Carceral Systems and Siding with Love Workshop: September 10, 2021

UU Prison Ministry of Illinois, REAL, and the UCE Prison Ministry team invite you to join us for the last two sessions of Carceral Systems and Siding with Love.

How do we actively side with Love in the face of harmful carceral systems that especially target black and brown people? We will welcome nationally known advocate Joyce MacMillan on Family Separation and Surveillance on October 21. On November 4 we will discuss the Basics of Restorative Justice. Registration is required, and a short reading or video will be emailed to you one week before each session. The last of these 90-minute Zoom workshops is on November 4.

Thursday, November 4, 7:00-8:30 p.m.: Basics of Restorative Justice

What is the framework for restorative or transformative justice and how is it different from the criminal legal system? How do restorative justice community courts work? What other models to address harm are being developed?

We hope you will join us! Please register here for any or all of these workshops.

Past Sessions:

Thursday, September 23, 7:00-8:30 p.m.: Policing

Why do activists make the call to “Defund Police”, and what do they mean by this? What is the impact of spending a large percentage of local budgets on police while disinvesting in low-income neighborhoods? What other approaches are being tried?

Thursday, October 7, 7:00-8:30 p.m.: Prisons

What are the dynamics and history that brought this country to mass incarceration? What is the impact of prisons on individuals and communities? Does prison make us safe?

Thursday, October 21, 7:00-8:30 p.m.: Family Separation and Surveillance

How does the foster care-to-prison pipeline affect poor communities of color? What is the history of child removal? What assistance is available for families when poverty creates less than ideal conditions? What remedies are anti-racist activists suggesting?

Carceral Systems and Siding with Love Workshop: September 10, 2021UCE UCE2021-10-29T17:27:08+00:00

Reparations in Evanston Workshop Update: September 10, 2021

Coming soon! A three-part workshop on Faith, Justice and Reparations in Evanston. On-line sessions will be held on Sunday afternoons September 19, 26, and October 3 from 4 to 5:30 pm. Register today to attend.

Over the summer, several members of the Racial Equity (REAL) and Peace and Justice teams have been working to develop a faith-based workshop series on Reparations. We will explore what “reparation” means, how Evanston’s history of exclusion and discrimination calls for repair, what is happening with the city’s current Reparations programs — and consider how we, as people of faith, are called to act at this significant moment in history.

While news releases and public meetings have introduced the Evanston reparations program to local residents, they have not emphasized reconciliation and repair. In our sessions we plan to look at different faith traditions’ grounding in social justice; and encourage each of us to consider how we’re effected by current inequities, what we can do to end injustice, and how we can begin to repair our community.

All workshop sessions will be held on-line. Our guest speakers will include former Alderman Robin Rue Simmons, who initiated the Evanston program; Morris (Dino) Robinson, local historian and co-founder of Shorefront Legacy Center; and Woullard Lett, a representative of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA).

Each session will offer participants a chance to exchange ideas, ask questions, and get involved. We’ll also give you current updates on the Evanston Reparations project and on various related funding efforts. Before each session, you can enhance your learning by reading and reflecting on selected articles and videos.

To find out more and to access links to articles and videos on Reparations, Evanston history and faith statements on slavery and racial justice, visit the workshop website here .

This program is a joint effort by UCE, Lake Street Church, Northminster Presbyterian Church, Saint Luke Episcopal Church, and Sherman United Methodist Church. It is endorsed by Interfaith Action Evanston and funded by the UCE Endowment Fund.

With many different faith traditions involved in our sessions, we’ll have the chance to exchange ideas and learn about the experiences of residents throughout the community. Working with church archivists and religious leaders from throughout Evanston, we plan to focus on how local faith communities have responded to racial discrimination in the past and what we can do to ‘level the playing field’ moving forward.

Reparations in Evanston Workshop Update: September 10, 2021UCE UCE2021-09-09T19:48:30+00:00

September 2021 BLUU Havens Gathering: September 18, 2021

Join at 12:30 for Socializing or Just Hanging Out & Listening to Music!

We welcome you to join us for our September Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism BLUU Havens Chicago Gathering.

In honor of Fall and the harvest season, please join BLUU Havens Chicago on September 18th, 2021 at 1-2 pm via Zoom for the first of a two part discussion on land, food justice, and the black freedom movement.

Food history in the US often describes Black people’s relationship to the land as one filled with danger, oppression, ignorance and subjection. There is another story however, filled with healing, resistance, and economic self-determination of our communities. How can we reclaim our connection to the land as a means of liberation in our lives?

Join us and our guest JIM EMBRY, Sacred Earth Activist, after which there will be a question and answer session.

Jim Embry considers himself an evolutionary being, his purpose is to contribute to a paradigm shift toward Sacred Earth consciousness and refers to himself as a Sacred Earth Activist. As founder and director of Sustainable Communities Network, Jim contributes to the theory and practice of sustainable living while cultivating collaborative efforts at the local, national, and international levels with a focus on food systems.

As a scuba diver and photographer, Jim has traveled widely to capture the beauty of the land and oceans. His photos and written works have appeared in many publications including We Are Each Other’s Harvest, Sustainable World Source Book, Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky, Kentucky African American Encyclopedia and many more!

If you’d like to learn more about Jim Embry, visit his website or read his “We Are Each Other’s Harvest” Essay.

September 2021 BLUU Havens Gathering: September 18, 2021UCE UCE2021-09-09T18:21:38+00:00

From Endowment Committee: Sept 10, 2021

This Sunday, we may return to our UCE building to begin our church programming year. This is will be an especially busy and challenging year for me as Chair of the Endowment Fund Committee and a member of the Endowment Fund Task Force.

The Endowment Fund Task Force has been meeting for a few months and some of the questions and comments that frequently come up concern communication with the congregation. Members have stated that they do not know much about the Endowment Fund, including basics of how to donate, how the funds are invested, how applications are written, submitted, and approved and What does the Endowment Committee do, anyway?

Although it may seem like the Endowment Committee is a behind the scenes operation, it’s actually front and center as stipulated by the Endowment Agreement. As designated by the Agreement, there are three Endowment Fund Trustees, one elected every year at the annual meeting in May. Candidates are proposed by the Nominating and Recruiting Committee. Trustees serve for three years and as chair in their third year.

The three Trustees are the voting members of the committee who recommend whether a grant proposal should be forwarded to the Board of Trustees for its approval. The Board of Trustees makes the final decision on the funding of every grant application.

The 2021-22 Trustees are Tom Hempfling, Bill Hartgering and me, Margaret Schatz. Other members of the committee are former trustees, Jane Kenamore, Barb Butz, Jim Clark and Will Van Dyke. Our Board Liaisons are Tom Ticknor and Joe Romeo.

The Committee meets monthly and spends the bulk of its time analyzing grant applications and the application process. It reviews the financial status of the Fund with the essential aid of monthly reports, detailing income and expenses, compiled by a professional accounting firm. All members serve as liaisons to specific grant recipients. They also actively seek donations and follow up on those that involve estate planning.

There’s much more to learn and the FAQs on the Endowment web page is particularly helpful.

The Fall deadline for grant applications is October 31. Questions or comments? Contact Margaret Schatz, mesharbor@gmail.com, Tom Hempfling, thempfling45@gmail.com, or Bill Hartgering, BHartgering@gmail.com.

From Endowment Committee: Sept 10, 2021UCE UCE2021-09-10T14:25:13+00:00

September 12, 2021

We will host an in-person and virtual worship service on Sunday, September 12th at 10:15 am.

The Continuous Journey
Our Annual Ingathering and Water Communion is a time-honored tradition at UCE and yet, this year, it is like nothing we’ve done before. We will gather our blessings and share our hopes in our first truly multi-platform worship service. Whether you are participating from home or in the building, please bring to worship water that has nourished your soul. What does it carry and what do you hope it returns to you? Rev. Eileen Wiviott, Rev. Susan Frances, Kathy Underwood, and Lynn Kendall are our worship leaders.

A few important notes about participating in-person:

Everyone over 2 in and around the UCE building will need to be masked.
We will maintain physical distance, which means, chairs will be spaced apart and seating is limited in the sanctuary to 120. We will have overflow seating in room 3 (25) and room 6 (20), to participate in the service through the livestream. Beyond this, there will be seating outside the sanctuary on the south lawn.
Please review our UCE Guidelines for Building Use before Sunday.

Please submit your Joys and Sorrows through this online form. If you submit a message by 11 am, we will try to read it that Sunday. Thank you for your patience as we are adapting to best serve you all! Note there will only be one service time so that we can gather together as a whole community of faith. You can still give to the shared offering through “text to give,” mail a check to the office with “shared offering” in the memo line, or go to our website and hit “give” on the upper right or click here. This Sunday’s shared offering recipient is Deborah’s Place.

September 12, 2021UCE UCE2021-09-07T18:24:35+00:00

VirtUUal Faith Formation: September 3, 2021

What’s Happening in Faith Formation?

Backpack Blessing – Join the virtual worship service for our backpack blessing on September 5! Rev. Eileen will offer a blessing for our backpack tags for those who are beginning a new school year. You can pick up yours at UCE at the Ingathering Service on September 12, or in the lobby during office hours all week long.

Back-to-School pictures? If you took some pictures to mark the occasion, we’d love to show them during the worship service on September 5! You can drop them in this Google folder or email them to Kathy Underwood.

Playscape Steppingstone Event – September 25 and October 2 – Families are invited to help make steppingstones. For more details and to register, click here.

Registration for Faith Formation begins! This year more than ever, it is important that parents register their young people, so that we can plan according to current guidelines. Please complete the form here for all young people, 0-18 years old.

Faith Formation Help this Fall – If you’d like to join in making this new format fun and engaging, look here for some of the ways you can do so! If you haven’t seen the video about our worship and faith formation format for this fall yet, check it out here. And if you missed Kathy’s recent article about this you can find it here.

College-bound youth and young adults!A network to connect with UUs wherever you are! Join Rev. Byron Tyler Coles & Rev. Stevie K Carmody Eama for an information session about the recently launched Bridging Youth Hospitality Network!

Wednesday, August 18th, 5pm ET
Thursday, September 2nd, 5pm ET
Thursday, October 7th, 7pm ET

Check the links below for Zoom registration and more information. Spread the survey to recently bridged youth and the communities that want to welcome them!

Zoom Registration & More Info

Survey for Recently Bridged Youth

UCE Book Groups

UCE Fiction Book Group is reading My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Book 1, a graphic novel by Emil Ferris. Discussion meeting September 17, 7-8:30 pm via Zoom.

Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late ’60s Chicago, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster magazine iconography. Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. When Karen’s investigation takes us back to Anka’s life in Nazi Germany, the reader discovers how the personal, the political, the past, and the present converge.

The Nonfiction Book Group will meet via Zoom at 2 pm on Sunday, September 26th to discuss How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America.

The author, Heather Cox Richardson, writes about how the South was the ideological victor of the Civil War as expansion of the Western frontier allowed the hierarchies of the South to proliferate. The book has been called “a thought-provoking study of the centuries-spanning battle between oligarchy and equality in America.”

VirtUUal Faith Formation: September 3, 2021UCE UCE2021-09-02T23:33:00+00:00

From DLRE: September 3, 2021

Shared Ministry – Who Are We Leaving Out?

Last month I wrote about my weakness: my fear of admitting when I need help, and then asking for help. It sounds silly, and looked even sillier in print, but the truth is hard to see at times.

As I reflect on why this can be a challenge in my life, I thought of a couple of things. The first one has to do with my childhood and growing up in a household where I was told in subtle, non-verbal ways that only weak people asked for help. I don’t remember either of my parents asking for help, but that was probably because I was in my own little world and didn’t notice it, for I’m sure there were times when they did. My parents were both very self-sufficient in my eyes.

The second has to do with my fear of leaving someone out. This usually happens in a dream where I am thanking all the volunteers who put in their time and energy to create a fun, safe, and welcoming program for the young people. In this recurring dream, I have a terrible feeling that I have forgotten someone, or worse yet, more than one person. I then have a deep sense of dread and shame for hurting their feelings. But in my awake moments, the fear is in not asking a specific person for help with a task. I talk myself out of it with thoughts like, “They do so much already” and “They have 7 little kids, I’m sure they don’t have the time”. How many of us have sat in a meeting and thought or said these things? I have tried to be intentional in changing my rhetoric in these situations, but often fall into old habits.

And so I now wonder how many times I have left someone out in participating more fully? Does my white, middle-class status factor into this? More importantly, what do I need to do to correct this?

In this time of change, asking for help is perhaps even more important. My struggle is partly in not knowing exactly how much help is needed. How many volunteers do we need when we aren’t sure how many families with children and youth will be in-person? And I struggle with asking people for help during a time when they are dealing with so much: grief, stress, the unknown, not to mention life in general.

And yet this is an exciting opportunity for us! We have the chance to create the multigenerational community we have been wanting for many years. Through our shared ministry, we individually and collectively can genuinely welcome all ages through our doors, into our sanctuary, and into our lives and hearts. There are so many ways each of us can do this, and faith formation is one of them. Feel free to see how here.

Let’s see what shared ministry looks like when we invite everyone in!

In Faith,

Kathy

From DLRE: September 3, 2021UCE UCE2021-09-02T19:55:31+00:00

Welcome Back to UCE Capital Improvements – Lobby: September 3, 2021

When returning to our beloved church building in September and beyond, you will notice some differences in the lobby and wing spaces thanks to funding from the 2019 Capital Campaign and the hard work and dedication of the Capital Campaign Implementation Committee and UCE volunteers and staff. We wanted to highlight some of these exciting changes and talk a bit about how we made decisions about what updates to make. This is the first of three articles.

Our lobby planning involved a broad, human-centered design approach–a process that starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor made to suit their needs. To do this, we gathered input from the groups that use the UCE lobby space, (hospitality team, membership relations, family ministry, accessibility team, and staff), as well as rentals, safety and security. We then analyzed and synthesized these inputs, and categorized them to create our organizing focus areas: furnishings, layout, technology, information, and signage. During this process we saw that some of the biggest areas of need were related to welcoming newcomers and families.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing with you various aspects of the lobby and wing projects so you’ll understand the thought process for each improvement area.

Welcoming Families

The first updates to the lobby space we wanted to highlight are related to welcoming families – and especially those with younger children. As Rev. Wiviott has mentioned in many of her recent messages to the congregation, we are working as a congregation toward being a truly multi-generational community. As part of this work we have taken special care to understand the needs of families – both current and new – and worked on ways to make our lobby space as welcoming and functional as possible for them. Here some things you will see:

New kid-height coat hooks. We learned through our research that for families with younger children, the current coat area was a source of stress. (Most young children are not able use hangers easily, and older kids couldn’t reach most of the hangers that were available.) We further considered both accessibility (locating the hooks far from the ramp) and safety (locating them away from the top of the stairs; choosing kid-safe hooks), and inclusion (our only kid-height hooks previously were in the basement, and were seldom used because they were not convenient).
New kid-friendly corner in the lobby. We noted in our research that no kid-sized furniture existed anywhere on the main floor of our church. Now there is a designated spot in the lobby with a kid-sized table and chairs, surrounded by seating for parents/adults. This spot was the best choice due to safety concerns (it is far from the automatic doors!).

Soon you’ll be hearing about our multi-generational outdoor space. It is coming along nicely as well and we can’t wait to welcome everyone to it soon. This is just a taste of what we have been up to – we are eager to provide you with more updates next week!

Welcome Back to UCE Capital Improvements – Lobby: September 3, 2021UCE UCE2021-09-02T17:16:58+00:00

“New” Kitchen Celebration: September 19, 2021

Just as Covid shut everything down last year, our totally renovated kitchen was completed, so we didn’t get a chance to celebrate all of the wonderful changes and upgrades. So on Sunday, September 19, the Kitchen renovation will be celebrated! There will be a recognition in the worship service, followed by tours in the kitchen and outer area guided by Carol Nielsen and Sandra Robinson. Coffee and cookies will be served outside following the indoor gathering to celebrate with food. Our kitchen has always been a warm and welcoming gathering place before, during and after events for our congregation and for our rentals. These improvements are due to your generosity during the Capital Campaign.

“New” Kitchen Celebration: September 19, 2021UCE UCE2021-09-02T17:13:38+00:00

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