Pondering the Principles

"Freedom is not won forever; each generation must liberate themselves from the bondage of tradition."
-Clarence R. Skinner

From the UUA website:

The Consultation on Ministry to and with Youth is a two-year process to revision, renew and support our Association's ministry to and with youth. It will solicit the input and commitment of the widest possible spectrum of stakeholders in Unitarian Universalist youth ministry. Conversations within congregations, districts, and stakeholder organizations will focus on what they can do to support youth ministry at their level, and what the Association can do to support youth ministry as a whole. In this way, the process will build from the ideas and needs of youth and adults at the grassroots level.

Right now, I am attending the Summit on Youth Ministry, the last formal step and gathering in the Consultation process.

The first formal activity that we did was construct a historical narrative from 1950-present, with foci on US and Canada, the UU movement (and before it, the U and U movements), and UU Youth Ministry, specifically.

In discussion that followed presentations, we developed three general statements that sum up a lot of what's going on in the UU movement, generally, although with occasional forays into the larger. They are:
- A movement towards youth political involvement, as well as youth being viewed as a political entity and being focused on by politicians as an important group of voters.
- More attention being paid to AR/AO work in the youth movement, but also the UU movement at large.
- A movement towards institutionalizing, but also towards revision of those institutions, such as the Commission on Appraisal's work with the Principles and Purposes.

After this, we broke into our small groups again (I, by the way, am in the group focused on Organizing Youth Ministry for Success, but that official component of the work hasn't begun quite yet.) and discussed forces, factors, and trends impacting youth and youth ministry today. When the small groups came together and reported their conclusions, the following trends emerged:
- The impact of technology on today's youth.
- The struggle by many UUs, especially youth, to define, articulate, and defend their UU faith and identity.
- Increased awareness of AR/AO work and White supremacy culture.
- Frantic pace of life and over-scheduling.
- The emphasis of Youth Ministry needs to be on Ministry, not Youth.

(For more stuff we came up with during this discussion, e-mail me at nerdpony[at]gmail[dot]com.)

We also discussed our "prouds and sorries," i.e., good and bad things within Youth Ministry
Trends that emerged include:

Sorries:
- Many of the Youth Office funds are allocated towards Continental events, which are inaccessible to many youth and serve even fewer.
- Disconnect between YRUU and CUUYAN.
- Lack of religious education and spirituality in congregational youth programs.
- Failure of ministry to and with Youth of Color
- No "Church of the Even Younger Fellowship," i.e., a community for youth with no congregational affiliation or no youth in their congregation

Prouds:
- Sexuality education and advocacy
- YRUU and Chrysalis trainings
- More younger people becoming ministers and being involved on the UUA BoT and other elected bodies on the Association level.
- For the people for whom it has worked, it has created a group of great leaders.

We then broke for dinner and worship.

And now, your slightly mortifying story of the day!

On the first night, I was facilitating an activity in my small group, which includes UUA President Bill Sinkford. He says something along the lines of, "Well, the facilitator made this suggestion, so let's do it." Without thinking, I turn to him and say, "Being the facilitator doesn't mean that what you say goes without question." And then he's like, "Yeah, I've done some facilitating..."

And then I realize what I just did.

More on day 3 later.

Although young adult stuff, in particular the concerns of bridger-aged youth, has been something I've been thinking about for a while, a few things that have happened and discussions I have had recently have really brought this more to the forefront of my brain. Some, if not many people, may disagree with me, but I feel as though, by attempting to remain rooted in "tradition," many Unitarian Universalist groups are effectively alienating and shutting out a large and valuable constituency, many of whom were raised UU. Although I'm sure that many groups are affected by this, the young adults, particularly, I think, the younger ones, are the ones I've been thinking about a lot lately.

At a recent meeting of my congregational youth group, attended by a number of youth, two advisors, our DRE, and our minister, I was made to feel the "radical" of the group, at least when it came to the integration of young folks into services. Why? Because I voiced the afore-mentioned concerns and said that I had come to the conclusion that, assuming most things don't change, I'm probably going to stop coming to church at all after I bridge out of senior high programming. This, as some of you may know, is imminent and will likely be occurring in May or June of this year. Why? Because sitting still and listening to- or, in some cases, being talked at by- some guy isn't a spiritually fulfilling experience, at least not for me... especially not if it's the same guy week after week after week. (Yes, I do realize that there are non-male ministers, but I imagine the majority of my concerns are not affected by the gender of the minister, perceived or otherwise. Additionally, all of the ministers who have served congregations I have attended have been educated White males, most of whom have an above-average standard of living.) Obviously, the preferred means of spiritual fulfillment vary from person to person, but it's not like I'm the only person out there who feels this way, as evidenced by... well, by a lot of things. (These things include Ethan Field's AWESOME essay entitled UU for Life, which I am going to shamelessly plug here, even though a) I don't think anyone reads this and b) if anyone does read this, you've probably already read the article. Anyways, you can read it here: http://www.students.umb.edu/ethan_field/uu/uu4life.html .)

...yeah. I think that's pretty much everything I have to say on that now. More later, perhaps.

Probably.

As I earlier mentioned, I'm hoping to become an LDC trainer relatively soon. As I imagine that at least some of you aren't familiar with the application process for spaces at the Trainings of Trainers, they involve anywhere from 15-20 different essay questions. One of the ones that was present on both the SDC and LDC applications revolved around youth empowerment and its meaning to me. As I read over the answer I gave for the SDC ToT, which took place in May of 2005, I became very aware of how much I have changed since then. I now view youth empowerment in a very different way, i.e. as youth who have stepped up to take leadership positions on committees or in other groups, not as youth who don't feel oppressed by others as a result of their age.

Because of my non-traditional, i.e., different than the standard YRUU doctrine, view of this essential and oft-mentioned concept, I was nervous about really writing about my beliefs regarding it on my LDC trainer application. However, I did, and that got me thinking. Hence, this entry.

To me, youth empowerment means that youth step up and take leadership roles because they want to and feel as though they would do well- not because an adult is telling them to. That said, this will occur much more often in an environment in which youth voices are heard and in which their position, concerns, and outlook are appreciated and given equal weight as those of adults.

However, whether it is for the better or for the worse, empowered youth, i.e., youth who have been given power, must often earn the right to keep the power given them. This means that they must behave in a manner consistent with the covenant of the committee or other group of which they are a part and treat the other members, in particular those in leadership positions, with consideration and respect. When a youth becomes empowered (again, I use empowerment in the aforementioned sense), the youth takes on not only the title and (one would hope) the respect and blessing of others, but also the responsibilities of said position, which include upholding the group's covenant, as well as doing things like fulfilling tasks set to or taken on by said youth and communicating with the other committee members in a timely manner.

Youth empowerment is something that youth can't expect to be given to them because they're youth. They have to take the initiative to take on leadership roles- and the responsibilities that come with them- before they can expect to be viewed as leaders on the intergenerational level.

However, not only youth are responsible of shirking committee responsibility or behaving in otherwise irresponsible fashions in the context of their committee work. I have worked on committees in the past with people, both youth and adult who, although they are on the committee by their own choice and claim to care a lot about the work, they tend to do a lot more trying to push their work off on other people (and no, it's not delegation) or trying to make it so they have to do as little work as possible because "they don't have time" or because "it's not [their] expertise" or whatever else. And regardless of how old you are, that's inappropriate behavior. After all, a covenant is a covenant. And responsibilities are responsibilities.

First off, I'd like to most heartily thank Donald Wilson, who hosts me, set up this blog for me, and whom I forgot to mention in my last post. Now, on to the introduction.

Who am I?
My name is Ellen Z. I'm 17 years old, have grown up UU, and am becoming more involved in district (and hopefully continental sometime soon) YRUU stuff. I go to the UU Church of Indianapolis and am a member of my congregational youth group and Youth Action Committee (YAC). I'm also the youth chair of the District Youth Steering Committee here in the Heartland, an intern at the Heartland District Office (more about my project later), an SDC trainer, and hope to become an LDC trainer and a chaplain relatively soon.

When I'm not doing UU stuff (which is actually more often than it sounds like), I sing with the Indianapolis Children's Choir, am a Girl Scout, am Treasurer of my college's German Club, knit, and enjoy playing and arranging folk music and hymns. Instead of going to high school, I take college classes at a university here in Indianapolis. I'm going off to "real college" in the fall to study Political Science; I'd post my top choices here, but don't want a college admissions officer to inadvertently find this. Actually, I'm sitting in class as I write this, but I'm writing it on paper.

What's going to be in this blog?
My thoughts on things, the majority of which will be somehow UU-related. Lately, I've been having a lot of ideas for potential entries, but I'm open to suggestions. If you want to hear my thoughts on something specific, leave me a comment on this or another entry or contact me in some other way.

Some of my favorite potential topics include:
- youth empowerment and the responsibilities of committee work
- cultural appropriation, especially as it applies to music
- my internship project and its results
- a seven-part series on the Principles (might be longer if I do Purposes and/or Sources, too)
- integrating young folks into Sunday morning worship and my thoughts on my future as a UU

Right. That appears to be everything for now.

Ciao!

Hey, folks.

If you've found this site, you probably know me. And if you know me, chances are you know the following things about me:
1. I'm a devout UU, if such a thing can exist.
2. On a similar note, I like committee work and processes.
3. I also like to think, especially about things that involve both item 1 and item 2.

So, yeah. I'm going to post some of my thoughts about other stuff later on; I just wanted to say "HI WORLD I AM AROUND AND PAY ATTENTION TO ME!" or something.