Hello from your acting Director of Religious Education! 

I’ll be playing fake-Catherine while she’s on leave this summer with her newborn son, and I’m so happy that their family’s joy gave me the opportunity to be a part of your congregational life over the coming months!  If I haven’t met you yet, I look forward to it — please don’t hesitate to introduce yourself on a Sunday morning. I will do my best to remember your name, but I must tell you truthfully that names are not exactly my strong suit — so, an extra thank you to people who wear their name tags.

Getting to know the culture and patterns of a different church is always fascinating, and I’m already excited for all the new ideas and fun possibilities I’ll be able to take back to my congregation in Canoga Park in September. And I hope to bring my gifts and experiences to making UUCCSM an even richer faith home for you and your family. Connecting with UUs from other congregations helps me remember that my religion is much bigger than just the place I spend my Sunday mornings; I look forward to sharing both that religion, and that place with all of you over the coming months!

Yours in Faith,
Emmalinda MacLean
EmmalindaDRE@gmail.com

CHILDREN

In case you missed Lifespan RE Sunday on June 2, here are some highlights. In addition to recognizing the dozens of people who volunteered in all levels of our program, Sabina Mayo-Smith paid special tribute to Beverly Alison who has been a stalwart member of our teaching teams for an uninterrupted 36 years!  Beverly has been presented with a cement paving stone for her garden made by the children of UUSM. Sabina's moving tribute to Beverly is as follows.

“I want to take a moment to honor a specific member of our Religious Education community, Beverly Alison. Now Beverly could be honored (and may have been) for so many roles in this church, that I feel lucky to get in here with this RE salute. Why are we saluting her today?  Because she has been a member of the RE teaching community for thirty-six years!

“My friendship and admiration for Beverly have taken a wonderful, winding garden path, which I would like to share with you, because my guess is that I’m not the only one in this church who has had this experience.

“It started when I first came to this church a number of years ago. I remember being greeted outside the church on one of those early days—with two kids who were unsure why they were there, and me with bits of Sunday breakfast stuck to my clothes--by a very stylish, friendly person who welcomed both my children and me individually and with a big smile. As we continued coming to church, I was drawn to this “greeter” by her warm presence and her cool, one might say, artistic, sense of style. She told me her name was Beverly.

“Then, the first turn on the path, one year, she was my daughter’s RE teacher. My daughter was at that time, some of you might find it amazing to hear, extremely shy and loathe to talk. Beverly Alison took my daughter Katie under her wing and was quick to tell her that she had been shy too and that it was fine not to talk.  

“The next turn on the path was when I became an RE teacher. I heard Beverly share her tips for teaching as part of a training panel for new RE teachers. My favorite tip was what to do with—and this is an RE secret—the dreaded class full of young rambunctious boys who didn’t feel like singing “love surrounds me.”  Beverly’s tip: Announce to the children in a respectful and confident tone that ‘Now we have the very important job of going out into the courtyard and taking care of our church by collecting pieces of trash.’

“Never one to be hemmed in by the curriculum, Beverly responds to every group of children in what I consider to be the quintessential UU way. She accepts each child for whom he or she is, and encourages the individual and collective spiritual growth of the members of the classroom. She also encourages our children to make their own free and responsible search for truth and meaning. She shows respect for each child in this search and helps him or her with the tools to meaningfully do so.

“She also has been one of the most creative teachers I have had the privilege of observing. Last year, my path with Beverly took another turn when we taught in classrooms right across from each other. You may remember that one month last year, our congregational theme was “broken.”  Wow, broken.  With 2nd and 3rd graders. And here’s where another of her many talents, her artistry, joined with her master teaching.

“At the beginning of the month, I saw Beverly bring a whole bunch of appliances to her classroom. For the next hour, as I was doing spirit plays with K to 1st graders, I heard from across the way, hammers hitting rice cookers, computer keyboards, the bottom of a blender, clock/radios, etc. Wow!  Second and 3rd graders with hammers. For the next two weeks, I saw her bring the boxes of these broken parts into her classroom, and by the end of the month, each of her kids left with an amazing sculpture made out of broken appliance bits. What a lesson!

“This year, I have been so fortunate because my path has joined hers. I have been fortunate enough to be on a teaching team with Beverly. I have gotten to watch her teach. I have seen her preparation. And I have been dazzled. For the lesson on Sacred Spaces, I came in to find our classroom transformed with dream catchers hanging from the ceiling, and different colored cloth draped over the windows, among other things. She had transformed our classroom into a sacred space with forethought, artistry, and time.

“But, aside from this effort, thoughtfulness, and sense of fun, here is the profound gift that Beverly has given to all of our children and us. When she and I spoke a number of months ago of her dedication to UUCCSM’s children’s religious education program, she told me the following: that her goal with each class is to build a community of young people. She wants each child in this church to find his or her community and to experience and be supported by that community throughout his or her time here. She said nothing makes her feel more fulfilled than to see these groups of children become groups of UU young people who seek each other out in friendship and community. And she has made this happen and seen this for the last thirty-six years.

“With all our thanks and admiration we want to present Beverly Alison with this gift from the grateful children and other members of our UU community. It is a stepping-stone for your garden covered with a mandala, signifying all the ways you have influenced the steps your students have taken in their building both a UU community and an understanding of Unitarian Universalism.”

— Sabina Mayo-Smith

YOUTH

We also celebrated our graduating high school seniors at LRE Sunday, and one of them, Olivia Legan, read an article she had written for the SAMOHI news magazine of which she is editor. We reprint it here with Olivia's picture and permission because so many people have asked for it:

“The majority of my friends are Atheist and I can sympathize with their exasperation with religious institutions, which they see as hateful and hypocritical. However, it makes me sad that flaws in modern religious establishments are turning my generation away from spirituality and a religious community. I was not the most receptive to church at first either. I’ll admit that I was dragged, kicking and screaming, to the Unitarian Universalist (UU) Community Church of Santa Monica. As a cranky eleven-year-old, I was not thrilled to get up at eight on a Sunday. Nevertheless, my resilient mother somehow managed to get me into the adobe building on the corner of 18th and Arizona Ave, and my life was forever changed.

“My first day, children in the pews around me rushed to the front of the chapel with cans of food for the homeless before filtering into youth groups. I was in Religious Education. As I learned long division in school, I gained a well-rounded view of every significant religion in the world, from Hinduism to Wicca at the Unitarian Church. We visited synagogues, temples and churches around Los Angeles. Over the next two years, we tackled the big questions concerning life and death to form an individual sense of meaning.

“Religious Education culminated with my Coming of Age ceremony. Everyone in my class wrote their own credo explaining their beliefs, a hefty task for awkward adolescents. This daunting mission made my youth group incredibly close. We traveled to New York City for a UU United Nations Spring Seminar on climate change, where we stayed in a 200-year-old church with 60 other teen UUs. We drove the eight hours to San Francisco with the Pasadena congregation to work with a street ministry in the Tenderloin ghetto. Every Sunday we discussed our lives, planned community service trips, taught the younger youth groups and more. 

“There is also the pleasant surprise of meeting Unitarians in random places. The glimpse of a UU chalice necklace or tattoo is followed by excited shrieks and hugs. It is rare that I meet a UU who is not a warm, genuinely interesting person.

“About a year ago I attended a service at the church, where our minister recited a section of one of my favorite Allen Ginsberg poems:

“Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!”

“Suddenly I realized that this was what my community at UUCCSM had done for me. Because of my UU family, I see the holiness and pure beauty in nearly everything. It was through the church that my eyes were opened to human rights issues. From the Unitarian Universalist (UU) principles and my youth group’s volunteer efforts, I learned that all human beings deserve respect. It may be clear at this point that Unitarian Universalism is not your standard religion. It is devoid of discrimination and judgment. I find it to have the pure goodness that is at the core of every world religion. Tragically, in many modern religious institutions, this kernel of kindness and acceptance is surrounded by scandal, worship through fear and antiquated oppression of minorities and women. Unitarian Universalism is the polar opposite — I even interned at their office at the United Nations where they battle for women's rights, LGBT rights and awareness of climate change. I feel so lucky to have found the Unitarian church, because without it, I probably would have been too repulsed by the hypocrisy of many religions to welcome the beauty at their center. I get upset when people are ignorant and hide their hate behind the Bible. They give religion a bad name and are scaring progressive, open-minded young people away from spirituality and a potential religious community. My plea is this: even if you are sick of the polluted religious establishments of our modern world, read up on the history of Buddhism or think about what Jesus Christ really would do or watch a video on mystical Judaism. Find the truth and "Love thy neighbor as thyself" at the core of every belief system and integrate that into your daily life. Then again, maybe we are just particles randomly colliding, but it's nice to believe in something larger than ourselves.”

— Olivia Legan

ADDITIONAL YOUTH NEWS

 Members of YRUU Travel to New Orleans for Social Justice Work Projects

On June 29, twelve youth from UUCCSM’s YRUU (Young Religious Unitarian Universalists) group traveled to New Orleans, along with six adult chaperones for a weeklong series of social justice projects. The group was hosted by The Center of Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal, which is located at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans (FUUNO).

The trip had been in the planning stages for almost a year, with the group hosting fundraising events such as the popular t-shirt sale and selling sack lunches at our annual meeting. Donations were also made from generous anonymous angels.

The Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal (CELSJR) promotes social, racial and economic justice and acts as a catalyst in the region for cultivating a sustainable, equitable and inclusive community. The CELSJR connects volunteers with opportunities provided by community partners and addresses the needs of people most affected by the floods caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The trip incorporated four (4) key components:

— An opportunity to take a self-guided tour of the devastated areas of New Orleans

— An orientation of the New Orleans area (history and geography), the history of Hurricane Katrina, levee breaches, the current situation in the New Orleans as well work safety issues.

— A Dialogue, New Orleans Now: Race, Culture and Rebuilding, that facilitates a discussion of the inequalities in the region’s rebuilding and recovery process, followed by a traditional New Orleans-style dinner hosted by CELSJR.

— Reflection and evaluation.

In preparation for their journey, the group screened the documentary, Trouble the Water, which was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. According to the film’s website:  “This astonishingly powerful documentary takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. Incorporating remarkable home footage shot by Kimberly Rivers Roberts—an aspiring rap artist trapped with her husband in the 9th ward — directors/producers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal (producers of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine) weave this insider’s view of Katrina with a devastating portrait of the hurricane’s aftermath. As seen on HBO, Trouble the Water takes audiences on a journey that is by turns heart-stopping, infuriating, inspiring and empowering. It’s not only about the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, but about the underlying issues that remained when the floodwaters receded—failing public schools, record high levels of incarceration, poverty, structural racism and lack of government accountability.”

A slide show presentation and recap of the trip is planned for later this year.

— Liza Cranis

July Ministerial Theme: VISION

Bettye Barclay has provided this list of daily thoughts about our ministerial theme for July.

July 1. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. Albert Einstein

July 2. While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. Dorothea Lange

July 3. He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window. Charles Baudelaire

July 4. If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is — infinite. William Blake

July 5. Nothing is more imminent than the impossible … what we must always foresee is the unforeseen. Victor Hugo  in “Les Miserables”

July 6. The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision. Helen Keller

July 7. It is a commonplace of all religious thought, even the most primitive, that the man seeking visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and love for a time in the wilderness. Loren Eiseley

July 8. A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown. Dennis Waitley

July 9. The person who sees the difficulties so clearly that he does not discern the possibilities cannot inspire a vision in others. J. Oswald Sanders

July 10. Prophets are those who take life as it is and expand it. They refuse to shrink a vision of tomorrow to the boundaries of yesterday. Joan Chittister OSB

July 11. Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. Edward Hopper

July 12. I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience. Ursula K. Le Guin

July 13. It seems an odd idea to my students that poetry, like all art, leads us away from itself, back to the world in which we live. It furnishes the vision. It shows with intense clarity what is already there. Helen Bevington

July 14. Too often our visions of the future are dull and impotent like a hammer beating the water. Harley King

July 15. The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul. Mark Twain

July 16. A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision and a task are the hope of the world. Inscription on a church wall in Sussex England c. 1730

July 17. In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision. Dalai Lama

July 18. Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. Carl Jung

July 19. Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. Jonathan Swift

July 20. Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. Ayn Rand

July 21. Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision. Aldous Huxley

July 22. Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. Arthur Schopenhauer

July 23. The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it. Thucydides

July 24. Imagination gives you the picture. Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own. Robert Collier

July 25. Give to us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for - because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything. Peter Marshall

July 26. We lift ourselves by our thought. We climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always everywhere. Orison Swett Marden

July 27. It takes someone with a vision of the possibilities to attain new levels of experience. Someone with the courage to live his dreams. Les Brown

July 28. We go where our vision is. Joseph Edward Murphy

July 29. The wisest keeps something of the vision of a child. Though he may understand a thousand things that a child could not understand, he is always a beginner, close to the original meaning of life. John Macy

July 30. I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision. Henry David Thoreau

July 31. Where there is no vision, there is no hope. George Washington Carver