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Why does IVY work?

Provides community (sangha)
Provides a safe place for exploration of life’s big questions and meaning
Removes barriers and establishes communication, connection, understanding, tolerance and love
Empowers kids to see solutions, not problems.
Shifts locus of control inward instead of outward.
Bridges divides, removes labels and pigeon holes and melts resistance of other groups.
IVY seeks unification and healing and ultimately results in a raising of consciousness.
There is much adults can learn from the success these youth have found.
Expands boundaries and enlarges the spiritual box...see below...

We think of spiritual exploration in this way. This is the IVY paradigm/model:

Picture nesting boxes...like babushka dolls...each one larger than the other. As we grow in our spiritual beliefs we settle into the box in which we feel most comfortable. If we notice that one is too confining, we move to the next size up to allow us a little more room and to permit the level of questioning we are comfortable with at that specific period in our lives. If we feel constrained again...we simply climb out and breathe deeply of the air of freedom...in the next box. Some find that a small box (dogma) is comfortable and cozy and contains them just right in a tight knit cocoon of community and authority. Others need lots of space. Youth of today need space for big questions and IVY provides a safe and spacious box in which teens can explore. However, it is still a box and some teens may find that later they need a larger box.

After much observation and reading, we have learned that the following is a safe conclusion: People who are allowed some space to explore what is "out there" will only find their own roots strengthened, if that exploration is supported. Those who are sequestered in tiny gardens behind walls only long for the great "out there" and many times rebel at the size of box in which they have been confined.

The building of bridges is, and ever will be, what IVY is all about. This means connection to what is “out there”. We do not believe in tiny sequestered gardens with walls…but permeable membranes.

Below is a letter from the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, posted October 7, 2005:

Pastoral Letter from the Rev. William G. Sinkford
President, Unitarian Universalist Association

“Let Us Begin Again in Love”

Dear Friends,

I write to you as we approach Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement for the Jewish people, a time when they seek forgiveness for past mistakes and commit themselves to living moral lives, striving again to have their names written in the Book of Life.

We Unitarian Universalists do not have such an annual holiday of atonement, but I have often wished that we did. I am thinking about atonement particularly during this 200th anniversary year of Hosea Ballou's A Treatise on Atonement. This theological statement of Universalism, asserting that all people are worthy of salvation and may find it if they act in accordance with what they know to be good and moral, has called generations to align themselves so that they stand on the side of love.

It is a difficult time, as our hearts and minds and media waves are filled with images of suffering, war, and human misery. And yet I believe it is at exactly such moments that we must commit ourselves, through acts of faith, to stand on the side of love.

Our nation remains at war. 140,000 US women and men occupy Iraq , with thousands more still mired in Afghanistan. American, Iraqi and Afghani citizens are dying daily, leaving loved ones bereft and wailing. Before this war began, I spoke out with many religious leaders to question its wisdom. After our government embarked on war, however, it was less clear to me what it meant to stand on the side of love, both domestically and internationally.

It is now clear to me that the time has come for a phased and scheduled withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. I have conveyed my beliefs to the White House and Congress, and our UUA advocacy staff remain active in the Win Without War coalition . I am also aware that hundreds of you visited the nation's capitol last month to stand up for your own beliefs about this war, and that one of our clergy, David Blanchard of the First UU society of Syracuse, NY, is fasting for an end to this war.

As a genocidal war rages in Sudan, I have felt compelled to speak out and to act in order to focus more U.S. attention on the atrocities occurring there. The UUA is active in the Save Darfur Coalition , and I will soon be taking a trip around the globe to Africa with Dr. Charlie Clements, President of the UU Service Committee . My forbearers and my faith call me there, to what I know will be a profound and disturbing journey.

The shame that I feel as I witness our government's involvement with torture in our detention centers and all around the globe also calls me to atonement. Many of us gathered in the nation's capital last month as part of the UUSC's Stop Torture campaign to hear torture victims and their surviving family members speak the unspeakable. It was my privilege to lead an interfaith delegation, walking with these who have been broken in body but not in spirit, to Capitol Hill so that elected officials could hear their stories. Once more, I was proud that Unitarian Universalists and our interfaith friends chose to stand on the side of love.

But we don't need to travel around the globe or meet with international visitors to see despair writ large in the faces of others. Hurricane Katrina, and the failure of our government to care for the most vulnerable in their time of deepest need, has caused pain that will endure for decades. I am pleased and proud to say that Unitarian Universalists have now contributed almost two million dollars to the UUA-UUSC Gulf Coast Relief Fund. This generosity will allow us not only to rebuild our UU congregations in the area, but will allow us to reach out, with both immediate and long-term support, to the communities of all faiths who are most in need in the wake of this tragedy.

No matter what we do, however, we may feel that our small actions are insignificant, that we do not have the skills or the time or the opportunity to choose life, to stand on the side of love. Yet even small acts may have results we cannot imagine. Your own acts for love and justice inspire me, and others, in ways you may never know. And please be gentle with yourself, allowing yourself to risk even when you know you may fail. As the Rev. Robert Eller-Isaacs, co-minister of Unity Church-Unitarian in St. Paul, Minnesota, wrote in his Kol Nidre:

For remaining silent when a single voice would have made a difference,
We begin again in love…
For each time that our greed has blinded us to the need of others,
We begin again in love…
For losing sight of our unity,
We begin again in love…
In this time of difficulty and peril, let us, over and over, begin again in love.

In faith,

The Rev. William G. Sinkford
President, Unitarian Universalist Association

This is a lovely letter eloquently expressing the goals and visions for the world that many of us share as members of different religious traditions and citizens of the United States. However, it also sheds a harsh light on many of our most pressing needs and impending catastrophes. We, as IVY leaders, wonder: what if there were leaders coming from the world’s main religions who actually knew what other leaders were thinking? What if they knew what drove decision making of others and also knew how to dialogue with them from their own perspectives? How would it look to have leaders who were connected to one another at that most basic root…spirituality? We all know spirituality and political decision making cannot be separated. What would be the impact of educating the next generation to communicate, connect, and to gain understanding for those who think differently? Tolerance must be taught at a young age. One of the Bible’s most often quoted proverbs is: Proverbs 22:6: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Religious conservatives take this admonition very seriously. Something we have noticed is that religious liberals do too. This creates two polar opposite factions who as a consequence don’t know how to speak to one another. Is this an interconnected web of life? Are the people we share the planet with not part of the web? Isn’t it vital that they also be part of the solution to the current problems we face today? We must learn to speak to and with one another, to bridge differences, to reach out and make valiant attempts at understanding in order to effect positive change… and only after real effort to reach a place of love and compassion has failed, then should we march in protest.

Many of us as parents lament the state of our world and decry the legacy being left for this generation. We teach our kids principles and values, provide them with experiences meant to expand their minds, take parenting classes and openly discuss world events. We fervently hope our kids don’t fall into some national suicide statistic. We attend candle light peace vigils, write petitions, do volunteer work, intellectualize how to change the world, and protest at organized events. We enjoy being in the company of others who think like we do. However, have we ever thought that our kids just might have a better answer for bridging the divides of today?

Huston Smith (Why Religion Matters, 2001) maintains that human beings instinctively ask several “ultimate questions” and that these are the “defining essence of our humanity”. If every human asks certain questions, and different religions provide a variety of answers, how then are we ever to communicate and understand our connection to one another? By studying the answers each faith has to offer a standardized set of questions, our youth came to discover hot points that create barriers and inhibit real connection.

In Promise Ahead (2000), Duane Elgin predicts that because of our increased ability to communicate quickly on a global level, within the next ten to twenty years we could witness, “…a quantum increase in the collective consciousness of our species”. He continues on to say that “…the human family could mobilize itself to begin building a future that we scarcely could have imagined a decade or two earlier”. This creation of a new future can be guided through programs such as IVY with youth at the helm who are interested in reaching out to one another to dialogue. In the words of Matthew Fox (Original Blessing, 1983), “A global awakening can only happen from a spiritual awakening that is of global dimensions”. The youth of IVY are thinking globally and need us to provide them with programs that give them the opportunity to heal the deep divides they are presented with in this era. These kids are not just hanging out with people who think like they do, they are getting out in the religious community and learning how to build bridges.

Collectively, as IVY leaders, we have taught many years of youth programs, parented, and volunteered in a wide variety of ways. We have learned that tolerance is not found in divisive language. We believe that IVY is a constructive way in which to address the polarization we see around us and commits our principles to action on many levels.

We believe that youth must have meaning and a sense of purpose in life, as well as power to make choices that can effect change. How do they find this? How do they discover their purpose and path? IVY gives them a structure, model, and framework to work from in this search. Spiritual disconnect creates signs and symptoms of teen problems. Materialism and the mall are not the answers and teens know this.

IVY provides an opportunity for youth leadership. Below are the leadership roles the youth fill and their job descriptions. The youth elect their own leadership and serve for a school year.