Kinsi goes to a Baptist Megachurch

As part of the Neighboring Faiths curricula, we take our middle school kiddos to all sorts of houses of worship in the area.  This week we talked about fundamentalist Protestantism and we went to First Baptist of Atlanta, a Southern Baptist megachurch home of Pastor Charles Stanley, televangelist of Intouch fame.  Here are my experiences, thoughts, observations, and everything else.  It was an interesting experience, and I do thank them for opening up and inviting us to come.  Yes, these thoughts are scatterbrained, but here’s what I remember and what I took notes on.  Warning – it’s kinda long.

This weekend rocked.

And now for something completely not deep =

This weekend freakin’ rocked.

Friday morning I lost 4 pounds at my weigh in, and couldn’t believe it.  I spent the rest of the afternoon watching gay themed movies from Blockbuster Online.  Mambo Italiano and Latter Days are a necessity for any movie watcher who doesn’t mind homosexuality on the screen!

Friday night a friend from church celebrated her 30th birthday party.  After I went up and mentioned how OLD she is (30…geesh….) I got down to business and murdered the club owner for stealing profits from my Chicago operation.  See, it was a murder mystery party and I had a pretty big role as head of the New York mob in to Chicago to try and get his daughter to marry me so I could get half of his business.  He ended up being the one originally murdered, but we soon drew slips of paper that either had an action, a weapon, or nothing on them.  If you wanted to kill someone you had to have a weapon.  We had money to play poker with, buy drinks, and buy people (I did a lot of that.)  Well, I was a mobster!  When it was my turn to deal poker, I stole quite a bit of money and stacked the deck so my loyal associate would win. When I was walking around I saw an unclaimed piece of red paper and I stole it without the owner being any wiser – and it was a weapon!  Since I had finally figured out who was lifting my profits, I killed him, with the only witness being someone who I had recruited into my mafia earlier in the evening.  I later ordered one of my guys to kill the Congressman so I could get the Mayor of Chicago, who I liked and would owe me a favor, into power.  I was wheeling and dealing the whole night and by the end had like, half the room bought off or part of my mafia.  And I lived!  Surprisingly enough.  Afterwards I went to a friends house, relaxed and smoked a cigar and chatted for an hour.

Saturday was a long day of work, as ususal.  It started off *horribly* in the beginning, but got pretty good by the end of the day.  Had fun with the kids, taught them stuff at teh saem time.  Finally drilled stoichemetry into one of my favorite student’s head after four hours.  Felt good.

Then the work party, which was a lot better than I expected.  My CD won for Best New Director, and she won a sales competition.  Then I won for best teacher – and am still completely flabbergasted!  Won the Starbucks card for winning the scavenger hunt with my team, and had a good time (which stunned me!  I was expecting disaster.)

This morning we took the 6th/7th grade RE class to the big Greek Orthodox Temple here in the Atlanta area.  And I swear, if it weren’t for the whole Jesus thing and the Nicean Creed, the gay thing and the communion thing, I would consider converting to Greek Orthodoxy.  The temple is breathtaking, the ritual is beautiful.  This time I was able to follow along with the service in the little book, and it was simply beautiful.  During communion we sneaked out and went to the 10th grade Sunday School class where I even learned a lot about the early history of the Christan church…which made me want to learn more (and I checked out a book from the UUCA library on it – my first time checking out a book there!)

Afterwards time to watch Latter Days with my old roomie, had a good cry over the movie, then went to the same cigar-loving friend to watch my dear Colts play.  (For those who forgot, I was born in Indianapolis, lived there for 10 years, then moved to Georgia in the summer of 93, and all of my extended family is in Indiana but me.)

That was a freaking AMAZING game.  Unbelievable.  When we (yes we, I now consider myself part of the Colts team) were down 21-3 I thought it was over, but Peyton woke up and pulled it out!  It was AMAZING and the Colts are in the SUPERBOWL!  WAHOO!  We’re going to have a 20s/30s Superbowl party, and I plan on making a complete fool out of myself there, completely decked out in blue, face-paint everything that walks through the door, and decorate my friends house like mad.  I suggested tonight he repaint his room Colt blue, but he wasn’t quite up for the idea.

Now I’m back home, watching Mambo Itliano one last time before I get some new movies, seeing how a post of mine is sparking a new discussion on overt-hyper-intellectualism within UU [I'm working on a new post to talk more about it.] and I’m just having the best weekend ever.
So, Vh1, come and film it and put it on next weekend.

Kinsi versus 6/7th Grader RE – Lessons from Week 3…with pictures!

Yesterday was the third week of RE at UUCA, and Neighboring Faiths went on its first visit to the Pagan Pride Festival.

Last year was the first year we went to Pagan Pride – it was a spur of the moment decision (we made it on the Saturday before class) because the timing of Pagan Pride synced up with when we were going to discuss paganism, so there wasn’t any hard planning behind it. This year Puck, a professor of religion at Perimeter, a Wiccan who talked to our Adult Neighboring Faiths class we had over the summer and also an organizer of the Pagan Pride festival, agreed to talk to us after we took part in an opening ritual.

The biggest difference from last year to this year, however, was that last year we had about 7 kids on average for a visit.

We had 22 kids yesterday.

That’s right, twenty-two 6th/7th graders went on this visit. And Pagan Pride is held in a park.

Twenty-two kids in a park.

That was a nightmare. We carpooled over, and here’s a picture of some of us getting ready to leave. Some met us there and the camera angle wasn’t big enough to cover the whole group.

We did have a lot of adults come…sometimes I think this class is more popular with the parents than the kids. With adults and kids, we had about 35-40 people there. Pretty good size. I wasn’t directly in charge of any of the kids, but was running around with Marcia, the lead teacher, making sure everything was going smoothly.

The opening ritual itself was pretty interesting. We stood in a circle around the altar, pictured below, and chanted “Water my blood, Earth my body, Air my breath and Fire my spirit” or something close to that, while some people danced around with representations of the elements – the lady spinning fire around her was pretty cool.

After the ritual we went and listened to Puck who gave the kids a nice introduction to paganism, emphasized nature, the elements, etc. He’s the guy with long hair in the picture. A male pagan with long hair! Unbelievable!

Afterwards we went and looked at the booths, and headed on back to UUCA. We thought we had lost one of the kids at first, but she got a ride back with a different car. So other then the panic heading back to UUCA, it was a good visit. Luckily this is the only one in a park – the rest are in buildings. I think our next visit is to the Jewish Reform Temple, “The Temple.” We wanted to go to an Orthodox Synagogue next, but, alas, it would be the last day of Sukkoth and they asked us not to come that particular day. Next week is an in-class lecture, so I’ll luckily get to tune out and watch Marcia handle it.

So what I learned? Watching 22 kids in a park is tough, its going to be a good, but big, year, and a lot of people want to learn more about Paganism – kids and adults.

I wasn’t done for the day though…it was the first Sunday, therefore Jr. High YRUU met! Look forward to a post on that soon.

Kinsi versus 6/7th Grader RE – Lessons from Week 2

My second week of RE went much better than the first. We went from only having 1 teacher there (aka better known as me) to having all of the teachers there.

ALL of them. Including the Board member (whom I adore) and the member who is saying the Board is nuts and we should fire our minister (who is causing a minor stir but won’t get anywhere).

And I was sitting between the two. Erhm, interesting. But she seemed a lot less nuts, and was pretty pleasant, so it was good.

Today we talked about “indigenous” religions, and what exactly makes a religion indigenous I’m sure could easily be a weeklong discussion in the UU blogsphere, but I ended up being asked to cover European Indigenous Religions. Luckily I had covered the topic with the Adult version of Neighboring Faiths we did, but I had no warning before Marcia (the Board member and lead teacher) called on me to do it. My first question was if any of them knew of any Roman or Greek Mythology – the class of 12 today (3 girls, 9 guys) shouted out with names of Gods and I knew it’d be easy.

Rock Star Karen, a lay minister and practitioner of Native American Spirituality, took up the bulk of the class with a hands on demonstration of native American spirituality. She’s got the best presentation I’ve ever seen, and it really makes me want to learn a lot more about Native American spirituality (She’s got a Sequoia grandmother and a Ute grandmother, among others, so she’s got a split Spirituality-Personality).

Near the end of class she had us draw a card (Tarot style) that had an animal on it. Marcia was an opossum, which means she’s good at diversion, one of the other teachers (the one stirring up the pot) was an Eagle, which means she’s spreading what we need to here (goodie) and fair Kinsi was an…..

Elk.

And I dig it. She said elks are about stability – placing one foot in front of the other and toughing it out. It stuck a cord with me because that’s how I make it through tough times and akward moments – “In _________ minutes its going to be over, and you’ll be done, free and clear, so just work your way through it)” She said beginning the cards that this is what first started her on her path – her card was for gentleness, something she was struggling with at the time.

I chatted with her at the end and mentioned how I liked the card and also needed to remember the lesson this month (see upcoming post on the Stewardship Drive – I’m on the committee…oiy) and whatnot. She smiled, we chatted more, then mentioned how she should find a piece of elk horn to center me.

I’d be a little creeped out, but flattered nonetheless.

And one other interesting point – I’m closer to the age of the kids than their parents. This freaked the hell out of me yesterday during a class picnic organized by our class parent (someone else whom I adore!) I ended up talking to an older brother of one of my kids the entire time while gently kicked the soccer ball back while talking about high school, feeling somewhat weird. But I liked getting to know Walker, and we briefly said hi today at church before his younger brother Eli (whom I also like) got kinda jealous and interrupted. Kinda cute.

And as a parting thought – more people care about Suri Cruise than Unitarian Universalism. We’ve got some work to do.

Kinsi versus 6/7th Grader RE – Lessons from Week 1

Today was the start of my second year of being a RE teacher (and my second year as a Unitarian – and I should post something about that later).  The curriculum is the ever-cool Neighboring Faiths, and this year we combined the 6th and 7th grades (usually its just a 7th grade class) for two classes this year.  I’m teaching the later, 11:15 class (ok – I’ll say it now.  I hate our new schedule.)

For those unfamiliar with the class, it’s the most field-trip-intensive of any RE curriculum out there.  Pretty much every other week is a field trip to participate in a different religion’s worship.  Our first visit is to the Pagan Pride Festival on October 1st…that should prove to be a hit like last year.

Luckily I knew about half the kids, since my other teachers were sucked away due to what might be the first civil war I’ve been a part of in my short history.  [See, one of the teachers is leading her side, and the other, main teacher (who I taught this class with last year) is on the board, so this should prove to be an interesting year.  Joy.]  So I was pretty much left alone – a teacher from the 9:30 class stayed for both to maintain the necessary 2-teacher quota, but it was my show.  I knew half the kids from YRUU – I’m an advisor for the Jr. High group (why did I agree to that again?) and we had a lock in last weekend.

The class is about 10 boys and 2 girls.  Oh goody – all the rambunctious little male hellions who refused to let me sleep last Saturday are in my class.  We (meaning them) established several important facts this first class -

• A)    Cookies are only 10 cents a cookie at Kroger

• B)    We want to visit a “Satanic Church” and, my favorite, “The little church next to the big church with the tower that has scouts in it.  The big church doesn’t have scouts, the little one does.  You know which one I’m talking about!”  Um, no, sorry, I don’t, because, see, there are about, oh, a billion churches in the Atlanta metro area.

• C)    Beanbag chairs are obviously planted by the Fundamentalists in order to disrupt my class with beanbag chair fights (imagine pillow fights, but with Kinsi standing at the whiteboard panicked) and the sounds of shifting beans which-eventually-sound-like-nails-on-a-chalkboard-and-I-just-wanted-to-sc…ok, deep breath Kinsi.

• D)    Did we mention cookies?  Could we have cookies right now?  Only TEN CENTS a cookie!

• E)    We can’t go visit a Buddhist Monastery where they wear orange robes because they aren’t allowed to TOUCH girls, and we have girls in the class.

• F)    Several don’t know what Unitarianism is [good job prior RE teachers!] and several “want to learn nothing” so can we only visit churches where you “don’t have to learn anything?”

• G)    One of them could have bought 200 cookies if we would just go to Kroger and finally

• H)    Doing the icebreaker where everyone grabs hands with people across from them and have to untie the knot is only good if the backup RE teacher doesn’t quit mid-game to greet the late kid.

I learned a valuable lesson too.  I want my lead teacher back next week.  Luckily next week we have an uber-cool guest speaker – the lay minister for children who is a firm adherent to  Native American spirituality.  So if there’s another emergency board meeting I’ll be able to handle it.

As long as I remember that cookies are only 10 cents a pop at Kroger.

TEN CENTS!