The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis
One of the unique characteristics of our religious movement is pluralism – the willingness to be different and be together at the same time. Historically, this meant we did not require allegiance to a specific theological creed or doctrine. Now it is a much wider effort. The main question is not whether or not we are different from each other, but how we manage our differences while staying true to shared values.
Rev. Jilll McAllister
Join us this 4th Sunday, October 22nd, after the service a little before noon in Room 7 for Young Adult Pizza Hour. Get to know your fellow young(er) adults at the UUFC while chowing down on free pizza. (GF and vegan pizza, too!)
We’re trying out a new online version of the weekly announcements here at uucorvallis.org/news. It contains all the same information as the pdf version of the Weekly Announcements that is emailed to you, but in a little different format. This page also includes easy links to the latest information about everything that’s going on at the Fellowship here in one place.
In the spirit of the theme for this year, “Building a new Way,” we are working on building new ways of communication to help everyone stay connected.
If you have questions, comments, or ideas about this format for the weekly announcements, or about the website, please email David Servias.
Wear your costumes to the service on Sunday, October 29th for the intergenerational Samhain service, and stay after for some fun!
All ages are invited to come play games and eat treats while you learn about what our various teams, councils, and board of directors are up to at our third annual Teams and Councils Trick or Treat!
The Fellowship is now a part of the Fred Meyer Community Rewards Program. What’s needed from you?
Please visit: https://www.fredmeyer.com. Once logged into your Fred Meyer account, search for Unitarian Fellowship of Corvallis either by name or FN605 and then click Enroll. New users will need to create an account which requires some basic information, a valid email address and a rewards card.
*You must have a registered Fred Meyer rewards card account in order to link to the Fellowship.
*If you do not not yet have a Fred Meyer rewards card, they are available at the customer service desk at any Fred Meyer.
Once your rewards card is registered, then purchases will count for your the Fellowship!
A reminder that participants must swipe their registered Fred Meyer rewards card or use the phone number that is related to their registered Fred Meyer rewards card when shopping for each purchase to count.
With fall here, we are recruiting help for UUFC leaf clean up. To help, please email Michael Hughes, subject Fall Clean Up.
When we first entered into the pandemic shut-down, in March of 2020, we also entered into a shared daily practice to help ourselves stay connected to each other and to our religious lives. Over several months we began to consider skills that could help us, including cultivating inner nobility and steadiness, naming our fears and counting our blessings at the same time, and nurturing courage and trust within ourselves and between us. Later, we talked about “the art of embracing” as a practice of turning toward and moving toward what the world brings us — moving in that direction of with arms opened wide, as much as possible.
It has been three and a half years since we shut down and entered into pandemic living, and a little over a year since we finally returned to indoor Sunday services. There will never be a time when everything simply reverts to the way it was “before.” We are living in, and are part of, calamitous and fractious years in the human world. We worried in 2016, and then during the pandemic, and then the invasion of Ukraine, and now the horrible situation for Israelis and Palestinians. Horrors, and more horrors. For those of us dedicated to a practice of peace and justice making, there are constant opportunities to start over, to begin anew in a changed world, as always. The organizer /humanitarian / activist Valerie Kaur says this: “Our most powerful response to the horror in Israel and Palestine is to refuse to surrender our humanity. Opening our hearts to grief—others and our own—is how we hold our humanity in a world that would destroy it. It’s how we will begin to survive this.”
May our practice be dedicated to this – to maintaining and nurturing humanity, in all the ways we can. The question is, “What are you willing and able to move toward for the good of all?” Everything we have been practicing will help us. The way stretches before us, and we can only take one step at a time. There are blessings that live in the very act of reaching out. May we find the needed courage.
It would be hard to argue that things don’t change, or that they aren’t changing constantly, and not always in ways we understand or are prepared for. Take this week for example, or almost any of the past seven years. A new generation of UU’s describes a need for us to be able and willing to not only change, but be changed, in order to keep adding love into the world.
Rev. Jill McAllister
Thursday, April 11th at 12:00 – 1:30 pm in the UUFC library
We will gather together to share from our hearts about the griefs we are carrying and to witness one another. These may be very personal sorrows or extend to the losses that we witness in the world.
Our time together will include sharing, poetry and simple ritual.
“Every one of us must do this. We must learn how to work with the grief in our lives…simply gather the courage to speak from your heart, and let the others know that you are feeling sad and carrying grief in your body. What I have discovered in grief rituals over many years is that we feel relief when we finally are able to acknowledge our pain with one another.” ~ Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow.
Facilitated by Anna Coffman and Susan Sanford.
Members of the Fellowship are invited to join the UUFC Community Page for Members and Friends on Facebook. Request to join! This is a great place not only to hear about what’s going on at the Fellowship, but also to share resources within our community and to share other community events that aren’t directly related to the work of the Fellowship, but would be of interest to folks.
