The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis
There is no time like the present to complete your pledge of support for the Fellowship for the 2025-26 year. We need you! All members are needed and expected to participate by submitting a pledge form, no matter what amount you can pledge. All friends are needed and encouraged to make a pledge as well.
Learn About the 2025-2026 Stewardship Drive and Fill Out the Pledge Form!
Linn Benton Food Share is the central food hub for a strong network of 68 local, non-profit agencies including emergency food box pantries, public meal sites, at-risk population programs and gleaning groups, which collectively distribute over 3 million pounds of food annually.
The food pantries in Alsea, Monroe and Philomath need a little boost since cuts to the USDA March 2025 affected 30%-40% of their food sources. Approximately 400 families, mostly children, are dependent on these pantries for their food sources.
All Fellowship leaders of teams, councils, tasks and events are invited to gather once more, on Thursday May 29 at the Fellowship, for coordination and collaboration, and especially to focus on leadership needs and tasks in the coming ministerial transition. A light supper will be provided, beginning at 6 PM. All leaders are needed – please join us!
Can we learn to transform and grow spiritually and ethically in a changing world? Let’s break bread together and see what develops.
The LEGATO potluck is Wednesday May 14 at 5:45 PM at the Fellowship. Come early if you can help set up tables.
Bring a dish to share (please identify all ingredients).
This is a Connect Up Event with the purpose of building community within the UUFC congregation.
In the pandemic years, in our isolation and worry, the daily practice we shared was a lifeline for me. I needed to connect – to myself, to others and to the Earth. Here is one of the musings of that time, from May 2021:
“Morning comes early in this season, and I’m surprised how easy it is for me to awaken, to join in the unfolding beauty of these days. I need the beauty. I need to be reminded of the vitality of life. I often need to be lifted above the continuing challenges of navigating the human world. I need help with the mixture of fear and anger which weighs on me – at people and their selfish, short-sighted ignorance. (And meanness). I need help as I remember that I am one of the people too. And that we all have egos which lead us astray.
I’m pondering a Buddhist teaching – I don’t know the source. It is two definitions side-by-side: “An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the non-living components of their environment, interacting as a system. An ego-system is a community of old outdated voices in conjunction with the desire to make the moment other than it is, generating a false reality.”
I’m not sure I quite agree with the first definition – some would say that every component of the world is alive in some way. (But yes, some are not breathing). The second definition is definitely worth pondering. I’ve learned enough to know that we are always influenced by old outdated voices, within us and around us. Today I’ll try to identify some of my own.
I pause to breathe. I remember that nurturing inner nobility and steadiness requires time and space and willingness to acknowledge where I am. With thanks for this part of the path, and this day on the journey, I’m sending love to you all.”
We sing this every Sunday: “We are here together in this holy moment, and we’re grateful for the winding road that brought us to this place.” They are lovely words, and they are more important than most of us can imagine. They speak to the profound human need for gathering, for collective wisdom and encouragement, for being a worshipping community – a congregation. “Worship” is a word, and an idea, that has taken generations for UUs to return to. We need a shared understanding of the movements and the consequences of worship, now more than ever.
With Rev. Jill McAllister
Greetings, Families!
This month’s newsletter contains some important information for parents about RE in the month and year ahead, so please read carefully!
UPCOMING EVENTS for FAMILIES
5/4 Summer Camp Registration Deadline, more info and registration HERE.
5/11 Final Family Breakfast of the year, Mother’s Day Edition, pre-register HERE.
5/15 Final Parent Peer Support Group of the year, 6:30-8PM
4/25 Parent Feedback and Q&A session, noon on back patio
5/1 River of Life Sunday with Stepping Stone Ceremony
UPCOMING EVENTS for YOUTH
5/11 and 5/25 4:30-7 OWL regular workshops
More information about our events can be found below, and info for all events can be found at uucorvallis.org by clicking “News” in the menu bar and then selecting “RE Council” from the drop down menu.
At the Fellowship, it’s our cherished tradition to celebrate children and youth as they move into new age groups with a special Stepping Stone Ceremony. Each child will receive a gift, words of affirmation, and be honored by the congregation as they journey forward in the river of life.
This year’s celebration will be especially joyful! We’re adding a new age group to our Sunday programs, renaming some of our spaces, and—wonderfully—we have more children to honor than in recent years.
If your child is entering kindergarten, 5th, or 6th grade (or their equivalents), please complete this form to register them for the ceremony. We look forward to marking this milestone together in community.
May will be our last family breakfast of the year before we break for summer. It also happens to fall on Mother’s Day! Rather than moving the date, our gracious hosts, the Polinder family, plan to make it a extra special to honor all the moms. Please plan to join us for this beloved gathering, and help with our planning by registering HERE at least a few days before.
Family breakfast will resume in the fall!
We are excited for our children to explore our shared values through puppetry and folk tales with accomplished professional puppeteer, Linda Zittel! The last day to register for camp is May 4th and registration, as well as more detailed information, can be found HERE!
There are a lot of changes on the horizon, y’all! As we prepare to return to intergenerational services for the summer, and envision our return to the classroom wing in the fall, lots of decisions need to be made, and that means I want to hear from YOU about what has been working and what hasn’t, and what your dreams and concerns are for the return to normal Sunday morning RE, AND I want to answer your questions about our plans for room use, curriculum, and the general wellbeing of your children when they are in our care.
You are invited to bring your drinks and snacks to the benches on the back patio on Sunday, May 25th to spend coffee hour asking and sharing for the mutual benefit of all who are invested in our RE programs for children and youth. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas!
Last month was loaded with fun! Our youth went to the Hult Center to experience Hamilton live on stage and their excitement was absolutely contagious! And between our JETPIG Easter and Beltane Maypole, I can honestly say we made the most of the beautiful spring sunshine and blossoms! If you have ideas for enriching activities you’d like to see take place over the summer, I want to hear them!
Everything we are able to provide in RE is only possible because volunteers generously give their time to bring these events to life for others! Our values-driven Easter experience would not have been possible without the help of Priscilla Galasso, Anya Ballinger, and Adriel Molk, all committing to help out in the weeks leading up to the event. And then, on the day-of, our fabulous young people, Sabina Giordono and Kezi Hirsch, stepped in to fill a need to talk to kids about justice and Love.
Thank you to all of our volunteers who fill roles big and small. You are the beating heart of Fellowship life!
Thanks to the tireless efforts of our Fellowship librarians, Holley Lantz and Christine Robbins, and volunteer Eric Lantz, the children’s collection in the Rita McDonald Memorial Library has been digitally cataloged and is ready for check outs!
Children (and adults who read children’s books) can now apply for a library card with this form, and use our new digital checkout kiosk. Please allow 3 days for new accounts to be set up prior to attempting to check out.
We have many faith-specific adult books that cannot be found at the county library and we’d love to see more people making use of this resource. Feedback about the usability of the adult collection is most welcome!
Thanks so much for being part of what makes our Fellowship shine! Happy May, Y’all!
In case you read the monthly journal, and you’re thinking Hey! I want to know more about these emerging trends in RE, I’ve got some resources for you! If you haven’t read the monthly journal yet, go check your inbox!
Joy Berry, the UUA’s children and families faith development specialist, has a nice post about whole-church RE that will get you started. After attending several of her discussion sessions, I was compelled to use her WCRE map template in planning for next year’s RE. If you look closely, you’ll spot things you’ve never seen before at UUFC!
If any of those stars spark your interest and you want to help, let me know! Mary Jo Wood and Joyce Standing are already helping with plans for our Jr. worship associates and Angel Swanson is gearing up to bring the Mosaic antiracism curriculum to adults and children. If everyone takes a small piece of the plan, our whole church connections will really shine!
This article on de-centering curriculum focuses on post-curriculum approach as a response to the wildly fluctuating Sunday attendance. Maybe you’ve noticed that some Sundays we have 5 kids at Time for All Ages and others we have 30. These are wild times! Luckily, we’re making it work and our congregation is one of the few for whom loose curriculum in Sunday morning spaces is still working (see more on that below), but we’re not out of the woods. It’s useful to take note of some of the massive cultural shifts that show up in the ways we gather. These changes will continue to shape how we show up in community and require that we have adaptive spirits if we’re in this for the long haul.
This article about how some churches are still finding success with curriculum highlights some of the reasons we’re doing so well. A major factor is financial support for staffing. Our volunteers are soul-weary and cannot commit to doing their own planning and prep. So thanks, all you pledging members! You’re making it possible for us to continue to provide structured exploration spaces in this current landscape of burnout and stress. We have been able to pivot to using curriculum with stand-alone lessons so that no one is lost when they join only sporadically. We have integrated much more social time and lightened the amount of curriculum-driven elements are in each Sunday session to keep our children’s spaces low-stakes and high nurture. We are so eager to get back into the classroom wing where we have dedicated spaces that are conducive to focused exploration as well as meaningful social connection. We’re getting a little itchy in the social hall, especially as we continue to grow.
I’m excited to hear your thoughts and ideas about whole church RE. Come talk to me about your ideas!
