Intergenerational Service – No Sunday School

This Sunday there is no RE for Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Children and youth are invited to stay in the main service. This important day reminds we are on unceded, stolen land of the Tamien and Ramaytush people. We acknowledge these communities, their elders both past and present, and their future generations, and we thank the past, present, and future generations of these tribes for their stewardship of the land where we now sit. As we join together in the name of creating a community that is caring, wise, sustainable, justice-seeking, and dedicated to transforming the world for the better, let us remember that to do so, we must join the work of dismantling the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism. We were not the people who took this land, but neither do we wish to create our community at the expense of any other. So we begin with awareness and gratitude, and pledge to join the Tamien and Ramaytush people whenever they ask us for solidarity.

If you would like some reading recs for this important day, check out:

“We Are Water Protectors” by Carole Lindstrom (Elementary School)

This beautifully illustrated book introduces the Native American movements designed to protect Earth’s most valuable natural resource, water, to young children.

“I Can Make This Promise” by Christine Day (Grade 3 to Grade 8)

This book focuses on adoption and the loss children experience when they are isolated from their culture and heritage written specifically for for older elementary school children and middle school students with little to no experience with this topic.

Mascot by Charles Waters and Traci Sorell (High School)

This novel is a fictional story loosely based on the real life debate over the formerly named NFL team known as the Washington Redskins and now named the Washington Commanders. It tells the story of a high school debating over a mascot in the DC metro area.

Because we believe in learning by doing, a most important part of our religious education is participation, with all ages, in the first part of regular worship services. Then during Sunday school, young people learn and play with people their own age. Feel free to ask Sunday school teachers what they did this week. If you would like to review curriculum materials that are not online, please call Cat Boyle.