UU church update

still not very impressed with the UU church. (read my first post about it here.) i was so excited about this church and finding a church that seemed to follow my beliefs! this has been a huge letdown. i’m not giving up though…it still might prove to be better than i’m currently experiencing.

last week i took maeve again to sunday school (“hogwuurts”) and they had all the kids together again, doing a teamwork game…they had laid out on the grass a ring with all these ropes attached to it and they had everyone take a rope and put a rock on the ring and the whole group was to work together to move the rock to a frisbee and set the rock down on the frisbee…it was a good game. but there was not explanation of what this had to do with anything. not sure how this ties in with hogwuurts or god or whatever. i’m still going on the assumption that church is to learn about god…i think its a mistaken assumption in regards to the UU church.

oh after that game the kids went inside and made bookmarks. they were given a hogwarts sticker to put on it and i didn’t hear any instructions as to why they were making a bookmark. but ok. again, not sure what this had to do with anything, but ok.

that was it for last week. afterwards i talked to the director of the children’s program, who is very nice…and me and another mom who has the same questions were asking why there doesn’t seem to be any discussion of god. basically the answer was that there are so many interpretations of god and they don’t want to presume how anyone believes so they don’t usually initiate a discussion of god…its too personal. they don’t, however, discourage the children’s discussing god. if the topic comes up they encourage them to discuss their beliefs. well that’s good, but my whole point of taking maeven to a church sunday school is because i WANT her to learn about god…and i don’t want to take her to a christian sunday school because i don’t want her to get the one-sided beliefs that that usually entails…especially don’t want her introduced to the dogma. but this lack of discussion of god is really bugging me.

and i don’t see how any of these sunday school activities are having anything to do with anything. there doesn’t seem to be anything tying it all together. maybe i’m just missing something.

so this week was the week they brought a horse in. this was the “care and feeding of magical animals” week. they had a horse outside and a snake inside. the kids got to learn all about caring for the horse, and maeven fed her a carrot…pretty cool…and she wasn’t interested in learning about the snake but that was available inside and there were a lot of kids experiencing that…maeven chose to work on her spellbook. colored on the cover some more and glued the horse handouts inside. the spellbooks apparently are sort of a journal and the kids can write about what they are learning in it. i still don’t see that they are really learning much of anything and they don’t seem to really make it clear to the kids what they are doing with the spellbooks, so they just keep decorating them.

oh and the houses that they chose on the first week…they have wall charts for each house and they mark the members’ attendance and get a percentage of who is attending and that’s their cumulative points. i really thought they were going to be doing something with those houses…like dividing them up and doing something based on their theme of their group or something, i don’t know…what was the point of going to the trouble of creating a theme to the group if you don’t then use it? maybe another week.

i don’t know…i don’t want to tear up the place with my comments here…i am trying to be open-minded…but the whole experience has just been so discouraging and i’m seriously thinking of seeking out a united methodist church to take my children to, just so that they can get some learning about god! i would prefer a non-christian church, but i do know that UM churches are pretty liberal, so maybe that would work. it would be nice to go to church with my parents again. my dad’s retired now so they will be seeking a new church to attend.

another thing…things are so casual at this church…maybe its just because its summer, but everyone seems to wear shorts/tshirts/sandals to church…maeven and i have been pretty overdressed with typical church attire most weeks, so this week i encouraged her to not wear a dress. don’t know why that bugs me…but for me church was always a day to dress up a little…not super fancy, but a chance to wear something nice for a change…disappointing to see that that is not the case at this church. maybe in the fall things start to get more churchy…the pastor is on vacation all summer and the church is run by the members all summer, so maybe things will change in the fall.

after saying all that and discussing with maeven how disappointed i’ve been…she still says she likes it and wants to continue to attend. *sigh* ok so i don’t want to take it away from her and i do want to continue to give it a chance. maybe the more i go the more i’ll learn about it and finally see stuff i like. i had such high hopes for this place! i’ve just been so disappointed! 🙁 i hope things get better…more later!