December 13, 2020, at 10:00 a.m. (Online Only at facebook.com/uurockford) Intern Minister Omega Burckhardt
We move through difficulty by pulling from our well of resilience resources. How do we refill those wells when things are looking pretty bleak? Let us consider new ways of seeing kindness during the month of December, a month marked by short days and long nights and the promise of continual change.
Happy Birthday to: Renee Ekedahl (12/09), Jill Gnesda (12/10), Rhea Overley (12/10), Victoria DeLaRosa (12/11), & David Black (12/15)!
Please keep Stanley Campbell in your thoughts and prayers as he recovers from a severe accident.
Share the Plate with MELD
Rockford MELD’s Mission is “guiding young parents to build a strong family and lead a responsible life by providing shelter, education and life skills training”. Through our programs and services MELD offers support and resources, life and job skills training, parenting information, emergency shelter and housing. MELD provides programs for young parents and their children in our community. Click here to donate.
Winnebago County CASA speaks up for children who’ve been abused or neglected by empowering our community to volunteer as advocates for them in the court system. Join us on Dec. 16th at 7 p.m. Zoom ID: 337-267-3668
Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5662364814 Meeting ID: 566 236 4814
One tap mobile
+13017158592,,5662364814# US (Germantown)
+13126266799,,5662364814# US (Chicago)
The First UU Rockford Annual Winter
Pandemic On-Line Auction / Marketplace / Art Fair
Auction – Last Day – Bidding Closes Wednesday at 9:00 pm
If you need help, email to auctionchair2020@gmail.com. Use this link to go to our marketplace website. www.auctria.com/auction/UUwinterauction Thank you so very much for your enthusiastic participation.
For tolerating a new on-line format. For, going with the flow. With no experience operating something like this, there were a few glitches, but not too many.
For tolerating the shutdown uncertainty. For being willing to see how well a Zoom dinner party works. For being willing to purchase a social event that is promised: “some time out into the future, whenever”.
For being really generous with your willingness to bid, and then to bid higher. Never have I had to bid that high for Neita’s candies. Many other things are selling higher than in past years. Higher than you could purchase on Amazon.
For demonstrating your generous support of the church. Even if you haven’t physically experienced church in nearly a year. Or, you haven’t actually talked a church friend in person for nearly a year. Your loyalty is pretty amazing.
What comes next. After Bidding Closes. Check out, Payment, and Delivery.
Thursday morning, we will email statements to everyone. Hopefully, the e-mails go out, being as this is the first time using this system.
Better still, you can go back into the auction web-site. At the top of the screen, there is a Tab for My Account. There, you can review your bids, your winnings, your donations. Then you can check out right then and there using your credit card.
Also Thursday, we will email the donors who have purchased their donation items.
Once you bidders have checked out and paid, and once you donors know who has items coming, then it is up to you to contact each other to complete the transfer. Whatever makes sense considering the nature of what has been purchased.
Breathe: A Letter to My Sons
I downloaded the digital copy of this book, Breathe: A Letter to My Sons, by Imani Perry, Saturday. I started skimming it—and couldn’t put it down. By the time I closed the book, I’d read a third of the 157 pages.
This riveting book is an “emotionally raw and deeply reflective . . . challenge to society to see Black children as deserving of humanity.” Instead of an academic description of racism, it’s an emotional education. And you don’t need to be a mother to understand the emotions of fear and love.
The UUA chose this book as its “Common Read” for us members of its congregations. We are challenged to rid our denomination and our congregation of “White Supremacy,” that ingrained postulate that white people are somehow superior to people of color. This book invests in the campaign at the level of emotional intelligence.
Breathe is available as a hardback frominSpirit: The UU Book and Gift Shopfor $18, and group discounts are available for quantities of 10 and more. The e-book and audio book (CD or MP3) are available fromBookshop.org. I downloaded a digital copy from Amazon.com.
If you are interested in joining a discussion of this book in the new year, send me an email at teresa.wilmot@gmail.com. I’ll combine orders for books.
Submitted by Teresa Wilmot
Prison Industrial Complex 101:Virtual Training Saturday, January 16, 2021, 10:00am – 11:30pm CST
and
Saturday, January 23, 2021, 10:00am – 11:30pm CST Register here
It’s easy to feel helpless in the face of the racial and economic injustice in our society. This is an opportunity to learn and reflect on what we can do to change it. This workshop is intended to challenge participants towards growth and inspire ongoing work and action. During workshop participants will have the opportunity to:
Examine the prison industrial complex root: its reach, impact and our ability to transform it.
Connect Unitarian Universalist (UU) values to the work to divest from prisons and police and invest in building new systems of safety, healing, and accountability.
Build connections with organizations engaged in prisoner solidarity and restorative justice.
Learn about the UU Prison Ministry and how your congregation or community can support our work.
UU Annual MELD Donation Collection (with a 2020 twist) We are collecting items to be donated to Rockford MELD again this year. Rockford MELD, a non-profit social service agency, started in 1981. The organization provides programs and services for young parents and their children in the Rockford community. MELD offers emergency shelter and housing, parenting information, life and job skills training, support, resources, and prevention education.
This year, you can follow the link below to an Amazon wish list that contains items that the women have requested. You can choose to purchase as many items from the list as you’d like by adding them to your cart. When choosing your shipping address, select Terry Lynch’s Gift Registry Address. Then proceed with your payment method as usual. The selected items will be shipped to the person at MELD that is coordinating the donations. We hope this twist on our traditional donation collection at the church will be just as successful as years past. Questions can be directed to Lindsay Dunn, Director of Religious Education. Thank you so much for your support!
Ideally, gifts would be received by Friday, December 18. Thank you!
*ZOOM Church Calendar*
Most “all church” events will be 337-267-3668. This is the Personal Meeting
ID for “Thomas Kerr,” our online identity (and the minister from 1870-1900,
who used all the new technology of his time to reach those he
served). Generally, there will be a waiting room and the host will need to
admit you.
– Coffee Hour on Sunday. 337-267-3668. 11:10 am. Chris will
be host.
– Touchstones: contact your touchstones group facilitator for the time
and meeting ID, if you don’t already have it.
– Caring Team Meeting – The first Tuesday of each month at 6 pm. ID 337-267-3668
Want to have a group – a book group, a parent group, a “circle supper”, or
whatever you like? You can create a free Zoom account (40-minute limit,
though often waived by zoom at minute 35). Or, you can use “Thomas Kerr’s”
– just email Autumn atoffice@uurockford.organd she can give you the login
and password.
• “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye
“Before you know what kindness really is/you must lose things” https://poets.org/poem/kindness • “The One in Ten” by Edward A Guest. In 1895, the year before Henry Ford took his first ride in a motor carriage, Eddie Guest signed on with the Detroit Free Press as a 13-year-old office boy. He stayed for 60 years. In 1908, standing in the rain as the solitary mourner for one such journalist who had long since been forgotten and relegated to the newspaper’s morgue, Guest resolved to escape that fate by becoming a specialist. From that day forward, nearly all of his writing was in meter and rhyme. And readers loved it. https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-one-in-ten/
