Part 1 of the Spiritual Practices Series is a 6-session series that helps participants develop regular disciplines of the spirit – practices that help us connect with the sacred. This series affirms religious diversity while seeking unity in our communal quest for meaning and wholeness. Each session offers a forum for learning, sharing, and growth that can enrich our personal faith journeys.
Join Skyla King-Christison on Monday evenings, Oct. 2nd through Nov. 13th, from 6 to 7pm in Room 7.
Part 2 of this series will be offered in the spring, at which time returning participants can share about how their spiritual practices have evolved since part one, and all participants, new and retuning will explore the topics of worship and ritual, discernment and devotional reading, hospitality and belonging, work and service, retreat, and life as a spiritual practice.
Join us for a 6 week course in culture shift and radical welcome, designed by Rev. Mykal Slack & Zr. Alex Kapitan, and facilitated by Bonnie Morihara.
WHEN: Thursdays from 6 to 7:30pm, September 21st through October 26th.
WHERE: Room 8
WHAT: A video course is designed to watch and discuss together, in an effort to expand our understanding of how to truly welcome folks of all identities into our beloved community.
REGISTER: please help us plan and setup by registering at this link. Thank you!
We offered this warm, challenging workshop over the summer, and at the end, participants said, “This was wonderful! More people need to take this!” If you missed it the first round, we want you to have a second chance.
All are invited to the ice cream social on Sunday, August 27th at 7pm on the Fellowship lawn.
The RE Council will provide the ice cream bars, tabletop games, and a water zone for cooling off. You will provide the general merriment and community building by chatting with someone new, inviting your friends, and bringing your whole, awesome self to the event.
If you’re available to help with set-up, please contact Skyla dre@uucorvallis.org.
It’s that time of year again! Register here by August 20th to attend the Annual River Reunion Youth Float on August 27thfrom noon to 6PM. All youth in grades 6-12 who planning to attend YRUU in the fall are invited. More details are available at the registration link. Please note, you MUST be registered for YRUU in order to attend. Direct questions to Skyla dre@uucorvallis.org.
Corvallis is hosting the PWR Cluster’s Fall Youth Overnight! Come get to know youth from the region as we explore the theme of building a new way through touch groups, playshops, worship, and community.
There is no more important climate work than the influencing of legislation and policy, whether at the national, state, or local level. Climate Action Opportunities, refreshed weekly on Saturdays, provides three or four curated, quick opportunities to do just that.
To help assess the engagement of UUFC members and friends in faith-based climate action and to encourage such action, please anonymously <Share> the number of the actions below you take this week. Optionally, you may anonymously also share other recent climate action.
The organizations whose calls to action we amplify, and the number from each organization, are listed <here>
Carbon price and dividend. Pricing carbon will drive energy innovation, giving every American community access to abundant, affordable clean energy at a predictable price. Email your members of Congress
Protect and strengthen our forests, food and agricultural systems. The bipartisan Increased TSP Access Act (S.1400/H.R.3036) has been introduced in the Senate and the House with bipartisan support. The act will (a) help farmers, ranchers and forest-owners access critical conservation programs, (b) empower producers to put climate-smart programs into practice on their own land. Email your members of Congress
Keep pollution out of Hawai‘i’s coral reefs. We have long fought alongside the communities of Maui. Right now, we have an opportunity to support Maui residents in their decades-long effort to uphold the Clean Water Act. Since the 1980s, Maui County’s Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility has discharged millions of gallons of treated sewage into groundwater every day that reaches the coral reef off Kahekili Beach, an area traditionally called Hāʻenanui. In 2012, Earthjustice and our partners sued the county under the Clean Water Act to hold Maui County accountable for its pollution. Now we can finally do something about it. Message the Hawai’i State Dept. Of Health
Of Note This Week is a source for current climate-change information at the local, state, and national levels. It is refreshed weekly on Saturday.
Save the Date is your calendar of upcoming climate-related events and activities.
Thu 7 Sep, 4:00 – 5:30 PM, online
Inflation Reduction Act Resources to Help You Electrify Your Home
Interfaith Power and Light Webinar. Jamal Lewis, Director of Policy Partnerships and Equitable Electrification for Rewiring America, joins us for a conversation on electrification, what it looks like, and what federal resources are available to help you do it. Learn more about the incentives that will be available to help make your home healthier and more efficient. Register
Church attendance in the US has been in decline for decades. A recent article by Isabel Fattal notes that this “great dechurching” seems to be driven to a small extent by a long history of corruption and abuse within religious organizations, but even more by current American culture and priorities. According to Jake Meador, editor-in-chief of the quarterly magazine “Mere Orthodoxy,” “contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care or common life.”
Here at the Fellowship, in May we approved a new Covenant of Right Relations which aims at precisely those values – the nurturing of mutuality, care and common life – including specific needed skills and practices, such as engaging respectfully, listening deeply and clarifying misunderstandings. Now we need to make that covenant real and alive, between us, by practicing these skills with each other as often as we can.
Beginning in September, our theme for the year will be “Building a New Way.” So much within the Fellowship which was lost during the pandemic still needs to be rebuilt, and we can’t re-build structures that are now outdated. We have to pay close attention to the negative effects of current American culture and priorities, plus the long-standing obstacles of patriarchy, racism, sexism and so much more, and do better. Here, between us in this congregation, we aim for better ways of being together, so that all may feel safe and respected as we each pursue the journey of a religious life.
Have you had a chance to meet someone new here this summer? Have you practiced listening deeply to someone else’s story, or clarifying a misunderstanding? August is a great time to do so, as is every other month! I don’t remember who said, “Be the change you wish to see,” but it’s still worth trying. May we reach out to each other with compassion and love.
Daily spiritual practice is a way to stay alert to how things truly are, to find sources of wisdom and strength, to let go of what does not serve us, and more. Here is a new iteration of my daily practice writings – a once-a-week reminder to maintain your own practice. I’ll begin with a new version of a piece I wrote a few summers ago – it still has much to consider:
“We were talking about loss as we walked this morning. About changes in how we work and what is needed now and what to do with feelings of inadequacy. Perhaps these are just small feelings compared to losses of life and housing and jobs, losses of connections to others and daily support from friends and family, losses of habitat and species and wilderness in the world. Nevertheless, they are feelings which shape how we move into the day, and how we face all the other losses and changes.
I have great hope for the future because of how much is changing right now. And I know for certain that these changes include many, many losses. This too is part of my daily practice; to name some of the losses of life and beauty and things I thought I could depend on. To acknowledge the sorrow and fear, and the challenge of finding new ways to live. As I breathe in and out, I let these feelings be present. Sadness and joy move in me and around me, while the breath is steady. Life is moving and changing and also breathing through me in every moment – therefore I am moving and changing. I give thanks for another day given.”
Our Pop-up Parking Lot Rummage Sale is Saturday, September 16, 2023 from 10:00 – 1:00. Look now through your garage, closets, and shelves to find things to sell. We are not having a recycled gifts room at the Holiday Fair, so this is your best opportunity to donate items you no longer need to benefit the Fellowship. Sellers price their own items, monitor their tables, send buyers to the UUFC checkout, and take home anything not sold at the end. Easy-peasy and a fun social event too! Seller/Vendor Registration Link
Volunteers are needed for this event: people to bring tables and chairs from the building and set them up beforehand and take them down at the end, and at least 2 cashiers. Volunteer Registration Link
Contact Bonnie Morihara, moriharb@ wou.edu or Judy Westlake, judywestlake@ comcast.net.
Remember HB 2021, Oregon’s 100% Clean Energy bill, which with your help was passed by the Oregon legislature in 2021? Among other things, HB 2021 created a $50 million fund, the Community Renewable Energy Grant Program, to support projects in Oregon communities that would bolster renewable energy and strengthen resilience in the event of an emergency.
Recently, the Oregon Department of Energy selected 39 recipients to receive a total of $12 million in round two from the Community Renewable Energy Grant Program funds. A variety of renewable energy and resilience projects in counties across state were represented – solar, geothermal, biogas, and micro-hydro projects, as well as paired battery storage.
One example of a funded project was to the Phoenix Talent School District, which will receive $1 million to install a ground-mounted solar installation with battery storage at Talent Middle School. The installation will act as an operable microgrid in the event of a natural disaster or other emergency, ensuring the building – which will act as a local emergency shelter – retains critical backup power.
At least half of the $50 million grant funds will be awarded for projects that serve environmental justice communities, including communities of color, lower-income communities, and rural communities.
Together our advocacy actions do make a difference — making life better for us all!
Deborah Clark, member UUFC Climate Action
There is no more important climate work than the influencing of legislation and policy, whether at the national, state, or local level. Climate Action Opportunities, refreshed weekly on Saturdays, provides three or four curated, quick opportunities to do just that.
To help assess the engagement of UUFC members and friends in faith-based climate action and to encourage such action, please anonymously <Share> the number of the actions below you take this week. Optionally, you may anonymously also share other recent climate action.
The organizations whose calls to action we amplify, and the number from each organization, are listed <here>
Restore the Endangered Species Act. The Biden administration just moved closer to undoing the Trump administration’s unprecedented damage to the regulations that interpret the Endangered Species Act. For 50 years, the Act’s served as the last line of defense for countless species and habitats. Today, it is our strongest tool for tackling the worsening biodiversity crisis, which is why the Biden administration must fix the rules that implement it.
Protect the Grand Canyon. The Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument Act has been introduced in the U.S. House and Senate to protect the Grand Canyon region’s sacred and natural resources, manage hunting and grazing, and establish a 12-member tribal commission to ensure tribal co-stewardship. Despite a 20-year uranium mining moratorium, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims by Tribes and environmental groups attempting to stop Energy Fuels Nuclear Inc. from mining the Pinyon Plain Mine on this land. It’s critical we fight for the permanent protections granted by designating more than 1.1 million acres within the Grand Canyon as a new national monument. Send a message to your U.S. Senators & Representative
Stop Yazoo Pumps Project. Yet again, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has announced an unprecedented move to resurrect the destructive Yazoo Backwater Pumps in Mississippi’s South Delta by fast tracking efforts to approve the project. If allowed, the Yazoo Pumps project would drain and destroy up to 200,000 acres of wetlands, some of our nation’s richest habitat that supports over 450 species of birds, fish and wildlife. Even worse, the project would not protect communities and only benefit a small number of wealthy agricultural corporations. Communities plagued by flooding in the Mississippi Delta deserve smart safeguards that keep people and property out of harm’s way, such as elevating homes and roads, and compensating farmers to restore cropland to wetlands! Submit your comment
Sun 13 Aug, 5:30 – 6:30 PM, Common Fields, 545 SW 3rd St
Finding Fish in the Willamette River: Do you wonder what is swimming below the surface as you fish or float the Willamette River? Learn about the native, invasive, rare, and cryptic species in the fish community, and what they tell us about the ecological health of a Corvallis water source. Presented by Dr. Brooke Penaluna, a Research Fisheries Biologist with the Forest Service. All day (11 am – 8 pm), enjoy tasty food and drink, and Common Fields will donate 10% of dine-in & takeout sales to support Willamette Riverkeeper.
Inflation Reduction Act Resources to Help You Electrify Your Home Interfaith Power and Light Webinar. Jamal Lewis, Director of Policy Partnerships and Equitable Electrification for Rewiring America, joins us for a conversation on electrification, what it looks like, and what federal resources are available to help you do it. Learn more about the incentives that will be available to help make your home healthier and more efficient. Register
