EXPLORING OUR VALUES THROUGH POETRY A Tapestry of Faith Program for Youth High School BY KAREN HARRIS © Copyright 2008 Unitarian Universalist Association. This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at www.uua.org/tapestryoffaith. 1 ABOUT THE AUTHORS Karen Harris has taught poetry in public schools as a high school English teacher for about 16 years. As part of poet Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poems Project, she also trains English teachers interested in learning new ways to incorporate poetry into their curricula. She has also taught beginning teachers at Boston University's School of Education, where she is pursuing a doctoral degree in Education. Karen is keenly interested in the intersection of literature and spirituality, especially as it regards teenagers' development of compassion toward self and others. She currently teaches at School-Within-a-School, an alternative democratic community of students and teachers that is a part of Brookline High School in Massachusetts. In addition to literature, Karen is passionate about music; she sings, writes songs, and plays guitar for the Boston-based band Edith. The band has produced two critically acclaimed CDs. Married to artist Morgan Cohen, Karen also loves being a mom to their two kids, Abby and Emmet. They live outside Boston, where they worship by reading spiritual texts (including poems, of course!) with their kids, going on lots of hikes, and sporadically attending a couple of different Unitarian churches and a Quaker Meeting. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Editors Susan Lawrence and Jessica York enriched this program with their contributions of additional activities. Judith Frediani guided the development throughout the process, and Nancy Burnett copyedited the finished manuscript. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS WORKSHOP 1: LISTENING AND SPEAKING WITH POETRY: AN INTRODUCTION ............................. 16 WORKSHOP 2: SURPRISED BY BEAUTY ...................................................................................................... 25 WORKSHOP 3: KEENLY OBSERVING NATURE .......................................................................................... 34 WORKSHOP 4: WHO AND WHAT GUIDES US? ........................................................................................... 46 WORKSHOP 5: FINDING OUR MISSION ........................................................................................................ 58 WORKSHOP 6: CONSCIOUS LOVE: BETTER THAN ANY FAIRY TALE ................................................. 66 WORKSHOP 7: DIFFICULT TIMES.................................................................................................................. 77 WORKSHOP 8: ON A LIGHTER NOTE............................................................................................................ 89 WORKSHOP 9: FAITH FOR THE JOURNEY .................................................................................................. 98 WORKSHOP 10: YOU AND ME ...................................................................................................................... 107 WORKSHOP 11: TRANSFORMATION .......................................................................................................... 122 WORKSHOP 12: POEMS ON STAGE: EXPLORING POETRY OUT LOUD .............................................. 132 WORKSHOP 13: PLANNING A POETRY SLAM .......................................................................................... 141 WORKSHOP 14: THE POETRY SLAM........................................................................................................... 149 WORKSHOP 15: TO TELL THE TALE ........................................................................................................... 153 Note: If you add or delete text in this program, you may change the accuracy of the Table of Contents. The Table of Contents is an auto-generated list; if you change content and want an accurate representation of the page numbers listed in the TOC, click the table and click “Update field.” Then, click “Update page numbers only.” Click OK. 3 THE PROGRAM hope, and sometimes just the plain old company of a good laugh. The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And Reading poems aloud is powerful. Discovering in the end, the poem is not a thing we poems together is powerful. see—it is, rather, a light by which we Poetry read aloud is immediate, communitarian, and may see—and what we see is life. powerful. Robert Pinsky, poet and two-term national — Robert Penn Warren Poet Laureate, says it best: Unitarian Universalism has always embraced poetry as ... poetry is a vocal, which is to say a a call to worship. bodily, art. The medium of poetry is a human body: the column of air inside Poetry can be an accessible and profound tool in our the chest, shaped into signifying sounds spiritual practice as we journey toward becoming more in the larynx and the mouth.... conscious as human beings and as Unitarian Moreover, there is a special intimacy to Universalists. This program utilizes poems that are poetry because, in this idea of the art, concerned with elements of the spiritual life: acute the medium is not an expert's body, as observation, conscious and continuous inquiry, the when one goes to the ballet: in poetry, unveiling of reality, hope and hopelessness, the afterlife, the medium is the audience's body... and the tenderness of the human condition. From The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide, by Robert Poetry, Czeslaw Milosz asserts, "enables us to look at a Pinsky (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999) thing and identify with it, strengthening in that way its being" (Book of Luminous Things. New York: Harcourt, Reading poetry is like finding our way home. As with Brace, and Company, 1996). In this program, that all important journeys, it is helpful to have a "being" is our being—as individuals, as members of a compassionate and qualified guide (you) who has a UU community, as members of the human race, as map (this program). members of the planet and universe. Both poetry and workshops can teach us about ourselves, but we need a good guide with a good plan. As with any curriculum, there is a set of assumptions While poetry is not a trove of secrets locked in a chest to and beliefs that inform and inspire this one. All of the be accessed by a select few, neither is it a blank slate following are born of the author's experience. onto which we may project any and all interpretations. As a guide, it is important to read the map, to know the Poetry is a uniting and a connecting force. general way but be open to detours, and to keep your Poetry—even very sad poetry—is a good remedy for group from getting lost on their way. Know the poems. loneliness, because it reminds us that our experience, Know yourself. And as much as possible, know your no matter how extraordinary, in some way mirrors participants. another's. In this way, we are not solitary beings. The GOALS poems featured in this program are from all over the world and represent different cultures, cosmologies, This program will: genders, races, and times in history. Yet striking Lead participants to discover the ways poetry similarities are evident in the poems' emotional terrain. illuminates the human experience. In recognizing this, we recognize our own compassion for others and ourselves. Even discovering that others Help youth recognize commonalities in our have some of the same questions as we do can be spiritual journey. extraordinarily powerful and comforting. Demonstrate the use of poetry writing as a Poetry asks the best questions. So do teenagers. Most spiritual practice. of the things that we can say about poetry, we can also Provide multigenerational opportunities that will say about teenagers—a fact that makes the idea of increase youth's sense of belonging to the doing this program with teens so exciting. Both poetry congregation and the wider UU world. and teens ask the great, big questions: How do we live? What do we love? What deserves our faith? Who are LEADERS we, and where do we fit in this universe? How do we keep our hope alive? Both poetry and teenagers are You do not need to be a poetry expert to facilitate these tireless seekers—of sense, justice, meaning, reason, workshops effectively. You simply need an open mind 4 and a sense of adventure. If, like many of us, you have conceptualizes religion as an outside authority at some point in your schooling felt daunted by poetry that can be questioned textbooks that feature poems followed by an "answer" questions faith, sometimes leading to deeper section (or by the teaching of poetry "drill and kill" style), ownership of personal faith or disillusionment we hope you feel liberated by the approach we take here. These workshops envision poems not as entities deepens or attenuates religious or spiritual to "decode" or master, but as a way in—to us, to truth, to identity others. These poems will be our partners in exploration, explores sexuality not our opponents. navigates greater risks relating to alcohol, drug They say that the best way to learn something is to use, and unsafe sexual activity teach it. While facilitating or leading are more apt words for what you will do as you guide participants through sustains the personal fable that "it couldn't these workshops, you will certainly learn. Best of all, happen to me" once you find a poem that speaks to you, that really sheds light on an essential truth as you have come to considers friendships and peers important,