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Update from Rev. Susan – 12/5/2025
Hi Friends,
One of my new spiritual practices is finding local outdoor places to explore. This summer I randomly received in a mailing solicitation a map of “100 Spots to Explore the Chicago Lakefront” from Openlands, an organization doing good work “conserving nature for life.” I love the snow, so I’ve continued to be out for snowy walks and the photo is of me recently exploring the Rogers Park Beach, one of the spots on the Openlands’ map.
During this holiday season, one of my renewed spiritual practices is being purposely present wherever I am. With the political and geopolitical worlds weighing heavy on my heart and my mind, I am intentionally making time to tend to my body and my spirit this winter. I’m seeking to find the balance of nurturing my whole being so that I may have the capacity to continue to engage in the world. I’m seeking to find the balance of holding the grief of death and the challenges of preserving our democracy alongside embracing the joy of celebrating my personal holidays and the holidays of those I cherish.
Our large congregation has members with many theological traditions and religious backgrounds and as we move through this winter holiday season, we celebrate different traditions. On December 8, we celebrate Bodhi Day, which commemorates the day Siddhartha Gautama achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, becoming the Buddha.
December 14-22, we celebrate Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, which commemorates the struggle for religious freedom through the Maccabean Revolt and celebrates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the miraculous relighting of the temple’s menorah for eight days with a single jar of oil.
For decades I have spent the winter holidays celebrating with various Pagan communities. The winter solstice on December 21 marks the longest night of the year. It is a time of rest and renewal, when animals hibernate and plants decompose to replenish the soil. As humans in modern society, we have to make the choice to rest and renew. It is in this spirit of caring for yourself that I invite you to figure out how you might make time for rest and renewal in the weeks ahead.
I am trying to have daily spiritual practices of mindfulness, prayer, and planning. As I travel to and from UCE during the week, I set an intention to appreciate the beauty of the brilliant snow during the day and the twinkling holiday lights at night. As I end each day, I make time for prayer that includes lament for the day’s events and gratitude for the day’s gifts. As I make plans for the holidays, I set an intention to be fully present with family and friends. Mickey and I planned a weeklong Thanksgiving celebration, being with my parents on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, spending time with a dear friend on Monday, being at home just the two of us for most of Thanksgiving Day, and spending the Saturday after Thanksgiving with Mickey’s family.
As fresh grief and the grief of marking the anniversaries of missed loved ones is upon us this holiday season, I invite you to join us for a Blue Holiday Service in the sanctuary from 5:30-6:30 pm on Wednesday, December 10. If the weight of what is happening with our country or around the world is weighing on you, please join us for this service when we honor the challenges that do not go away, and sometimes intensify, during the winter holidays. If you need, or someone you know needs, some support right now, please fill out a Request for Care form or email me, Rev. Eileen, or Rev. Elizabeth.
You are also invited to join in the festivities of celebrating our Christian heritage in a UU way with our tree ornament making Sunday on December 7, our Holiday Music Sunday on December 14, our Christmas Pageant on December 21, and our Christmas Eve Candlelight Service on December 24. The list of events is located on the Home page of our website and in this newsletter. Come craft and sing and laugh and be comforted!
In this snowy winter wonder land, take care of yourself and join us! You are not alone. You are valued within our faith tradition. You are loved this holiday season for exactly who you are.
Yours in wintry rest and renewal,
Rev. Susan
Sunday, December 7, 2025
What Might Rise?
In uncertain times, as all times are, choosing hope is an act of courageous defiance. In community we practice choosing hope and planting seeds of what might emerge from the soil of creative resistance. Rev. Eileen leads this service with Charles M. Anderson as our Hymn Leader and Gregory Shifrin on piano.
Today’s offering will be shared with FORA, which works to ensure that refugee families are provided access to an education sufficient to prepare them to become economically self sufficient and robustly engaged in American civic life.
Upcoming services:
December 14th – Music Sunday – UCE Choir led by Vickie Hellyer
December 21st – Pageant Sunday – Kathy Underwood
December 24th – Christmas Eve Service (7pm)
December 28th – Living Faithfully – Dr. Emma Farrell
January 4th – Fire Communion – Rev. Susan
Friday, November 28, 2025
Click here to read the newsletter
Mitten Tree Update – 11/28/2025
For Friday, 11/28
MITTEN TREE 2025
Deadlines are This Week
Mitten Tree gifts are due this SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30, for sorting and wrapping. Did you miss the chance to shop? It’s not too late to donate money and the mitten tree elves will shop for the remaining gifts –you may Zelle or Venmo Jenny Walsh, jmw99free at gmail dot com or 847-309-3648, or write a check to UCE with Mitten Tree in the memo.
Sign up to help with organizing/shopping/wrapping HERE.
This longstanding tradition is a beautiful snapshot of our community’s shared values. Read on below about where your gifts will go this year, AND MAY WHAT YOU GIVE BRING YOU JOY!
In addition to providing gifts for two of the asylum-seeking families whom our congregation is supporting, we are partnering with three organizations this year:
Lydia Home (formerly Rice Child & Family Center) is located just down Ridge from UCE and is a safe home with wrap-around services for children with post-traumatic behavioral dysregulation making traditional foster care inaccessible to them. The facility includes a medical clinic, group therapy classrooms, special education facilities, art therapy and maintains a goal of helping children return to a loving family environment. UCE has supported residents of the center for a number of years as our own Mitten Tree founder, Carol Nielsen is a long-committed volunteer.
Connections for the Homeless is an organization near and dear to our UCE community. Whether through shared plate, Mitten Trees past, Our Giving House donations, or supporting affordable housing programs, Connections has and will continue to be a meaningful partnership for us. Connections supports more than 1500 people a year – preventing homelessness, sheltering those in crisis, providing advocacy services, and fostering development of job and educational skills.
Family Focus Evanston began in 1976 as the original drop-in center for parents in Evanston, Illinois. Forty years later, Family Focus continues to serve the Evanston community. Services available include early childhood home visiting, Family Advocacy Center, after school, Grandparents raising Grandchildren, and community partnership initiatives such as the Foster Street Urban Agriculture program. Family Focus, Inc. offers innovative, community-based programs that help parents, grandparents, and foster and adoptive parents gain confidence and competence as the primary educators of their children.
DLFF Newsletter – December 2025
DLFF Newsletter – December 2025
Gratitude and Hope
As we end this month and our Soul Matter’s theme of Nurturing Gratitude, I am reflecting on the many things and people I am grateful for this year. My family and friends are the first that come to mind – both those alive and those who have died. They have helped make me who I am today with many lessons learned along the way. I also find myself grateful for little things each day, such as a tree with its crimson leaves still clinging to the branches, or a hot cup of chai on a chilly morning.
At UCE, there are so many people I’m grateful for! The staff, or course, is the best. They’re not only good at their jobs, they’re passionate, respectful, and joyful as they work with each other and the congregation. And in my little corner of it all, I have some dedicated people who care about our young people and make them feel welcomed and a part of UCE life.
As we celebrate friends and family and all we’re grateful for, I invite you to add to our gratitude tree in the lobby if you haven’t yet done so. You can find a basket of paper leaves to write your gratitude on and then hang them on the tree in the corner of the reading nook.
As we look to a new month starting next week, our Soul Matters theme is Choosing Hope. With all that is going on in our area, the country, and the world, it is hard to feel any hope at all. The cold and dreary days certainly don’t help either. UCE, on the other hand, helps so much! I have heard many stories in the past couple of weeks when someone shared how meaningful our community is and how it gives them hope.
Christmas is certainly a time of hope for many with the promise of the shining star and the baby in the manger to bring peace and joy to all. As you can see in this newsletter, there is much happening at UCE to be grateful and hopeful for; Cocoa, Carols, and Community, Ornament Sunday, the Christmas Pageant, Christmas Eve worship, and many ways to make a difference in the world through our committees and community partnerships.
In closing, I wish to share this poem from our Soul Matters Sharing Circle by Julián Jamaica Soto:
In this community, we hold hope close. We don’t
always know what comes next, but that cannot dissuade us.
We don’t always know just what to do, but that will not mean
that we are lost in the wilderness. We rely on the certainty
beneath, the foundation of our values and ethics. We
are the people who return to love like a North Star and to
the truth that we are greater together than we are alone.
Our hope does not live in some glimmer of an indistinct future.
Rather, we know the way to the world of which we dream,
and by covenant and the movement forward of one right action
and the next, we know that one day we will arrive at home.
With Gratitude,
Kathy
Sunday, November 30, 2025
Until We Are All Free
This Sunday’s service is a haunting meditation on what happens to the human soul when it is caged. Keith Talley with the Unitarian Universalist Prison Ministry of Illinois (UUPMI) leads our service this Sunday with Rev. Susan Frances, worship associate Sally Parsons, and pianist Gregory Shifrin.
Keith Talley (him/him) is a system-impacted Muslim leader working at the crossroads of reentry, faith, and narrative justice. He serves as Prison Solidarity Specialist with the Unitarian Universalist Prison Ministry of IL, Reentry Program Coordinator at Phalanx Family Services, and Founder & CEO of Revolutionary Reentry Hub. Introduced to UUPMI through the Pen Pal Program while caged, Keith found not a call to conversion, but a deep alignment of values. Today, he works to build bridges between spiritual traditions and to transform how we see and stand with those returning from prison.
MASKS ARE REQUIRED AT THIS SERVICE to create space for in-person community time with our immunocompromised members and friends.
Today’s offering will be shared with the Unitarian Universalist Prison Ministry of Illinois in its effort to equip UU’s in Illinois to transform institutions and partner with people harmed by the prison industrial complex.
Upcoming Services
December 7th – Hope in the Darkness – Rev. Eileen
December 14th – Music Sunday – UCE Choir led by Vickie Hellyer
December 21st – Pageant Sunday – Kathy Underwood
December 28th – Living Faithfully – Dr. Emma Farrell
Friday, November 21, 2025
Click here to read the newsletter
Sunday, November 23, 2025
Thanks For Being
Our annual Bread Communion service in which we share from the abundance of our traditions, with gratitude for what we have and knowing that what we pay attention to grows. Rev. Eileen leads this service with Ellie Feddersen as Worship Associate. The UCE Choir, directed by Vickie Hellyer and accompanied by Gregory Shifrin and Ken Smith share their musical gifts.
Today’s offering will be shared with Restore Justice Foundation, which advocates for fairness, humanity, and compassion throughout the Illinois criminal legal system, with a primary focus on those affected by extreme sentences as youth.
Upcoming Services
November 30th – UUPMI – with Rev. Susan
December 7th – Hope in the Darkness – Rev. Eileen
December 14th – Music Sunday – UCE Choir led by Vickie Hellyer
December 21st – Pageant Sunday – Kathy Underwood
Mitten Tree Update 11/21/2025
THIS SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23, is the last day to sign up to purchase gifts for Mitten Tree (sign up HERE or you may stop at the table at the back of the sanctuary after the worship service). There are still many unclaimed items, so don’t delay in signing up! Don’t want to shop? You can donate money and the mitten tree elves will shop for you–you may Zelle or Venmo Jenny Walsh, jmw99free at gmail dot com or 847-309-3648, or write a check to UCE with Mitten Tree in the memo.
Gifts are due back at UCE BY SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30, for sorting and wrapping.
Sign up to help with organizing/shopping/wrapping HERE.
This longstanding tradition is a beautiful snapshot of our community’s shared values. Read on below about where your gifts will go this year, AND MAY WHAT YOU GIVE BRING YOU JOY!
In addition to providing gifts for two of the asylum-seeking families whom our congregation is supporting, read on for more information on the three organizations we are partnering with this year:
Lydia Home (formerly Rice Child & Family Center) is located just down Ridge from UCE and is a safe home with wrap-around services for children with post-traumatic behavioral dysregulation making traditional foster care inaccessible to them. The facility includes a medical clinic, group therapy classrooms, special education facilities, art therapy and maintains a goal of helping children return to a loving family environment. UCE has supported residents of the center for a number of years as our own Mitten Tree founder, Carol Nielsen is a long-committed volunteer.
Connections for the Homeless is an organization near and dear to our UCE community. Whether through shared plate, Mitten Trees past, Our Giving House donations, or supporting affordable housing programs, Connections has and will continue to be a meaningful partnership for us. Connections supports more than 1500 people a year – preventing homelessness, sheltering those in crisis, providing advocacy services, and fostering development of job and educational skills.
Family Focus Evanston began in 1976 as the original drop-in center for parents in Evanston, Illinois. Forty years later, Family Focus continues to serve the Evanston community. Services available include early childhood home visiting, Family Advocacy Center, after school, Grandparents raising Grandchildren, and community partnership initiatives such as the Foster Street Urban Agriculture program. Family Focus, Inc. offers innovative, community-based programs that help parents, grandparents, and foster and adoptive parents gain confidence and competence as the primary educators of their children.
Friday, November 14, 2025
Click here to read the newsletter