Earth Element Mandala

This MANDALA was created by the children of the 'Panda-Class' within their first year in a primary school in Cologne: 28 children aged 6 and 7, with very different cultural and religious family backgrounds (9 from Italy, 9 from Turkey, 9 from Germany and 1 from Kosovo/Albania. They just brought, what they found along the streets or in parks. They put together, what often is considered as dirt and dust. In the middle of our classroom, they created a work of art and a deep symbol of unity in diversity: Millions of different pieces have become ONE. After several weeks, we made a little ceremony, went to the school-yard and gave it ALL back to MOTHER EARTH.
That was at a Catholic school. Half of the 150 primary schools in Cologne are Catholic. I also have got the permission (by the Catholic Church) to teach Catholic religious education. In Germany, religious education is a normal subject like mathematics. The parents can decide, wether their children should get Catholic, Protestant or no religious education. That means, that the children of one class are divided up and Moslemic children generally don't get something like this at school.
In my eyes, at least in primary-schools, there should be something like spiritual education with all together. Children should get a lot of space to evolve their inborn spirituality, to become aware of life and how fascinating it is: our body, our feelings, the nature, the arts, the ancient wisdoms, the connexion of everything...
A Catholic school offers only Catholic relious education. The normal is, that all the Christian children come together to get this. But I asked the director of my school and in the very first assembly the parents of the children of my class, if I could do religious education with the WHOLE class. And everybody agreed, also the parents of the 10 moslemic children. So we got the great chance, to integrate spirituality into all the other things we did. And that's the way it should be in life: Just doing, celebrating, expressing and sharing it, where it is there anyway or where it can help us, to get more aware of the deep values in our life.
We are all born out of the same Mother Earth and out of the same Father SPIRIT. And that's where we are going back to and where we are all at home - HERE and NOW. That's worth to be celebrated TOGETHER again and again.