News - Page 105 of 212

From Rev. Susan Frances: October 23, 2020

Dear Friends,

I am finally feeling settled into my role as Director of Congregational Life. Part of this role involves shepherding the various aspects of membership. I have found myself reflecting on two aspects of membership this month: hospitality and belonging.

How do we welcome new individuals, couples, and families into our community? I have been wondering about how we open our hearts and minds to people who may be different from us. I know UCE to be a place that strives to embody radical hospitality. Hospitality, hospitable, hospital, hospice, all come from the same root word, meaning generous, caring, sustaining.  The Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell reminds us that radical "means 'out of the ordinary,' 'revolutionary,' even. So what would it mean to receive someone—a stranger—with a presence that was not just polite, but to receive them with revolutionary generosity?"

Over the years, we have been able to practice doing this in person. And, now, with Sunday services and other events being online, we need to think about how we will practice doing this virtually. What does it mean to sit online with someone who we feel uncomfortable with, not because they are being offensive, but because they are actively expressing a need for assistance or a viewpoint with which we disagree? How do we acknowledge our discomfort and also make space for another person's struggles or ideas? How do we express our compassion for someone while maintaining healthy boundaries? We are practicing all of these ways of being radically hospitable online.

As we continue to be in virtual spaces together, I invite you into generosity as we are introduced to new people. With having so much of our lives online and all of the cyber threats, I know how difficult it is to have the emotional energy to engage with the unfamiliar. Keeping this in mind, I invite you to practice creating an inner emotional and spiritual space large enough to have your needs met as well as the needs of others, knowing that if a person is abusive or threatening, clear boundaries will be established by the moderator of the online space.

And then, once we have been introduced, how do we get to know each other better? One way is through Proximity Partners. When the church building closed in March, Rev. K Mooney, Adam Gough, Ellie Feddersen, Susan Carlton, Shirley Adams, and Melanie Kitchner organized the members and friends of UCE into groups based on geographic proximity. Some of the groups are still forming and other groups are already active and meeting via Zoom or gathering outside always wearing their masks and being physically distanced. The photos are of a gathering in Manor Park in Glenview, a backyard Pumpkin Party, and the end of a trail walk in LaBaugh Woods with the bags of trash collected along the way. If you would like to connect with your Proximity Partners or join a covenant group, email Adam at agough@ucevanston.org and he will connect you with the group leader for your area.

Another way to get to know more about each other and the UCE community is to take the Journey Toward Membership class. This is a class that focuses on the exploration of our spiritual lives and what it means to be a member of the intentional and covenantal community at the Unitarian Church of Evanston.

I invite you to join me in our next Journey Toward Membership class, which will be held in two sessions from 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm on October 27th and 28th. Here are the Zoom links:

Click here to join the Journey Toward Membership Part 1 class on October 27.
Click here to join the Journey Toward Membership Part 2 class on October 28.

I look forward to meeting you during our Sunday morning worship, getting to know you better in our Journey Toward Membership class, or seeing you again at another Zoom meeting.

In faith,

Rev. Susan

From Rev. Susan Frances: October 23, 2020UCE UCE2020-10-23T15:14:14+00:00

Your Chance to Connect with Connections for the Homeless: October 23, 2020

We have new opportunities for volunteers who want to make a difference in our community in very concrete ways. Connections for the Homeless is a well-established, non-profit organization in Evanston, providing a wide range of services to homeless people. To address the complexities of services during the Covid19 pandemic, they have been creative and flexible and have increased their efforts to meet greater needs. They provide temporary housing, lunches, clothing and access to other essential services, including a path to permanent housing.

The UCE Prison Ministry and Food and Shelter Team are launching a renewed and invigorated partnership with Connections, along with a $40,000 donation from our Endowment Fund. Connections has effective infrastructure to provide services, which all depend on lots of volunteers. That’s where we come in – with volunteers! We’re starting with two areas – bag lunches and the Clothing Room at Hilda’s Place. We’re hopeful that in 2021 we can expand to other projects, as well.

There are roles for all adults, with varying levels of contact with other people. The 25 bag lunches (sandwich, fruit, snack and drink) are made and delivered to Hilda’s Place on Monday through Friday. Hilda’s Place is in the basement of Lake Street Church, 1458 Chicago Ave. in Evanston. The cost of the food is already covered.

The Clothing Room at Hilda’s Place is a way for people to get clean, warm clothing. It also helps provide a sense of value and dignity and a way to build relationships with people living on the street. Winter is almost here! Volunteers are needed to gather new socks and underwear or lightly used hoodies, jackets, sweatshirts. They can’t use dress clothes, like sport jackets.

These are tasks that can be done in small groups or individually. The lunches can be made at home or in the UCE kitchen. Please use the link below to sign up for a date to help with bag lunches. This is a great way to invest in our community in a practical, meaningful way.

Questions? Contact Sheila Holder at skholder8@gmail.com.

Your Chance to Connect with Connections for the Homeless: October 23, 2020UCE UCE2020-10-21T20:59:01+00:00

Endowment Fund Money Still Available: October 23, 2020

There are Endowment Funds remaining to be distributed during this fiscal year. According to the Endowment Trust, the money can be used in the following ways:

supporting special church projects not anticipated in or provided for by the operating budget;
supporting the communities in which UCE resides and operates including spiritual, educational and economic needs;
enhancing, repairing, supplementing or improving UCE’s building and property, including both real and personal property;
scholarships and grants to UCE members and staff for education and training; and
supporting the wider mission of Unitarian Universalism.

The next two deadlines for submitting grant applications during the current church year are October 31, 2020 and January 31, 2021. Applications may be filled out online and submitted digitally. Contact Jane Kenamore, jkenamore@ameritech.net, Margaret Schatz, mesharbor@gmail.com or Trudi Davis, trudiannedavis@gmail.com, if you have an idea for a grant proposal.

The Endowment Committee and the Board of Trustees appreciates the work of UCE members who have submitted Endowment Fund grant applications so far. The initiative of these members to identify grant opportunities, within UCE and in the larger community, and efforts to present them in applications for Endowment funding, have greatly extended the impact of UCE.

Shirley Adams – Leadership Development
Doug Erickson – Nonviolent Communication
Dale Griffin – Connections for the Homeless, UU Prison Ministry-Solidarity Circles
Tom Hempfling – Worship Arts
Renee Hoff – Recycling/Composting – Kitchen Renovation
Carol Nielsen-Connections for the Homeless, Life Planning Series, Kitchen Renovation
Joan Retzloff – Family Focus
Sandra Robinson – Building and Grounds
Joe Romeo – Chalice House, Team Brownsville
Alice Swan – Ministerial Search

Endowment Fund Money Still Available: October 23, 2020UCE UCE2020-10-22T00:28:59+00:00

Wanted: Congregational Leaders: October 23, 2020

Like challenge?
Like to work with others?
Like the chance to significantly help UCE nurture the human spirit for a world made whole?

UCE’s Nominating and Recruitment Committee (N&R) is beginning its work to identify potential candidates for leadership positions in the church, some of whom are then elected at our annual meeting in the Spring to open positions on the Board of Trustees, Endowment Fund Trustees, and our own N&R Committee. Over the next few months we will be contacting folks who have shown an interest in being considered, and others who have been suggested by others as potential candidates.

This is challenging work in the best of times, and particularly so now. COVID presents its own problems in terms of peoples’ bandwidth capacities, heightened stress and competing priorities. We are also aware as never before that, just as we need to improve our capacities for “radical hospitality” to welcome people into our church, we need to open the gates to leadership within the church. Along with looking to people who have provided leadership for years, we want to encourage folks who have not previously considered themselves “leaders” to share their best selves in helping our church move forward in its mission.

Please help us out here. We may not know what skills and experience you have that would make you a perfect fit for one of the elected positions, or some other role within the church’s organizations. You may have a friend (or even spouse/partner) who you think would add value to some aspect of church life, if asked. Even if we can just help someone without leadership aspirations find a group that fits their interests or gives them the kind of challenge they crave, that would help enrich their church experience, as well as make the church stronger.

Please let us know if you would like us to talk with you or someone else about contributing to the church’s work. Contact Maggie Wilson by email maggiemwilson@gmail.com or phone (847) 648-0884.

Wanted: Congregational Leaders: October 23, 2020UCE UCE2020-10-21T18:45:37+00:00

Fair Trade Cart Update: October 20, 2020

The Fair Trade Cart has donated its food items to the pantry at Family Focus here in Evanston and will purchase new foods when we return to services at UCE. If you have a fairly traded food item you would like to see included in the future, please send the information to Joan Retzloff (jr1100@comcast.net) and we can see if it can be included in future inventories.

Hopefully, we will be together again in the near future. In the meantime, be safe.

Fair Trade Cart Update: October 20, 2020UCE UCE2020-10-20T22:40:04+00:00

MidWest Leadership School Journey: October 23, 2020

Vision, Mission, and Covenants

[CORRECTION from Mary Beth Napier: The notice in last week’s newsletter about this series inadvertently failed to mention one of this year’s attendees at the MidWest Leadership School. Apologies to Sally Parsons.]

In session 2 of the Midwest Leadership School, the attendees from each church spent time reviewing their mission and covenant and how they align with how the church actually spends its resources. I gained a broader perspective. There are two other components not mentioned as often — vision and shadow mission.

Below you will find definitions of each of these concepts provided us by uua.org. I invite you to examine the UCE vision, mission and covenant through these lens.

Vision: A carefully defined picture of where you want to be in five or more years. It is the dream of what you can become.

UCE’s vision is expressed in ENDS statements. (See https://ucevanston.org/mission-and-more/ )

Mission: A concise statement of what you want to be known for, or known as, within the wider world; what you want to mean to the community.

What is your congregation called to do?
How are you transforming your internal community?
How are you transforming your wider community?
If you ceased to exist, who in your wider community would notice?

Our mission is to nurture the human spirit for a world made whole.

Covenant: A statement of how your members will be with, and will behave toward, one another, as well as what is promised or vowed to one another and to the congregation as a whole.

Our covenant, recited at every service, is:

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

We also have a covenant of engagement, found on our website at:

https://ucevanston.org/about-living-in-our-covenant-of-engagement/#single/0

Lastly, there is the shadow mission, a checkpoint to decide if we are true to our mission or spending our resources on things other than what was agreed upon.

What are you really serving?
Where does your time and energy and money go?
Building? Grounds? Conflict in the congregation? Being “nice?” What else?
Again, who in the wider community would notice if you disappeared?

Carefully studying these concepts and questions as they apply to UCE actions will serve to make us better servants.

—Sally Parsons

MidWest Leadership School Journey: October 23, 2020UCE UCE2020-10-20T21:41:48+00:00

Fair Trade Cart News!: November 22, 2019
Gallery
Fair Trade Cart News!: November 22, 2019

fair-trade

Fair Trade Cart News!: November 22, 2019

This year the Fair Trade Cart will be donating half of its holiday profits to Team Brownsville to support its efforts to help immigrants at the border. The remaining half will continue to provide grocery gift cards for selected families at Chute Middle School here in Evanston.

Come browse the new items and the old favorites on the Cart and help many have a good holiday this year!

Fair Trade Cart News!: November 22, 2019UCE UCE2020-10-19T20:27:18+00:00

October 25, 2020

Instead of hosting a virtual worship service, UCE joins the Democracy Revival on Sunday, October 25th at 10 am.

Democracy Revival
Join with hundreds of other Unitarian Universalists around IL for a Democracy Revival. Along with 16 Unitarian Universalist congregations across IL, UU Advocacy Network of Illinois (UUANI) and UU Prison Ministries of IL (UUPMI) we will sing, dance and shout (virtually) together to revive democracy and our spirits! Democracy has always been a core of our Unitarian Universalist faith. Using our online technologies, we will gather our resources and energies for this worship service.
Watch to hear more here. Let us know you will be there by clicking here.

Joys and Sorrows cannot be read this Sunday, but please submit yours through this online form to be read another Sunday. 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 the Crossroads Fund/Black Lives Matter Chicago.

October 25, 2020UCE UCE2020-10-16T22:39:16+00:00

From Rev. Karen Gustafson: October 16, 2020

For as long as I can remember, I have had a curiosity about the complexity of things. Not just exotic things like works of art or airplanes or chocolate eclair and bone china, but ordinary, everyday things like screws and pencils and traffic signs. When my children were just into their double digit ages, we used to play a game in the car on road trips. We would pick something, like the knobs on the car radio (this was in the days of knobs – look it up) and we would try to name everything that went into the creation and production of that particular object. It started with a perceived need. Cars need radios. There needs to be a way to turn them on, etc. Then we might turn to that particular knob and all of the processes and decisions, designers and workers and decision makers that went into making it and getting it into our particular car. A designer, a design; decisions about color and size and materials and how it fit into the dashboard design. Someone designed and made a machine that would produce that very knob and install it in a factory where workers were employed etc., etc., etc.

I think about that game whenever I hear someone say something akin to, “I HATE the radio knobs on my car dash…” Where, I wonder, did the piece of the process that made that knob become the source of someone’s dissatisfaction? How is it that the outcome of a process so complex and in some way so miraculous become the object of judgment and critical reaction? What complex process has led any of us to the impression that our judgments and our dissatisfaction should somehow become the rallying point for how something is understood?

My interest in such things extends into how I understand my ministry at UCE. For the past year, I have been engaged in looking at the complex and often miraculous processes by which the staff, the elected leadership, the lay leadership and all of the other kinds of stake holders at UCE engage in the process of “making church”. Unlike the production of a radio knob, there is no concrete and single outcome. The moving parts are not, in fact, made of metal and plastic but of hopes and dreams and mission and hundreds and hundreds of human connections and isolated and shared decisions. My job has been to look with you at the ways you organize those parts to fill the needs for which they were intended; to hold up a mirror and to provide and encourage constructive feedback that might make the systems more accessible and inviting and the perceived outcomes more understandable.

In a few weeks, I will be meeting with the Ministerial Search Committee to share my observations. By next week, there will be an updated interim report available on the UCE website detailing the “progress” we have made together in addressing some of the observed challenges and the Interim Tasks and what we will be inviting you to do in the coming months.

In the meantime, I would invite you into the “car game” as you consider your dissatisfactions and judgments as well as your joys and appreciations of anything you perceive as an outcome at UCE…the time of the service, the color of the new tile in the foyer or the choice of hymns or the budget or the process for selection of your next settled minister. If you have not been a designer or a machinist or a line worker in these decisions, try to follow the process back and engage in some real curiosity about the complexity and the miracle of this dynamic and life giving entity that is UCE. Consider the hours and hours of meetings and research and the daily choices, large and small. Miracle, indeed.

I would love to hear from you!

In love and gratitude,

Karen

From Rev. Karen Gustafson: October 16, 2020UCE UCE2020-10-16T15:57:12+00:00

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Fair Trade Cart News!: November 22, 2019

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