Our Religious Education Director's Insight to Children

I really enjoy children. If truth be told, I like them better than I like adults. They are more

truthful, less artful, and much better judges of character. If a child or a dog seems to shy away from someone, you best stay away from that particular person too. This is why the daily indignities I see visited upon children hurts me so much. Whether it is Yemen, Syria, Chicago,or Homestead, we are failing the children of our planet. They are the innocents who are suffering from our inability to learn to get along with each other and understand that we are responsible for each other. No man is an island; no woman is an island; no one is an island, and the longer we turn our backs on the children, the harder it is going to be to pull ourselves back from the brink. As I watched the kids hunt eggs on Easter Sunday at UUCFL, I saw one of our regular kids, Dominic, take the responsibility of leading a first time visiting girl on the egg hunt(since he has hunted eggs many times here at UUCFL, he knew the spots). He didn’t think, “who is this person I don’t know? “ He didn’t think, “Oh, she’s a girl.” He didn’t think, “I need to get all the eggs.” He thought, “hey, maybe she could use a friend”. I wish I could say our adults were as welcoming to the little girl’s mom and another first time visiting mom. I ran back and forth with both families, talking, welcoming, and trying to make our community seem like a place

that they would like to be part of. I won’t say no one welcomed them because I don’t see

everything, but I saw them sitting alone to eat lunch, and that should never happen. We are trying to grow our community, and when folks show up, we all need to open our arms to them. No one can assume that someone else it handling it. I don’t want to be a scold, and maybe most folks just don’t realize. It’s natural to want to sit on our lovely porch and chit chat with the folks you already know, but if we don’t welcome new folks, soon enough, we won’t have that lovely porch to sit on. Open your hearts, open yourself and welcome those folks. We have to, for them, and for us.

Love and blessings, DRE Susan DF