This “Hunger Podcast” (below) was created by the 4th-5th Grade RE class who has been learning about fighting for social justice, most recently around the issue of hunger. They supported a food drive in November-December for the West Seattle Food Bank and now have created this podcast covering the highlights of what they feel are the most important points for our congregants to know about hunger.
Continue readingHappy New Year! I am so grateful to all of you for your support of religious exploration for Westside’s children and youth. Our amazing community’s gifts of teaching, contributions to the classroom supplies, and commitment of financial resources makes RE possible. Thank you! I wish for all of you a year of blessings, health and resolve … for whatever resolutions you choose to dedicate yourself to this year. May your faith or credo support you on your path. The new year is a time of both celebration and reflection. The cold and dark of winter naturally turns our attention inward
Continue readingThe holiday season is upon us and with it comes, for many of us, a lot of stress and challenge. I encourage us to cultivate some form of compassion and/or self-love practice to support us as we move through this busy time of year. In addition to offering yourself kindness and love, these practices will support extending your compassion and love out into your community. As part of our covenant with each other at Westside, we promise that we will dwell together in peace and love each other. Believing the best of each other, listening attentively and speaking thoughtfully and
Continue readingIn the world of Religious Exploration we DREs are responsible for finding creative ways to encourage, inspire and support the work of faith exploration and formation at home and at church. As Westside’s RE program evolves to keep pace with the evolution of the needs and availability of children, volunteers and parents, I am re-imagining the offerings of our RE Programs. In addition to RE Classes this year, we are experimenting with offering more Chalice Chapels and a few more all generation services. As I create these programs, I am conscious of asking myself, our parents, our children and our
Continue readingThe new RE year is upon us!! Woohoo! Several themes will run through this RE year: social justice, diversity, and inclusivity. We are also working with an evolving reality for religious exploration, for both WSUU children and within the UU world. Some of the evolutionary forces are discussed in a thought provoking article in the UUA Bulletin about the “Death of Sunday School and the Future of Faith Formation.” I don’t agree with everything in the article by any means but the article is an important contribution in a larger discussion about the ways religious exploration is evolving in UU
Continue readingOn Sunday, May 21st Westside held a service with guest speaker Dr. Jabali Stewart called “We Will Keep Moving Together.” He explored the painful reality of white supremacy culture in America with music and story, looking at our cultural assumptions from a place of curiosity and solution. As part of that service, our story for all ages was about an 11 year old black girl named Marley Dias who loved getting lost in a book but wanted books where black girls were the main character. When she didn’t find those books at her school or in her library, she started
Continue readingTo what do you align your heart? Ultimately, that is the quest of religious exploration. The formation of our children’s spirituality comes through story, art, lessons, wondering, questioning, and discussions. Exploring their feelings and understandings of UU, their personal expression of this faith, develops and evolves. Children and youth are accompanied on the journey of spiritual formation and spiritual self-awareness by our RE volunteer teachers and RE staff. Together we grow and mature our faith. Relationship building and involvement with the broader church community help our children appreciate Unitarian Universalism, and discover what it means to be a member of
Continue readingReligious Exploration at Westside matters to all of us whether or not we have children. We are growing lifelong UUs through our RE programming. Our children – and they are our children – are the future leaders, volunteers, congregants, and members of UU churches. Perhaps they will remain at Westside when they reach adulthood. Perhaps they will land in some other congregation. Wherever they go they will have been nourished by our Unitarian Universalist sources and principles. Our children and youth are learning from the curriculum, from each other, from the teachers, and from the many intangibles (love, concern, attention,
Continue readingJune 11th is the RE Celebration service and we’d love to find a creative soul to work with us to create a slide show of photographs of all Westside’s volunteers, RE classes (and children and teachers). Are you interested in either creating a slide show (with music) or taking photographs or both parts of this project? I’d love to talk with you! Please contact me at dre@wsuu.org.
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