In over my head and the science project of a lifetime...

I need to help approximately 10-20 seven-ten year olds create a giant (and by giant...I mean truly GIANT) model of our galaxy-- yes, I meant galaxy, not solar system-- in a very large hall at the church.

And I need to do it on a pretty restricted budget, no more than a couple hundred dollars.

The challenges include:

1. The galaxy is, well, giant, and I need basically a map of it even though it isn't fully mapped.

2. Since there isn't a complete map, I need to decide what is important to demonstrate about the galaxy, and figure out a way to demonstrate those elements first and foremost. I am thinking the vastness is a start, but there are more specific scientific points that shouldn't probably be demonstrated.

3. Hopefully, the galaxy will be hung. I have to figure out what to use for materials. Balloons, beach balls, styrofoam balls...?? At first I was thinking that each would represent a star or planet, and that we would create a "condensed"/mini/unfinished version of the galaxy, but I am realizing after looking at the second picture here that it might be better and would definitely be more accurate to use each one for a solar system...perhaps sharpie pens to mark the systems??

Oh, and I have been researching and strategizing for a while, but it is coming down to the wire. I have two weeks to get this figured out and set up. Ack! Help!!!!!! I need some good advice, tips, ideas, and suggestions, and it can't include "give up."

Here are the links I've found helpful or awe-inspiring so far, aside from the fantastic one above, with the picture:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way
• http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorations/galaxies-galore/build/index.html
• http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/qa/galaxies.php.p=Astronomy+basics%40%2Ceds%2Castronomy-basics.php&a=%2Ceds
• http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/phonedrmarc/2002_march.shtml
• http://teachspacescience.org/cgi-bin/search.plex?mode=topic&gl=elem&subject=space&subtopic=&topic=Galaxies
• http://teachspacescience.org/graphics/pdf/10001032.pdf (pdf)
• http://stardate.org/pdfs/btss/build_your_own_galaxy.pdf (pdf)
• http://nasascience.nasa.gov/big-questions/big_question_by_division_list?division=astrophysics
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5zVlEywGZg&feature=related (youtube vid)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0-lsyo28SU (youtube vid)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvhimW97Kj4&feature=related (youtube vid)

Church-Related Humor

Funny, and a little sad too...

"We never did..."

It's holiday time! I now hear the Fiddler on the Roof song "Tradition" cuing up in my mind. I am a traditions gal. I love celebrating traditions!

A couple days before Halloween, my kids were practicing the song "Away in a Manger," which they will be singing in the Christmas pageant at church. I got down our creche as a visual aid to help them learn the words to the song. This is the creche my mother finally gave me after I begged her and begged her (if memory serves correctly). It was the creche she had when I was a kid, and I have many fond memories of looking at it and playing with it.

Just getting out my winter holiday boxes and going through them to find the creche filled me up with the stories of winters past. As I took out each item, I kept saying to G., "remember when..."

(Hey, remember that older SNL skit with the "remember when" guy. Yeah, that was funny.)

But this is an interesting time of year to study the way memory works. Memories are not straight-forward things. So many memories we carry are influenced by emotions and hindsite and the state of mind we are in when the event happens and then when we try to recall it.

My dad told me that he once took a class in which a professor asked everyone to recall their earliest memory. The professor then promptly informed them that in all probability, the memory was filled with complete inaccuracies.

Back when I took my first position as a religious educator, I heard many varied stories about my predecessors from the congregation I was serving. It is only now that I am beginning to understand the great number of which were likely not particularly accurate.

In the congregation I now serve, I am following the 25 year career of the religious educator before me. For 25 years she served the congregation in many different ways, through times of small programs and large, times of great activity and times of rest, times of trying new things and times of going with "the old standard." Different years called on different skills. There is only one thing I can be sure of, and that is that she wasn't the same religious educator in year 11 as she was in year 4, or in year 5 as she was in year 8. Of course she wasn't the same religious educator in year 25 as she was in year 1, but I am pretty sure she wasn't the same even in year 24 as she was in year 25.

I spent ten months functioning under the story that the congregation had never had a "Coming of Age" program (a rite of passage program for middle schoolers). That's the story I'd been given by multiple people on multiple occassions. In month eleven I discovered while sorting through old files that there had indeed been such a program for some stretch back in the 90s. Then suddenly when I mentioned it, several people said they remembered it clearly, but the stories of how it went varied wildly from what the actual written records.

This kind of thing happens all the time. "We've never done it like that before" is not only a line only a dying congregation uses, it is also a line used by a congregation that really probably wouldn't remember if it had been done like that before. Institutional memory only goes so far.

Heck, when I came to the congregation, I heard lots of stories about the religious educator before me not being a big fan of change. She'd run a very successful program one way for 25 years and wasn't interested in trying anything new. Then I get into my office and find a series of books on Godly Play in her closet-- that's a new methodology-- and I take her out to lunch and discover she had pushed to try Godly Play for some time but hit a wall.

So now its Christmas Pageant time, and I know that this time of year more than any I will hear, "But we've always done it this way," and "That's a new creative idea!" But I am going to assume that neither things are fully true, and try to listen more to the emotional undercurrent. Regarldess of how things were done in the past, those two statements translate (loosely) respectively into: "This is what I remember and treasure," and "I am tired of the same old thing and interested in getting out of perceived or real ruts!"

Church Shooting Update

The most recent update is that it is now being reported that one victim of the shooting has died. Five of the others are in critical condition. Reportedly, the seventh person had not a gunshot but another (minor) injury related to the attack.

It seems you can get frequent updates here, so I will discontinue posting:
WBIR Knoxville, TN

Prayers and love to this church.

Church Shooting

No, I am not back from my hiatus. But I just left worship only to receive an email with news that there was a shooting this morning at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church in Knoxville during a children's production of a play. Six or seven people have been taken to the hospital. At this point it sounds like they are all people who were sitting in a pew, though details have not been released. The extent of the injuries haven't been reported, but fortunately no deaths have occurred.

May our prayers and thoughts be with this faith community at this time.

P.S. Nevermind what we may think about "Annie" being the morning's worship service. I am sure we all have opinions on that one (I know I do), but let's focus loving thoughts on this congregation.

Bloom Where You Are Planted

The sun was on its way down when I took these photos, but hopefully they are bright enough for our purposes.

Here is the view to the left of the church where I serve, heading up our urban street. The trees on the right are "our trees," Bradford Pear trees (non-fruit bearing??) that, according to the senior minister, were purchased in 1986 by some members of the congregation in a cooperative effort with the city to beautify the street.

When they arrived, she said, the saplings were so scrawny and spindly that she was sure they wouldn't survive the winter. Indeed, they did survive, and the tallest is now about 40 feet tall. As you can see above, they nearly touch the trees across the street, next to the Methodist church.

This is the view through the trees, looking up at our steeple. Beautiful. These trees are amazing. They make me think of a type of tree I remember from back in Colorado that has tons of compact balls of small white flowers. They look like snowballs.

In the tree out by my new church, however, the flowers are in smaller, much less compact bunches, and there are these sweet little green leaves that stick out at the ends of each bunch, adding a perfectly-placed accent of color.

I am a city girl. I've always preferred the urban life to the suburban, and certainly to country living. Even if I loved the country, I know I could not survive there. I am not only missing a green thumb, but most everything I try to grow experiences a quick demise in my hands.

Nonetheless, I have a deep appreciation for green, living, growing things, and for mother earth, our home. Just because I need a reminder every year about things as simple as the difference between an annual and a perennial does not mean that I have never sat on the side of a mountain in awe at the smallness of me and the vastness of the ground upon which I sat.

Indeed, some of my most profound spiritual experiences have been on a silent mountainside and/or deep in a tall forest.

One of the things I miss most about Washington State is the green. In Western Washington, we had two notable seasons: rainy and dry. The dry season was our shorter season, lasting a few months each year. It was a short enough season that many folks did not water their lawns, and there would be rows of houses surrounded by brown.

But the whole rest of the year, the earth was green from the heavy, lush ground cover, all the way up the large moss-covered tree trunks, until the green of the leaves on the trees met the sky. I am sure you can understand, from the below photo, why I miss it so dearly.

The above photo from Washington State is not my own (it came from http://www.flickr.com/photos/burchdc/1465029060/in/photostream/). But it is the dominant scene of the area, and a similar picture could have just as easily been taken at a park near our old home. I do miss that. And the rain.

The church I previously served was on the edge of the city, a terribly tucked away location I felt, yet each day when I came into work, I would look behind the church into the small forested area against which it was set, and I felt a sense of peace and calm that I am having trouble finding here.

However, I keep getting the feeling that the more I connect with the earth here in New England, the more grounded I will feel on this land, and the more connected I will feel to this place and its people. The more I connect with the ground upon which I now stand, the better able I will be to bloom where I am planted. And blooming where one is planted is critical for happiness.

So I have been taking walks and admiring all the beautiful flowering plants. (And I am looking forward to our beach time this summer.)

(I think the above one is called forsythia. My photo, taken at night, does not do it justice at all whatsoever.)

Hooray!

Well, some good news from my day:

1. G's brother M (N's husband) test drove the car and said it was good. We have put down a deposit so that we can get an independent mechanic to check it out. I also looked up its true market value on http://www.edmunds.com/, and decided I could safely begin negotiating the price at $10,300...still a lot more than we had wanted to spend, but the car is virtually new.

2. I had one more person from the congregation call back to volunteer in the children and youth ministry for the coming year. I had four volunteer slots open, and now only three. I'd like to leave town with them all filled, so I can rest well knowing that I left things in fairly good shape.

3. Some funds that were needed for a special program in the children and youth ministry were granted generously by the executive committee.

4. G's supervisor called and they chatted for a bit. It looks like G is going to have some more time to decide whether she will resign now, or whether she will wait until after K's case is closed (thus extending our months of dual income).

I LOOOOOVE good news!!