Donna De Lory is a singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist whose radiant voice and expansive musical vision encompass pop, world music, electronica and devotional mantras. In the pop realm, she’s perhaps best known for her work with Madonna as a backup singer and dancer. At the same time, De Lory is one of the world’s foremost singers of devotional mantras and songs of spiritual inspiration. Throughout the 2000s, she released a string of evocative, eclectic, beautifully produced albums that have captured the hearts of listeners in mindfulness, wellness, meditation and yoga communities and beyond.
The UUFC CAT newsletter contains good news, news of note, actions and solutions that can be undertaken, and upcoming dates or past recordings of climate-related concerns and events. Articles and announcements are curated or written by CAT members.
If you would like to subscribe to the free, twice per month e-mailed newsletter, send your name and email address to cat@uucorvallis.org or see Brian Lee. You may also read the articles without subscribing using the links on the Climate Action Team page.
THANK YOU to all pledging members of the UUFC who supported the Global Partners Team with our budget request! It’s the start of the new fiscal year so it’s time for the Team to get our financial house in order. We will review our goals and objectives and document allocation of funds at 11:30 in the library.
Come join us for what will, actually, be a scintillating conversation.
Contact Team Lead, Heather E, for more information.
In 2026, for the first time, the Services Auction was held off-campus. This was an experiment, and this form provides the opportunity to share your opinions on the Philomath Scout Lodge and your preferences with respect to hosting future auctions at UUFC, the Scout lodge, or, potentially, other off-campus sites.
Responses will be used by the fundraising team in making its recommendation to the Finance Council and Board on the venue for the 2027 auction, and they will be summarized in the August Monthly Journal.
Your birthday is a day to celebrate: it marks the day you joined fellow beings on this planet and gave your beloved community the opportunity to get to know and love you. –What a miracle!
A wonderful way within the UUFC to honor the threads of connection you are weaving in your life is to join the Birthday Club. What’s the Birthday Club?
It is a group of UUFC folks who commit to annually contribute on or near their birthday a dollar amount equal to their new age. Your contribution honors another year you’ve shared with us in community. It adds your dollars to the UUFC Endowment Fund, whose earnings are used to keep our intergenerational congregation vibrant for the long term. Recently, the endowment earnings have been used to provide childcare so that UUFC members can attend events and meetings at the UUFC, and have funded scholarships for families to attend summer camps at Eliot Institute.
Joining the Birthday Club is a gift to yourself and to the UUFC, since a robust Endowment fund ensures UUFC can continue to support both the people and the place that make up our community. Plus a sweet bonus: we’ll celebrate you and other birthday clubbers ~each calendar quarter with a big cake and a hearty huzzah!
We hope you’ll join the Birthday Club and help build our endowment fund, which will help ensure our future vitality. Contributions can be made by check (write Birthday Club on the memo line) and USPS mailed to UUFC, or online via the drop-down menu in Breeze.
Here is a little background on the music that was played this morning at the service.
Prelude: Coming Home, by Carolyn McDade
If you don’t know Carolyn McDade by name, you probably know some of her songs. Three that we do often at UUFC are Come Sing a Song With Me, We’ll Build a Land, and Spirit of Life.
A few weeks ago a book of songs by Carolyn McDade appeared in the music office. It sat there for a few weeks until I finally found some time to play through the songs. I found one called Coming Home which had a tuneful melody and nice chords. Jumping ahead to this morning, I was still trying to decide what to play for a prelude, and I remembered this song.
If you know the song, you may not have recognized it. Or you might have only recognized little snippets of it. Before I started at UUFC I worked with another music director who always encouraged me to improvise. He had an interesting strategy that worked surprisingly well: play a version of a song in such a way that people barely recognize what it is. The idea is to use the song as a jumping off point, but to make yourself invent variations on the chords, melody, and rhythm. I do this often for the prelude – sometimes with songs we’re singing on that service, and other times like today I pick other songs.
I wish I could find a publicly available recording for you, but I haven’t been able to find one. Here are the lyrics of the chorus:
We’re coming home to the spirit in our soul,
We’re coming home where the healing makes us whole,
Like rivers running to the sea,
We’re coming home,
We’re coming home.
Offertory: Aria from the Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach
There is a well-known story about this piece that may or may not be true, but I’ll tell you anyway. The story goes that Bach wrote it at the request of Count Kaiserling, an insomniac who asked Bach for a set of variations to help cheer him up when he couldn’t sleep. Goldberg was the name of the harpsichordist who lived with the count and was probably the first performer of the Goldberg variations.
I chose it because I wanted to play something that represented part of the musical ancestry of so many of the songs we sing on Sunday mornings. If you ever look at the index of composers in the back of the hymnal, you’ll see quite a few songs are either composed or harmonized by J.S. Bach, and there are many more that are emulating the choral style for which Bach is well-known. For what it’s worth, that includes pretty much any of our hymns that sound like they should be played on the organ.
It’s a theme with variations, but I only played the theme this morning. I highly recommend listening to the entire piece in one sitting someday. Although it was written for the harpsichord, one of the most famous recordings of the Goldberg Variations is done by a pianist named Glenn Gould. Here is a video where you can watch him play it. He is known for his quirky mannerisms and humming along to the music, which makes it kind of fun to watch as well as listen to:
Postlude: In My Life, by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
I played “In My Life” by the Beatles for a few reasons: first because the lyrics talk about the past and how some things change, and others stay the same, and all have an impact on today, so I thought it had some connection to today’s theme about history and learning from the past. Second, because it contains a short Baroque-sounding solo in the middle of the song, so I thought it might tie in nicely with the Bach piece I played for the offertory.
After the service Carl, our current board president told me an interesting story about that solo. I was practicing it this morning and realized that it was kind of tricky to play, and I was having some trouble with it. Apparently George Martin, the person who played it on the album, had trouble with it too. Carl told me that the solo was actually recorded at half speed and sped up for the album, which made me feel better.
I found this recording of the solo the way it was recorded at half speed, and then the original recording where the solo is sped up:
I hope you found it interesting to hear about the music. Usually a handful of people come up to me after a service and ask me about things I played, so I wrote this in case there are others who are also curious but didn’t come up and ask.
The last Community Music Circle before we take a break for the Summer will be Monday, June 1st at 7-8:30 PM in the sanctuary. Hope you can make it!
What’s that you say?
Did I hear someone ask “what is a community music circle?”
So glad you asked: The community music circle is when a group of really great people from the Fellowship come together to play and sing together. You can sing or bring your instruments. All skill levels are welcome. It’s a fun time and there are usually surprises – most of them unplanned!
If you’ve never come to one, give it a try! If you’re a regular, we have a new songbook with a bunch of familiar songs to try out.
Do you want to share your music with others in the Fellowship? Sign up to perform at the Music Sharing. Sign ups will be available in June. Watch the weekly announcements for details on how to sign up.
Do you like to sing or play music, but the thought of performing causes you a feeling of terror or dread? This is understandable. But you should know that we’ve had many people make their musical debut at these Music Sharing Nights. People who have never sung outside of their car or the shower took the leap and stood in front of a supportive group of people from the community cheering them on to make their first public performance. This could be you!
But if you don’t want to perform, you don’t have to. There will be no pressure whatsoever – just come and enjoy the music and cheer on all the fantastic musicians in our community!
The next Community Music Circle is scheduled for May the 4th. Join others in the community in singing familiar songs together.
Singing or play your instrument, or both!
If you came last time, we’ll sing some of the same songs we sang last time, and some new ones, and see what happens. You are invited to bring a song from childhood to teach to the group!
We can’t distribute copies of copyrighted materials, so songs that can be taught be rote are strongly encouraged. If you have an idea but are not sure if it will work, feel free to ask and we’ll see what we can come up with.
If you have a song to share with the group, please email music@uucorvallis.org with your song idea so that we can try to have some chords for the instrumentalists to play along.
Open to all ages and all levels of musical ability! Bring voices and instruments if you have them.
