BUILDING THE WORLD WE DREAM ABOUT
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
WORKSHOP 22: SHARING OUR NEW WISDOM
BY MARK HICKS. GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL, DEVELOPMENTAL EDITOR.
© Copyright 2010 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 10:46:13 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Unitarian Universalists have a role to play as healers and repairers of the broken world we have inherited from our ancestors. Our congregations have a role to play as places to practice—to rehearse—Beloved Community for the benefit of future generations. — Taquiena Boston, Director of Multicultural Growth and Witness, Unitarian Universalist Association
This workshop invites participants to form action plans to build on their learning and insights about antiracism and multiculturalism. Action plans may include strengthening relationships that have been built between and among participants and relationships initiated in the community panel and community field trip experiences. Workshop participants set easily achievable goals as well as "stretch" goals, taking into account that actions which require the support, engagement, and participation of the larger congregation or community also require participants' commitment to helping shape the vision, goals, strategies, and actions needed to secure that support, engagement, and participation.
A few days before the workshop, remind participants to bring any notes, observations, and insights they made after further reflection on the simulation or case studies.
Before leading this workshop, review the accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Welcoming and Entering | 0 |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: Next Moves | 50 |
Activity 2: Antiracism, Multiculturalism, and Spiritual Journey | 55 |
Closing | 5 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Take time to reflect on your own learnings and experiences in these workshops and formulate your own action plan. What easily achievable goals will you set for yourself to support and encourage antiracist/multicultural work and action in your congregation and the wider community? To what "stretch" goals can you commit?
Workshop participants will likely look to you for some leadership in bringing learning and new practices into congregational life. Set aside time to reflect, pray, and or meditate. Discern what you are called to do and embrace the actions to which you will set your heart, mind, and spirit, going forward.
WORKSHOP PLAN
WELCOMING AND ENTERING
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Greet participants as they arrive.
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Light the chalice or invite a participant to light it while you read Leader Resource 1, The Destiny of Diversity, aloud.
Invite participants to share briefly any new insights they have gained since the last workshop.
Invite your photographer to take a group photo.
ACTIVITY 1: NEXT MOVES (50 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to move into four reflection groups according to the plan you have devised. Give each group markers, one set of questions on newsprint, and several blank sheets of newsprint. Invite them to discuss their questions and list their answers. Allow 25 minutes for this part of the activity.
Ask the small groups to post their responses. Invite all participants to move around the room and read the other groups' responses. Allow 10 minutes for this part of the activity.
Re-gather the large group and lead a discussion with these questions:
Allow 15 minutes for this discussion.
ACTIVITY 2: ANTIRACISM, MULTICULTURALISM, AND SPIRITUAL JOURNEY (55 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce the activity using these or similar words:
We are going to plan a worship service to share our stories and learnings from Building the World We Dream About with key members of our faith community, inviting them to help us move the work along. In worship, we will speak of the spiritual journey we have all undertaken as part of this program. We will demonstrate connections between antiracist/multicultural work and Unitarian Universalist spirituality. We will want to tell our stories in such a way that non-participants in Building the World We Dream About will understand, while at the same time, honoring our own deep experiences.
Point out the list you have created of invitees and brainstorm additional people. Ask for volunteers to agree to invite particular people and put initials of the inviter next to the invitee. Ask for a volunteer to transcribe the list and distribute it to all workshop participants within a few days. Allow ten minutes for this part of the activity.
Post the lists the small groups generated in Activity 1. Lead the group to choose a list of learnings to share with invited guests as a worship handout. Allow 15 minutes for this part of the activity.
Distribute Handout 1, Planning the Worship Service. Explain that you will begin the planning with some reflection time. Invite participants to take ten minutes to reflect on the questions in silence and jot any notes on the handout. Invite them to consider which questions resonate most deeply with their own experience and the story they would like to tell about their participation in this program.
After ten minutes, refocus the group together on the order of worship suggested on Handout 1. Work together to plan the service. Invite volunteers to agree to prepare in advance two- or three-minute reflections. Some should address individual experiences and others express the group's experiences. Some reflections might focus on particular workshops or activities that were particularly meaningful. Engage other volunteers to select the music and prepare to lead it or recruit someone to lead it. Invite others to plan and set up the worship table. Take careful notes about who accepts which responsibilities, and tell participants you will send out a task list to remind them of their commitments before the next workshop. Allow 20 minutes for this part of the activity.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home. Share "To Be of Use" by Marge Piercy, Reading 567 in Singing the Living Tradition. Extinguish the chalice.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Take a few moments right after the workshop to ask each other:
TAKING IT HOME
Unitarian Universalists have a role to play as healers and repairers of the broken world we have inherited from our ancestors. Our congregations have a role to play as places to practice—to rehearse—Beloved Community for the benefit of future generations. — Taquiena Boston, Director of Multicultural Growth and Witness, Unitarian Universalist Association
Set aside time to prepare your part of the worship service for the next workshop.
BUILDING THE WORLD WE DREAM ABOUT: WORKSHOP 22:
HANDOUT 1: PLANNING THE WORSHIP SERVICE
Plan a worship service that invites your guests to join you in the work of building an antiracist/multicultural faith community. Use these questions and template as a guide.
I. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
II. SUGGESTED ORDER OF WORSHIP
OPENING READING
Unitarian Universalists have a role to play as healers and repairers of the broken world we have inherited from our ancestors. Our congregations have a role to play as places to practice—to rehearse—Beloved Community for the benefit of future generations. — Taquiena Boston, Director of Multicultural Growth and Witness, Unitarian Universalist Association
OPENING HYMN
A hymn that speaks to the journey you have undertaken and will continue. Possibilities from Singing the Living Tradition include "I'm On My Way" (Hymn 116) and "Guide My Feet" (Hymn 348).
EXPRESSIONS OF OUR EXPERIENCE
Choose three or four people to briefly share a two- or three-minute reflection on their experience.
MOMENT OF SILENT REFLECTION
HYMN
A hymn that acknowledges how challenging this work has been and will be, and expresses a promise to continue—a quieter, more meditative hymn, such as "Spirit of Life" (Hymn 123) or "There Is More Love Somewhere" (Hymn 95).
EXPRESSIONS OF OUR EXPERIENCE
Choose three or four people to briefly share a two- or three-minute reflection on their experience.
MOMENT OF SILENT REFLECTION
HYMN
A hymn that speaks to how joyful and soul-enriching this work has been and will be. Possibilities include "For All that Is Our Life" (Hymn 128) and "I've Got Peace Like a River" (Hymn 100).
EXPRESSIONS OF OUR EXPERIENCE
Choose three or four people to briefly share a two- or three-minute reflection on their experience.
MOMENT OF SILENT REFLECTION
PRAYERS AND HOPES
Invite workshop participants and guests, as they are moved, to voice a prayer or hope for the congregation and to light a candle.
CLOSING HYMN
Choose an upbeat hymn that expresses hope, such as "We'll Build a Land" (Hymn 121), using the alternate words from Workshop 11, Handout 5; "Love Will Guide Us" (Hymn 131); or "One More Step" (Hymn 168); consider replacing the word "step" with "move" to fully include people with mobility limitations.
CLOSING WORDS
If you are who you were,
and if the person next to you is who he or she was,
if none of us has changed
since the day we came in here—
we have failed.
The purposed of this community—
of any church, temple, zendo, mosque—
is to help its people grow.
We do this through encounters with the unknown—in ourselves,
in one another,
in "The Other"—whoever that might be for us,
however hard that might be—
because these encounters have many gifts to offer.
So may you go forth from here this morning [afternoon, evening]
not who you were,
but who you could be.
So may we all. — by Erik Walker Wikstrom (used with permission)
BUILDING THE WORLD WE DREAM ABOUT: WORKSHOP 22:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: THE DESTINY OF DIVERSITY
Excerpted from a sermon by Rev. Fred Small, delivered at First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts on December 6, 2009; used with permission.
Diversity is the destiny of our world, and if Unitarian Universalism is to survive and thrive, it must be our destiny, too. We can be an island of whiteness in a river of many colors and cultures, or we can plunge into the living water and partake of its liberating power.
If we shrink back, warns my colleague Rev. Dr. Paul Rasor, "We could devolve into a quaint relic of a once-vital tradition, holding fast to our good liberal ideas (while continuing to bicker about them), protecting an increasingly insular identity, ironically slipping into the kind of safe and unchallenging provincialism we have always resisted."
But if we take the leap into the river of diversity, we could become what sociologist Michael Emerson calls "Sixth Americans,"... people who live in a world rich in daily interactions with people not like themselves. They cultivate relationships with those of different backgrounds and cultures and become conversant and increasingly comfortable in those relationships. And they seek out religious communities in which these relationships thrive, thereby enriching their lives and nourishing their souls...
Let's stop wishing for Beloved Community and start dreaming it, planning it, seeing it, living it, until we wake up one astonishing blessed morning to find the dream come true.
FIND OUT MORE
The UUA Multicultural Growth & Witness staff group offers resources, curricula, trainings, and tools to help Unitarian Universalist congregations and leaders engage in the work of antiracism, antioppression, and multiculturalism. Visit www.uua.org/multicultural (at www.uua.org/multicultural) or email multicultural @ uua.org (at mailto:multicultural@uua.org) to learn more.