When I was growing up my best friend’s family

would have a huge meal every Saturday night.

This was due to the fact that Mike the father of the family

had landed a job in NYC and could only return home on the weekends. /

Often after my family finished eating I would run over to my friend’s house and squeeze in to the very full kitchen

where seven children and assorted friends and relatives had gathered

for the meal.

Everyone looked to Mike to set the tone of the meal,

most nights I was called upon to sing a song while everyone else ate. Other nights friends were called upon to do readings or to play the fiddle or banjo, it was like the Grand ole’ Opry in a run down farmhouse

at the end of Akin street in East Fairhaven.

And at one point every Saturday Mike would ask one of his children

what they had learned this past week.

This would often cause wild discussions of who did what to whom

either in the house or in the school yard. /

Mike would then clarify for the child what he wanted to hear,

he would say "no that’s just information that you acquired by living, which is important. But what I want to know is what did you learn?"

The child would then hem and haw searching in their mind for an answer that would satisfy their father’s wish.

More often than not they would be sent to the set of encyclopedias

that lined the walls in the living room

that someone had long ago given to the family.

They would then have to take down a book,

open it at random and read to all assembled

what it was there in front of them.

determined and regulated by nature, science, and taste...

and so they read. /

But that was not the end of the lesson

in order for those of us who read to really understand the topic,

the rest of the conversation that evening revolved around architecture. You see to Mike the old adage ‘you learn something new everyday’

was not an observation,

it was instead a standard that had to be followed.

That in order for you to live fully you must continue to learn.

That understanding I continue to carry myself,

though I don’t always live up to it.

I think after being in school for as long as I have

I have unfortunately slipped into the pattern where

I just assume that I’m going to learn something new each day./

I’m about to start my last semester of schooling,

it just may be my last time in a formal education setting.

That is both exciting and frightening.

It’s exciting because I’ll be free to peruse my dream of ministry

By the time of graduation I should be ready to take a leadership role

in a church.

When ever the new UU world (magazine) comes in the mail

I look in the back to the part that lists churches looking for ministers

and I imagine what my life would be like in those various towns and cities.

What the people in those churches are like

how I may influence them and how they may in turn change my life./

Of course at the same time I’m also frightened.

I think of all the mistakes that I may make, that I will make

I worry about leaving the safe cocoon of school.

I worry that I will not have studied the right information

Will I find myself wondering why I took the class

on poetry instead of a class on the theology of suffering.

It is of course easy to for me get hung up on the specifics of my class work.

What I forget and overlook is what is really important with education

is not how well one is able to repeat back what you learn in a classroom.

But how what you learn, helps to shape you. /

For in this day and age we too often hear how education should be about learning skills that will help our nation in the global economy.

There has even been talk in Washington of placing

the department of education within the department of commerce.

But education is not about enabling people to get jobs.

Not that we don’t want people to have jobs,

but education should more than just helping our economy.

Education should be about helping people find meaning in their lives

it should be about helping individuals to be creative,

to accomplish tasks never thought achievable.

Education should help people become who they were meant to be./

Perhaps that is why I was so taken with Maria Harris’s

image of life being like a piece of clay.

The idea of education is one of the elements that

helps to shape that piece of clay appealed to me.

Of course we also need to recognize that there are other things

that shape us, much of which comes from within each of us.

Though what I came away with the first time I read her piece

was not that we as humans are completely formless

until we begin to learn.

but that through education a form, a form

that was already present in the clay, will become clearer. /

There was an art toy when I was a child called the little sculpture

and inside the box came a plastic hammer, a chisel

and a seemingly formless piece of dried clay

that once you started to knock away the superfluous

pieces of clay,

you came to a harder pre-formed sculpture inside.

and once you knocked all the clay off you were left with a miniature version of The Thinker or of Bugs Bunny.

[depending on which box you bought]/

This image came to me when I read Harris’ piece,

The idea that within each of us is a form that will slowly

come to shape through education.

Not that all education is of the same quality,

it would be wrong of us to assume that all education is equal

that money and position do not have influences on education standards.

Yet all education shapes and gives form to our beings.

OK this is a very Platonic idea I’ll admit it.

The Platonic idea is the belief that there is an ultimate example

of everything somewhere off in the ether

and everything in this world is merely an expression

of that ultimate thing.

So there is an ultimate chair in heaven

and all chairs here in this world are merely attempts

to duplicate that chair.

Both Channing and Emerson who helped to define

Unitarianism in this country were influenced by Platonic thought.

For them Platonism provided an ideal for humanity to strive for,

The onward and upward belief that is so imbedded in our faith.

For while the orthodox exclaimed to have the ONLY true religion

the early Unitarians were able to be comforted in the knowledge

that since there was only perfection in God

all religions were merely human expressions

trying to mirror that ultimate perfection.

It has been through my own understanding of how education

has worked to reveal in me a more complete person

that has inspired me to be more confident and to begin to teach.

After years of education,

after seeing how I have been shaped and molded by books, and teachers, my own experiences, and by my faith in God./

After understanding how far I have I come personally and professionally because I have had those bits of superfluous stone smoothed off me,

I know that it is my duty to help teach others.

To provide them places where they can grow

and to help them become who they best can be.

Because I have been able to recognize how far I have come/

I look forward to my work in the Sunday school.

For the next six weeks I’ll be spending Sunday mornings downstairs

working with the youngest members of our church,

teaching curriculum on the life of Moses and the life of Jesus.

Perhaps this will be the most important work that I’ll do here at the church. Helping give form to their early religious impulses

helping to shape them as religious beings,

providing for them tools that they will carry with them their entire lives.

Of course I am not going to stop being shaped by education just because I am teaching,

none of us are ever fully educated,

all of us can improve on ourselves.

No matter what position in life we have achieved there is still room for growth. Certainly there are times in our lives when we need more education, when we need to be shaped, and disciplined

when boundaries and limits need to be established

in order to focus the energies of youth.

But education goes on all through our lives,

As my friend’s father pointed out we must learn something new everyday.

I think of one such experience recently

when I was leading the workshop on Ethics. I thought that I would be teaching and instead I was taught something.

The adults who were present were joined by one of the members of our youth group,

who provided the rest of us with insights

into the life of an adolescent at the end of the century.

Enlightening some and reawakening in others the emotions

that we had for such a long packed away.

That was an education for a lot of us that day.

We all need to explore, we all need to be creative

So that each person can move

closer to becoming the best person they can be.

It is through learning that we come to know ourselves so that we may move closer to reaching and fully knowing the religious impulse deep within.

For as Ralph Helverson wrote it is by knowing that religious impulse that resides within all of us

tat spark of creativity, that piece of the divine that is with in all people.

It is by coming to be able to recognize our connection to the divine that we come to know the spirit that resides in and connects all people.

By coming to know ourselves better we are able to recognize the interconnected web of all existence.

We are able to entrust ourselves to the life that is larger than ourselves.

By following the instruction to learn something new each day

come to oneself, come to know the sacred better

We should remember that the most important thing for any of us to learn to day is that the truest teaching comes from the beating of the human heart