DLFF Newsletter – November 2024 

Despite the many feelings we may be having since the election, there is still much joy to be had. We have this beloved community where we can bring our whole selves to be nourished intellectually and spiritually. We have friends to share our experiences, hopes, and dreams with. We have ways to make the world a better place through social action and justice and by simply being present. 

One of my joys is how we are expanding our connections with other faith communities this year through our program, Meeting Our Interfaith Neighbors. Last week, we welcomed Rabbi Andrea London to UCE to share some history, theology, and practices of Judaism. Then last Friday, a group of us attended the shabbat service at Beth Emet to experience it on a personal level. Next, we will gather at UCE on the 19th to reflect on and share our thoughts on our visit.  

We will be exploring Buddhism beginning January 7, and invite you to join us. If you weren’t able to attend the orientation sessions last month, you can watch the first session here using Passcode: .w6N$k$U, session 2 here with Passcode: W7.v4yRH, and for session 3 here with Passcode: &nQscB22. 

You can register here to be included on future emails including the link to session 3.  

Another joy is that our Young Adult group continues to engage members and newcomers with Kiley Korey and Kevin Barrow taking the lead. They are meeting on the third Friday evenings of the month, and they are also meeting this Saturday at 2p at the National Museum of Mexican Art to see the Día de los Muertos exhibit. 

And then there’s OWL – Our Whole Lives Sexuality Program – We have 19 young people in grades 4-6, 14 from UCE, participating on Sunday afternoons in this important program. It has been a joy to work with Kendall Matias and Christine Peters as well as the parents and young people. We are aware of so many societal challenges when it comes to healthy sexuality education and we UUs are leaders in this endeavor. 

And the joy will continue on into December! Cocoa, Carols, and Community on December 6, 6-8p – Our Family Friday event this month will be to help wrap gifts for the mitten tree and then enjoy some hot cocoa and sing carols. Those who wish can bring a snack to share at 6p and we will start gift-wrapping at 6:30. 

Ornament Sunday on December 8 during Kinship Time – a fun gathering where you can make an assortment of ornaments to hang on the UCE Christmas tree or at home. Do you have a simple craft to share, or are you willing to help little ones at a table. Or maybe you’d like to help but need a raft idea? If so, we can suggest some! Either way, you can sign up here.   (Insert link: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/805044BABAB2EA4F85-53052241-ornament ) 

Christmas Pageant – December 22 during worship – all ages are invited to help re-create the story of Jesus’ birth. If you would like to claim a specific role and costume, sign up here. Or you can pick one up before worship. (insert link: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/805044BABAB2EA4F85-45793877-christmas ) 

We will also have our traditional Christmas Eve worship with candles and carols, a definite joy! 

I hope you can come to some of these gatherings and events. My wish for you all is to find a little joy in the coming month. 

In Faith, 

Kathy 

With the much-anticipated start to the new church year behind us, things are settling down a bit, but not the energy of it all! And while everything we do at UCE is faith formation, let me lift up all that is happening in my area of our community.

Our new adult program, Meeting Our Interfaith Neighbors, began with a 3-session introduction to the program. Each session was recorded so that anyone can watch them before participating in exploring any of the six faith traditions we’ll be learning about during the year. You can watch the first session here using Passcode: .w6N$k$U, session 2 here with Passcode: W7.v4yRH, and session 3 here with Passcode: &nQscB22.

On November 5, we will begin our exploration of Judaism with Rabbi Andrea London as our guest speaker. We will follow this by attending Shabbat services on November 8 at 6:30p. Then on the 19th, we will gather again at UCE for a time of reflection and sharing.

Our Young Adult group has started up again with Kiley Korey and Kevin Barrow taking the lead. Although Eileen and I are no longer considered young adults (gasp!), we have been invited to participate in their gatherings on the third Friday evening of the month. Speaking for myself, I still feel young at heart and being with the group keeps it that way.

For our youth, the high school youth group has resumed and will continue to meet on the second and fourth Sundays of the month. They are looking into the topic of environmentalism for their Youth Sunday worship service this spring. They are also using the Crossing Paths curriculum from Soul Matters this year that will lead into the Bridging Ceremony for the seniors.

Our new middle school group if off to an awesome start. They are making their new space in room 10 feel a bit more their own. Last Sunday, they painted the orange walls a dark teal. They hope to do a mural on a bulletin board too. Using a design concept presented by Gillian Lawrence, they’ll add some new pillows, a rug, and floor lamps. The adults will want to use the room more often now!

Many of our young people in grades 4-6 will be participating in the Our Whole Lives Sex Ed (OWL) program on Sunday afternoons for five weeks beginning on October 27. This year, we have partnered with Lake Street Church to run this program. We have 16 young people participating, and four facilitators, two of whom are from UCE: Kendall (Lake) Matias and Christine Peters.

For all ages, plans are underway to finish the playscape area on the south lawn with input from interested parents and young people. For phase one of our plan, we ordered some chairs, benches, and a climbing structure for toddlers. We are also blessed to have an aspiring Eagle Scout, Enzo Wallin, who will be building some wooden pieces to add to the space. We plan to have a mulching party next spring to lay the foundation for this new equipment. Phase two will be a bit later on and includes a tetherball pole that can also be used as a maypole in the spring.

As you can see, we have a lot of awesome things happening here to help people of all ages connect with each other and create a caring and thriving community. Feel free to join in whenever and wherever you can!

In Faith,

Kathy

Our Ingathering worship service this past Sunday was wonderful! I was full of joy to see so many families and young people – especially to see them enjoying our new family-friendly area we are temporarily calling The Nest. Having the kids all gathered and seeing them and parents getting to reconnect was the highlight of my day.

Over the next few weeks, the Family Ministry Team and I welcome feedback from parents as well as older adults on how we can improve this area and make the worship experience enjoyable for all ages. We will also have a time to vote on possible names for our family area, so look for that soon.

And so now we get to work gathering our chicks of different ages for their first Sunday in their Faith Formation program this week. As always, our nursery will be open for our youngest beginning at 9a. This will allow parents to attend adult faith formation programs and other groups before worship. My hope is to expand childcare in the future to include elementary ages. If you are interested in helping make this a reality, let me know.

We will also have a preschool/kindergarten group we’re calling Chalice Children led by Ann Gadzikowski in room 9. For our elementary ages (1st-6th), we will have Heads, Hearts, and Hands in room 8 led by myself and Sue Larson. Our youth group for 7th-12th grades will be in room 13 and led by Linda Herried, Gillian Lawrence, and Margaret Shaklee.

On the Sundays we have programming for children and youth, they will begin their morning in worship and move to their programs around 11a until noon. This will give parents 20-30 minutes of Kinship Time with other adults before their children’s program ends. You can see our working calendar here and refer to it throughout the year as things get added to it.

I’m pleased to say that many folks have volunteered to help with our pre/k youngsters, and I’m hopeful that we can get more folks to help with our elementary ages. Ideally, we need four more adults, which would mean each person would only need to help twice between now and December! If this is something you could commit to, give me a call or send an email and I can give you more details.

And let’s not forget the adults here! We are starting Faith Formation programming for you too, with the Forum Discussion Group this Sunday at noon in room 6 and on Zoom. Following this, we have two opportunities for a discussion on Faith as Faithfulness led by Bob Mesle. The first one will be Sunday, Sep 25, 9:30-10:30 am and the second on Tuesday, Sep 27, 7-8:30 pm. Both will be In-person and on Zoom.

Be sure to read more about what is happening in Faith Formation elsewhere in this newsletter.

In Faith,

Kathy

The Chicken or the Egg? 

It’s a classic question: Which came first? For those of you who are scientifically-minded, you can find the answer here or in this short video. 

So what does this have to do with Faith Formation, you ask. As I think about programming for next fall, especially for our children and youth, I struggle with my version of this question: Which comes first? A programming plan or the volunteers? 

I could spend countless hours making plans (let’s call it the eggs) for each age group from preschool through high school, and then cross my fingers and hope I can find the 25 volunteers (the chickens) to make it happen. OR I could try to get as many volunteers (chickens) that I can and THEN make the plans (eggs) for the year. Just for the record, our beloved volunteers are not chickens! This analogy is meant to be humorous and yet get the point across. So what are the possible consequences in each scenario? Would one make more sense than the other? 

In the first scenario, I might waste a lot of time making the eggs and then need to change it if I don’t get enough chickens, which would then take more time. I could also change the ages of each group so that I wouldn’t need as many chickens. If we look at it from the perspective of parents and their children though, this doesn’t seem as desirable. There is quite a difference  between a six-year-old and a twelve-year-old, so it’s not ideal to have them together all of the time for many reasons. While having them together periodically is good, they also need time with their peers, just like adults do. 

In the second scenario, it would take time to find chickens before making the eggs, although perhaps not as much time. The pros to this are that I would know exactly how many chickens I had and could then determine the age-range for each of the groups for the children and youth.  

Another analogy comes from Field of Dreams, with the saying, “If you build it, they will come”. This would align with the first scenario above of making the eggs and then finding the chickens. The movie romanticized this nicely, didn’t it? And while part of me loves to indulge in the romance of this approach, I have struggled with it every year of the 26 that I have been a religious educator. Some years it works out awesomely, some years it doesn’t.  

The pandemic has changed this too. It feels like starting from chicken scratch over and over. I keep trying new ways of approaching and doing things in hopes of finding the golden egg. I’m sure many of you feel this way too – in your jobs, in your social life, in your daily life. My dream is for UCE to be the golden egg – the place where everyone’s life is enriched, nurtured, tended to – so that we can be our best selves out in the world. The world needs this as much as we do. 

As I muse the chicken or the egg dilemma over in my mind, I have decided to get the chickens first. And then together we can make the golden egg.  

In Faith, 

Kathy Underwood,
Director of Lifespan Faith Formation

On the Cusp 

In case you haven’t heard, since my last article Todd and I have officially become grandparents. We welcomed Clementine Jennifer Underwood (CJ for short) on May 25. Mom Michelle is struggling a bit but is slowly adjusting to the many unusual sounds of a newborn.  

And I am carefully balancing on the cusp between being a supportive mother-in-law and an over-bearing one. I keep offering to help in any way I can no matter how small and have only been asked once to stay with the baby so Michelle could sleep. I know they need to find a new rhythm to their family life though, and so I continue to offer my help and wait to be asked. 

As I write this on the Summer Solstice, I can’t help but notice how today is also a day of being on the cusp: the cusp of summer. While our culture celebrates the solstice as the beginning of summer, it is seen as the middle of summer, or midsummer, in many other cultures such as Scandinavia as well as in the Wiccan tradition. From this day until the Winter Solstice, our time of daylight is gradually decreasing with each passing day. We are on the cusp and at the peak of our time with the sun. And while this may seem a bit depressing, we manage to make it a time worth celebrating with joy and gratitude for all the sun and earth provide us.  

We are collectively on another cusp at UCE: hopefully coming out of a pandemic. We adapted quickly in 2020 to virtual worship and groups, and from there we explored other ways of doing things as we slowly returned to in-person gatherings. We had many events and groups outside – even OWL, the sex ed program for youth! We needed to discern what was meaningful in the past and what we could let go of in the future. We dared to be brave and tried something new with the faith formation hour. 

Being on a cusp gives us a new perspective. It offers us the opportunity to see that we have many paths to choose from and to forge ahead and boldly go wherever it takes us. We will continue needing to ask ourselves, “How much of the past do we continue to uphold and how much do we let go of to leave space for the new? How do we continue to minister in all the ways we want to minister to each other when many of us are still recovering from the past two years?” 

I believe we still need to nurture ourselves and each other as we continue on the path to a “new normal”.  We need to gather in as many different ways as possible, whether in person or virtually: covenant groups, committee efforts, worship, social action, and faith formation (which includes all of these). And so this summer the Faith Formation Council continues the Wednesdays on the Lawn program and is coordinating local meetups at outdoor concerts around Evanston. The Family Ministry Team is also doing monthly gatherings outdoors. Our first one was geocaching at Emily Oaks, which was a bit challenging and lots of fun. Look for details in the newsletter to see what all we have going on this summer. 

As we head into the new church year this fall, our plan is to continue with a variety of ways for you to connect with others, such as potlucks, game nights, holiday rituals and celebrations, campfires, etc. We are also looking at how we can tweak the worship and faith formation schedule based on the feedback we have gotten so far and are reaching out to leadership for their thoughts as well.  

We won’t be on this cusp for long – might as well enjoy the view while we can. 

In Faith, 

Kathy Underwood

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 

And so the rollercoaster called Covid continues! Case numbers go up, then down, then back up. We close our doors, then open them, then close them, now opening them again. As much as I love rollercoasters, this one is wearing on me. And I’m not alone. We may never totally get off this ride. 

There has been a recent thread on one of the Facebook pages for religious educators on the lack of motivation everywhere. Families are facing it, parents are facing it, congregations are facing it, and religious educators are facing it in all these places as well as in their own homes and families. I am seeing more posts about leaving the profession, which saddens me. I can’t blame them for tapping out. And yet it brings me to ask, “How does one stay engage and connected during hard times – especially when related to the trauma of a pandemic?” 

I can’t begin to count the number of people I have seen leave their congregation over the years. Sometimes, it was simply because they moved away. But too often, it was due to not wanting to stay engaged – whether over a disagreement, being offended by another’s words or actions, or from microaggressions. As Rev. Eileen said more eloquently than this in her sermon last week, all who enter have the choice to stay or go. What helps to keep us here is our Covenant of Engagement, which in part says, “We covenant to speak and listen with open hearts and minds, be kind and gracious, and practice resilience and perseverance.” 

Doing this as we continue to navigate through this pandemic has its challenges, of course. How do we stay in covenant and be engaged considering all we are dealing with in our daily lives? In my experience, keeping in touch with one or two people helps immensely. Sharing our experiences, thoughts, and feelings validates us and ensures a feeling of connection that we need. Self-care goes a long way too, which may seem obvious. The connection between self-care and self-compassion though is not as obvious. Research from the University of Washington showed that there are three symptoms of burnout, one of which is exhaustion (physical or mental), and the most effective way to recover from burnout was by re-energizing acts of self-care and self-compassion. They also found that compassion is like a muscle and can be trained through practices such as meditation, yoga, appreciation exercises, and movement practices. These things can re-wire the neural systems in the brain. 

Isn’t it wonderful that we have opportunities at UCE to learn about and practice some of these things that can help us? We are so blessed to have people in our congregation who are willing to share their talents and knowledge! My wish and endeavor is for all of us to stay connected and engaged in some way – with a friend or a group, by doing a spiritual practice or social justice work – and hang on to one another until the rollercoaster ride comes to an exhilarating stop. 

In Faith, 

Kathy Underwood