Our Hats are Off to Chris Allender and Mike Takada for putting together and running a wonderful youth con November 1-3. Their calm and steady leadership enabled UCE to host about 100 youth from around the area and 25 youth group leaders. Our space is one of a few in our region that works really well for the youth cons but it can’t happen without the many hours of planning Mike and Chris provided, as well as the willingness to spend the entire weekend here with 100 teenagers. Mike and Chris also brought a truly meaningful social justice program to the Con. Bonsai Burmudez of the Youth Empowerment Performance Project (YEPP) led the youth through an exercise involving dramatic arts, which provided insights into experiences of oppression. Mike and Chris also wanted to recognize the many people that contributed to the success of the con, including their youth group co-leaders: Ally Hunter, Natalie Lawson, and Maxine Lapin. Our deep gratitude to all of you.

Additional thanks to:

Barbara Ghoshal
Carolyn Leman
Cindy Sammons
Alice Swan
Michael Skilton
Anne Figert
Jane Wurster
Eric Schwabe
Christine Peters
Martha Holman
Meredith Hayden
Nicole Kramer
Ed Finkel
Jordan Strueber
Emily Marlowe
Sean Talmage

And Staffers, Liz Kennedy, Adam Gough, Vicki Doebele, Kathy Talmage, Kathy Underwood & Sandra Robinson were also instrumental in helping things run smoothly.

Summer may be ending, but UCE members can look forward to Evanston’s fall event: Bike the Ridge.  On Sunday, September 29^th from 9:00-1:00pm, Ridge Avenue between Howard and Church will be closed to vehicular traffic for “Bike the Ridge.”

This event is an excellent community building opportunity for UCE. Hundreds of people will be biking by UCE’s doorstep; let’s give them a UCE welcome!  We will have a tent set up on Ridge.  Here UCE members can greet bikers, supply them with water, and provide information about the church. We need lots of friendly faces on Ridge to represent UCE!

Please consider biking to church that day.  Having Ridge closed to vehicular traffic is an excellent opportunity to support environmental sustainability by biking to church.

For both our community members and UCE members, there will be bike decorating on the church lawn.  Anyone who stops by can decorate their bikes with streamers, pipe cleaners, or ribbons.

With us again this year will be members of The Recyclery Collective.  The Recylery is an educational bike shop that provides a space for empowerment through education, transportation, and community building.  The shop offers Open Hours, Volunteer Hours, Spanish Open Hours, and Youth Programming.  There is an “Earn a Bike” program where anyone can log volunteer hours to earn a reconditioned bike.  Otherwise reconditioned bikes can be purchased through the shop and a number of bikes are designated for those who cannot afford them.  Please stop by and meet our friends from The Recyclery.

Please volunteer for this community-building event!  We need the following:

1) volunteers to help decorate bikes
2) volunteers to greet bikers, distribute water and information about the church on Ridge
3) contributions of materials—streamers, pipe cleaners, old playing cards, scotch tape, water, etc.

Please contact David Bates-Jefferys to volunteer or with any questions: 860-501-5300 or david.wood.bates@gmail.com

We must turn our attention to finding a new Director of Lifespan Religious Education, and to that end, the Board of Trustees has commissioned a DLRE Search Team to work with Reverend Eileen to find a worthy and qualified candidate for the position.  Team members are Sue Larson, chair, Susan Comstock, Dan Solomon, and Chris Yoo.  They have already met with Eileen and have started the process to identify and evaluate potential candidates.  There are already several applicants in process.

The focus of the Team will be to find someone who is highly motivated to collaborate on quality religious education that highlights intergenerational activities, an excellent children’s curriculum, open and ongoing youth and young adult groups, and highly relevant and inspiring adult education programming.

DLRE Search Team members would like to meet with congregants to learn more about what you love about liberal religious education for children, youth, young adults and all adults! Please contact one or more of us.

Click here to read more.

Suggestions for your reading pleasure and enlightenment over the summer – fill in some of
those blank spots we all have in understanding American history.

Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools

By John Diamond and Amanda Lewis

On the surface, Riverview High School looks like the post-racial ideal.  Serving an enviably affluent, diverse, and liberal district, the school is well-funded, its teachers are well-trained and many of its students are high-achieving.  Yet Riverview has not escaped the same unrelenting question that plagues schools throughout America: why is it that even when all the circumstances seem right, black and Latino students continue to lag behind their peers?

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

By Isobel Wilkerson

“Over the course of six decades, some six million black southerners left the land of their forefathers and fanned out across the country for an uncertain existence in nearly every other corner of America. The Great Migration would become a turning point in history. It would transform urban America and recast the social and political order of every city it touched. …It grew out of the unmet promises made after the Civil War and, through the sheer weight of it, helped push the country towards the civil rights revolutions of the 1960s.”

This is a GREAT book.  It reads like a novel, sweeps you along, and opens up unknown lives.

Family Properties

By Beryl Satter

The “promised land” for thousands of Southern blacks, postwar Chicago quickly became the most segregated city in the North, due to a very intentional, institutionalized system of legal and financial exploitation.  Satter, the daughter of a man who was at the same time a landlord holding some slum properties and a lawyer representing black clients who were victimized by the contract buying system, is able to describe the mechanisms, pressures and terror employed to keep blacks and whites from living comparable lives.  When you read in the June 6, 2019 Tribune that there is a 30 year variance in life expectancy for people living in Chicago’s Streeterville and those 9 miles away in Englewood, this book provides part of the explanation.

Search committee pdf

Ministerial Search Committee Bios

As Mary’s last day approaches, we still have time to express our gratitude to her, and to share our sadness at seeing her go.  We will grieve this loss, individually and together, for some time.  Mary is a gem!!!  Join us on Saturday, June 29th at 5pm for a potluck and goodbye party for Mary.

But we must also turn our attention to finding a new Director of Lifespan Religious Education, and to that end, the Board of Trustees has commissioned a DLRE Search Team to work with Reverend Eileen to find a worthy and qualified candidate for the position.  Team members are Sue Larson, chair, Susan Comstock, Dan Solomon, and Chris Yoo.  They have already met with Eileen and have started the process to identify and evaluate potential candidates.  There are already several applicants in process.

The focus of the Team will be to find someone who is highly motivated to collaborate on quality religious education that highlights intergenerational activities, an excellent children’s curriculum, open and ongoing youth and young adult groups, and highly relevant and inspiring adult education programming.

DLRE Search Team members would like to meet with congregants to learn more about what you love about liberal religious education for children, youth, young adults, and all adults! There are two listening sessions coming up for you to attend and share your thoughts and ideas with Team representatives.

1. Sunday, June 9^th, from 11:30 to 12:30 in Room 6
2. Wednesday, June 12^th, from 7:30 to 8:30 in Room 13

Please come and join the discussion about our beloved RE program!

Click here to read more.