THE FIRST UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST SOCIETY OF MIDDLEBOROUGH

Transcription

1 THE FIRST UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST SOCIETY OF MIDDLEBOROUGH 25 South Main Street, Middleborough, MA January, 2018 Sunday, January 7, at 10:30 a.m. Rev. Sarah K. Person preaching What Matters Most At some point in our lives, we ve been forcefully reminded: Actions speak louder than words. If you're going to talk the talk, you've got to walk the walk. Practice what you preach. Deeds not creeds. If we take these admonitions to heart, we dedicate all aspects of our lives to our values. Join us for a conversation about acting on what matters most. Special music will be provided by a vocal ensemble. Sunday, January 14, at 10:30 a.m. Rev. Sarah K. Person preaching The Promise and the Practice Clergy of color have created a deeply moving and timely worship experience for all of us. This service will center the history, the perspectives, the voices and the leadership of Black Unitarian Universalists. It takes a commitment to do something truly different as we are called to be bold and revolutionary in how we are living, leading, and giving to support the work to dismantle white supremacy, racism, and oppression from within and beyond. Join us as we share the remarkable work of these generous contributors to our collective consciousness and moral values. The Chalice Choir will be singing Precious Lord, which was a favorite of Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday, January 21, at 10:30 a.m. Jazz Sunday We welcome back Jeannie Gagné and Stan Strickland for a soulful morning of music and reflections. Jeannie is the former Music Director of our church, and she and Stan have shared a Jazz Sunday with us annually for many years. Both Jeannie and Stan are teachers at the Berklee School of Music. Jeannie Gagné co-authored Singing the Journey. She is known internationally on YouTube as The Vocal Genie. Her book, Belting: A Guide to Healthy, Powerful Singing (2015) the first of its kind has received rave reviews by voice teachers worldwide. Jeannie's first book on vocal technique is Your Singing Voice: Contemporary Technique, Expression and Spirit. Jeannie has released three solo CDs Closer to Bliss, Must Be Love, and Wide Open Heart. Singer, saxophonist, flutist, and actor Stan Strickland has performed throughout the U.S., Europe, Caribbean, New Zealand, and South Africa. He won the 2009 Presidential Award Coming Up Taller, given to him personally by Michelle Obama, for his work co-directing Express Yourself, a multidiscipline arts collaborative serving youth at-risk. Stan also teaches flute and sax at both Longy School of Music and Lesley University. Love and Beauty, Stan's jazz vocal CD, features arrangements of jazz classics as well as original material. Sunday, January 28, at 10:30 a.m. Rev. Sarah K. Person preaching Re-calculating It happens to all of us. We are tooling along the road of life, using all of the ways we know best how to cope, and all of a sudden we are forced onto a detour. Fate takes us for a ride to the unexpected. How we cope depends on how we make meaning of the detour. To carry this metaphor to the bitter end; this is where our theological rubber hits the road. Join us for the GPS message Unitarian Universalist style. The Chalice Choir will be singing. Minister s Meditation I saw the dawn this morning as I have never seen it since moving to Middleboro. The brilliant orange horizon in a pale silver sky was completely open to view. The day before, a wavy wall of brick with tall trees interspersed had been torn down in the space of an hour or two. The expanse of land behind it will be smoothed over, and excavation will begin on a housing development. By next fall I will have lost that particular sight of dawn again behind moderately priced apartment dwellings. We change the land over and over again, planting, building, breaking down, stripping, digging, opening, closing, creating light and shadow. The dawn will always be there, and other days begin. It will have to be for another s eyes. And that is as it should be. We are creatures of change in a world that is always, blessedly, new. Welcome to the New Year, Rev. Sarah

2 NOTES FROM THE PARISH COMMITTEE Happy New Year from the PC! As we look ahead to the promise of the new year, we wanted to let you know that we've been working over the last six months on plans for this year and the next. Together we've set forth a vision that we'd like to share with you and hear your thoughts about. Let's talk about all of our dreams and wishes. And let's keep working together to make them happen! Vision of Ministry With the support of our members and friends, we plan to advance our work in many ways, including especially the following priorities: Engaging with the community beyond our walls. Building on our share the plate giving, we mean to step up in hands-on service to our neighbors. At the same time, we intend to strengthen our support of our members socialjustice advocacy work. In doing both of these, we intend to focus on living out our principles in a deliberate manner and getting our good out into the world. Building spiritual community. We have welcomed many newcomers in recent years and see a need to integrate musicians, families with children, retirees, and others. To this end, we plan to find new ways of helping people to be better acquainted and more deeply engaged, and in doing so will provide greater opportunities for spiritual exploration and nurturing. Paying our own way responsibly. Over the last several years, our Church has assembled a first-rate staff team whose work has helped us grow in numbers and enthusiasm. In the process, our expenses have gotten ahead of our financial giving. This year we intend to move decisively toward balancing our budget and will enhance our efforts to educate ourselves about what it takes to be fiscally responsible. Bob Waterman, President A REMINDER FROM YOUR HOSPITALITY COMMITTEE Just a reminder that we have streamlined the beverage set-up and offer light, easy to serve snacks such as pretzels, crackers, and wholesome cookies during coffee hour. This is so our volunteers have a simple and fast time of serving and cleaning up after us on Sunday morning. Now that we have made it easy, we encourage you to pick a Sunday to sign up to be a Coffee Hour Host. It is a wonderful way to give back to our church community. There is a sign-up sheet on the clipboard in the Parish Hall. And, if a member of our Hospitality Team calls to ask you to step up, please say yes! COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE! Would you like to donate Equal Exchange coffee for our Coffee Hour? Please let Rev. Sarah know.

3 On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, January 6, we will once again host the Solstice Singers for a fundraiser show, followed by hearty soups and delicious desserts. The Falmouth based Solstice Singers are celebrating their 25 th anniversary of music making with a concert called Solstice Light featuring songs and instrumental pieces mostly from medieval and Renaissance times. In addition to colorful costuming and music making, there will be sword dancing and a mummers play. (Once again, a fearless leader is beheaded and brought back again, so that we might have Spring! This time it s Saint George, and you should see the Dragon.) Live music will be provided by members of Ensemble Passacaglia joined by yours truly. The concert is at 4:00 in the sanctuary, followed by festivities in the parish hall. Suggested donations at the door are Adults $25, Seniors & Students $20, and Family Plan Max $40. Please bring your friends for a great evening of entertainment and enjoyment. Contributions for the winter warmth basket for the Solstice Singers event will be collected by Andrea Priest. Items that are needed include: hot chocolate, books, music (CDs), candy, yarn, nuts, unscented candles, chocolates, candy canes, jelly, biscotti, hand towels, greeting cards, lap quilt, magazines, gloves, teas, cookie mix in a jar, syrup, breads, journal, pen, slipper socks, tin cookies, hard candy, honey, fleece blankets, warm items - hats, gloves, slipper socks, etc. Wishing you all a Happy New Year! Susan Land Hotchkiss, Director of Music

4 RELIGIOUS EXPLORATION In January and February we'll be following the guidance of Yoda and exploring the noble 8-fold path of Buddhism and learn how we can reduce our suffering through mindfulness and acceptance. We'll also revisit or Jedi trial cards and see how we're progressing on them, so don't forget to bring them with the Jedi wallets on Sunday, January 7, when our Buddhist classes begin. Juliet Donaldson, Director of Religious Exploration BATHROOM REDESIGN TASK GROUP A task group will start meeting in January to talk about how to make our bathrooms more accommodating to all. This group will be looking into how our bathrooms are used and how to make them accommodating to all genders. If you wish to be part of this group, please see JR Pucillo-Dunphy or Christine Hoyle, the co-chairs. Meeting dates and times to be determined. SANGHA MEDITATION GROUP The Monday Morning Sangha is not able to continue for lack of a quorum. We will continue to meet on the first and third Fridays of the month at 6:00 p.m. in the Parish Hall. New members welcome. Tom Tanguay REMINDER Are you or your group the last one(s) to leave the church after your meeting? If so, please remember to check and make sure that all the lights are off, all the doors are locked and all the windows are closed. Thank you. WORSHIP SERVICES Everyone is welcome. Members and friends are invited to help with Coffee Hour or serve as a Greeter on a Sunday morning. Child care for the littlest children begins at 10:15 a.m. in the Nursery Room. We are handicapped accessible with an elevator serving both levels of the church. We also have hearing assistive devices and large print hymnals available.

5 ON THE TABLE Wednesday, January 10, at 7:00 p.m. Center for Spiritual Practice at the McKinstrey House 115 High Street, Taunton AND Wednesday, January 24, at 6:30 p.m. in the Church Parlor On the Table is a monthly conversation hosted by Rev. Sarah Person about faith in society. Will the New Tax Law Change How You Donate to Worthy Causes? Researchers tell us that people at the lower end of the income scale and people at the higher end tend to give proportionally more of their income than folks in the middle. People at the higher end liked to give in part because they could get a break when they itemized their tax deductions. With the standardized deductions doubling under our new tax law, fewer people are going to itemize, and that particular incentive will disappear. The only reward for making donations will be the satisfaction of doing so and your commitment to support a particular religious institution or cause. 1. How will the new Tax Law affect your giving to your places of worship and charities? 2. Why or why not? 3. Are you surprised to find out that people with less money give more than the middle income earners? Why do you think that is? Some resources: DRUMMING CIRCLE Saturday, January 20, at 6:00 p.m. at Pam Rasa s Home The Drumming Circle will meet the third Saturday of each month from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. for anyone ages 15 and up who would like to attend. This will be an indoor/outdoor event depending on the weather. Please bring your slippers with you. And bring a rattle or a drum or both. If you need a rattle or a drum, one can be purchased at Ms. Bee Haven Angel Alley, 10 West Union Street, East Bridgewater. A pot of soup or other main course will be provided. Finger foods are welcome. A $5 donation is requested. RSVP to Pam Rasa. CUUPS CUUPS will not be meeting during the month of January. The weather is too iffy, and some who are working have to travel some distance. So we decided to take the month off. Our first meeting of the new year, Imbolc, will take place on Monday, February 5, at 7:00 p.m. in the Parish Hall. All are welcome.

6 DODY'S REPORT ON HER CIVIL RIGHTS PILGRIMAGE I've recently returned from a Civil Rights pilgrimage to the deep South co-led by the UU Living Legacy Project and another organization devoted to racial healing called Coming to the Table. This church gave me a scholarship toward the cost of doing this, and I am grateful to all of you for that. (The other 98% of the cost was paid for by contract work requested of me last winter by a former employer and joyously completed in the knowledge that it would enable me to have this oncein-a-lifetime experience.) I was called to this pilgrimage, first, by the lifelong impact of TV footage of children my age bravely setting off to integrate southern schools and later being brutalized by attack dogs and fire hoses. And second, by the disparity between the rapid progress on civil rights for my LGBTQI people over the past 50 years, and the amount of progress on civil rights for African-Americans over the past 450 years. Back in my activist enthusiasm of the 1960's and '70s, I had expected Black Liberation to be achieved by now. Instead, over my adult lifetime I have seen racial equity creep forward in some ways only to fall backward in others. So I went on the pilgrimage with the goal of becoming a more effective ally to black people's continuing struggle for true liberation. I felt I needed help to make further progress in freeing myself from the toxic effects of the myths of white supremacy and inherent black criminality. The pilgrimage was a week's tour of about 30 sites across Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee that were the locus of key actions in the civil rights movement of the 1940's through the '60s. Some of the sites that affected me most were the gravesites of local activists James Chaney and Jimmie Lee Jackson; the roadside memorial to Viola Liuzzo who was a white UU ally and hero less well known than James Reeb; the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma; the abandoned remains of the corner store in Money, Mississippi, where Emmett Till had the encounter that led to his murder; the Lorraine Motel in Memphis where Dr. King was murdered; and all the churches, out of which so much of the Movement was born, and which sustained it through such unspeakably hard-won victories. At many of the churches in big cities and in small towns like Marion, AL, and Philadelphia, MS we met with local people who shared their memories of the struggles, victories and defeats they survived there. The stories they shared with us and also the small groups in which we met nearly every evening to further the deep and uncomfortable personal work of racial healing made this experience a pilgrimage and not just a tour. I am still integrating this experience into my life. I will share more at a lay-led service next summer. For now, let me just state my long-held belief that America will never be whole, and none of us will be truly free, until we commit ourselves to doing what it takes to end the disparities that remain following America's long history of enslaving Africans. Dody Adkins-Perry

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8 CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP A Unitarian Universalist Congregation Without Walls The Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF) is a Unitarian Universalist congregation with no geographical boundary. Together, we create global spiritual community, rooted in profound love, which cultivates wonder, imagination, and the courage to act for justice. We strive to keep the flame of love burning bright for all who yearn for its warmth and light. Our over 3,700 members, with their children, live all over the world. What brings us together is the desire to connect, seek, share and grow within Unitarian Universalism. You are welcome here whether you are a CLF member or not. Take your time, get to know us. On our Seekers Site, you can Worship with other UUs and seekers from all over the world to share in a contemporary worship service and find community in our live conversations. Check our calendar to see when the next worship service is, or when the next online class begins. You can also take classes through our Online Learning Center. Feel free to click around the website, explore the ministries, and contact CLF if you have any questions at all.