Exploring Your UU Faith At Home

Posted on February 10, 2022 Posted By: Achsah Carrier Categories: Explore Our Faith, News & Views

AROUND YOUR KITCHEN TABLE
Start a Conversation…

Use the questions below to explore to spark a discussion for all ages. They are designed for a household gathering – maybe during a Friday night meal, a quiet moment in the living room or before a board game night. Watch for different questions included in this section each week.

1. What examples of love were most impactful on you as a youth?

2. What’s your longest loving relationship, human or otherwise?

3. Describe a situation where, to be loving, you’d need to let someone or something go.

4. Can you love someone you’ve never met?

5. How do we show babies that they’re loved? What about elders? Why is it important to show love at all stages of a person’s life?

6. What is the “loveline” that runs through your family, a way of expressing love, a loving phrase, or a loving gesture that is distinctive to your family, that has been passed down from generation to generation?

Return to the Discussion Throughout the Week

Thoughts develop with time. Find opportunities to bring up particularly compelling questions again during the month, maybe on walks, rides home, when tucking your child in to bed, etc. If thoughts grew or changed, notice that together, how we are all evolving beings, opening ourselves to new truths and understandings as we live our lives and connect with others

1. What is something mysterious you believe in, even though some people might think it’s silly?

2. What are some of your favorite stories people have told to explain mysterious things, like how earth was created? Or why we dream? What can we learn from those stories?

3. In your opinion, when does mystery lead to conspiracy theory? How do you hold open space for mystery without getting lost in explanation?

4. What’s your first memory of experiencing a mystery beyond all understanding, an occurrence that you did not understand then, and which is still bewildering to you now?

1. What is something you’re not afraid of that many other people are? (For example, spiders, heights, being on stage, etc.)

2. If you could live forever, would you want to? What’s one thing that would be great about being immortal, and one thing that would be really hard?

3. When do you pretend you are strong? When do you let people know that you’re actually scared, worried, or sad?

4. What positive belief do you hold about humanity despite a personal experience that demonstrated otherwise?

5. When was a time that you “failed forward” in your life, or ended up in a better place despite a mistake or difficulty?

1. What do you wonder about your ancestors?

2. What do you think is wonderful about being a much older person, like your grandparents or grandfriends?

3. What was something wonderful you witnessed or accomplished, but which no one else was around to see?

4. Can you imagine someone staring in wonder at you? Under what circumstances might that/has that happened? How did it/would it feel?

5. How are wonder and wisdom related in your parenting? In your friendships? In your partnerships?

1. What’s the best kind of dream? The worst?

2. What’s your favorite thing to be able to do when you first wake up in the morning?

3. What is one special, waking-up memory that you have as a child, such as waking up to snow for the first time, waking up to the news of a new sibling’s arrival, waking up in a grandparent’s home, etc.

4. What truth did you wake up to recently that you could not have accepted at any prior point in your life, because you simply weren’t ready for it?

1. What do you intend to be when you grow up?

2. When you woke up this morning, what was it that you were most excited to do? What did you intend to do? And did you do it?

3. Tell about a time that you meant for one thing to happen, but an entirely different thing happened, instead.

4. Would you rather proceed through the day with an idea of where you want to be, or be completely free to encounter whatever might come up? How do you strike that balance for yourself?

5. Which of your intentions (or goals, or plans, or even dreams) no longer sparks for you, no longer ignites feelings of passion and drive? What would it take for you to release that former intention and open up some space for what might come next?

1. What’s one habit you have that keeps you from doing what you want to do, or know you need to do? (Parents, here might be a good place to tell on yourself to build some compassion around falling short of our best intentions but connect over your shared resolve to follow through on what you and your child both want to do and be!)

2. What intentions do you have about friendships? What new friendships are you intentionally trying to make?

3. What is your intention with your studies this month? Is there one class or subject or project that you really want to succeed in?

4. At what point in your life were you not free to set your own intentions, more likely to follow the life plan that others set for you? What feelings come up when you revisit that moment?

5. When you were younger, who modeled authentic living for you, living as if their intentions and actions were in resonance?

1. Intention is rooted in passion, or as some call it, “the fire in our belly.” So, what fire lies in each of your bellies?

2. Empathy is also important to living with intention. When we are able to empathize with the suffering of others, it activates our intention and our desire to change things. So, what suffering or struggle would you say your family most empathizes with?

3. Intention takes persistence. Just think about “T he Little Engine That Could.” When have you had to keep telling yourself “I think I can. I think I can.”

4. What are you most likely to assume about someone’s intentions, that they are benevolent, malevolent, or something in between? How does that worldview serve you?

5. Is “fake it until you make it” a strategy you use in difficult or uncomfortable situations? Why or why not?

1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how joyful do you feel this moment? If joyful isn’t the right word, what is?

2. Would you rather make someone laugh, or help them find a solution to their problem?

3. Has Joy ever been an act of resistance for you?

4. When was the last time you told your partner or closest friend that they bring you delight?

December:

1. What’s your favorite joke?

2. Have your parents ever told you the story of the joyful day you came into the family?

3. What routine or practice helps you stay open to pleasure, happiness, and joy?

4. When you bring to mind the experience of joy, what is the backdrop, or setting?

1. Who do you know who is always smiling?

2. Is there ever a time that you don’t want to feel joyful?

3. In what ways are you most alive to the song of all creation? What are the obstacles when you aren’t feeling that way?

4. Whose joy matters most to you?

1. Where do you feel joy in your body?

2. What’s the best thing about this month?

3. How has joy changed for you as you’ve grown older?

4. If you are actively parenting, as your child grows older, what new joy are you experiencing in your parenting and guiding?

1. Which meal, when you hear you’re having it, brings a huge smile to your face?

2. Have you seen a pet or neighborhood animal feel joy? What does it look like?

3. What did you learn about joy growing up?

4. What is your first memory of feeling joy?

November:

1. What’s the story of your childhood, in just a few sentences?

2. What do you remember most about your childhood home?

3. How did you come to live in the home you now live in? What were the blessings and challenges that led to that circumstance?

4. What’s the story of your birth? Is there something about your own birth that you’ve always wanted to know? (The questions that arise here may or may not be able to be answered; hold the questions in love if they re-main a mystery even after being asked.)

1. How many Thanksgivings back can you remember? **

2. What’s the history of the home you live in? When was it built? What was the neighborhood like then?

3. Whose story from your own past abruptly ended, because of death or loss of contact? Where would you like to imagine that person would be now?

4. What is the hardest part about reconciling your personal history with the history of your nation? Where do you get stuck in this history, and where do you move through with resolve?

1. If you were to create a time capsule to tell people in the future about what our times were like, what would be the 5 most important things you would include?

2. What are the favorite parts of the history of your pets? Do you remember first meeting them? What was it like to train them?

3. We all “stand on the shoulders” of those who came before. Whose shoulders are you most grateful for?

4. In her wonderful poem,Remember the Sky, Joy Harjo invites us to remember the fullness from which we come. Where does Harjo’s poem take you?

1. Who in the family is most likely to tell stories about the way things used to be?

2. Which is your favorite old photo of yourself and/or your family?

3. If you could go back in time and visit a historical event, which would it be?

4. We hold some histories in our bodies, through our genes handed down from our ancestors. What aspect of your physical self most connects you to them? How do you feel about this connection?

5. What memory has been with you the longest?

October: To Be and To Do

1. What TV show or movie character would you most like to have as a real-life friend? Why?

2. How do you have a relationship with your past self? Do you ever find your-self “talking to” the “younger you”?

3. How would you describe your relationship with your own past?

4. Who is coming into your life right now? What does their presence mean to you?

1. Who in the family is most likely to tell stories about the way things used to be?

2. Which is your favorite old photo of yourself and/or your family?

3. If you could go back in time and visit a historical event, which would it be?

4. We hold some histories in our bodies, through our genes handed down from our ancestors. What aspect of your physical self most connects you to them? How do you feel about this connection?

5. What memory has been with you the longest?

1. What is your relationship like with your home? Do you have a feeling about your home’s “personality” or “moods”?

2. If you could use one word to describe your relationship with your pet (or the critters who live in your neighborhood), what would it be?

3. What words would you use to describe your relationship with your body?

4. What’s your best tool for repairing a relationship that’s been damaged? Who taught you how to use that tool?

1. Have you ever experienced growing away from a friend, or a friendship simply fading into the background? What was that like?

2. What is one reason NOT to be friends with someone?

3. What’s something you wonder about an elder in your life or an ancestor of yours? Would you ever consider asking them about it?

4. In what landscape do you feel most you?

5. What does it mean to you to invest in a friendship? Do you find that work difficult, or easy?

1. Who is the most recent person you got to know better? How did you meet them?

2. Who is the person in your life that you’ve been friends with the longest?

3. What are things you do or say to let your friends know that you care about them, and about your friendship?

4. In what ways have others showed up for you throughout your life? In what ways have you showed up for others?

5. At what point in your life did you learn to set boundaries for who gets to be in your life, and who doesn’t?

1. How can you tell if someone wants to be friends with you?

2. What do you do when you want to be friends with someone? How do you cultivate a closer relationship to them?

3. What does this precise moment, in relationship with your trusted friend or partner, mean to you?

September: Embracing Possibilities

1. Have you ever seen an animal do “the impossible”?

2. What advice would you give a friend who wanted to do something but was also scared about it and telling themselves, “No, I could never do that”?

3. What other people’s efforts made it possible for your family to share the meal you’re eating together? [If you don’t do your At the Table questions at mealtime, have everyone describe the last meal they ate, and talk about them individually.

1. What is possible to do with friends that is not possible to do alone?
2. In the family, who is most likely to take the words, “It’s impossible!” as a challenge?

3. What possibility are you looking forward to this coming fall?

July & August: Play

1. How do you know when it’s time to switch gears and play?

2. What’s your favorite way to play with your child? What’s your least favorite? (Honest talk here–we ALL have a least favorite.)

3. What holds you back from being as playful as your spirit calls you to be?

4. How are you playful in ways people don’t recognize or give you credit for? What is your unique – and sometimes unrecognized – form of play?

1. What was the moment, as a young person, that you remember not wanting to play with the younger kids? How did that moment feel to you?
you?

2. When you were growing up, who was the “fun” or “playful” adult in your life? What made them seem so to you then, and how do you think of those qualities now?

3. On a scale of 1 to 10, rate your family members and close friends on how playful they are. How do you feel about the score you gave yourself?

1. What aspects of your work feel like play to you?

2. What games does your pet like to play?

1. What games do you play in your own mind to help yourself stay motivated to finish chores or schoolwork?

2. Who is someone you used to play with, but you don’t anymore? What would it be like to reach back out to them, just to tell them how much that memory means to you?

1. How did you learn how to play?

2. If you have to name three of your best family games–board games, word games, physical games, whatever–what would they be?

1. When you see other kids playing, are you more likely to jump in and join them, or hang back and watch for a while? Whichever of these you answered, what would it take for you to try the *other* approach?

2. Who is the most playful adult in your life?

1. Does your family “play with your food”? Does everyone in the family agree that it is fun?

2. Where do you go to play in your own imagination? And what do you take with you?

1. What is the secret ingredient to you having fun while you are playing with someone else?

2. Who is (or was) the most playful in the family?

1. What game have you not played in a while that you’d like to revive?

2. If you and your grandparent or parent were both kids at the same time, what do you think you would play together?

May & June: Story

Have you ever been healed by a story?
Whose stories do we need to hear more of right now, in this moment? Where are those voices to be found?

If you could go back in time and ask a historical figure to tell you stories about their lives, who would you pick?
What story (or tale, or myth, or anecdote) gives you strength when times are hard?

Whose story are you curious to know?
Which story of pandemic life do you think you or your child will most remember?

Who’s usually the storyteller in your family? Who’s most likely to add embellishments and exaggerations to make the story really memorable?
What makes a really good story?
Do you notice the seed of a particular story in your child? Do you already notice a unique “story” unfolding in your child?

If your experiences last month had a title, what would that title be?

How would you describe the story of Unitarian Universalism? A hero story? Detective story? Love story?
What story does your family’s favorite meals tell about who you are, where you come from, and what you enjoy?
What was the best read-aloud you ever experienced, either as a child or an adult? (This could have been a bedtime story, a theater table-read, etc.)

1. What’s the first story you remember hearing (could be a family story, a folk tale, a ballad, etc.)?

2. What happens in your mind when you hear a story? (Examples might be picturing the characters, imagining yourself sitting in the setting and watching what happens, smelling smells and hearing sounds, trying to figure out how the story will end, imagining yourself as one of the char-acters, etc.)

3. What was the story of your role in your family of origin? Were you the funny one? The talented one? The troublemaker? How has that “story” informed your growth into the person you were meant to be?

4. What story or stories about your ancestors cause you the most pain? Which swell your heart with admiration and gratitude?

Return to the Discussion Throughout the Week

April: Becoming

Sometimes becoming requires us to let go of things. What is one thing you’ve had to let go of to become something new? (For example, in order to become a speaker of a second or third language, we have to let go of fear of sounding silly as we learn. In order to become a trumpet player, we have to let go of a few afternoons of free time each week to practice.)
Using the second definition of becoming–meaning lovely and attractive–what do you find becoming in yourself?
Last year, we all became families who had gone through Covid together, a unique circum-stance in all of human history. How has that experience changed you?
What do you most hope our society is able to become in the next ten years?

Sometimes, change and becoming happen suddenly and in an instant. Is there a big “before” and “after” moment in your life, when you felt like you became someone new? Or were suddenly placed on a new path? (Examples might be getting glasses, moving to a new neighborhood, experiencing a grandparent’s death, or getting a puppy.)
Who has helped you become the best version of yourself?
How has your faith helped you become the person or the parent you are?

March: Committment

When it’s time to make good on a commitment you made to yourself, how do you psych yourself up for following through.
Tell about a commitment that you dropped, for the better.
What new commitment might you make to your neighborhood? Your town or city? Your state? Your country? Your planet?

Return to the Discussion Throughout the Week

Treasure Hunt for Commitment

The UUA joins other groups in observing Climate Justice Month, March 22 (World Water Day) to April 22 (Earth Day), a commitment to approaching climate justice as a matter of faith. UUs acknowledge that the issue of climate justice is best addressed when it acknowledges North America’s legacy of colonization, and looks to the leadership of indigenous peoples who have been protecting the earth and its waters for many, many generations.

This month’s treasure hunt can be done in a combination of spaces–online, and in-person outside.

See if you can find or find out:

1. The names of the native peoples of the land you live on. Do you know anything about those peoples, historically and currently?

2. A historical marker or heritage site in your area that acknowledges the land’s indigenous population. (The Historical Marker Database might be a place to start, or you could contact your local historical society for pointers.)

3. Five native plants

4. Five introduced plants

5. Your watershed; have you been to the body of water that your land’s runoff drains into?

6. The landfill closest to you (Not the most exciting field trip, we know, but an important visual to have in mind when we throw things “away.”)

7. Who is leading environmental protection efforts in your area? Which one seems like the best fit for your family to be involved with?