October Services

October 1 – “Love As Spaciousness” with Rev. Jill McAllister. A new generation of UUs suggests articulating our values in new ways, beginning with Love at the Center  

October 8  – “Not So Like-Minded After All” with Rev. Jill McAllister. We’re learning a lot about the real differences in how brains work – neurodiversity. Turns out we’re more different than we imagine.

October 15  – “What is Transformation?” with Rev. Jill McAllister. Have you ever experienced transformation? How is it part of religious and spiritual growth?

October 22  – “God Is Not One, Neither are We” with Rev. Jill McAllister. One of the unique characteristics of our religious movement is pluralism – the willingness to be different and be  together at the same time.

October 29  – Wheel of the Year – All Ages – Samhain / Halloween

Children in Worship Discussion 6/2 & 6/19

The RE Council will be hosting 2 post-sermon discussions for you to ask questions, voice concerns and ideas, and hear about the approach to multigenerational worship that we will be experimenting with this summer.

These will take place on June 2nd and 19th after the service in the sanctuary. Grab a cup of tea and come catch the vision for a summer of beautiful multigenerational worship!

You can read more about the specific changes here to help you prepare for our conversation!

Changes Coming to RE!

Beginning June 9th, we will be adopting a new approach to how we welcome children and youth on Sundays! Nursery and classroom spaces will not be available during this temporary change. If you want to learn more about what’s coming to your hometown UU sanctuary this summer, read on!

What is Soul Work?

Soul Work was popularized by the UUA’s Children and Families Faith Development Specialist, Joy Berry, and is already used by countless congregations around the nation who moved to multigenerational worship after the pandemic impacted their volunteer pools. This approach to multigenerational worship involves having handwork projects — called “Soul Work” in our sacred spaces — available to members of all ages during worship.

Repetitive handwork like embroidery, crocheting, knitting, and coloring mandalas has shown therapeutic benefits similar to meditation. Many folx, young and old, feel better able to settle their bodies and listen when their hands are busy.

While the primary aim of Soul Work in multigenerational worship is to support our youngest members in being appropriately engaged in something quiet while they share our worship space, a side benefit has been referred to as the “NPR effect” by religious educators, who report that kids may look like they’re not paying attention to the service at all, but then a few days after will ask their parents about something that was said by the minister. Just like when kids seem zoned out in the car, but then ask about a Supreme Court Justice who was quoted on the radio. Hopefully, our children and youth will be able to be in conversation with all other members of our congregation around topics that are elevated in the service, making us a more whole and integrated community!

Here’s what it has looked like in other congregations:

Why Now?

I’m so glad you asked!

As you have hopefully heard by now, the classroom wing is getting a safety update sometime this summer. When that process begins — and we have no idea when the work will commence — we will not be able to enter that area for at least three months. What’s an RE team to do? Well, the staff and RE Council have been hard at work making a plan!

After exploring many options (renting other buildings, having children’s RE on a different day of the week, running in circles in a panic until construction is over), adopting Soul Work and starting it on the chosen date feels like the best possible option. Why? Well, many of our volunteers are unable to consistently serve in the summer months, and while I would ordinarily get busy trying to recruit some new summer volunteers (and did do some of that before we landed on this plan), it’s quite difficult to get people to set aside one of their precious few summer Sundays for something that may or may not happen. As you can imagine, it’s not a very compelling ask.

Planning for an unknown future is nearly impossible, so we decided to create some knowns by declaring a start date and implementing something beautiful on our own terms. I’ve been in consultation with DRE’s around our region who have already been using Soul Work in their congregation, learning what what has and hasn’t worked for them, and we’re almost ready to launch!

We will commence multigenerational worship on June 9th and return to our usual Nursery, Spirit Play, as soon as construction on the classroom wing has ended and a full slate of volunteers has been identified. This could be any time between fall and early winter. The reality with construction projects is that the timeline is entirely out of our hands.

How Will This Work?

Great question! A shelf of Soul Work options will appear near the hymnal racks at the back of the primary aisle toward the social hall. Parents, we invite you to consider stopping by the shelf on your way to your seat and encouraging your child to select something that will keep them busy for a while. If you think your child will need to return to the shelf at some point during the service, we encourage you to sit on an aisle near the shelf to minimize disruption.

I and a volunteer will be available to sit with kids in the gallery who want a little support learning a new handcraft. We’ll keep it to a whisper or silent demonstration, but we recognize that working with someone new is a novelty that might support their capacity to be respectfully quiet in the sanctuary as they acclimate to the space. We’re hoping this approach will be sufficient, but setting up a maker space in the social hall is a backup plan.

Alternative Orders of Service will be available that are simplified for children and we encourage parents and adults who are sitting near children to help them follow along in their Order of Service to help them stay engaged if it looks like they need more than their handwork.

Won’t Kids Be Disruptive to Our Sacred Time?

Multigenerational worship is a whole congregation endeavor. For years, we’ve been hearing folx wish for more children in our spaces. For four years, the RE Council has been actively working on expanding our congregation’s capacity for intergenerational connection. This is our chance to put those wishes and skill sets to work to make a meaningful and welcoming worship experience for all of our people, the tall and the small. But we’ve still got a lot of learning to do.

There will be hiccups. There will be disruptions. It will not be perfect. We’re viewing this as an experimental era, where we are committed to trying a way, reflecting, tweaking, and trying again. So the first few weeks will likely look a little different each Sunday as we work things out. I invite you to share your ideas with me and any member of the RE Council as we experiment. We’re here to help this be as smooth and seamless as possible, but we’re being realistic about the challenges ahead.

Kids do make sound. Kids do move their bodies. Kids do sing off key and clap off beat. There will be some distractions. We’re already in talks with the sound team about strategies for those with difficulty hearing, and we’d love to chat with you if that is a concern. We have some ideas, and if you’re a hearing aid user, we’d like to hear your ideas around the use of the Loop or Bluetooth, or other ideas we haven’t even thought of.

What If I Just Absolutely NEED a Super Quiet Space?

We know this is a reality for some, and we’re working toward creating a few zones for worship time in the building. Remember, once the construction begins, this is an unavoidable reality of our circumstances, so it’s nice that we’ve got a little practice time in advance to iron out some details.

We ask that parents of children who have reached their limit of quiet stillness step into the social hall, where they can still hear the sermon and choir while their children have a little more leeway to be active without preventing others from engaging with the service.

And for those who simply need a silent space, we are working towards streaming the service into the library for a completely set apart quiet space for those who absolutely need it in order to be able to focus completely.

It is our hope that the vast majority of adults will take advantage of this time to introduce yourself to the children near you, just as you would any other person in the sanctuary, and help them feel at ease in the sanctuary.

But I Still Have Questions!

We knew you would! Members of the RE Council will be available in the sanctuary after the service on June 2nd and 16th to answer your questions, hear your concerns and ideas, and share any information about the decision making process that led us here. I hope you will join us!

Pride Party 2024

Pride is a joyful celebration of all of the beautiful identities of our LGBTQ+ community. The UUFC Sexuality and Gender Diversity Justice Team invites all UUFC friends to join us for a Pride Party. Music, food, games and crafts will be available.

You do not have to identify as “queer” to attend. This is a family-friendly event open to allies and people of all backgrounds.

Volunteers needed to help with set up, clean up… and bringing snacks!

Volunteer now!

Learn about the Sexuality and Gender Diversity team at UUFC. and our justice work.

NOTE: there is no Queerly Beloved meet -up in June, due to our efforts to plan a pride party.

“Tending Our Selves” 5/12/2024

Jill will welcome guest speaker Jen Shattuck. Jen is a UU religious educator and author who serves on the staff at both the Unitarian Church of Barnstable MA and Sanctuary Boston. She is the author of The Tending Years, a book for those caring for preschool-age children, and is also the creator of Ellery Churchmouse, a video series for UU kids and their families.

In her sermon she’ll consider “who” we bring when we come together – our many identities, experiences, hopes, needs and more. The service will include a dedication of children, and special music from Johanna Beekman. Afterward Jen will host a post-sermon discussion, which might include questions about the sermon, about her book “The Tending Years” (copies available), about neurodivergence and more.

Sacred Chanting with Shantala & Friends

We are very happy to welcome Portland’s popular Kirtan group Shantala back to Corvallis for a sacred chanting concert on Saturday, May 18 at 7 PM. Benjy and Heather Wertheimer have been leading kirtan (sacred chanting) worldwide since 2001 as the duo Shantala. They are known and loved for their special gift of bringing the audience into a vast and loving experience through their unique blend of exquisite voices with instruments of India and the West. Together they create music with beauty, passion, and reverence.

Heather and Benjy have released nine beautiful and well-loved albums of sacred chant music since 2003, including Living Waters, Jaya, LIVE in love, Sri, The Love Window, LIVE2love and FIVE. They also have a passionate international online following, with hundreds of thousands of YouTube video views, millions of iTunes/Apple Music downloads, and millions of streams on Spotify.They will play in the Sanctuary of the UU with special guests Sean Frenette and Johanna Beekman.

Between Us

May is my birthday month, and reflecting on having been once again carried by the Earth thru this part of the universe, on a full rotation around the Sun, even taking all the hard things into account, I’m very glad to be alive! As a small token of my deep gratitude for all the gifts that I receive every day, I’ll be making a contribution to the UUFC Birthday Club again. The older I get, the more I love this: that on my birthday I celebrate by giving gifts to others, including an amount of dollars at least equivalent to my age, to the Fellowship. When it is your birthday month, I hope you’ll do that same.

One of the reasons I like to give to the Fellowship, again as a SMALL token of my deep gratitude, is that the Fellowship has been for so much of my life a community of companionship and nurture, in which I have in so many ways learned to be the kind of human being I want to be. When I first became a UU, here at the Fellowship, I was deeply interested in the history and development of liberal religion. I was in need of the kind of religious freedom the Fellowship, and UUism offered. I was thirsty for theological and social perspectives that were wide open and inclusive and progressive. It was heady and exhilarating, and I decided to make it my life work.

What I didn’t know at the time is that while the ideas are important, the opportunity to be in relationship with other people – to be in community, as we so often say – is even more important. Both are needed: the evolving ideas AND the chance to practice them in real time with real people. That’s my bottom line:
how do any of our ideas stack up in relation to how we interact with other people (and all of the living world?) I have to say, to myself as well as to you who might be reading, that as UU’s we are quite good at articulating, discussing, and debating ideas and not as good at living into our highest values. Like almost everyone else in the world, we still get hung up in self-centeredness, in a need for comfort and security, in an outsized need to be right, in the perspective of ego.
And so, I am grateful to be alive in order to keep trying, keep learning, keep aiming to be the kind of person I want to be.

I hope I have many more years to do this work, because the more I learn the more I see that I have to learn. I have a long way to go. Thank-you for being my companions on this journey!

In Memoriam

On the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, May 26, we’ll remember Fellowship members who have died in the past year. If you would like to have someone you’ve lost named and remembered in this service, please let Rev. Jill McAllister know.

Leadership Zoom Gathering May 30, and 2024-25 UUFC events calendar

To all leaders of teams, task forces, councils, committees, projects and events, and the Board, at the Fellowship. Thank-you for all you have done and are doing at the Fellowship this year! And, an invitation… We began the year with a leadership retreat, and it will be good to touch base now as the regular church year winds down, to give updates on so much that has emerged as we have been building new ways this year. Please plan to join us for a ZOOM meeting on Thursday, May 30, at 7 PM.

CALENDAR FOR NEXT YEAR:

You have probably noticed that the Fellowship is quite busy these days and sometimes it’s a challenge to find space for your meeting or event. To help us plan for the next church year we’d like to get all the major 2024-25 Fellowship events on the calendar now — we’re aiming for by the end of May.

Can you please send a note to office@uucorvallis.org so that we can add events to the main list, begin to coordinate as needed, and get things on the calendar?

Thank-you!

RE Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon 6/9

We couldn’t offer the awesome programming and community-building opportunities for our children and youth that we do if not for our tireless team of volunteers. Did you know that it takes approximately 34 volunteers to keep our Religious Exploration programs up and running? That’s a lot of people contributing their time and energy to the care and development of our tiniest beloveds!

All RE Volunteers from the Grandfolks Squad, Nursery Care Team, Spirit Play Guides, Youth Advisors, and RE Council members are invited to attend a luncheon in Rooms 6 B&C at 11:45 on June 9th. Register HERE to help us prepare.

Parents, it would be lovely if you would sign up to contribute an item to the luncheon for those who care for our littles throughout the church year. Signups for food contributions can be accessed HERE!

If you have any questions about attending or contributing, contact Skyla (dre@uucorvallis.org)