“Harris: I wanted to give parents and educators tools to help ...children:

1) learn to identify the feeling of not knowing and develop language for talking about it.

2) become aware of the positive feelings associated with not knowing--awe and excitement.

3) learn to say "I don't know" with pride, rather than embarrassment or fear.

4) learn to ask questions.

5) begin to develop a capacity for postulating theories without censoring oneself.

6) learn to say "I don't know" by seeing it modeled in adults, which I believe is the most powerful way to teach children.” from the inside flap of the book

The theme this month is Commitment and we are exploring the 4 “C’s” of commitment for Unitarian Universalists. Our first week we explored our commitment to curiosity. This week we will explore change. The other two “C’s” are conscience and compassion, which we will explore later.

Commitment means that we act on what we value and hold important.

 

That means we expect change, just like the ice is changing. What’s it doing now?

 

Is the ice cube dying or changing?

When it turns to water will it stop changing? [No, it will evaporate] That’s right. Almost everything keeps changing and changing all the time, including us and our ideas.

 

We Unitarian Universalists expect change in our lives, and our beliefs. What we believe at age 4 will change when we become 8 years old. What we believe at age 8 may well change when we become 12 years old. What we believe at age 12 may well change when we become 20 years old, which may well change when we become 40 years, 60 years and 80 years old! We believe that is part of living and growing.

 

 

The ice cube always has hydrogen and oxygen molecules, H2O, whether it is ice, water or steam.

Pretend our commitments are like molecules - curiosity, change, conscience and compassion. These have always been there in some form in our faith, but our understandings, our language, what we leave out, and what we include, changes.

 

 

1. Right now, we have a change to consider - that of adding an 8th Principleto our 7 Principles. We are learning more and more about racism and have grown and understand racism in ways that have changed. The 8th Principle, which has already been adopted by a number of congregations, tells us, “ We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: 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.” 

 

2. We changed our second source to reflect a new sensitivity to gender identity. We have learned and grown in our understanding that there are many genders, not just male and female. So, we changed our language from “Words and deeds of prophetic women and men (which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love)” to “Words and deeds of prophetic people(which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.)”[Depending on your age group, you can decide if you want to read the whole thing or concentrate just on the language change.]

 

4. And if we go further back, we see how our understandings have changed, too. One of the older principles from 1961 when UnitarianandUniversalism were merged, said, “To encourage cooperation with men of good will in every land.” The compassion was there, but in those days, the word “men” was supposed to include “everyone.” But it really didn’t.  So now we use the word “humankind” instead of “mankind.” Our world has changed since then!

 

 

So, we can expect all sorts of changes in our lives.  Sometimes it isn’t easy to change, but that’s why we Unitarian Universalists are in it together. We have to help each other not only be open to change but also to help each other adjust, let go and embrace what’s new. Yes, we all change. But we’re also in it together!