Both Sides By Rev. Nina D. Grey June, 2004

When my daughter, Kim, and I were new UUs, I established a family holiday. Noticing that there was a Mother's Day and a Father's Day, I thought Kim and I needed a special day for her. I called it Daughter's Day and I assigned it to the first Sunday in June. This was in around 1968 or so, I think. At the time I had no idea that there was an international holiday, an International Children's Day, that is celebrated June 1.

About International Children's Day, Miles Li wrote on January 23, 2003,

"Children's Day had its origin in the World Conference for the Well-being of Children in Geneva in 1925... In 1925, the Chinese consul-general in San Francisco gathered a number of Chinese orphans to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival. This, of course, coincided with the conference mentioned above. June 1 somehow died out in the USA, only to be revived a couple of years ago. However, each country chooses its own day to commemorate it." (http://flagspot.net/flags/int-chdn.html)

The country of South Africa celebrates International Children's Day on June 1. And Marion Wright Edelman's Children's Defense Fund has chosen this time of year to remind people that every child in our nation deserves a "Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities."

On May 2 we dedicated two babies, Sophia Gyuk and Clara Grosse, and we said hello to a third new baby, Federico Latino. On May 23 we celebrated the Coming of Age of three youth, Zarinah Ali, Gabriel Henriques, and Scotty Roberts. We also recognized Anne Jonas, who is graduating from high school. May was a month for honoring the lives of our children. As we approach the beginning of June, and International Children's Day, I am thinking about how we do and can practice faithfully our commitment to children and youth.

This is a good time to support organizations, like the Children's Defense Fund, which works so hard on behalf of young people. It is a good time to support our church, which is a community that cares deeply about its children. It is a good time to take a stand against war and against any violence, whether violence within families, or the violence of poverty, or of oppression, or of war. Being a community that cares about children calls us to both celebrate their growing, and work for the conditions that sustain the growing, of our children and of all children.

In faith, with love,

Nina