Taking it Home for November 25 Youth Class: Thinking of Death

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The question is not whether we will die but how we have lived.

? Joan Borysenko, psychologist

Talk about the quote. What does it mean to you?

WHAT WE DID TODAY

Today?s Big Question was ?What happens when you die?? We talked about some different answers to the question which come from a variety of belief systems. We heard what a Unitarian Universalist minister said when he had cancer and expected to die soon. We found out that UUs talk more about heaven- and hell-like situations on Earth and what to do about them, than we talk about an afterlife. That is because many UUs believe we live on after life through what we did when we were alive?as well as in the memories of our families and friends. We also explored rituals to memorialize people after they die.

ANSWERING TODAY?S BIG QUESTION

What do family members have to say about the question: ?What happens when we die??

What does your family do so relatives who have died live on, through you?

VISIT THE DEAD

Go to a cemetery and look at the gravestones. What can you learn from them? Do those messages help the people buried there live on? Are there flowers and mementos? Why do people put them there?

SHARED SEARCH

Go through a family photo album or ?family tree.? Choose somebody you know little about who has died. Find out as much as you can about that person so they can live on through you.

REFLECT ON YOUR BELIEFS

Ask another big question: Is anything worth dying for? Patrick Henry was a famous patriot who said, ?Give me Liberty or Give me Death.? Was he right? What do you think is worth dying for?

PHOTO CHALLENGE

Photograph a cycle of life and death. You might start with a seed, photograph a flower as it grows through the summer, and photograph it again when it dies in a frost. You might photograph spring buds and then beautiful dying leaves.

FIND OUT MORE

Bereaved Children: A Support Guide for Parents and Professionals by Earl A.Grollman (Beacon, 1996) offers insight into how children and adolescents experience death and grieving and how adults can help them through such experiences. The book presents ways children and adults might bring various faith perspectives to the subject of death.

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A Unitarian Universalist minister who has written extensively on this session?s Big Question is Rev. Forrest Church. Obtain Love and Death: My Journey through the Valley of the Shadow (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008) from the UUA Bookstore (at www.uuabookstore.org/) in hardcover or paperback or as an audio CD.

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A 2008 Time magazine article (at www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1842627,00.html) details one scientist?s attempts to find out what happens after death.

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Posted in Taking It Home, Youth Class (6-12)

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