UUtheVote Launch: April 10, 2022
After reaching 22,500 people in 2020, this year our UUtheVote Team has a 40,000 Points of Love initiative. Contact Shirley Adams or Carolyn Laughlin via REALM or at admin@ucevanston.org to get involved.
This Sunday, April 10th, at 3:00 pm CT, join the UUA Side With Love Organizing Strategy Team’s UUtheVote Launch. This 90-minute live webinar will feature UUA President Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray, state partners, and the new UU the Vote Campaign Manager. Learn how UUtheVote is going deeper into values-based conversation, showing up for ballot measures to combat voter suppression, fight for reproductive justice, and resist the criminalization of BIack, Indigenous, and people of color communities. Click here to register.
Our 40,000 Points of Love initiative encompasses our partnerships with the UUA Side With Love Organizing Strategy Team, Unitarian Universalist Advocacy Network of Illinois (UUANI), Reclaim Our Vote (ROV), and local non-partisan non-profits organizing around getting out the vote and voting our values! We will be engaging in the following 4 areas:
- Get Out The Vote (postcard and letter writing from home or in small groups)
- Voter Registration (in-person at various locations)
- Advocacy/Education Virtual (phone banking or text banking)
- Personal Conversations (in-person values conversations)
What can you do?
- Contact Shirley Adams, our lead UUtheVote organizer, if you are interested in working to organize one of our voter registration, advocacy/education, or personal conversations areas.
- Contact Carolyn Laughlin, our Get Out the Vote organizer, if you are interested in sending postcards or letters.
Unitarian Universalists understand that democracy is a process and a practice. It is one way we live our values out in the world. Join us!
WTCC Discussion: April 10, 2022
April 10th 11:30-12:30
9th Chapter – Restoration and Reparations
and
10th Chapter – Accountability and Resources
Want to learn what our Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is recommending as ways to dismantle white supremacy culture within our Faith Formation structures? Congregants are encouraged to participate in small group discussions of the Report of the UUA Commission on Institutional Change, Widening the Circle of Concern. This report is a guiding document for UCE’s Anti-Racism/Anti-Oppression work.
For our discussion in April, we will be reading 2 chapters. You are encouraged to read the chapter on Restoration and Reparations and the chapter on Accountability and Resources before April 10th so you are prepared for the conversation. You do not need to have participated in previous conversations to join this one!
If you would like to take part on Zoom, here is the link for April 10th at 11:30 am: Click here to join on Zoom.
These conversations will be taking place in-person as well as on Zoom. If you hold a marginalized identity and would want an identity-based caucus space to discuss Widening the Circle of Concern, please contact Rev. Eileen Wiviott or Rev. Susan Frances so we can arrange that space.
The UUA Commission on Institutional Change (COIC) was commissioned by the 2017 General Assembly to conduct an audit of the power structures within the UUA and analyze systemic racism and white supremacy culture within our movement. This report, issued in June 2020, is the result of three years of labor by the COIC, gathering painful stories and doing the difficult emotional labor of identifying the ways systemic racism exists within Unitarian Universalism. The purpose and goals of the report include, to “identify the aspects of [white supremacy] culture that must be dismantled to transform us into a faith for our times.”
As the Board of Trustees, staff, and a few members have engaged with this report over the past year, we are clear that dismantling systemic racism within our institution is a shared responsibility and requires all of us to take part. Please join us in these vital conversations the 3rd Sunday of each month during the Faith Formation Hour through June 2022 (except April will be the 2nd Sunday).
~ Rev. Eileen Wiviott and Rev. Susan Frances
DRUUMM Worship Service: May 4, 2022
Join DRUUMM (Diverse & Revolutionary UU Multicultural Ministries) for a public worship service on May 4, 2022 at 7:30 pm.
You Can Count On This
Rev. Tyler Coles, Guest Preacher
Dr. Zanaida Robles, Musical Artist
Faith can be both a guiding light and sustaining force throughout the course of one’s life. Yet in a world that is all too cruel and harsh, faith can be twisted, becoming instead a tool that fosters both isolation and a sense of underwhelm. What do we do when this happens for us as Unitarian Universalists? Come, let us gather in the fortifying spirit of love made known in community as we re-member ourselves, for ourselves, in the presence of all that we choose to name as Holy. RSVP at this link by May 3rd.
Our Worship & Fundraiser is an opportunity for the wider world of Unitarian Universalism to connect with DRUUMM and be in community together. The Worship is open to everyone while prioritizing space for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. We particularly encourage our DRUUMM members in multiracial families and White antiracist allies to join. We are at a sensitive moment after two difficult years of pandemic and loss in our communities. Your witness and solidarity are greatly needed to help us thrive into the future. Our goal is to connect more deeply with our wider Unitarian Universalist community to share DRUUMM’s mission, highlight some of our key activities, and raise funds in support of expanding our chaplain and pastoral care work with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in Unitarian Universalism.
For more information, please contact Dawn Robinson our DRUUMM Administrator dawn.druumm@gmail.com.
DRUUMM is the Diverse & Revolutionary UU Multicultural Ministries, a UU People of Color organization. Learn more at www.druumm.org
From EOD: April 8, 2022
Greetings Members and Friends,
We are into the 4th quarter of our 2021/22 fiscal year which ends on June 30. The Budget Working Group of the Integrated Stewardship meets this weekend to revise the budget draft based on results from the pledge drive. Members of the team are Board President Joe Romeo, Sr. Minister Eileen Wiviott, Treasurer Tom Carlton, ISC Member-At-Large Susan Comstock and myself as Executive Operations Director and Staff Lead of ISC. The draft will be presented at the ISC meeting on Thursday evening and to the Board of Trustees on the following Thursday evening. The budget will be voted on at the May 15th Annual Meeting.
For those of you who may not have had the opportunity yet to pledge please do so as soon as possible. Every pledge counts as we review budget numbers as we are required by policy to include in our pledge income only pledges in hand. Thank you to all of you have done so. Your financial participation and support make it possible for us to continue to provide the quality programming and worship that we all need now more than ever. We have done well to weather this pandemic and are working very hard to continue that momentum.
Two major fundraisers are ahead. Mark your calendars and plan to join us on April 30 at 7 p.m. as Emma’s Revolution returns to the UCE stage with their powerful and beautiful voices for social justice. Click here to purchase tickets.
On May 15th we begin set up for Rummage Sale 2022. Just after the Annual Meeting we return to the famous raucous turnover of the sanctuary as we prepare for the sale. Please sign up with this link to volunteer after the service or for work in a particular department, or to bring sweets for the café. All of these efforts will contribute to a successful sale. It is not only an important fundraiser for UCE, but a wonderful time for members and friends to enjoy time together. See the article in this issue of the newsletter with more information about the sale and the donations tips form which is an easy-to-use guide when figuring out what to bring for the sale.
This Saturday, Afternoon of the Arts will be held in the sanctuary for all ages. More information is listed in this newsletter. Shirley Adams will lead dancing, Adam will play songs from his famous playlists, among other fun art projects. Drop by and see me at my clay sculpting table. It is guaranteed to be a great time for all. Don’t miss it.
Thank you to Johna and Will VanDyke, Gay Riseborough, Eleanor Boyer, and Eleanor Speis-Ferris for continuing our Lobby Arts Program. Please visit the lobby and enjoy the current exhibit by artist Leslie Riley. Our Endowment has funded this year’s program with a grant. We hope that Afternoon of the Arts donations and other contributions will continue to make this program possible. The arts help to nurture our spirits at UCE. We want to continue the legacy that Rosemary Zwick began so many years ago.
Capital Campaign projects continue. You may have noticed activity outside the lobby on the west side of the building. Our new air conditioning installation has begun. Once completed in early summer we will landscape the area and provide camouflage of this area so that it remains attractive as guests arrive to our building.
Inside the building you will soon notice a new Welcome Desk where hospitality team members will greet you and you will immediately know you are welcome at UCE. We will also add a sofa to the mix of chairs, some of which will be moved to another room in order to provide a good mix of comfortable and easy to use seating. I hope you have noticed the new children’s reading area with a bookrack especially for them.
Our UCE Garden Team meets regularly to plan for maintenance of and improvements to our gardens. We have the pollinator and prairie gardens on the west side, the peace garden to the right of our entry, welcoming planters along the front of our west entrance, new grasses and yews along the west wall of the wing, hostas along the south end of our new parking lot, and, of course, the new playscape area which is almost complete.
For information on Administration, Finance, Buildings and Grounds, to make suggestions or learn more, contact me at srobinson@ucevanston.org.
April 10, 2022
We will host an in-person and virtual worship service on Sunday, April 10th at 10:15 am.
“Affirming the Worth and Dignity of Every Gender”
Each of us is a gendered being. But our gender is subject to societal dictates of which genders have power and privilege. We reach out to you to embrace a spectrum of genders as equally deserving of power, privilege and possibilities. The service is co-created by the UCE Youth Group.
Please submit your Joys and Sorrows through this online form. If you submit a message by 9 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 Faith in Place.