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People of almost all faith traditions practice some form of meditation. Why? Meditation is a super power!

Light Watkins, says, “Common side effects of daily meditation are increased energy and feelings of contentedness and inner happiness.”

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to sit silently and empty your brain to meditate. Meditation can include any number of practices that help you strip away distraction and encounter your innermost being. This can start with something as simple as focusing your eyes for a period of time on some object like a bird or a flame, and when your thoughts start to wander, notice, and then return your attention to your focal point. You may be wondering how on earth that helps you encounter your inmost self, but do this enough and you’ll start to identify patterns in what’s tugging at your attention. When we hurry and scurry, distract and scroll, it’s possible for us to live any number of days without encountering ourselves. Meditation is a way to reconnect to what is present within us.

Start with Guided Meditation!

Guided meditation is a great starting point for children and new meditators alike. You don’t have to be an expert, or have studied some ancient practice. All you have to do is close your eyes and visualize what you’re hearing.

When my children were younger, we started every day with a guided meditation, often the one linked on the left. Those are my two older kids, about fifteen years ago when we had family meditation time every morning. It was a great way to settle and center before getting into the work of the day.

Try joining your kids for a guided meditation, and discussing the experience over breakfast!

Make a Calm Down Jar

Calm-down jars are a mesmerizing way to help our brains step out of a stressful moment and settle like glitter.

Supplies:

• 1/2 C hot water
• 1/2 C corn syrup
• 1 Tbsp glitter
• 1-4 drops dish soap
• jar

Mix water and corn syrup in the jar. Add glitter and shake. Dish soap will help the glitter clump less, but will also make it settle faster, so add a drop at a time and test before adding more.

Next time you’re stressed, give it a shake, and envision your feelings settling with the glitter.

Meditation Spaces Around the Valley

You can meditate absolutely anywhere but the Willamette Valley is rich with excellent places to help you flex your meditation muscles.

If the great outdoors is your thing, Starker Arts Park is a lovely place to sit for a nature meditation beside the pond and focus your attention on a dragonfly or the surface of the water. If you prefer gazing across the distance, Fitton Green is a delightfully short hike out to a bench that’s just perfect for observing the horizon and tracing the line where the sky meets the mountains.

Maybe insulated silence is more your jam. If so, check out the Grotto’s cliffside meditation chapel next time you’re in Portland. Pictured in the higher image on the left, it’s open to the public during operating hours and is a beautiful space for quiet contemplation in a warm and protected silence.

A little closer to home, you can enjoy a walking meditation in the Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan’s courtyard labyrinth, shown in the lower image to the left. This space is always open to the public, though during office hours, you’re likely to have an audience of church administrators. And while I haven’t seen it myself, I’m told there’s a second labyrinth that’s open to the public behind the cancer center near the hospital.

Homework for Caregivers

Just being with ourselves is getting harder and harder as the world fills with digital distractions and opportunities for immediate gratification. It’s easy to want better for our children than we demand for ourselves, but role models are the best teachers. If you’ve been particularly stressed, or self-medicating with social scrolling, try setting aside a mere five minutes a day to try on of the techniques above. Notice how you feel in your body before and after your five minutes. Once you’ve tried it yourself a few times, consider inviting your kids to join you. Tell them why you wanted to try meditating, and how it’s going, and see if they’d like to try with you.

Meditation might seem weird to your children at first, but many children feel a sense of inner control that is comforting to them after a very short amount of time developing their meditation muscles. When so much outside of ourselves seems big and scary, knowing that we can turn inward and trust ourselves can be a huge source of security for the smallest members of our families.

Happy meditating!

Every 4th Sunday of the month, the young(er) adults of the UUFC are invited to gather after the service to enjoy pizza and conversation together, to deepen social connections between the two newest adult generations of our culture. The term “young adult” is a wiggly one, especially in today’s social climate, where some Millennials identify more with the elder Gen X, while others find they have more in common with the younger Gen Z. As such, our Young Adult Pizza Hour attracts quite the spectrum, a delightful mix of 18 year-old college freshmen all the way to elder Millenials who are starting to inch into their fourth decade. All of these age brackets are welcome!

Every month, regular attendees receive a reminder email in the week leading up to the fourth Sunday with an evocative quote and a few discussion questions to ponder for that month’s meet-up, and then when we get together for pizza (including GF and vegan options) to chat, learn from one another, and commiserate about the struggles of adulting in the world in which we live.

Every six weeks or so, we gather at each of the eight points on the Wheel of the Year as an intergenerational community to celebrate holidays from nature-based neo-pagan tradition with story, song, and ritual. Some of these holidays are widely known, like Yule, the Winter Solstice. Some, like Lughnasadh, are not as well recognized. The eight sacred days on the Wheel start with Yule in December, then proceed to Imbolc in February, Ostara in March, Beltane in May, Litha in June, Lughnasadh in August, Mabon in September, Samhain in October, and then right back around the Wheel to Yule. This cycle of celebration echoes the cycles of the changing year, and it honors the interdependent web of which we are all a part,

The stories we tell as part of these services are told together, with an ever-changing cast of voices. Congregants of all ages can volunteer to take roles in these services, bringing the tales alive with costumes, props, and lots of fun congregational interaction. In addition to the services themselves, each point on the Wheel has been recognized as a holiday throughout human history, and so we honor some of these occasions in extra ways, too! A May Pole for Beltane, Hallow’s Eve costumes for Samhain, sing-a-longs for Yule… Honoring the Wheel of the Year calls for celebrations of all kinds! In addition, each point on the Wheel is accompanied by a Celebration Week — a handful of self-guided activities that are appropriate for all ages that deepen understanding and interaction with the truths of each seasonal celebration.

We hope you’ll join us!

If you’re a UU who gets an itchy feeling when you hear the word God, you’re not alone. There are plenty of reasons we might avoid the subject, but our kids will hear the word without our help. It doesn’t matter if you abandoned the notion of God long ago, you’ve got a solid relationship with your Goddess, or you’ve gotten comfortable with just not knowing. I’m all but 100% certain that your kids are going to have questions about God anyway. UU minister, Reverend Robin Bartlett says, “I have a responsibility to say something about god because someone else on the playground, or at a friend’s house, or at a summer camp will fill the vacuum I’ve left if I say nothing at all… I need to counter the message that God picks and chooses, that some souls are saved, but not all souls.”

Let’s explore some ways we might authentically fill that vacuum.

Half an Answer is Better Than an Answer and a Half

When we’re caught off guard, uncomfortable, or overly passionate about a topic — all feelings we might have when our kids ask about the G-word — it’s easy to give too much of an answer, and even start to answer questions that weren’t actually asked.

Sound familiar?

With younger, elementary-aged children, asking more questions before offering answers can help you discern what’s really being asked. Our own baggage can cause us to read too much into the question & give an answer that is too big for our child. Take a breath so you can listen & discern first.

If we give too big an answer, our children are likely to tune out before they get the answer they were looking for. If we’re regulars at giving too much of an answer, they might even develop a habit of not asking.

Remember this: Half an answer is better than an answer and a half!

While this is true for all aged audiences, it’s especially true when talking with our children. By keeping our answers short, we give our children time to digest what they’ve heard & ourselves time to consider what more we wish to say. When we leave our kids with a valid answer, but still wanting more, we make space for the conversation to circle back around a few more times, and these big conversations with no easy answers are at their best when we plant the seed, give it time to grow, and return to tend it regularly.

We’ve got a lifetime for this talk. No need to overdo it on our first go.

Other Ways of Saying God

Very often, “god” is just a quick way to say “something bigger than ourselves that inspires awe.”

If your younger kiddo asked about God, it’s probably best to stick with that word for now and just try not to make it weird.

If you have older kids, though, who are capable of more flexible and nuanced thinking, it can be useful to come up with a list of longhand terms for God that feel less loaded. Then, when you encounter religious wisdom with god talk together, you can evaluate it with more clarity by substituting your longhand terminology to see if it’s wisdom that resonates with you.

Here’s a short list to get you started.

God is:

the Big Mystery Love with a capitol L

the Unknowable Power the Really Real

the Inner Calling the Governing Laws of the Universe

Anne Lamott & Howard

Next month, we’ll be adding prayer to our toolkit. As a bridge from here to there, I offer the words of the brilliant and ever-salty Anne Lamott:

You may in fact be wondering what I even mean when I use the word “prayer.” It is communication from the heart to that which surpasses understanding. Let’s say it is communication from one’s heart to God. Or if that is too triggering or ludicrous a concept for you, to the Good, the force that is beyond our comprehension but that in our pain or supplication or relief we don’t need to define or have proof of or any established contact with. Let’s say it is what the Greeks called the Really Real, what lies within us, beyond the scrim of our values, positions, convictions, and wounds. Or let’s say it is a cry from deep within to Life or Love, with capital L’s. Nothing could matter less than what we call this force. I know some ironic believers who call God Howard, as in “Our Father, who art in Heaven, Howard be thy name.”… Let’s not get bogged down on whom or what we pray to. Let’s just say prayer is communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or Goodness, or Howard; to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in; to something unimaginably big, and not us. We could call this force Not Me, and Not Preachers Onstage with a Choir of 800. Or for convenience we could just say ‘God.’

Homework for Caregivers

If you can, practice speaking out loud what you would say if your child asked, “What is God?” or “Do you believe in God?” Notice how it goes, and whether it reflects your truest answer. If they’ve already asked and you feel like it could have gone WAY better, don’t fret. It’ll circle back around. And when it does, you’ll have a little practice, and hopefully a little community of support.

Speaking of support…

Ask a friend if they’ve had the god talk with their kids and would be willing to share how it went. If they’re still a part of your life, ask your parents or caregivers about how old you were when you first got curious about God and how they felt. Have their feelings about god shifted over time? If they could go back, would they teach you the same? The more we talk about these topics with our people, the less weighty they start to feel, and then we can approach these conversations with our usual calm.

And, as always, if you want to pop in and discuss the big G or anything else, my door is always open!