UCE UCE, Author at UC Evanston

The UCE Afghani family update: June 3, 2022

The UCE Afghani family: Please support them!

We wanted to give you a quick update about the Afghan family that the Refugee Family volunteers have been helping. We are proud to tell you that we have raised $6000 with another $2000 to go to reach our $8000 fundraising goal.

The baby of the family just turned one and there is much to celebrate as she is a joy, toddling around and babbling away. The young man in the family (nephew of the mother) loves to practice soccer at the Weber Center in Skokie and is also in chess club at his school.

Note: If you have a child who is around 10 years old and they’d be willing to practice soccer or do another fun activity with the boy—please reach out Jeanne Kerl (her email address is in Realm or use admin@ucevanston.org) and we can arrange an outing.

The mother is working hard on learning English, and she often has two lessons a day online. We would love to see her taking classes at Oakton, but with a baby, childcare is an issue. We will be working with World Relief to try to get her a job and she will need childcare for that. It is a challenge.

The family’s immigration issues are significant. The father is still in Afghanistan and Andy Schlickman and Marilyn Wroblewski have spent many, many hours pulling together information for his humanitarian parole case, which is now complete. Now they are working on the mother’s case with help from the Muslim Women’s Center. Because Afghanistan imploded so quickly, these families are not traditional refugees with a long vetting period, so they need to apply to stay in the U.S.

NOTE: If you know of anyone with legal skills that might be able to help our team, please email Marilyn Wroblewski (her email address is in Realm or use admin@ucevanston.org).

We are still trying to raise $8000 (or more) for the family’s rent. If you can donate any amount, we would be incredibly grateful. If we make enough money, we can help her with childcare as well.

How to donate:

Checks can be mailed to The Unitarian Church of Evanston, Refugee Family Fund, 1330 Ridge Avenue, Evanston, IL 60201. Or use this online form and scroll down to “Refugee Family Fund” and enter your amount and fill out the form to donate, as directed. 

If you have already given—thank you so much! If you have not yet done so, please consider helping this family navigate their new life here in the U.S.

–the Refugee Family Working Group (of the Immigrant Solidarity Team)

The UCE Afghani family update: June 3, 2022UCE UCE2022-06-03T14:12:19+00:00

From EOD: June 3, 2022

Greetings Everyone,

We are in the final lap of our 2021/22 fiscal year. We are poised to have a successful year-end. Pledge statements will go out this week. If you have not yet completed your pledge payments for this year, please do so. This will enable us to meet projections for year-end. We have exceeded rummage sale and rental projections and are well on our way to a healthy financial recovery and start to the new fiscal year on July 1. Your generosity has kept UCE thriving. Not only is your financial support crucial, but your time and talents. Each of you bring something to this congregation that is valued and worthy. Thank you.

Rummage Sale was an incredible success this year. Not only did we meet our financial goal, we doubled it. Our planning team took a close look and a professional review of how previous sales had been done, what was successful, what was not, and took the opportunity post-closure to model a new refreshed sale and the changes worked. It is believed that containing the sale to one level and the new air conditioning in our sanctuary boosted buyer comfort and enjoyment, which encouraged sales. Guests were comfortable and spent time milling about the “department store” environment. Prices were increased this year, yet great deals were abundant. Grouping of small items limiting/eliminating items at 25 and 50 cents, increased income in each department and we had far fewer items at the end of the sale.

In last week’s newsletter we did a “Hats Off” for Rummage Sale, but we missed one of our very important department leads, Johna VanDyke. Johna did an amazing job of wrangling hundreds of pieces of art into a cohesive, organized hallway of delight. The art department was very lucrative selling almost $700 in the first 15 minutes. Even under difficult circumstances and not feeling well, Johna did a terrific job. I’d also like to give a shout out to our terrific small furniture team leaders Jinny Niemann and Kay Gibbs-Novy. Tory Bassani also had two special lead helpers Lisa Solomon and Joan Taylor. If we have missed anyone in lead roles, please let us know. It is impossible to list each and every worker whose contributions were invaluable.

Not only was Rummage Sale 2022 a financial success, but the set up and sale were so much fun. Everyone who helped has commented on how mellow and enjoyable their experience was. It truly was a community-building gathering of like souls who enjoy our annual rummage sale event. Some thought it might be time to put the old sale behind us and try something new, but thanks to our younger generation for reminding us they are still interested in keeping this long tradition going. Gillian Lawrence encouraged the planning team to look at new ways to make that happen. Gillian organized the children’s department and recruited help of families to set up and run that department. Gillian also took department heads recommendations on donations we should and should not accept into a well-organized and easy to follow instruction sheet.

Kudos to everyone who “Shared the Work” worked the sale, donated items, set up, cleaned up, and supported this effort. The well-used phrase “it takes a village” could never be more true.

This Sunday, June 5, is the annual church picnic. Everyone will have an opportunity to experience our new Intergenerational Playscape as we gather, grill, socialize and share in the dedication of the accessibility ramp so generously funded by the Woods family in memory of accessibility advocate and mentor Alma Woods. New accessibility buttons were just installed so that access to the lawn is possible for everyone. Thank you to Ruth Ormes-Johnson, Bob Mesle David Wiviott, and David Bates-Jeffreys for stepping up to be our grillers this year. Much appreciation goes to Robb Geiger and Woody Haynes for assembling the new Playscape furniture. Groups will be able to gather outside for meetings and enjoy the beautiful garden. A new fountain will be installed soon to provide audible and visual enjoyment.

Our rental program is growing once more. Baker Demonstration School has it’s graduation next week. PedalHeads bicycle training camp returns June-August. We have had several outside memorials, as well as music concerts, including Youth Choral Theater Chicago and North Shore Chamber Orchestra. Rentals are a key component in our budgeted income this year and next. It has taken extensive outreach and negotiations to rebuild this program. Not-for-profits endured losses, as we did during the pandemic closure periods. Our new air conditioning has been a good selling point for attracting summer events and weddings thus far. I will do more to market this new feature. As well, our multi-platform equipment makes workshops rental more attractive to renters.

On the expense side of things, we will incur repairs costs for the sanctuary roof. The wing roof was funded through the capital campaign and was replaced a few years ago. The sanctuary is showing signs of roof issues such as spalling, and a few leaks. Sanctuary roof repairs were not approved by the congregation in the capital campaign, but we now must follow through as we are experiencing issues. Three roofers are scheduled to look at the roof in the next few weeks. For every project in excess of $5,000, per board policy, we obtain three bids. We will choose the appropriate roofer based on scope of service, price and referrals. Our Equity Lens is applied to all construction project contractor choices.

Sandra Robinson, Executive Operations Director

From EOD: June 3, 2022UCE UCE2022-06-03T00:36:24+00:00

June 5, 2022

We will host an in-person and virtual worship service on Sunday, June 5th at 10:15 am.

The Blessing and Beauty of Community
We celebrate the annual tradition of the flower communion, a cherished and uniquely Unitarian Universalist ritual, created by Unitarian Minister and founder of the Unitarian Church in Czechoslovakia, Nobert Capek (1870-1942), to lift up joy in the midst of despair. Please bring flowers, whether from your garden or purchased, to add to our collective bouquet. Together we will express gratitude for the resilience we bring to one another.

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 Restore Justice Foundation.

June 5, 2022UCE UCE2022-05-28T04:38:52+00:00

May 27, 2022

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May 27, 2022UCE UCE2022-05-27T23:45:23+00:00

From Rev. Susan Frances: May 27, 2022

Rev. Susan Frances on an Atlantic Beach at Sunset

Dear Friends,

I just returned from a road trip to Chesapeake, Virginia, where I participated in the installation of The Rev. Viola Abbitt as the minister of the Coastal Virginia Unitarian Universalists. The photo is of me enjoying the beauty of the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. The ceremony was a beautiful reaffirmation of our faith tradition’s reliance on covenant to bind us together.

Covenant, or the promises we make to each other about how we will be in relationship, is the how to our what. The what is our mission and our vision. Having just adopted our new Values Statements or vision at our annual meeting, my thoughts are on how our agreement to be in a covenantal relationship as reflected in our Sunday morning covenant, our Covenant of Engagement, and our Principles aids us as we live out our stated values within our UCE community and out in the world.

When I think of covenant, I often think of a story from my childhood. The story of Noah and the ark. The version I learned as a child is the version from the Torah and the Biblical Old Testament, which ends with a rainbow to mark God’s covenant with humankind. The story is about a great flood sent by God that destroyed everything on earth but the people and animals in the ark that Noah built. When the waters of the flood subsided, God made a covenant with Noah that God would never again send a flood to destroy the earth. And as a sign of that promise, God said, “I have placed My rainbow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth, the rainbow will be seen among the clouds. I will then recall the covenant that exists between Me, you and every living soul in all flesh.” (The Book of Bereshith (Genesis) 9: 13-15, The Living Torah: The Five Books of Noah).

The part of this story that I have been thinking about this week is that God left a reminder of the covenant. Not a reminder for the humans, but a reminder for God. That when God next becomes mad, angry, disappointed, exasperated, or heartbroken with how humans are behaving, and again sends the storm clouds for a flood to destroy the earth, a rainbow will appear in the clouds as a reminder of how God promised to behave. It is a story that affirms for me what I have experienced about how the promises we make about how we will engage with one another are often hard to keep. That we break our promises with each other and need to be called back into covenantal relationship.

Some reminders are put into place so that we come across them on occasion, like the rainbow. Each Sunday morning, we say our covenant from 1894, written by The Rev. James Vila Blake:

Love is the spirit of this church
and service is its law.
This is our great covenant:
to dwell together in peace,
to seek the truth in love
and to help one another.

It is a reminder of our promise to engage with each other fully and honestly. It is a reminder of our fuller Covenant of Engagement that this congregation proactively developed in 2011 to help us engage with each other as we do the hard work of caring for and growing our community. It is a reminder of our Congregational Relations Team that is available to support us when being in relationship is difficult.

Reminders may also be something unplanned that reminds us of our commitments. My time at the Atlantic coast this past week was a reminder to me of my personal promise to care for the earth. My time with colleagues during Rev. Viola’s installation was a reminder of my personal promise to care for my colleagues. This week, as I vacillate among rage, heartbreak, and numbness after the school shooting in Texas, I am trying hard to be open to those unexpected reminders that bring me back to my commitment to living out our new Values Statements and our 8 Principles in the world.

Before I returned home from the wonderful installation ceremony in Virginia last Saturday, the horrible school shooting in Uvalde, Texas occurred. Already in 2022, before the horrific events in Uvalde, there had been at least 77 incidents of gunfire on school grounds, resulting in 14 deaths and 45 injuries across 31 states. And that does not count what we call mass shootings at locations other than schools.

Deeply disappointed by the lack of gun control policies, the lack of mental health care services, the lack of funding for education and support for educators, the overfunding and lack of accountability of the police, and the way we are failing our children, I must admit that I am struggling to find those reminders that bring me back to the covenants articulated through our Principles. Those promises to address my anger by acting to make our society a safer and more peaceful place (6th & 8th Principles), to address my despair by caring for myself and others (2nd & 3rd Principles), and to address my numbness by finding ways to connect with other people and with nature (7th Principle). So, I hope this note may act as a reminder for you to care for yourself as well as caring for others. To get engaged in caring for and improving our society, in whatever form that takes from conversations with children and youth to letters to protests. To do what you can to stay connected, whether online or in-person, with friends, family, and this faith community that shares in the many ranges of emotions we are feeling in the wake of the ongoing gun violence.

We are often practicing how to hold both hardship and joy. Figuring out how to bask in the glory of our celebrations and successes, whether that is the birth of a grandchild or participating in an installation service, and simultaneously embrace the depths of grief, whether that is due to the death of a loved one or of strangers in a far-away place, is challenging. Our covenants and promises to each other, to our society, and to the earth are there to guide us on this complex journey. To comfort us. To buoy us up. To bind us together.

You are invited to leave yourself a reminder that you will come across on occasion to remind you that you are part of a covenantal community, called into accountable and loving relationship. To remind you that you are loved, you are valued, and that if you need help, to reach out to me, or Rev. Eileen, or someone on the Pastoral Care Team.

Yours in covenantal community,

Rev. Susan

From Rev. Susan Frances: May 27, 2022UCE UCE2022-05-27T16:29:04+00:00

May 29, 2022

We will host an in-person and virtual worship service on Sunday, May 29th at 10:15 am.

Tending Our Metaphorical Cups
Grief and trauma have all too often been a part of our lives over the past two years. The strain and stress of such events often drains our energy, manifests in physical pain, brings up existential questions, and affects our disposition. During times such as these, it is important to attend to our metaphorical cups, so they don’t run dry. On this Memorial Day Weekend, we will honor our grief, acknowledge our trauma, and attend to the care and hope that has the ability to fill our mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional cups.

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 Mother and Child Alliance.

May 29, 2022UCE UCE2022-05-24T16:03:20+00:00

May 20, 2022

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May 20, 2022UCE UCE2022-05-20T19:11:46+00:00

From Kathy Underwood: May 20, 2022

Grand Parenting and the Congregation

Sometime within the next few weeks, my spouse Todd and I will become first-time grandparents. I know many of you have experienced the joy of a new baby to hold and help raise, no matter the geographical distance between you. Added to this joy, my son and daughter-in-law want to raise their daughter in a UU congregation. A fifth-generation UU in my family! How many mid-westerners can say that?

And yet I worry that as they navigate parenthood and look towards the congregation for support that they will be let down. Not intentionally. It rarely happens that way, thank goodness. It can happen in smaller, more subtle ways.

When our middle child was born, our congregation was in the process of reconstructing an old barn on a rural piece of land and was renting space at a local middle school for worship and Sunday programs. It was a fairly large space that was open, and while not as big as UCE, sound was a bit of an issue. And although we were fortunate that our kids were pretty mild-mannered for their age, they did babble in baby-talk and make some noise when scribbling on the back of the order of service.

One winter morning we sat near the back of the space as usual. Maybe 10 minutes later, we heard “Shhhh” behind us. I couldn’t tell where it came from. I glanced at Todd with a questioning look, which asked “should we stay or go?” We just shrugged a bit and stayed, although feeling awkward and self-conscious. For the rest of the worship service, I was so paranoid that my kids were disrupting people that I couldn’t tell you what the service was about that day.

I’m glad to say that this was the only time we experienced this (I’m sure it’s because of my well-mannered kids, tongue in cheek), but over the years I have thought about it occasionally. I wonder how many other parents have had a similar interaction, and whether or not it led to them leaving our doors never to have returned.

On occasion, I have witnessed a toddler having a meltdown at the grocery store. My first reaction is to make eye contact with the parent and say something like, “It’s a tough job some days.” Sometimes I offer to help, but many times I don’t.

While I don’t think a parent would avoid a grocery store because their child had a meltdown and caused a scene, a religious community is different, especially a UU congregation. It’s not like there is a UU congregation in every town to choose from. Because we are a covenantal community, building relationships is so important. How do we put our trust and faith in our community when another’s action is not in covenant? What compels us to stay?

In going even further, I think generations of white, European-centered culture play into this too. We are challenged by those expectations about parenting that we grew up with and are now ingrained in us. And in many UU circles, educational status plays into this as well – as in the stereotype that highly educated people behave in a more controlled, refined manner. Somewhere in time the idea was presented to think of those who can’t control their children as “less than” and it continues today. Maybe it will never change. Maybe it will change when white, European-centered culture becomes the minority. For us at UCE more importantly, how do we change our culture and attitude about children as vital (and sometimes noisy) part of our worship life and faith community?

With our work with Rev. Karen, we said we wanted our children and youth to be integral to our community and our mission. We said we wanted children to be heard, not just seen. Parents tell me that they want support to raise kids who are independent thinkers, who question and seek answers, who dream of a better world and help make it a reality, and who are able to be their full selves among us.

Yet we also need to balance the needs of our youngest with those of our eldest and those with other challenges, such as hearing, sight, and mobility. How do we welcome and accommodate all of the people with all of their needs at the same time? Perhaps we are setting ourselves up for failure as we can’t make every experience fit everyone’s needs. We do our best to direct our efforts to as many of these challenges as we can. We most certainly can stay in covenant as we navigate through these challenges and doing so with respect and grace says a lot about our community.

And the next time I see a child and parent struggling, I will smile sympathetically and ask how I can help.

In Faith,

Kathy

From Kathy Underwood: May 20, 2022UCE UCE2022-05-18T21:14:47+00:00

May 22, 2022

We will host an in-person and virtual worship service on Sunday, May 22nd at 10:15 am.

Owning Our History, Envisioning Our Future
Sankofa is a word in the Twi language of Ghana, meaning “go back and get it;” we must look back and know who we are to move forward into who we want to be. Our newly adopted values statements include a commitment to honestly and bravely explore our shared history and this exploration will inform our actions in the future. How will we embark on this exploration of our history, bravely telling the truth and imagining the more just and equitable world we want to build? Rev. Eileen leads this service with Joe Romeo as Worship Associate.

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 UU Prison Ministry of Illinois (UUPMI).

May 22, 2022UCE UCE2022-05-16T15:26:54+00:00

May 13, 2022

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May 13, 2022UCE UCE2022-05-13T17:48:08+00:00

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