![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI have been thinking for several years that maybe-someday I'd get the kids signed up for Religious Education with the UUs, because I think that's a pretty good way of inoculating people against really dangerous forms of indoctrination. They wouldn't be going into a conversation with an evangelical or worse completely ignorant. But because they are young, and because of some other things, it has not yet been time to really start planning this process. However, with T. recently asking to go to church and both of us enjoying a Tai Chi/Taoism lay-led summer service over in Stow, I got to thinking about it again, and was trying to figure out how to get an answer to my concerns about UU pacifism and also to better understand how to make a hypothetical future interaction with Religious Education work better for my special needs kids. After my usual resort to the web, I said to myself, Self, you are friendly acquaintances/friends with a UU minister. Why are you trying to get an answer to these questions online?
So when I ran into my minister friend while on a walk with T. (it seemed potentially complex to attempt this conversation while walking with M.), I told her the story about T. asking to go to church and we had a very nice conversation about that that very naturally led to answers to my questions. I felt a little bad about bugging a friend with what is essentially a "work" question, but I apologized pre-emptively for that and she completely dismissed that as a concern. I suppose I should have expected that from a minister! She says that the UU community of course is varied, but has been really working on being more supportive of veterans, and they do have a chaplaincy program. She also talked about providing support to military families. Based on what she said, I had no trouble finding confirmation for her assertion that this was a quite new development for UU:
http://www.uua.org/care/ga/199191.shtml
She was also able to make suggestions about which of the nearby UU congregations might have more experience providing special support in Religious Education, and how to go about accessing that support.
Not sure when I'll be able to do anything about this, given the kids' current Sunday schedule, but I'll keep plugging away at the scheduling constraints and presumably something will work out, if not this year, then in a future year. In the meantime, it is a relief to learn that what was obviously the Denomination For Me in every other way is probably even manageable on the pacifism issue.
So when I ran into my minister friend while on a walk with T. (it seemed potentially complex to attempt this conversation while walking with M.), I told her the story about T. asking to go to church and we had a very nice conversation about that that very naturally led to answers to my questions. I felt a little bad about bugging a friend with what is essentially a "work" question, but I apologized pre-emptively for that and she completely dismissed that as a concern. I suppose I should have expected that from a minister! She says that the UU community of course is varied, but has been really working on being more supportive of veterans, and they do have a chaplaincy program. She also talked about providing support to military families. Based on what she said, I had no trouble finding confirmation for her assertion that this was a quite new development for UU:
http://www.uua.org/care/ga/199191.shtml
She was also able to make suggestions about which of the nearby UU congregations might have more experience providing special support in Religious Education, and how to go about accessing that support.
Not sure when I'll be able to do anything about this, given the kids' current Sunday schedule, but I'll keep plugging away at the scheduling constraints and presumably something will work out, if not this year, then in a future year. In the meantime, it is a relief to learn that what was obviously the Denomination For Me in every other way is probably even manageable on the pacifism issue.