Honest, accurate information about sexuality changes lives. It dismantles stereotypes and assumptions, builds self-acceptance and self-esteem, fosters healthy relationships, improves decision making, and has the potential to save lives. For these reasons and more, we are proud to offer Our Whole Lives (OWL), a comprehensive, lifespan sexuality education curricula for use in both secular settings and faith communities.
Our Whole Lives helps participants make informed and responsible decisions about their relationships, sexual health and behavior. With a holistic approach, Our Whole Lives provides accurate, developmentally appropriate information about a range of topics, including relationships, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, sexual health, and cultural influences on sexuality.
Because we aim, as people of faith, to never stop growing and evolving, UUFC doesn’t stop offering OWL just because you’ve become an adult. As part of our core programming, we offer OWL every other year, alternating with Coming of Age, each with a cohort of middle schoolers and a separate cohort open to adults ages 18 to 101! Adult OWL is not a children’s program made available to adults. Instead, we expand the conversation to include information about up to date terminology that may have changed in your lifetime and what that means for your conversations about sex and sexuality, as well as discussions around how our identities and challenges shift as we become sexual beings in aging human bodies.
OWL is only taught by teams of background checked adults who have completed training offered jointly by the UUA and UCC. You can find more information about the complete program by visiting this website, and more about our local OWL offerings by emailing Skyla King-Christison at dre@uucorvallis.org.
Coming of Age is a core UU program that asks participants to explore what it means to become an adult in a Unitarian Universalist context. A lot of cultures have this kind of event in the life of their congregation or community. Close to home, our Jewish neighbors have bat and bar mitzvahs where young people are asked to learn a language and be able to reflect on a text. In other cultures there are walkabouts, solo experiences in the wilderness, or even rounds of combat. In each of these examples, the community is expressing what is important to it. In Judaism, the importance is put on being religiously literate in the language of the Torah. Walkabouts emphasize the importance of survival in nature, while hand to hand combat points toward the importance of defending the group or surviving a conflict.
In our faith, we ask our members to reflect deeply on who they are as spiritual people, to be able to think metaphorically, and to express themselves as soulful, connected beings, capable of experiencing a spiritual passion and transforming that passion into service and dedication to a common good.
Because we aim, as people of faith, to never stop growing and evolving, UUFC doesn’t stop offering the Coming of Age program just because you’ve become an adult. As part of our core programming, we offer Coming of Age every other year, alternating with OWL (Our Whole Lives, a comprehensive sexuality education), each with a cohort of middle schoolers and a separate cohort open to adults ages 18 to 101! Adult Coming of Age is not a children’s program made available to adults. Instead, it’s a program that asks adults to engage with the same themes, but in a small group that is willing to deeply reflect on the personal history that shaped them, where they are in their spiritual development, and where they aim to go next.
For more information about when the next Coming of Age Cycle begins, contact Skyla at dre@uucorvallis.org
Do you or someone you know have an interest in helping We Care further our mission, by applying to be our half-time Intake Coordinator?
The Intake Coordinator oversees all steps of the Intake process, supports volunteers, talks with applicants and partner agencies, and coordinates with the We Care Board. A complete job description and job application can be found here. Applications submitted by January 30 will be given priority.
EDI would like to invite you to an opportunity to attend a special event at LaSells, focusing on civil discourse and “difficult conversations” —an area of deep concern for many of us! Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Robert George will be featured speakers at LaSells and online via live.oregonstate.edu.
The topic: Difficult Conversations: The University’s Role in Restoring Civic Dialogue.” We are asked to register for this event.
“Difficult Conversations” – More Info and Registration
This week: Minister’s Q&A* with Jill McAllister. Inquirer’s Series is a series of 9 hour-long sessions designed especially for newcomers seeking more information about UUism and the Fellowship AND open to all others who are interested. Sessions take place every Sunday at 11:45 AM Room 8.
Upcoming session dates:
2024
Jan 21 Minister’s Q&A* with Jill McAllister
Jan 28 Lifespan Faith Development with Dawn Dirks
Feb 4 Worship & Liturgical Year with Jill McAllister
Feb 11 Social Justice, Community Action & Connect Up with Karen Josephson
Feb 18 Care and Support & Chalice Circles with Sandy Piper
Feb 25 Membership 101* with Bobbi Bailey
Mar 3 Roots with Skyla King-Christison
Do it Your Way: The Climate Action Team invites and encourages us all to renew our dedication to climate action and climate justice and our celebration of the interdependent web of all existence. Do this in the ways that work for you and yours. Happy New Year.
Podcasts recommended by Katharine Hayhoe: Warm Regards podcast, How to Save a Planet podcast, & No Place Like Home podcast. These have wrapped up their programming, but it’s never too late to binge! Co-hosted by some of Katharine Hayhoe’s favorite women colleagues – Jacquelyn Gill, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Mary Anne Hitt, and Anna Jane Joyner – they take a deep dive into the heart of how we feel about the climate crisis, why it matters, and what we can all do about it.
Inside Climate News (ICN): ICN Newsletters deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every day or once a week, original stories and digest of the web’s top headlines deliver the full story, for free: ICN Weekly, Inside Clean Energy, Today’s Climate, & Breaking News. Subscribe to the Inside Climate News website
Looking Back
Good News. We started sharing “Good News” on Sat 9 Apr, 2022. We presented 22 pages of linked Good News stories in 2022 and 34 pages in Good News stories in 2023. There is indeed lot’s of bad news, but also so much good! On 11/1/23, we started tracking the number of times Good News is clicked, and as of 12/28, the tally is 56.
Climate Action Opportunities. These began on Sat 25 Feb, 2023, and since then shared 136 Opportunities. Since 11/1/23, Opportunities have been clicked 58 times as of 12/28.
People of almost all faith traditions practice some form of meditation. Why? Meditation is a super power!
Light Watkins, says, “Common side effects of daily meditation are increased energy and feelings of contentedness and inner happiness.”
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to sit silently and empty your brain to meditate. Meditation can include any number of practices that help you strip away distraction and encounter your innermost being. This can start with something as simple as focusing your eyes for a period of time on some object like a bird or a flame, and when your thoughts start to wander, notice, and then return your attention to your focal point. You may be wondering how on earth that helps you encounter your inmost self, but do this enough and you’ll start to identify patterns in what’s tugging at your attention. When we hurry and scurry, distract and scroll, it’s possible for us to live any number of days without encountering ourselves. Meditation is a way to reconnect to what is present within us.
Start with Guided Meditation!
Guided meditation is a great starting point for children and new meditators alike. You don’t have to be an expert, or have studied some ancient practice. All you have to do is close your eyes and visualize what you’re hearing.
When my children were younger, we started every day with a guided meditation, often the one linked on the left. Those are my two older kids, about fifteen years ago when we had family meditation time every morning. It was a great way to settle and center before getting into the work of the day.
Try joining your kids for a guided meditation, and discussing the experience over breakfast!
Make a Calm Down Jar
Calm-down jars are a mesmerizing way to help our brains step out of a stressful moment and settle like glitter.
Supplies:
1/2 C hot water
1/2 C corn syrup
1 Tbsp glitter
1-4 drops dish soap
jar
Mix water and corn syrup in the jar. Add glitter and shake. Dish soap will help the glitter clump less, but will also make it settle faster, so add a drop at a time and test before adding more.
Next time you’re stressed, give it a shake, and envision your feelings settling with the glitter.
Meditation Spaces Around the Valley
You can meditate absolutely anywhere but the Willamette Valley is rich with excellent places to help you flex your meditation muscles.
If the great outdoors is your thing, Starker Arts Park is a lovely place to sit for a nature meditation beside the pond and focus your attention on a dragonfly or the surface of the water. If you prefer gazing across the distance, Fitton Green is a delightfully short hike out to a bench that’s just perfect for observing the horizon and tracing the line where the sky meets the mountains.
Maybe insulated silence is more your jam. If so, check out the Grotto’s cliffside meditation chapel next time you’re in Portland. Pictured in the higher image on the left, it’s open to the public during operating hours and is a beautiful space for quiet contemplation in a warm and protected silence.
A little closer to home, you can enjoy a walking meditation in the Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan’s courtyard labyrinth, shown in the lower image to the left. This space is always open to the public, though during office hours, you’re likely to have an audience of church administrators. And while I haven’t seen it myself, I’m told there’s a second labyrinth that’s open to the public behind the cancer center near the hospital.
Homework for Caregivers
Just being with ourselves is getting harder and harder as the world fills with digital distractions and opportunities for immediate gratification. It’s easy to want better for our children than we demand for ourselves, but role models are the best teachers. If you’ve been particularly stressed, or self-medicating with social scrolling, try setting aside a mere five minutes a day to try on of the techniques above. Notice how you feel in your body before and after your five minutes. Once you’ve tried it yourself a few times, consider inviting your kids to join you. Tell them why you wanted to try meditating, and how it’s going, and see if they’d like to try with you.
Meditation might seem weird to your children at first, but many children feel a sense of inner control that is comforting to them after a very short amount of time developing their meditation muscles. When so much outside of ourselves seems big and scary, knowing that we can turn inward and trust ourselves can be a huge source of security for the smallest members of our families.
Every 4th Sunday of the month, the young(er) adults of the UUFC are invited to gather after the service to enjoy pizza and conversation together, to deepen social connections between the two newest adult generations of our culture. The term “young adult” is a wiggly one, especially in today’s social climate, where some Millennials identify more with the elder Gen X, while others find they have more in common with the younger Gen Z. As such, our Young Adult Pizza Hour attracts quite the spectrum, a delightful mix of 18 year-old college freshmen all the way to elder Millenials who are starting to inch into their fourth decade. All of these age brackets are welcome!
Every month, regular attendees receive a reminder email in the week leading up to the fourth Sunday with an evocative quote and a few discussion questions to ponder for that month’s meet-up, and then when we get together for pizza (including GF and vegan options) to chat, learn from one another, and commiserate about the struggles of adulting in the world in which we live.
Every six weeks or so, we gather at each of the eight points on the Wheel of the Year as an intergenerational community to celebrate holidays from nature-based neo-pagan tradition with story, song, and ritual. Some of these holidays are widely known, like Yule, the Winter Solstice. Some, like Lughnasadh, are not as well recognized. The eight sacred days on the Wheel start with Yule in December, then proceed to Imbolc in February, Ostara in March, Beltane in May, Litha in June, Lughnasadh in August, Mabon in September, Samhain in October, and then right back around the Wheel to Yule. This cycle of celebration echoes the cycles of the changing year, and it honors the interdependent web of which we are all a part,
The stories we tell as part of these services are told together, with an ever-changing cast of voices. Congregants of all ages can volunteer to take roles in these services, bringing the tales alive with costumes, props, and lots of fun congregational interaction. In addition to the services themselves, each point on the Wheel has been recognized as a holiday throughout human history, and so we honor some of these occasions in extra ways, too! A May Pole for Beltane, Hallow’s Eve costumes for Samhain, sing-a-longs for Yule… Honoring the Wheel of the Year calls for celebrations of all kinds! In addition, each point on the Wheel is accompanied by a Celebration Week — a handful of self-guided activities that are appropriate for all ages that deepen understanding and interaction with the truths of each seasonal celebration.
