multigen

Taking Justice General Assembly Home

On Sunday afternoon at Justice General Assembly, UUA vice-presidents Kay Montgomery and Rev. Harlan Limpert reported on resources you might use to help you bring your experiences and learnings from Justice GA back to your congregations. Included was information about witness and action initiatives, curricula for all ages, Beacon press books, discussion guides, and other resources to support your congregation or group as you faithfully consider your response to the related calls for immigration justice, racial justice, justice for indigenous people, and economic justice.

Watch video of the report, view the slide presentation, and read the transcript. Let us know about the conversations you are having in your congregation or group, actions you are taking, and resources that have been helpful. We are looking forward to sharing wisdom and experiences one with another as we move forward from Justice GA as Unitarian Universalist people of faith. -Ed.

Posted by:

Education, Reflection, Witness and Action

Standing with Families on the Side of Love

This week’s post, written by Susan Lawrence of the UUA Resource Development Office, lifts up the four-page immigration justice resource for families found in the summer issue of UU World.­-Ed.

“What’s an appropriate, effective way to engage children in immigration justice?”

For a religious professional, an RE volunteer, or any adult involved with raising a child, that question comes up right alongside our own call to immigration justice—because any call to justice we hear is a call we want our children to hear, too, as they grow in faith. We want to spark a child’s empathy. We want to create a sense of urgency, but without creating a heightened sense of fear. Most important, we want to invite children to see themselves as agents of change—people who can help.

The Family pages insert in the new UU World magazine (Summer 2012) offers a carefully crafted approach, with a set of real-life stories, exploration activities, and justice actions for all ages you can use to lift up immigration issues with children and multi-age groups. Because this pull-out section comes with UU World magazine directly to your home—the true cradle of faith development!—parents, caregivers, and religious educators are probably accustomed to using it to create family conversations, games, and reflection. But you can also share components of the Family pages in other contexts, and this issue’s insert, titled “Standing with Families on the Side of Love,”  makes an especially timely pairing with Justice GA. (more…)

Posted by:

Education, Reflection

CAFÉ MALLETTE: A Spanish Salon

Many Unitarian Universalists are working on their Spanish language skills ahead of Justice General Assembly. In this post, Rev. Hope Johnson tells us about her discoveries as she brushed up on her Spanish, and about the wonderful way her congregation has joined in- Ed.

ALL ARE WELCOME!!! 

Grab a cup of “café” and let’s begin to practice our Spanish. 

Those who speak Spanish, please come and support the rest of us. 

Those who are wanting to learn Spanish, let’s take a big breath and practice together.

It doesn’t matter what level we find ourselves at, let us communicate with each other.

If we are serious about getting to know our neighbors, one way is for to begin to communicate in Spanish.

Gracias, Esperanza

Friends, what led us to this invitation?

Let’s go back to February, 2012. I headed for Playa del Carmen, México to work on my Spanish language skills in  preparation for Justice General Assembly 2012 (Phoenix, AZ) Although almost fluent while growing up, I needed to work on unlocking my fear of making mistakes in Spanish. I traveled with my twin sister.

Our linguistic adventure began when we proudly found our way to the Soléxico School from Cancun Airport. After arrival in Playa, we found our way from the bus station to a taxi stand. We had been advised to negotiate prices—in Spanish—before getting into a cab… Next shock, the Spanish Assessment Placement Exam was conducted in Spanish!  (more…)

Posted by:

Education, Your Recipes

Crossing Borders…

Rev. Ann Willever traveled with Borderlinks to the Arizona-Mexico border last month, part of a 23-person delegation that included nine youth and young adults, five ministers, and four seminarians. In this post, she shares some of her many stories from that trip. –Ed.

The Desert

After spending the night in the Borderlinks dorm in Tucson, we set out the next morning in two vans with our first stop Green Valley, just south of Tucson.  There we met Shura, a woman who volunteers with the Samaritans, whose mission is to prevent deaths in the southern AZ desert by providing water and first aid to migrants.  Shura welcomed us into her home where she had arranged an array of items collected from the nearby desert on her dining room table – things that had been carried or worn by migrants…things left behind when they were either apprehended by border patrol or overcome by dehydration or sun stroke:  clothing (including a small child’s Mickey Mouse sweater), shoes, children’s books, baby bottles, beautifully embroidered tortilla warmers.  A pair of high heeled shoes – perhaps for the job interview a migrant might anticipate when reaching the US.  She had many stories of encounters with migrants wandering in the desert over the years – one of the saddest had to be that of the 42 year old man suffering extreme edema who was searching for his son, who he hadn’t seen for two and half years. (more…)

Posted by:

Education, Reflection, Witness and Action, Your Recipes

When God Tried to Cross the Border

In this post, intern minister Marcus Liefert shares the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley‘s “recipe” for including children in the congregation’s focus on immigration justice. Which stories, music, games, and activities have helped your congregation include people of all ages in immigration justice work and preparation for General Assembly? Send us your recipes! – Ed.

Immigration has been a major topic at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley this year.

Along the way, we’ve made up stories to explore immigration through the lens of our monthly worship themes. Near the beginning of our church year, Family Minister Laura Bogle and I told a story about Hospitality.  As the story ended, our Youth and Children’s Choir sang The Welcome Table. As they rehearsed it, they had learned about the history of the song and the history of some of the struggles for justice in our country. We are pleased to share the video recording.

(more…)

Posted by:

Education, Worship, Your Recipes

With Justice and Compassion: Immigration Sessions for Children’s Religious Education

With Justice and Compassion

In the month of February, we will provide materials to help Unitarian Universalists of all ages engage in theological reflection and prepare for the work of Justice GA in Phoenix and the work of our local congregations in support of immigration justice. In this post, we are pleased and proud to announce the publication of With Justice and Compassion: Immigration Sessions for Children’s Religious Education, by Mandy Neff.

The four-session curriculum includes plans for children in grades 1-3 and children in grades 4-6, as well as plans for a Family Night, where children share what they have learned and take part in a service project.  Grounded in our second Unitarian Universalist principle and in the Buddhist lovingkindness meditation, the curriculum invites children to explore their own family stories while learning about immigration in the United States. It lifts up justice and compassion as guiding values as we consider immigration justice issues in our own time.

Please let us know if you use this program, and tell us how it comes to life in your congregation!

Posted by:

Education, Reflection

Who Belongs Here? Exploring Immigration with Children and Youth

Many UU congregations are looking for help in engaging children and youth with immigration justice issues. In February, the UUA will publish a four-session curriculum for children. With this post, we publish an annotated list of websites and books about immigration compiled by religious educator Karen Scrivo as a course project at Starr King School for the Ministry. In this post, she introduces her project-  Ed.

When my Italian grandparents came to the United States as children during the early 1900s, they and their parents arrived at Ellis Island without papers, passports or visas. My grandma Rose Siciliano was about 7 and my grandpa Louis Scrivo was 12. Their families made the long arduous trans-Atlantic journey to escape the harsh poverty that gripped southern Italy.  They came knowing no English and with dreams of finding a better life in America.

Their stories are similar to those of many of today’s immigrants – except then there were no quotas for how many Europeans could enter the United States.  So their undocumented status did not brand them as “illegal aliens,” nor did they constantly look over their shoulders, worrying they might be deported.  Had they been coming from Mexico, they would have not have encountered high barbed wire fences or been detained or turned back by menacing border patrols.

My grandparents went to school, learned English and later met and married in Freeport, Pennsylvania.  A carpenter, my grandfather built a house and also worked in the coal mines near Pittsburgh. My grandmother sometimes worked as a seamstress for a local department store.  They raised three sons – my father Bill and his older brother Bob and younger brother, Vic and lived to see their many grandchildren. (more…)

Posted by:

Education, Reflection, Your Recipes

Connecting the Dreamers with Dr. King

In this post, Rev. Carlton Elliott Smith writes about how he put together a service for Martin Luther King Sunday that explored the dreams of undocumented immigrant youth and connected them with the dream of Dr. King. Perhaps you might consider doing something similar in your own community.– ed.

This time last year, I wondered what to do about the Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday worship service. Naturally, I was thinking about his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. At the same time, I was among the many immigrant advocates hoping for the passage of the  Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrant youth and young adults brought to the United States by their parents as minors. Then it came to me: What about doing a service that would bring together Dr. King’s Dream and the dreams of the Dreamers? The idea for the service, “Dreamers and the Dream” was born. The title comes from the song “Here’s to Life”. The version of it I know and love best is sung by the late Shirley Horn:

Here’s to life / and the joy it brings

Here’s to life / to dreamers and their dreams (more…)

Posted by:

Witness and Action, Worship, Your Recipes

“Com-passion:” A Theological Foundation for Intergenerational Worship

Why do we do justice work?  Theologically speaking, we are guided by ancient tradition and covenants that teach us to “do unto others as we would have them do unto us.”  A more contemporary articulation for Unitarian Universalists would be that to honor the inherent worth and dignity of every person means advocating for all human expression whatever the situation.  Such advocacy is how we honor that worth.  But when we’re crossing cultural boundaries in doing our advocacy work, we need to be mindful that our efforts do not patronize nor our expressions become misappropriation.

In my own anti-racism and anti-oppression work over the last decades, and especially in the early days of that awakening in me, I came to appreciate a way to understand “compassion” more fully.  I am thinking here about the Latin roots of the word compassion:  the prefix com meaning with, and passion meaning to feel.  “Com-passion” equals “feeling with.”   I’m not writing about some action where one in privilege reaches down to alleviate the pain of someone less fortunate.  That is a vapid, empty devaluation of the word itself.  But I am talking about discovering ways to identify with those whose positions we advocate, so that their concerns and their struggles become ours in the most intimate, intuitive ways. (more…)

Posted by:

Education, Worship

Modeling Multigenerational Learning and Service

The UUA Mid-South District’s Annual Healthy Congregations Conference focused on Immigration as a Moral Issue.

This  multigenerational conference, presented on October 8, 2011 had a number of tracks, including political, congregational, and social media responses.  The multigenerational faith development track included reflection, an immersion experience field trip and an introduction to a long-term social justice project. For a project, the District has planned a mobile library of bilingual children’s books to be located near an indoor playground. Pat Kahn reports on the multigenerational track written for the Mid-South Faith Development Council. 

Plaza Fiesta!

As part of the Mid-South District Healthy Congregations Conference hosted by Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta on Saturday October 8th, 14 people (5 children ages 6-9, 1 infant, and 8 adults) participated in a multigenerational workshop and field trip.  In the morning session, all ages heard the keynote address by Jerry Gonzalez, Executive Director of GALEO, followed by a workshop during which UUCA member Laura Murvartian (helped by her children Claudia and Nicolas Murvartian-Rhim) shared her own immigration story. (more…)

Posted by:

Education, Reflection, Your Recipes