A few weeks back, as I watched our 7th and 8th graders, including two of my own, participate in the Coming of Age ceremony, my mind wandered to a number of different times in my life and in my kids’ lives where I or they passed similar milestones. It was a big step for them, this ceremony that 4 years ago we had never even heard of, and they really enjoyed it.

I watched all the kids get up one by one and share their most intimate secrets about themselves, what they believed and what they wanted to be when they grew up. They all have their dreams and aspirations, and we love them dearly for that. This church does a fantastic job of recognizing that our youth are our most vital assets. From the time we provide in our weekly service to the children’s stories, to the hard-working RE teachers that are guided by Alison, to the time spent by many other volunteers organizing and leading the youth groups, we demonstrate as well as any other church around here our commitment to providing our children a safe, nurturing environment where they can learn more about Unitarian Universalism, our church and most importantly, themselves.

As many of us know all too well, our children are extremely impressionable. They look to us for guidance from their very first days – how to talk, how to walk, how to dress. At least until they become teenagers, then it’s the exact opposite. Within these four walls they learn the very basics of our seven UU principles from the first time they set foot in here. The timeliness of this is essential, I believe, because I think children are natural Unitarian Universalists. Think about it:

• They come into the world with the same kind of natural inquisitiveness that makes a good UU. Our children are like sponges – eager to learn anything they can. It’s a hallmark of Unitarian Universalism that none of us could ever be heard saying “I’m done learning”, or “I have all the answers”.

• They, after a brief period of selfishness in their toddler days, have an excellent sense of fairness and equity, and know what’s right and wrong. How many times in a child’s life will you hear them say: “it’s not fair!”. How unfortunate that we have to be the ones to ruin it and tell them “life’s not fair”.

• Children don’t judge people by the color of their skin, by the clothes that they wear, or by the friends that they have. To many kids, a gay, lesbian or interracial marriage is a normal as the sky is blue. They don’t even know what a stereotype is until unfortunately, too often in life, they learn it from adults.

When Emily and Evan first attended school, they went to a small school back in Ohio where whites made up less than 50% of the school population. Did they mind this? Of course not – they didn’t even notice. None of the children did. They all played with one another, shared lunch with one another, became best friends with one another as if they were part of the same family. They didn’t have a different set of playtime rules for Asians. They didn’t apply a different set of principles to Indians or African Americans. They saw themselves as equals, which is what the world could use a little more of today.

Coming of Age – an interesting phrase, and I’m not even sure that it has a specific definition. At some point in our lives, I’m sure we’ve all come of age. And a few of us probably even do it multiple times. But in this context, it’s meant to designate a time when children become young adults, and there is a certain period of maturation that they have achieved by that age. They’ve begun to formulate their own beliefs, as they shared with us, about why we are all here, how we got here, and where we are headed. And we found – not surprisingly - that their beliefs are just as diverse as ours!

My parents weren’t overly religious. I didn’t grow up going to church every Sunday. It’s more coincidence than divine guidance that I was baptized in and attended a Lutheran church, was married in a Lutheran church, and graduated from a Lutheran university. Come to think of it, what on earth am I doing here?

But I can remember as a child, no more than 8 years old, sitting in my room debating with myself over the existence of God. I know what I learned in Sunday school, and read about in children’s bibles, but something just didn’t seem right – I couldn’t quite rationalize the logic of an all-knowing, all-seeing, eternally alive being that answered some prayers but not others….that talked to some people but not others….that allowed so many bad things to happen here on Earth. And I hadn’t even gotten into the concepts of the Trinity! If only I had belonged to a Unitarian Universalist church back then. I would have been immersed in the teachings of Theodore Parker and Thomas Starr King, and absolutely giddy reading about the theological debates that had helped shape our faith. If only I had been fortunate enough to be a member of a church like ours when I was a child.

Over the last 7 months, I have been extremely fortunate to spend a lot of time with Dennis, Sydney and the other members of the group that will become, next January, the UUCR Lay Ministry. We’ve spent many fantastic hours reading, discussing, sharing and learning. Learning about Unitarian Universalist history, about our church and about each other. And the more I learn about each of these areas, the more I appreciate what so many of our leaders have gone through in the development of what Unitarian Universalism is today. We talked one day about one of the big differences between our faith and Christianity and Judaism and Islam – the lack of a central story in UU history. We don’t have a story that drives us like the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, or the divine revelations received by the prophet Muhammed. We don’t have a holy place or a holy day, although the annual UUCR auction comes as close as you can get sometimes. We don’t have a book that we can clutch to our chests and say “this I believe”. Our history isn’t made up of legend or dogmatic texts that tell us what to think. But I think we have something a thousand times better. As the Reverend Frances Leigh Deverell stated so eloquently, “our history is the history of thought AND action and of people who thought for themselves”. Minds no less than John Murray and Joseph Priestley have slowly shaped our faith to be what it is today, and we embrace that just as much as any text or scroll. These exemplars communicated their ideas to the world through their writing and preaching and by these means, changed our world, and the entire world for that matter, for the better.

As I learned more about our history, and I looked at the children in our midst, I wondered to myself – who will be the next Hosea Ballou? Who will be the next Dorothea Dix? Who will lead this next generation into a world where equality and justice are the laws of the land, and faith through service becomes a rallying cry for everyone? As we’ve seen time and time again, our children have such potential, and such promising futures, that it’s not hard to imagine that they too will change the world. We all have dreams for how we want our children to turn out. We all hope that they’ll grow up to be astronauts, presidents, or if we’re really lucky, Unitarian Universalist ministers.

I learned about a man named Egbert Ethelred Brown, who realized as a young child growing up in Jamaica that that he disagreed with some key aspects of Christianity. He came across William Ellery Channing’s groundbreaking sermon in Baltimore in which Channing denounced the concept of the Trinity. He knew at that point that he was meant to be a Unitarian. Egbert later became one the first African American Unitarian ministers in the country, and founded the first Unitarian Church in Harlem. Barbara Wells ten Hove is an excellent example of someone closer to home. She is one of several children that grew up at UUCR and now, as a UU minister, leads her own flock of faithful UUs. Everything we do for our children today, within this building and within our homes, will help to shape their future, our future and the future of Unitarian Universalism.

I’m certainly not advocating that UUs have all the answers, or that UU children alone will save the world. There’s a fantastic book that was published a couple of years ago called “The Trouble with Islam”. It’s by Irshad Manji, who is a practicing Muslim and has been all her life. In the book, she presents an extremely compelling story of her childhood, and her evolution of thinking, and how she thinks many Muslims today have gotten off track. She says it started when she was a child, and she experienced what she perceived as inequities such as Muslim girls not being allowed to lead prayer. When she asked about it, she was told to ‘read the Koran’, or ‘know your Islam’. But regardless of what was in the holy text, she knew in her heart that this wasn’t right, and she set about to try to change the mindsets of Muslims. She has since become quite the lightning rod in many Muslim circles, and received hundreds of death threats, but she also serves as inspiration to many as she tries to help a wonderful religion evolve. While I wouldn’t yet compare her – yet - to a Martin Luther King, she further serves as an example of someone today that can change the world one person – one voice - at a time.

Our youth group, consisting of middle and early high school students, has had a busy summer, participating in numerous activities that help them grow as young adults and build strength of character. This character will take shape over the coming years as they graduate high school, perhaps move out of state or even out of the country to attend college, and settle down with their own families. These ideals that we have spent 18 years ingraining in them will foster social activism and social justice efforts like none of has ever seen. And hopefully, it will give some of them courage to band together within their communities where they see a void, and, like Linda Holloway, Harry Mangold and many others did right here 30 years ago, form their own church that today is the backbone of so many of our lives. I urge each of you to get involved, or stay involved, in shaping their lives by volunteering to teach RE or help out with these youth groups. Because while we look to them for inspiration, they look to us for guidance.

We live in a time of troubles today. It’s hard to turn on the TV, read the newspaper or listen to the radio because we’re inundated with horrific news of another terrorist attack somewhere around the globe, or atrocities committed in the name of war or justice. In what may be known hundreds of years from now as the Age of Intolerance, it’s hard to know where this relentless drumbeat of terrorist attacks, African genocides or even the present White House administration will take us. But what we do know is that we are in desperate need of a generation of leaders who not only worship tolerance and compassion but practice it. A group of leaders who preach equity, not injustice. Peace, not prejudice. Responsibility, not retribution. Conscience, not conflict. Our children are those leaders, I’m absolutely convinced of it. They’re a tender young garden right now, blooming into our future leaders, and it’s up to us to water and provide nourishment for them.

I’ve been an RE teacher here at UUCR for just a few years now, and each year I enjoy it more than the last. Working with our children has been a fantastic experience for me, as they have inspired me to be a better person myself. They inspire us all, and we need to cultivate that inspiration and transform it into action. Faith through service. That’s what we are proud of as Unitarian Universalists, and it’s what will save us in the end. We owe it to our children to hold that vision, and be our conscience.

At less than 500 years old, Unitarian Universalism is a baby among the world’s religions. I’ve read that there are less than 1,000,000 acknowledged UUs, although I suspect there are millions more hiding in the closet, or that just don’t know it. How many UUs have you met that have said “I was a UU for years before I knew it”. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t effect change. It doesn’t mean that any of our children can’t be the one that captures the world’s attention like Channing did almost 200 years ago, and paves the way to a better tomorrow.

In the bible, Jesus said “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.” Jesus knew what he was talking about. He knew where the future lies. And as we have many times, we need to listen to his teachings. We need to see that they are the light – the illumination - that will lead the world to a better place.