Tapestry Ukulele
Latarsha Dorrance
Leah Purcell gave examples of several ways she used Tapestry of Faith in her congregation, specifically the program Sing to the Power: a multigenerational workshop on faith development and service; family reflection questions (PDF) and a Tapestry of Faith volunteer development workshop (PDF). Leah also shared pictures of the Sing to the Power program.
PAT KAHN: Good morning. This is program 2010, the Journey to Commitment, Faith Development and Action. So I hope that's where you were planning to be. And we hope we'll have a great time together this morning. My name is Pat Kahn. I'm the Children and Family Programs Director for the Unitarian Universalist Association Resource Development Office.
And it is my pleasure this morning to have a wonderful team of people to talk to you about putting faith development into action. We are going to start by hearing from Judith Frediani, who is the Curriculum Director of the Resource Development Office at the UUA. Then we will hear from three congregations. We have Leah Purcell from a large congregation in Albany, New York. She is the Director of Religious Education.
And what we'd like to do is each person will speak for about 10 minutes or so. And then after each one, we'll allow about five minutes for your questions, specifically to that person. And you could use this microphone right up here. And then at the very end, we'll end with, again, probably another five or ten minutes of questions and observations for sharing your stories and congregations. And so, without further ado, Judith Frediani.
JUDITH FREDIANI: Pat, this is about commitment. And since you're a general assembly, you're already about commitment to your congregations and communities, and to your [INAUDIBLE]. I want to tell you a little bit about what a Tapestry of Faith is, because you probably don't know all of the layers of this particular onion. Tapestry of Faith is a collection of resources and curriculum for our congregations.
It is literally something we developed of the people, by the people, for the people, the people being you, Unitarian Universalists, and even beyond to our seekers who may join us in the future. It is a rich and robust resource for you to keep your commitments to this education, to worship, to social justice and action, to strong multi-generational and multicultural communities. It is nothing less than that.
It nurtures UU identity, spiritual growth , a transforming faith, and vital communities of justice and love. And we didn't make that phrase up. We asked you what you want and need, and this is what you said.
What is new about the Tapestry of Faith series? Well, for one thing, it's all online, and it's all free. And that's really cool. It means no matter how small your congregation is, you can afford it. It's free. And all your parents, and all your teachers and any interested people can see it.
It emphasizes community, relationship and interdependence. UUs and the United States in general have always emphasized individualism and uniqueness. We are so unique. And we are, that's fine. We don't really need more help with individualism.
What we need is more help with relationship, interfaith relationship, multi-generational, international relationships, relationships even within our own congregation with different theologies and beliefs. So we are emphasizing interdependence, global independence that hopefully will save the Earth. As a new era in curriculum resources, it's another chance to bring anti-racist, anti-oppresion multicultural lenses to bear, not perfectly. We're not perfect.
But we took this opportunity to make sure we paid attention all the time to those issues. It draws from all six of our sources. We say we have seven sources. The seventh source, which is missing from our bylaws is Unitarian Universalism. That actually is a source of our faith, our unique history and heritage as well as all the wonderful eclectic resources we draw from.
Partly because it's online, it's very family, and friendly and teacher friendly. And our parent or any interested people can have full access to what's going on. It's intentional about faith development, our livable free thinking faith. We aren't afraid of faith language or religious language, not because we share theology, but because we can use this language in a way that is inclusive, faith development as meaning making, as community building, as addressing the big questions of life.
It's intentional about UU growth. Without families with children, we have no future. But without bringing in adults, young adults and older adults in their journeys, we also will not maintain our vibrant communities. And this offers resources to really interact and hold people of all ages.
One thing that is changing in our congregations is how they do RE. There's the thematic approach from a pulpit right down to the pre-school. There's the different organizations of the RE program. Well, this is a resource that's adaptable. No matter how you do RE with children, youth and adults, this is a resource that will work for you.
In the past, and still, I think, in our public schools, often in education, there's an emphasis on content. What are you going to cover? Are you going to cover the [INAUDIBLE]. This obviously, is enormous content, over 16,000 pages of content. We've got content.
But it's focused and designed on outcomes. What is the point? What kind of people do we want to be? What kind of people do we want to nurture? And again, we asked you about six or seven years ago through surveys, phone scripts, and so forth, both online and in print to reach everybody, and this is what you said.
Spiritual development, faith development, ethical development and human identity is what should be the outcome of engagement in religious education at any and all age. But we want to talk about action. In order to meet those outcomes, every single session and workshop, whether it's for a five-year-old or an elder, has spiritual preparation for the leader, so this is grounded as a religious experience, not just secular education experience that could be received somewhere else.
Every single session and workshop is a faith in action, a specific activity that your group, or your congregation or your family can do to make the world a better place, to make the community stronger, whether it's right at home, or in your larger community or in the world. For example, how many of you celebrate the annual Twighlight day? We got one. You must have gotten it in Tapestry of Faith.
Just as an example, you have hundreds and hundreds of specific faith in actions. National International Toilet day is a day to recognize that millions of people have no clean water, but in fact drink the discharge from sewage. So this is hundreds of opportunities to put your faith in action.
Taking home is similar. We might send home taking it home for little kids. This is taking it home for all ages, including adults. Adults are going to take home things to talk about, things to research, things to explore with your families, things you can do, every session.
And we don't just tell stories, we listen to each other's stories. And that is part of the cycle of story, reflection, action on that story, reflection, and on to another chapter in our journey or faith and exploration for justice and spiritual growth. So actually, I'm going to end there. Do I take questions too?
It is an all congregational resource. And you should take advantage of it. And these people here are going to demonstrate ways in which it can be used in congregations of any size. So a couple minutes of questions if you have any, and you can come to this mic.
JUDITH FREDIANI: Yeah, I get asked that a whole lot. And the way we picture it, because those words are often used interchangeably, you know how people say I'm spiritual, but not religious? Spiritual is an innate human capacity.
You don't have to be in a religion. You don't have to be in a community. We're intellectual, we're physical, we're sexual, we're spiritual. And so that's kind of the inner sense of awe and wonder, of connection perhaps to God, perhaps to nature, being part of something greater, all of that.
That's my spiritual development. We're using faith to mean a process that involves more than inner capacity for awe and connection. It involves beliefs, theology, questioning on the big religious questions, making meaning and purpose to your life, coming together in the community to learn together.
JULIE STONEBERG: My name is Julie Stoneberg. I'm the minister in Peterborough, Ontario. Thank you for these online resources. We use them a lot, and we are very grateful for them. My question is about the depth of the resources and getting through them.
I just thought that there was something that came up but I haven't had a chance to follow up on in terms of some new curriculum mapping. I was interested to hear you say that it's more than just for the RE program. I hadn't thought about using it in terms of worship. We use the [INAUDIBLE] program. But I find it very dense to get through to find the pieces that are going to work without having studied it all. And I don't know what the answer is, but what can you tell me about search and retrieval?
JUDITH FREDIANI: She's going to show you how to use it. I will say we do have some search functions, which Liz will help you with, but we also need more search functions, and we're going to do some more tagging, so particularly for worship and things like that. We'll do more work on tagging to help your search.
And I'll say this. We really listen to what you ask for, and we put it all in there. And now people are saying, there's too much in there. But we were really trying to make sure that we addressed the expressed needs that we heard for a couple years, while we were doing the needs assessment. So that's probably five minutes, right? All right, thank you.
LEAH PURCELL: What should we do for the slides? So I will just say when we're doing this part that we did talk to the tech people about the buzz, and there's nothing that we can do about it right now. There's nothing we can do about the buzz right now.
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