Exciting Program for Middle Schoolers in Fairmont

CZ

We are excited to that Learning Options, Inc. is hosting MIT’s Zero Robotics Middle School Summer Program July 5th through August 15th.  If you know of someone in this age group, please direct them to our website immediately while spaces are still available.   We started with 20 spaces, and they are filling fast.

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Details for ZERO Robotics from MIT

ZERO is designed for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. During the course of the five-week summer program, team members will be introduced to programming, coding, space engineering, and more! Programming of SPHERES
(Synchronized, Position, Hold, Engage, Reorient,Experimental Satellites)

zerorobotics

The program culminates in a tournament where winning teams’ SPHERES compete aboard the International Space Station (ISS). SPHERES will be seen in a live stream from the ISS, in action, based on the codes and programs written by the ZERO team.

The program will include 5 weeks of classes, Monday through Wednesday, 9:00am – 2:00pm, at The Learning Center facility in Fairmont, WV and will include one or more offsite visits to the NASA IV & V facility in Fairmont.

 LOI Robotics team will have two 10-member teams. (Only 20 available slots.)

6th, 7th, and 8th grade students are elligible to join the Learning Options ZERO robotics teams.

PS: Tuition assistance is currently available to residents of Harrison County, WV, through a grant from the Sacred Heart Children’s Charity. Details for applying can be found inside the registration form.

This is a great opportunity to celebrate the 3rd and 4th principle (3rd Principle: We believe that we should accept one another and keep on learning together. 4th Principle: We believe that each person must be free to search for what is true and right in life.) and be involved in the community.

Namaste,

Cricket

Some comfort for the Angry

CZ 1 Comment

[First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin] Respecting the Fire => http://www.austinuuav.org/audio/2016-02-07_Respecting_the_fire.mp3 via @PodcastAddict

Dear friends,
The past few weeks surround by politics, court trials, and injustice have left me filled with a cold and mushy rage. I have had to do a lot of soul searching. I found this sermon from First UU in Austin, TX at just the right time. I hope it offers you some comfort as well.

Namaste,
Cricket

 

Singing!

LdeG

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

Sunday February 21, 2016: The Commandments

Robert

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.

10 Commandments

For further information, email westforkuu@gmail.com or visit our website at https://westforkuu.org/

Map

Church Going

LdeG

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.

Church Going – Philip Larkin

For Valentine’s Day: A Love Letter to My Friend

CZ

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

Sunday February 14, 2016: Radical Love

Robert

“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.

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For further information, email westforkuu@gmail.com or visit our website at https://westforkuu.org/

Map

Living Mindfully UU Style: Lent 2016: No longer Irish Catholic

CZ

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

We do not lead single issue lives — Standing on the Side of Love

CZ

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

February 2016 Naming Race

CZ

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