diverse views.  They will gain some idea of what “God” means to people of different faiths, and participate in exploratory exercises that allow them to express their own thoughts and feelings concerning God.  The curriculum recognizes that one perspective is an atheistic view of God, and thus introduces each perspective on God in the context of a story that some people believe, but not as one ultimate truth that we should all agree upon.

I suspect the question “What is God?” is one that each of us has asked at some point in our lives.  Think back to the first time you became aware of the concept of God.  Did you wonder, “What is God?”  or did you just know the answer?  Was your answer something you had been taught since birth, or did you develop your own theology even at an early age? Do you know the answer now, or continue to ask the question?

One thing that I find exciting about working with children in the field of religious education is that, regardless of age, many of us find ourselves asking the same questions at different times in our lives.  We might have different perspectives on the answers as we mature, but the questions persist.  This service is an opportunity for us to become aware of the kinds of things the children of HUU are wondering about, to acknowledge their questions, and to see what kind of answers we can provide.

The book What is God? By Etan Boritzer provides a great example for how we might answer some of the children’s questions.  Let’s read, and then we’ll see if any of us adults can provide answers to the questions from the children.

Read What is God?

When you came in this morning, you should have received index cards with your order of service, and had the chance to look at the children’s banner of questions and write down one or two that particularly struck you.  As you looked at their questions, did you see anything familiar?  Anything that you might have asked recently?  Anything that you asked as a child?  Sure, there are some questions that are practical and specific to the physical world – questions that adults might have an easier time answering.  But in the article “On Not Falling Down to Earth: Children’s Metaphysical Questions,” the author notes that children’s metaphysical questions are not so different from their questions about the physical world.  They are figuring out its laws, and their questions often arise when something doesn’t seem to fit into the laws they’ve begun to understand.  If a child spreads jam or cream cheese on a warm bagel, she might make the observation that it “stays on top” and add that to her mental catalogue of the how the world works. But the next time she spreads butter on a bagel and it melts into the bread, she might wonder “Why doesn’t the butter stay on top?” Similarly, a three year old boy posed, “Well, the little seed out of the flower drops into the earth and springs up again into a flower. Why can’t (dead) people do that?”  Most of the kids in our program are at an age where their understanding of the metaphysical is rooted in the physical, so try to keep that in mind as you answer their questions.

Now we’re going to have a few moments of meditation for you to contemplate your questions and try to write down an answer for the kids.  If you did not have a chance to look at the banner when you came in, you can step up here now to do so.  I’ll ring the chime when it is time to bring your heart and mind back to the group for the discussion.

Questions and Answers (collected from notecards at the service on 8/30/09)

Why can’t people see God? Where is God?

• GOD is everywhere, even if we can’t see Him or touch him, we know that He is there. He is with us all the time, all we have to do is ask for Him.  We can see GOD in places and things that we love – in nature, in peaceful views, or whenever we close our eyes to pray.
• God is everywhere . . . in the mountains, at the beach, in your yard and in your heart.
• Everywhere.  Every thing has energy, energy that holds the atoms together and makes up the atoms, so God is like this energy that is in every thing, everywhere.
• I know God is with me when I ride my bike because you NEVER get a strong headwind AND a steep hill at the SAME TIME. Thank God!

Don’t bad things mean you’re a bad person?

• No, bad things happen to good people. Just because something bad happens in your life doesn’t mean that you did something wrong or bad.  I believe that good and bad things are experienced by all kinds of people – and that is just life.
• I think that if you do something bad it doesn’t make you a bad person. It just makes you realize what you’ve done is wrong and it teaches you not to do it again.
• Bad things happen to everyone but doesn’t mean you are bad.  Bad things give us a chance to find out what’s really important.
• Doing bad things doesn’t make us bad. It just makes us human. We all do some good things and some bad things. We just need to try each day to do fewer bad things and more good things.

Why did this happen to me?

• It’s part of the “game” we play in life, like Chutes & Ladders, Candy Land, Sorry, Monopoly… It helps us appreciate when the good things happen and appreciate all kinds of adventures.

Why is church fancy?

• To separate it and us from the way things usually are, and help us think about things.

Who dies?

• Everything has a beginning and an end.

When will the flowers bloom?  How long will they stay?

• A famous writer in the Bible said “for every thing there is a season.”  Flowers have their own season.  They bloom in the spring when the weather warms up, and last until the hot summer sun dries them up or the cold fall evenings chill them.  They produce seed which falls to the ground.  In the spring, these seeds produce a new flower.
• Everyone (and every thing) has its time. We are made of many very tiny parts.  Those tiny parts were parts of something else before our time, and will be parts of other things, after our time.

How long will the flowers stay?

• They will stay forever, but they change their form and the way they look, as time passes.

Why isn’t Sunday School attached to the church building?

• Sunday School is not attached to the church building because adults are too noisy and they might bother the kids trying to learn.
• They are. Look at the curved sidewalk between the two. It is like the bent arm reaching between two people in love. In fact, the soil of the earth, and the air of the sky also connect the two and all other places of worship and learning on the earth.  Remember this: we are all connected.

Why do you have a special desk where you stand?

• Sometimes, when a group of people want to think, and listen, and sing together, it helps to all look at the same spot and focus their attention on place.

Why do people die?

• We all ask this question.  Sometimes their bodies wear out. Sometimes they are hurt too badly to keep living.  Dying doesn’t mean someone was bad or did something wrong.  It just happens sometimes.  We feel very sad, but remember the person in our hearts.

Can everyone be “smart”?

Why are some people so “lucky”?

Are we born only once?

Why do we put pebbles in the water instead of just having a flower and stirring the stem in the water?

Why isn’t the church arranged so that everyone can sit in one long row in the front?

Where does Santa Claus live at the North Pole?

How big is the world?

Thank you for your thoughtful responses to the questions from the children.  I hope that, in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, each of us will continue to ask these questions throughout our lives.  I’ll conclude with a quote by Anton Storr: “We are all children, even if most of us have forgotten it” (Heller 149).

Benediction:

“And yet, insignificant as I was, my mind was capable of understanding that the limitless world I could see was beyond my comprehension.  I could know myself to be a minute part of it all”– Edward Robinson, The Original Vision

Credits

Crompton, Margaret. Children, Spirituality, Religion and Social Work. Brookfield: Ashgate, 1998.

Harris, Paul L. “On Not Falling Down to Earth: Children’s Metaphysical Questions.” Imagining the Impossible: Magical, Scientific, and Religious Thinking in Children. Ed. Karl Rosengren, Carl Johnson, Paul Harris. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. 157-178.

Heller, David. The Children’s God. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.