August 2011
167 posts
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Share a folk tale or fable that comes from your...
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Pakistani Students Share Cultural Fables &... →
Who doesn’t love stories? One way we can share our cultures is to share our folklore and fables from one classroom to another - digitally! We can retell those stories and folklore in a number of different media, and share it with others. We can receive the creations and wisdom of others and learn new things! Doesn’t this seem like something that would be cool for the religious...
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“Science is a mere heap of facts, not a golden chain of truths, if we refuse to...”
– Francis Power Cobbe (Unitarian, social reformer, founder of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection)
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“All belief and speech respecting God is untrue yet infinitely truer than any...”
– James Martineau (Unitarian, minister)
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How are you practicing dialogue with & learning...
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Bridge Building Through Internet Dialogue &... →
Another great project using the internet to build bridges through dialogue in the educational world - and one that many of us in religious communities could learn from and honor through creating our own!
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“Whatever for you is set apart, solemn, breathtakingly special – that is...”
– Clarke Dewey Wells (Unitarian Universalist, minister)
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“When your life is the true expression of your faith, whom can you fear?”
– Julia Ward Howe (Unitarian, author, social reformer)
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“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of anyone else.”
– Charles Dickens (Unitarian, novelist, social reformer)
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“Universalism has not abolished the idea of hell. It has humanized and socialized...”
– Clarence Russell Skinner, The Social Implications of Universalism (1915) p. 63 (Universalist, educator, minister, theologian)
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“My larger comprehension has given me a noble and abiding faith in human...”
– Mary A. Livermore (Unitarian, social reformer)
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“Look out how you use proud words. When you let proud words go, it’s not easy to...”
– Carl Sandburg (Unitarian Universalist, poet)
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Aaron Shepard's retelling The Gifts of Wali Dad →
One of the great storytellers in the biz - do add copies of his work to your libraries! - is Aaron Shepard. Here, a tale with Zoroastrian and Islamic roots comes to life in a new way.
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What Can't You Eat? Rev. Allison Cornish (pdf) →
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What can’t you eat? Why? What about your neighbor?
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How would project-based learning change the way...
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Creating Calenders for Project-Based Learning →
Project-based learning for faith development takes the real questions and issues in people’s lives of faith and asks us to create projects directly related to those issues. Relevance and learning! No more amorphous faith development goals for the institution - you can map strategic events to help you meet those goals and track how you’re doing. Thanks, Edutopia!
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Finding Calm in the Midst of the Storm - Vernon F.... →
Another fine share from the archives of the Universalist Herald - a great journal to support (follow the link, you’ll find the website).
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“We are workers in the world, immersed in its business, tried with its cares,...”
– Octavius Brooks Frothingham (Unitarian, Transcendentalist, abolitionist, author)
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“Religion is the most substantial thing in the world; it can take more hard...”
– E. H. Chapin (Universalist, minister)
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Creating Calenders for Project-Based Learning →
People say to me, “Naomi, these tools are cool, but how do they really help us set and meet faith development goals for our communities and for individuals?”
This month, I’ve been sharing a lot of tools focused on social media and education. Faith development is in everything we do as religious communities, from personal spiritual practices and public worship, to risking our...
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How have you practiced generosity with a stranger...
Fear and hate smash up things. They cultivate suspicion. They break us up inside and they break communities. Not only does practicing generosity with a stranger offer a way to begin to repair the smash-up that hate and fear does in our communities, it also can be a way of healing on the inside, too. It isn't easy, but it is worthy.
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“Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way”
– Hosea Ballou (Universalist, minister)
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“The progress of ideas is not always visible to superficial observers”
– Julia Ward Howe Reiminiscences (1899) p.196. (Unitarian, author, social reformer)
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How is your community caring for people in...
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“There is nothing common, nothing trifling, nothing un-wonderful in this...”
– William Channing Gannett, A Year of Miracle (1882) p. 30 (Unitarian, minister, social reformer)
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“If one’s conscience be as dead as stone, it is as heavy too”
– E. H. Chapin (Universalist, minister)
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Healthy Schools Campaign →
The Healthy Schools Campaign is one of those projects that is easy to appreciate - it is doing good that feels really good and helps us be good (4th stone of liberal religion). The campaign gives us agency, teaches us respect for our bodies and for the earth, and helps us give thanks for nutritious food. That’s a winning combination!
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Slow Food On Campus →
The Slow Food on Campus program is another one that is about creating healthier communities, appreciation for food and for the people who grow, carry it, and prepare it. Respect, agency, and gratitude: so let’s make sure this program goes from campus to campus.
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The Prince Who Thought He Was A Turkey →
A great Hasidic wisdom tale, from Nachman of Bratslav.
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What relationships do you have that required...
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Dr. James Badawi, Bridgebuilding Between Christian... →
Here’s another fine offering from the Fiqh Council about the Islamic ground for bridge building between Christian and Muslim, from Dr. James Badawi.
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The Green Life (Tips from Sierra Club) →
These tips from the Sierra Club are doable for a lot of us. They also remind us that how we are together matters, and that we’re always making choices about how we live, each other, and this earth.
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How might you connect across cultures & better...
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Cultural Connections & A Canoe →
Learning by building a canoe, with the guidance of Elders, changes relationships (actually growing them), teaches understanding of another culture, cultivates patience (this project took 2 years), and promote the wisdom the is nurtured by doing. What ways can you learn from another community? From tradition and from doing?
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“I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance”
– Adlai E. Stevenson (Unitarian Universalist, statesman)
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“Evil is the capacity, within us and among us, to break sacred bonds with our own...”
– Victoria Safford (Unitarian Universalist, minister)
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“A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation”
– James Freeman Clarke (Unitarian, minister, reformer)
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“To participate, however, is more than responsibility. It is the way in which the...”
– James Luther Adams, “Roger Baldwin: By Their Groups You Shall Know Them”, An Examined Faith (ed. G. K. Beach) Boston: Beacon Press, 1991: 66. (Unitarian Universalist, educator, author, minister, theologian, ethicist)
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Tikkun of the Fertile Soil →
Tikkun Magazine ran a great series of pieces on ethical eating, ecology, and sustainable agriculture - connected to faith. Here’s one of those. Read, be inspired, make commitments, then act.
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How can you share what’s happening in your local...
Learning from others what's happening in their local environments is a way to take the abstract challenges of climate change and the realities of local ecosystems and make them understandable. Everyone has a story about the weather, about food, about water, about how it is to play in X condition (like when the air is so foul you can't breathe). Our stories are different, but we have something to share. What's yours? How are you sharing & learning?
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An Environmental Educational Collaborative →
One of the cool things digital tools can help us with is connecting and collaborating in learning about, appreciating, and understanding our global environment. When we talk to a classroom of folks struggling with finding drinking water, or a classroom that’s out testing and collecting data on acidified and polluted water, we have some real stories to share, data to offer and collect,...
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Unitarian Universalist Assoc - Muslim Interfaith... →
Here’s a useful PDF (you’ll be asked to download if you click the link) from the Unitarian Universalist Association to encourage UUs in being ever better interfaith community members and neighbors.
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Transforming Kitchens Into Classrooms →
Kitchens have always been places of learning. We teach how we live. So how do we teach appreciation for the earth, for the preparation of food, for the gift of good food? We teach that around the table, in the fields, at the markets, and also in the kitchen.
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Understanding Migration →
This is a cool high school and middle school curriculum that helps students appreciate the different causes and patterns of migration. I think this kind of basic introduction gives part of the reasons for why immigration is a justice matter for Unitarian Universalists. Let’s see if your youth agree!
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Share a migration story from your larger community...
All kinds of stories of migration, emigration and immigration. What are the stories you know?
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Dr. James Badawi, Islamic Business Ethics →
You might know what the 5 pillars of Islam are. You might even have studied Islam further to appreciate and love your neighbor. But do you understand the grounding of Islamic Business Ethics? Fascinating offering here from Dr. James Badawi, and accessible to those of us who aren’t scholars. I’d recommend sharing it in small group studies and opening conversations about business ethics...
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Immigration Matters: New Sanctuary Movement →
Sanctuary movements have arisen time and again when we as people of faith have needed to be creatively maladjusted and create refuge from unjust laws. The same is true of this New Sanctuary Movement. Here are the Unitarian Universalist New Sanctuary Pledge Partners: @font-face { font-family: “Arial”; }@font-face { font-family: “Cambria”; }p.MsoNormal,...
