Blessing of the Animals Service for the Public

Images, clockwise from top: detail of mosaic of Saint Francis of Assisi from the Saint Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse, NY; "Noah's Ark," by Edward Hicks, 1846; "Offering the Buffalo Skull--Mandan," by Edward Curtis, 1908; "Strength," from the Gaian Tarot, Joanna Powell-Colbert; "Unitarian Universalist Chalice World Flame," by Christia Cummings-Slack.


This Saturday, we are holding a Blessing of the Animals ceremony on the front lawn. One of our organizers is very savvy with PR, and she wrote a good press release that got picked up by the NPR station. It has been announced several times a day for a week already.

It looks like this service will be no small affair. I feel excited and nervous about that.

As a bit of background, the Blessing of the Animals is a religious service offered by many Catholic, Episcopal, Jewish, and Unitarian Universalist organizations. It's often held around this time of year, early October, which corresponds with St. Francis of Assisi Day, as well as the Noah's Ark portion of the yearly reading of the Torah. I have never been to one before, but in researching the one we planned for this weekend, I came to understand that what most of these services have in common is a recognition that animals are a special gift in our lives, an honoring of their inherent goodness, and a dedication to treating them well.

For my part, I am going to be presenting the Time for All Ages story about the Blessing of the Animals, as well as doing the blessing itself with a willow stick and water from our waters of the world basin. What I'd like to share here is the text that I'm using for the Time for All Ages story, as well as a picture (above) of the felt board that will be mounted near the altar at the front of the lawn. There is an existing Blessing of the Animals text by Connie Dunn and Kirsten Robinson on the Spirit Play training CD.  I borrowed the structure and some verbiage from their excellent piece, and tailored the content and wording to our particular audience and purpose:

St. Francis and the Blessing of the Animals

Spirit Play story for use with entire congregation, based on the work of Connie Dunn

Materials

Green feltboard on an easel or otherwise supported and pointed toward audience

Items: Large (8x10ish) picture of St. Francis of Assisi, Noah’s Ark, a colorful UU chalice, Gaian Tarot image of person and animal, Edward Curtis image of plains Indian honoring bison spirit, all backed with Velcro (see below for examples)

Presentation

St. Francis was a Catholic monk. He believed that animals and the earth were good and important gifts from God.

Place the picture of St. Francis on the felt board.

St. Francis said, “All praise to you, Oh Lord, for all these brother and sister creatures.” He is said to have treated animals with great love and kindness during his lifetime. He told people to take care of their animals as they took care of themselves. October 4 is the Catholic St. Francis feast day.

Place Noah’s Ark on the board.

Blessing the animals is an old Jewish tradition. While sometimes the Jewish Ceremony of Blessing the Animals is performed on the seventh day of Passover in the Spring, it is more often celebrated when the Torah reading is about Noah’s Ark, around this time of the fall.

Unitarian Universalism shares a heritage with Judaism and Christianity, and also has a tradition each fall of recognizing and giving thanks for how important and beloved animals are in our lives.

Place on the felt board a picture of a chalice.

Our seventh Unitarian Universalist principle is to care for the earth and all those who live on it. We value being part of the interconnected web of all existence—all creatures, people, and plants depend on each other and need clear water, clean air, and a healthy planet to call home. We humans are the ones who can decide to protect animals and the earth from harm, and Unitarian Universalists work together to make that happen.

            Place picture of “Strength” tarot card showing woman and lion. (Gaian Tarot)

Pagans view animals, both pet and wild, as sacred earthlings and kindred spirits, embodying special aspects of the God and Goddess. They recognize animals as helpers who are connected with that which is unspoken, but is seen, felt, tasted, heard, smelled, and perceived all around us.

Place picture of Native American honoring the animal spirits on the board.

Many Native American traditions also see the animals as spiritual brothers and sisters. Some Native Americans—and pagans, too—also see plant life as spiritual kin. Before harvesting food from the ground or hunting animals, birds, or fish, those who follow a Native American spiritual path might talk to these living beings and tell them why they are harvesting or hunting them. In this way, people stay grounded in the understanding that for all we eat, something has grown on this planet and given its life to fill our human bellies.

I wonder what all these traditions have in common?

I wonder if people of every religion, in every time, have experienced special connections with animals?

I wonder what part of this was new to you, that you maybe heard for the first time?

I wonder if you see yourself and the animal or animals you love somewhere in this story?

Edited to add:

This is what our altar looked like after the Blessing of the Animals service. (The green felt board was up on the altar as I told the story, but we moved it afterward so that the pictures of past beloved pets could be seen.) It went great! It was interesting to see how people responded to the story. At the very beginning, it seemed as if people didn't quite know what to make of the story. I don't know if the Saint Francis reference followed by Noah's Ark was a bit too Christian for them or what, but there was a little resistance in the body language and energy of the room. But, by the time I got to the part about UUism and the environmental aspects of taking care of animals, plants, and the earth, people were back into it. And they really seemed to like the Pagan and Native American pieces. I tried--and am trying--to remember that my job is not to make people comfortable and happy, but to give them the information and experiences that will help them to make the world a better place. That's a hard, but pretty dang amazing job.

 

Spirit of Spirit Play Spreading

We have but one of our three classes set up as Spirit Play classes, but the concepts themselves--big and small--have percolated through our offerings so that things are a little different now than they were last spring.

The fourth Sunday of each month is "ShaRE Sunday," an opportunity for congregants to share a talent, passion, activity, skill, game, craft, etc., and for the regular teachers to get a Sunday off. Sometimes, a couple of congregants are off and running with this and I stand by watching happily as they orchestrate a multigenerational class of an always unpredictable number through a fun and interesting 50 minutes. Other times, a second person can't be found. I have a love-challenge relationship with this. On the one hand, both finding people to do ShaRE Sundays and coming up with and preparing components myself takes a lot of time, two to six hours, easily. On the other hand, researching themes, planning activities, and preparing materials is really fun! I feel giddy with excitement imagining how the session will go.

This coming Saturday is our "Blessing of the Animals," so this Sunday a (incredibly talented, knowledgeable, and skilled) congregant adapted for children a personality test that used animal archetypes. She led those gathered through a series of open-ended questions about animals in our lives--who they are, how they act, and what they tell us about ourselves. They then took a short quiz to see if they self-identified most as a Golden retriever, otter, lion, or beaver. The idea was to give them a little bit of self-knowledge as well as help them consider an animal's point of view. My job was to create the hands-on component of this session.

Here was what they walked in to see, along with a few other tables set up with cardstock and drawing materials, as well as extra pieces of felt and scissors:

And here is how they were used:

Finally, a close-up of a couple of final products:

This isn't, of course, Spirit Play. But what I noticed is that I am acquiring a kind of "Spirit Play lens" to add to some of my other lenses when I want to look at any given session, lesson, or activity to see if it's as good as it can be.

Looking through the Spirit Play lens, I asked myself--when I first began and all throughout the process of planning and preparing:

• Are these materials engaging? Are they the best I have access to?
• Are they arranged in an eye-pleasing way?
• Are they at a height and distance that young and older children can easily access them?
• Will everyone has ample opportunity (time, space, adult or older-kid help) to do the work they want in as self-directed a way as possible?
• Are there choices available for children who may need an alternate form of the activity, or who may want to express themselves in other ways? Are they equally attractively presented and accessible?
• What do the participants need to know to be successful with this activity? What's the best way for me to help them get this information?
• How do I envision the flow in the room, the physical movement? How about the rhythm?
• What's available for children who finish early? Who don't quite finish before it's time to go?

After my Spirit Play training, I am more cognizant of these factors, even if I knew and used a few before. I found that I now consider each of them to be essential! 

For example, in thinking about alternative forms of the activity, I realized that for non-neurotypical children and children with sensory issues, a tie-on, full-face felt mask might be very unappealing! I didn't think of this until this morning (of course!), so an hour before go-time I was cutting out paper versions of the masks and adding long, thin dowels so that the mask could be held a little bit away from the face, while still giving the full effect of "trying on" an animal persona. Don't you know that THREE people of our 16 chose those paper masks on sticks? If that wasn't a choice, I wonder if those people would have simply declined participating at all...?

What I learned from the training and reading is still paying off, still spreading through our program in new, delightful, inclusive, and lovely ways.

Spirit Place Storage Space

Almost immediately it became apparent to us, the religious education team, that we needed a significant amount of extra space for 1) storing completed story baskets while they wait to be introduced to the class, 2) storing story-building materials for yet-to-be-made stories, and 3) storing "special work" materials and supplies, and 4) the out-rotated regular work choices each week.

We don't have a system for this yet, and the DRE office is getting a touch crowded...

Pattern, Relationship, and Spacial/Kinesthetic Learners

Last week, I found a good price on a set of Cuisenaire Rods, a popular math manipulative that allow children to play with and wonder at the beauty of pattern and relationships based on numbers and parts of the whole.This may not be an intuitive choice for a religious education classroom, but I think it has a very defensible place there. I, myself, was filled with an overwhelming sense of wonder the first time I saw microscopic images of snowflakes with its regular symmetry, cutaway images of a nautilus shell (that conforms to the Fibonacci sequence), and the perfect tesselation of hexagons that is honeycomb. Pattern and relationship abound beautifully in our natural world, and claiming this as a source of awe and inspiration is our children's birthright.

At the same place that I bought the Rods, I picked up a small set of wooden pattern blocks, and for many of the same reasons. But additionally, pattern blocks can be used to create mandalas, which have a long, multicultural tradition of being used as meditation tools and expressions of peace and harmony. Additionally, the Cuisenaire Rods and the pattern blocks both offer something special for the spacial learners, one of Gardner's 8 intelligences that is often more challenging to engage.

Something to keep in mind about spatial/kinesthetic learners and manipulatives is...well, they manipulate! And that manipulation might not look like you anticipated. See the last picture above? That is the hand of a child who made the soccer ball and the "drops of blood" in the first picture, and here he has made up a challenge game where one tries to flick a shape through a narrow passage to knock down another shape.  He was engaged. He was doing his own thing without interfering with anybody else's work. He picked up the pieces that fell on the floor. He made a new friend when another child came over to see what he was doing.

This was not the exquisitely laid symmetrical mandala of thoughtfulness, or an abstract theme derived from the morning's story. But it was a kid in a good mood having a good time within the boundaries of the room and making a sweet connection. With that kind of Sunday experience, he'll leave happy and ask to come back, and we have all the time we need to offer him new and different ways of expressing the Spirit within.

New things!

Maybe one of the best things I've discovered about the Spirit Play classroom thus far (and granted, it has been in use a grand total of one Sunday!) is how excited I and the teachers are about what is new and different each week.

I think the best environments and education setting for children mix known, familiar, and beloved ritual and structure with a frequently changing collection of interesting things to touch, play with, see, do, and talk about. In Montessori, the familiar setting and structure is called the "prepared classroom." In homeschooling, the frequently changing objects of curiosity and conversation starters are introduced through "strewing," leaving them in places children are likely to find them on their own and pick them up (or sometimes not--no attachment there to a specific outcome). Spirit Play mixes these techniques, and it is So Very Much Fun to be on the lookout for ways to enrich the experience of Sunday School for the children.

This week, I took my own two kids to the Mulberry River for a swim, and whilst poking around on the shore, I found these treasures to add to the observation tray:

Structuring around the liturgial year

I've been spending a lot of time on the Thoughts from the Sheepfold blog, which is written by the direction of education at an Episcopal church in Ohio that uses the Good Shepherd Catechesis, a religious education model developed by Sofia Cavalletti and a forerunner of the UU Spirit Play in its use of some Montessori methods in a religious school environment.

One thing I envy in the Christian applications of this type of program is the abiding structure of the liturgical year. UU's have traditional services performed at traditional times (Water, Flower, and Bread Communion services, winter holiday service, etc.), but there is something comforting about taking a turn around the wheel of the year within one's community when each station has its own feel, pull, push, and stories. Different branches of UU have it--Christianity, Paganism, Judaism--but what is the wheel of the UU year? This may be something to create.

Children's Comments on Day 1

Today was the first day! The doorkeeper and storyteller were in their roles, and the third teacher (we have a three-teacher rotation in this room) was there, too. There was no story today, but rather an introduction to the classroom.

As coffee hour was winding down, a couple of the children--two ten year olds--went back down to play in the room. (This, in and of itself, was a good thing! It means we effectively set up an inviting space that feels like "theirs.") When I walked past, one child was pretending to be storyteller and the other was in the "circle." I asked them how the first day went, and I asked that they be really honest with me. This is what they said:

"I liked that we got to choose what to do, that it wasn't just one activity that everyone had to do." (One chose to look at things on the examination tray, the other chose to play with modeling clay, and both chose to play some with the salt tray.)

"I liked the work rugs, and that we got to sit on cushions." (The cushions were an afterthought, but proved to be important in helping the children to be comfortable sitting on the floor. With eight kids ages 7-12 in our small room, it helped define space better, too.)

"I loved the feast! I love that we get snack every time." (Feast is an important part of Spirit Play. Snack had been a happy sometimes-thing in years past.)

Then they reflected a bit, and one said, "There weren't really any con's." I asked if there was anything they thought they might miss from the way classes used to be done. One said that he liked sitting in chairs. He also said he preferred for the story to be told quickly rather than unfolded slowly, so they could get right to the work. The other child did not contribute a drawback.

...just before the children arrive

There's a special kind of quiet excitement in education spaces just before the children arrive. It's delicious, a mix of loving preparation and hope-filled possibility.

"Tool Belt" for handling challenging classroom behavior

This graphic grew out of a Teacher Development Renaissance Module I took with Pat Kahn and Courtney Montgomery in Gainesville, Florida, and was further developed during the first teacher orientation I conducted at the UU Fellowship of Fayetteville, AR. A copy of this goes into the teacher classroom binders for quick reference when things get a little sticky.

Salt Tray with Religious Symbols

Salt trays are popular on the homeschooling and Montessori sites these days. The idea is that children can copy a picture, letter, number, etc. using a finger, chopstick, q-tip, or the like, enjoying the tactile experience while learning how to form the new symbol. It's a little different, highly adaptable, and erases like magic when you gentle shake the tray (kind of like an Etch-A-Sketch!).

I'd seen a very simple one here, done with alphabet letters, and adapted the same idea to religious symbols, examples of which I painted in watercolor on thick watercolor paper.

The tray is a repurposed Melissa and Doug tray that once held a letter puzzle. These are pretty easy to find at thrift stores, but I bet many parents of young kids right now would have one they'd be willing to pass along.

The salt isn't very thickly poured--just enough to fully cover the bottom, and so that when one draws with the finger, the design goes through to the bottom of the tray. (Some people paint the bottom of the tray for better contrast. That looks nice, I think, but takes more time than I wanted to spend on this.)

The watercolor paper is cut down to fit in the small side of the tray. There are religious symbols on both sides, so 12 total.

In the Spirit Play classroom, this could be a special worktime choice during a world religions lesson, or to correspond with a churchwide interfaith endeavor. It could also sit alongside the finger labyrinth on a shelf dedicated to kinesthetic work, available at any time.

Many Ways to Pray story

This lesson was lovely to build. You are tasked to find images that are such fun to look for--a picture of Ghandi, Jesus, and the Dalai Lama, children praying, Muslims praying, American Indians praying, labyrinth walkers, lotus sitters, etc. A simple white background frames these images, and a simple text about what a prayer was, is, and can be leads you through them.

A friend told me that plastic lamination takes 500 years to break down. So, I have resolved to quit using it. No small feat in children's education settings! But we got the pictures printed at the office supply store onto heavy-duty cardstock, then recycled a set of old holiday cards to provide backing and further sturdiness. A few tidy slices of the paper cutter, and the cards look and feel great.