It was wonderful to see those who made it today, and we were thinking of those who couldn’t. I’m putting together a page of our songs. It has our opening and closing songs, the one we sang today, one we might want to learn, and will have a few more we sing frequently.
From a UU Church of the Larger Fellowship service:
Pax, Lisa
This Sunday’s service will continue the discussion from the 10 a.m. Adult Religious Education ‘Are the Ten Commandments out of date? If so, how can we nail down some ethical convictions when, morally, “everything nailed down is coming loose”?’
You can come at 10 for the beginning of the discussion, or just to the service at 11. Bring your own commandments.
Please join us for coffee and conversation at 10:45 a.m. at the Progressive Women’s Association’s Uptown Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, West Virginia. The worship service starts at 11:00. Our ongoing Religious Education classes begin at 10:00. The current reading for Adult RE is here.
For further information, email westforkuu@gmail.com or visit our website at https://westforkuu.org/
There has been an ongoing discussion on the UU-Leaders email list called “Let’s Get Out of the Box and Do Something Meaningful”. This poem, imagining an abandoned church building, was quoted.
A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognized, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, If only that so many dead lie round.
UU Rev. Cynthia Kane shares a beautiful message and reflection for her friend on Valentine’s Day. “Maybe, in a better world, that is what Valentine’s Day would be about? Not celebrating romantic love with awful candies, but remembering love in all its forms—remembering to send and share it in ever wider and widening circles. Because, with all due respect to the vocal stylings of Whitney H., I am not one bit sure that learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. I am still stuck on the idea that learning to love one another is. And learning to hold our hearts open, to really feel and collect all the love and Spirit that travel our way. So whether we are looking at our own face in the mirror—or into the face of our One True Beloved—we see reflected there all the strength and love and care that fill us from so many different quarters.” Read the full letter in The Huffington Post.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/for-valentines-day-a-love_b_9192476.html
“Radical Love”, with John Hall.
Please join us for coffee and conversation at 10:45 a.m. at the Progressive Women’s Association’s Uptown Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, West Virginia. The worship service starts at 11:00. Our ongoing Religious Education classes begin at 10:00.
For further information, email westforkuu@gmail.com or visit our website at https://westforkuu.org/
http://livingmindfullyuustyle.blogspot.com/2016/02/lent-2016-no-longer-irish-catholic.html?m=1
“Lent is a church season with the ultimate goal of making us a better person. May Easter find you transformed by your Lenten practice, and thereby find the world a little (or a lot) better. Blessings abound if we can but see them.”
This blog is from one my fellow UU Seminarians. I found it helpful for the upcoming season.
Namaste,
Cricket
http://www.standingonthesideoflove.org/ourstories/we-do-not-lead-single-issue-lives
“When we speak of racial justice, we are not talking about a theoretical framework. We are talking about principles and values that lead and inform the way that we do base building, create policy and monitor policy implementation. We’re talking about building power to dismantle systems of oppression.”
Namaste,
Cricket
https://www.uua.org/re/teachers/webinars
This is from the UUA’s Faith Development Webinar Series
Religious educators are key leaders in our racial justice work as Unitarian Universalists. And sometimes beginning conversations about race can be challenging—we fear that we’ll be awkward or use the wrong word or cause pain or contribute to exclusion. Join the Faith Development Office and the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministry for a webinar featuring religious educators telling stories about naming race – stories of things going well, mistakes made, lessons learned and how our souls and skills grow in the process. Presenters: Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen, Lauren Wyeth, Sheila Schuh, Kirsten Hunter, and Rev. Jamil Scott.
Namaste,
Cricket
Prelude: Out in the Country – Three Dog Night
Welcome: Wind, Water, Sun – Seth Carrier-Ladd
Wind that whispers through the willow trees
Sun that sustains us
Water that washes over willing earth and weathered stones
A smile shared and savored
A child’s squeal of delight as she dances in the daisies and daffodils
The quiet joy of gathered communityThis, this is the spirit of life and love that we call forth now into this gathering
May this spirit infuse our hearts, fill our souls, and carry us forward like a wave on the ocean as we enter now into this sacred time and space.
Come, let us worship together.
Chalice Lighting: As One Small Flame – Celia Midgley
Global Chalice Lighting for January 2016
As one small flame
fills a whole room with light,
So may we radiate
hope, courage and good cheer
in our homes, in our worship
and in all the corners
of our world.
http://callandresponse.blogs.uua.org/a-white-privilege-wake-up-call/
There is a question embedded in this article.
“How can racism possibly be dismantled until white people, lots and lots of white people, understand it as an unfair system, get in touch with the subtle stories and stereotypes that play in their heads, and see themselves not as good or bad but as players in the system?”
This was a big discussion in one of my classes last semester at seminary. We have to see the privilege and then work towards equality.
Namaste,
Cricket
West Fork Unitarian Universalists 