I cut up
this document with quotes about peace and placed the "peace pieces" in the center of the circle and told the children that they'd be choosing a peace piece to illustrate. Everyone looked though them until they found one they liked. Before we moved on to illustrating, we talked a bit about what Faith & Practice books are (this was not new for most of the group) and the meanings of the words faith and practice. Then I asked the children to talk about what's in Faith & Practice. Even though someone remembered that Faith & Practice contained queries, no one knew what queries were. We read a couple as examples, and people came up with the idea that they were questions that made you think and reflect. I asked the students while they were drawing to think of one query to go along with the quote they were illustrating. For some quotes, it helped the children to be told to think about to think about a question that might have been answered using the quote. When I do something like this again, I'll probably suggest that the queries begins with a typical beginning of "Do I/we . . . ?", "How do I/we . . . ?" or "Am I/we . . . ?" since some people had trouble figuring out how to get started. Once everyone had finished, we got back into our circle and passed around a small object from our centering basket. When the object was passed to a person s/he read her query, counted silently and slowly to ten so that everyone had a chance to reflect on the query and then passed the object on to the next person. Our queries were
How do you get to peace?
How do you think a prisoner has peace inside a cell?
How can we love what we think we hate?
What is the best place for dreams?
How can I make friends with my enemy?
How do I make peace with my enemies?
How can we forgive others for mishaps and not hurt, but heal during the process?
What would you say if you feel there's not enough love in someone or something?
