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Tapping is a technique used in acupuncture as a means to calm our minds and heal from stress. Tapping works well when negative emotions arise, providing  a physical way to remove stress and heal when we are triggered.
Move into a  meditation position.

Sit comfortably in your chair or on the floor.

Put your hands on your lap or on your knees.

Sit up nice and tall.

Focus your eyes in front of you.

Find your breath moving in your body by taking in one breath through your nose and then slowly breathing it out through your mouth.

Place your hands above your head and use your fingers to gently tap the crown of your head.

Say the mantra, “Tapping once, Tapping twice, Releasing Fear, Stress and Fight .” Breathe deeply and pause.

Next, tap and say the mantra in a few key areas that prove very effective for reducing stress and promoting healing. After each tapping, Say the mantra, “Tapping once, Tapping twice, Releasing Fear, Stress and Fight,” breathe deeply and pause. Try tapping the top of the head, above the eyebrows, beneath the collar bone and the center of the chest bone.

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We call it comfort food because when we are sick or sad or lonely, they are the foods which give us healing. It comforts us.

When we are sick, or sad, or lonely, we might not feel in the mood for eating daring, experimental foods. We want to return to foods we know and love. Whenever we need to heal, we want to return to people, places, food, and other things that we know and love.  As we seek comfort and healing, foods can help. There are other ways of seeking comfort. Petting the fur of your dog or cat is one. Being part of a church community is comforting too, knowing that there are people who care if you are sad, sick, or lonely.

Do you have a favorite way to comfort and heal? A favorite food?

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One of the myths about Indigenous Peoples is that they are extinct or don’t live in modern times.  Check out this map to which shows the percent of Indigenous persons in the U.S. now.  Why do you think there is a myth that Indigenous Peoples are extinct?

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What do you think the lesson of the story is?

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A founding story of American Thanksgiving, reflected by the History Channel claims, ” In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an…

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We often talk about the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do to you. What about the Platinum Rule? Do unto others as they would want done to them.  The Platinum Rule is about recognizing what others want, rather than imposing your own ideas upon them. When we try to serve others without asking what they would like, we really aren’t helping them or offering the healing they really need. Instead, we could be assuming that we are better than those who need help, and know them better than they know themselves.

Share your  thoughts on the following questions in the comment section below.

●  What do you think about the difference between the Golden Rule and the Platinum Rule?

●   How might the world be different if we asked people how they might want to be helped?

●   Has anyone ever tried to help you without first asking what you really need?

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Peace is when we want to help others and help the world. To help others, we need to listen to what they need. There are all kinds of ways to help in this book. There are all kinds of needs in the world. When we listen to what is needed, we can help in the best way possible.

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Our faith asks us to serve others. It’s part of our second UU Principle, “Justice, equity and compassion in human relations.” But sometimes when we try to help and heal others we assume we know exactly what they need, but we’re wrong! So what’s one of the ways our faith guides us into becoming a people of healing? It tells us to “Listen Before You Try to Help and Heal Others!”

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Healing takes work, and our faith also reminds us that healing involves being gentle with ourselves. When our feelings have been hurt and we’re feeling sad and lonely, sometimes the best thing to do is comfort ourselves. One way might be comfort food. Another way might be to spend time with a beloved pet. So what’s one of the ways our faith guides us into becoming a people of healing? It tells us to “Find ways to comfort yourself!”

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Heal by Telling the Truth...of Thanksgiving!

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Heal by Telling the Truth...of Thanksgiving!

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When it comes to healing, so many brave and wise voices have lifted up the importance of telling the true history of Thanksgiving. This search for the true history is reflected in our Fourth Principle: “A Free and Responsible Search for Truth and Meaning” and our Eighth Principle: “journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.” Our faith has taken up this work and called on white UU’s to be especially vigilant about the work of correcting stories that have caused harm. So what’s one of the ways our faith guides us into becoming a people of healing? It says, “Learn and tell our true history!”

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Gratitude means saying thank you. When we think of everything we are grateful for, we are healed.

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Our faith reminds us that healing takes work. After a fight with someone, it’s easy to never want to see that person again. We’d rather ignore or run away from the mess. This is true whether we are the ones who did the harm or got harmed. It takes courage, commitment and skill to successfully travel the path of healing. So what’s one of the ways our faith guides us into becoming a people of healing? It tells us, “Don’t run away from the hard work of healing!”

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Simply saying “thank-you” can be a prayer. Saying “thank-you” is called expressing gratitude. And when we take the time to say thank you for the good things in our lives, it can help us feel better about the sad or bad things in our lives. Has saying thank you and noticing the good things in your life ever helped you feel better? Share you thoughts in the comments below.

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Prayer is one word for the alignment of our full attention with our desire to connect with That Which Is Larger Than Us. It can take many forms, from the quiet cultivation of stillness to the deliberate naming of all that we're grateful for, which Rev. Tom Schade calls "naming the goodness."

Whatever its form, prayer also creates an internal shift. As renowned theologian Reinhold Neibuhr noted, "Prayer does not change things; prayer changes people, and people change things.... Prayer is not hearing voices, prayer is acquiring a voice."

When it comes to prayer and meditation, how it works is less important than its practice. Prayer is a way to connect and reconnect to ourselves and to that which is life-giving; the mechanics don't matter as much as the intention: remembering ourselves as magnificent, fragile vessels of love, sometimes with intimates and sometimes with strangers, and affirming our choice to remain connected so that we're not lost in the vastness of space and time.

-Rev. Erika Hewitt, Editor

Prayer is not about leading the universe toward some desired outcome; it is about our willingness to be led to greater consciousness, compassion, and connection.

-Rev. Erik Walker Wikstrom

Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist, Charlottesville, VA

I define prayer as kind, thoughtful and intentional conversations with the universe. My prayer might not change anything, but it helps me respond to the rest of the world in a way I didn't before.

-Ronya Hobbit

Bismarck-Mandan Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Bismarck, ND

When I think of prayer, I think of continuity with all those who have offered prayers over time. I grew up seeing my mother pray her rosary daily. As a child I didn't really understand it, but as I grew older I realized it allowed her a tiny space away from the commotion in her life. My mother's prayer to us as we left her presence is stitched into my ordination stole, "Que Dios y la Virgin te acompañe siempre- May God and the Virgin (Mary) accompany you always." Prayers are my touchstone. Regardless of what's happening, in prayer I find my power. It brings me solace and sets me right again in my mind and heart. Prayer is the deepest longings of my soul manifested into words and actions.

-Rev. Marta Valentín

UU Church of Medford, MA

Prayers of gratitude focus my attention on the many blessings all around me, pedestrian and profound. Praying for the well-being of others in a Buddhist metta style of wishing what's best for them opens my heart. Praying for people with whom I'm having difficulty is the best way I know to access my compassion and shift the energy between us. Sending blessings to people I pass as I drive to work-including the drivers who cut me off-reminds me that we are all connected.

-Rev. Sue Magidson

Affiliated Community Minister, UU Church of Berkeley, CA

I love the word prayer over meditation because the latter is often used to describe an emptying of one's mind-and I'm looking to deliberately fill mine up. In understanding what I'm doing as prayer, I'm placing myself in the company of souls throughout millennia who also hoped, cried, were sickened with worry, loved desperately, and felt impossible levels of joy.

-Rev. Marisol Caballero

Faith Innovation Specialist, Faith Development Office, UUA

Prayer was foundational to my fundamentalist Christian family-and frequently about the fundamentals. So narrow was that narrow way, for me, that when I stepped off it I expected my prayers were forever unworthy. Still, that longing for marrow-deep connection would not relent, and led me to study devotional traditions once considered foreign or forbidden. How precious that study, when I became an interfaith hospice chaplain, companioning all manner of sojourner, including a devout Atheist who recited Whitman's poetry as profoundly as any scripture. And so I learned to pray again, with no one right way, save yearning toward the Mystery my heart has always known.

-Rev. Amy Carol Webb

River of Grass Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Davie, FL

When I experienced a call to ministry, I felt a stirring and connectedness that I couldn't fully articulate or understand. In one of my seminary courses, we spent the first portion of every class in centering prayer. In that silence I built a deeper relationship with the connectedness that had drawn me to ministry, a connectedness I often call God. My experience of prayer gives me an intimate place to bring my broken heart, my rage and thirst for justice, my deep gratitude, my joys and celebrations, my fears and anxieties. Our principles of respect, justice, curiosity, and lively community give my Unitarian Universalist faith wings, but prayer helps to give my faith deep and abiding roots.

- Rev. Sarah Napoline

First Parish Universalist Church, Stoughton, MA

Prayer is an intimate conversation with myself in all my vulnerability-facing fears that may be beneath the surface or staring me in the face. In prayer, I admit that I am powerless to shape the world to my desires and wants, but I have the power to choose to respond. Prayer grants me the courage to face the mistakes I've made and the harms I have caused others. Prayer exposes the bounty of my life for which I can be grateful.

-Michael Salwasser

Unitarian Universalist Church of Long Beach, CA

In going inward, prayer is an opportunity for mindful noticing of my fears, my dreams, my sense of gratitude. With that deeper noticing of my inner life comes the opportunity to name and share those parts of me, to invite others and the holy into deeper relationship with me. In reaching out through prayer to "all that is"-God, the universe, the vastness of time and space of which we are a part -I place myself in both a larger context and a larger relationship. I am a part of all that is, distinct yet inseparable, held yet free. I invite every atom, every molecule, everything seen and everything unseen, to bear witness and support me in my prayer.

-Rev. Manish Mishra-Marzetti

First Parish in Lincoln, MA

What prayer can do is help us to live consciously, honorably, and compassionately. As long as prayer helps me to be more loving, then I need prayer. As long as prayer serves a potent means of sharing my love with others, I need prayer.

- Rev. Kate Braestrup

Chaplain, Maine Warden Service

In times of need and inspiration I open up a "streaming" prayer channel-the baby has a high fever; the changing wind and the smell of cinnamon stir a sense of wellness in me; the cease-fire has lasted two days; the starfish are all dying and how can we all go on living on an earth without starfish?-and my message joins the smooth, silent static made by us little humans the world over as we tap into concepts we barely understand but that sustain us just the same: fierce and desperate hope, a search for what is right and true, and a whole-hearted embrace of the One whose breath fills our own lungs.

-Teresa Honey Youngblood

Religious Educator, Fayetteville, AR

For Reflection

Do you pray? If not, is there something you do regularly that someone else might call prayer?

What are some differences in how prayer is portrayed in media (fiction and nonfiction) and how prayer is practiced in your life or the lives of your loved ones?

The reflections in this pamphlet imply that prayer is a mode in which we cultivate tenderness and humility within ourselves. Has that been true in your experience with prayer?

Does the form of prayer matter to you? Why or why not? How might praying in a certain form or style affect your experience of prayer?

Imagine walking past a church, temple, or mosque with a public box outside inviting passersby to submit "prayer requests." Would you write a prayer to put in the box? Would the denomination matter?

How does your personal history with prayer influence your current feelings about prayer?

Resources

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Prayer is one word for the alignment of our full attention with our desire to connect with That Which Is Larger Than Us. It can take many forms, from the quiet cultivation of stillness to the deliberate naming of all that we're grateful for, which Rev. Tom Schade calls "naming the goodness."

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To move past a fight, it’s important to talk things through. Here’s what you can do:

●  Reach out – Let your friend know that you want to talk and work things out

●  Make a time to talk – When you’re both ready and calm, set a time to talk

●  Keep calm – Talk in a calm, quiet voice. Take a break if things get heated

●  Be present – Make eye contact, avoid interrupting and distractions

●  Talk about your feelings – Use “I” statements  and be specific

●  Be open – Let your friend share their feelings and thoughts

●  Apologize – Say you’re sorry for your role or actions during the fight

●  Agree to disagree – When you want to move past this but find it hard to agree

●  Fix things together – Figure out how to stop this from happening again

●  Be patient – It may take time for things to go back to normal

●  Celebrate – If you’re able to work things out, celebrate by having fun!
What ways do you use to to work through a fight or disagreement?

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Share in the comments what you are thankful for!

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Kid President’s 25 Reasons To Be Thankful!

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Let’s now get into our meditation positions.

Sit comfortably in your chair or on the floor.

Put your hands on your lap or on your knees.

Sit up nice and tall.

Focus your eyes in front of you.

Find your breath moving in your body by taking in one breath through your nose and then slowly breathing it out through your mouth. Click on the video to learn a healing song!