“How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!” – Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Greetings, Families!

I hope your Thanksgiving weekend was full of all the things you love most! It’s time to turn our hearts toward all the good things that December has to offer. Grab your calendar and let’s have a little look ahead!

UPCOMING EVENTS:

12/6 Seeker Space Kids & kids table at the Holiday Fair! 9-3 @ UUFC!

12/14 NO Family Breakfast this month!

12/11 Parent Peer Support Group meal prep night. Register ONCE Here!

12/21 Solstice Pageant during the service NO RE! 

12/28 All ages Poetry service with activity kit available for kids NO RE!

Post Holiday Break for Parents: date, time, and registration information were emailed directly to parents. Check your inboxes!

***Childcare is still available in the Rainbow Room on no RE Sundays!

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. 

Our 4th-6th graders in the Seeker Space have been making crafts and art for their booth at the Holiday Fair on December 6th! They learned about Entrepreneurship from our very own Rachel McGrath and have role-played sales etiquette with their advisors. They are ready to see you at the Holiday fair with their selection of magnets, Perler bead ornaments, and one-of-a-kind paintings! Come say hi and support their efforts!

If your Seeker Space kiddo isn’t signed up for a time slot yet, please pop over to register them HERE ASAP!

For the protection of our children, we will not post the date and time of children’s events where their parents and guardians are not remaining on the property. Full information regarding the Post-Holiday Break was sent directly to parents’ inboxes. Please check your email for the December newsletter for the date, time, and registration information. OR, if you are a parent or guardian of a school aged child, you can email me (Skyla) directly at dre@uucorvallis.org for more information.

In an effort to honor feedback from our families, we decided to do something a little different for the winter holidays this year. We will be hosting a Solstice Pageant featuring our children and youth at the center during an intergenerational Sunday morning service instead of holding a separate Christmas Eve service for families with children. This all-ages service will be on December 21st, and while our speaking roles are all spoken for, we do have room for a couple more woodland creatures if any of you missed the news in last month’s newsletter and have children who have an inner squirrel or raccoon just waiting to shine.

The Christmas Eve service is open to all, and we will have electric candles available for children and those who wish to participate but prefer not to handle fire. We will also have some soft toys in the social hall in case your littles need a little more room to burn off some steam while you listen to the service. 

The following Sunday, December 28th, will be a second all-ages service, with a poetry theme. Children are invited to participate in all the ways the adults do, and I will have a poetry-themed collaborative art project for the kids to quietly work on together, in case the poetry isn’t quite their thing. 

During both the solstice and poetry services, there will still be childcare available in the Rainbow Room for registered children. 

Thank you to all who responded to my Coming-of-Age feeler email! Unfortunately, we did not get enough of a response to confidently plan a CoA program for this year. If you let that email slip through the cracks and want to immediately contact me, there’s a chance we hit our minimum needed youth to make a go of it, but…

On my recent trip to the Liberal Religious Educators Association Fall Conference, I connected with many DREs from across the continent and learned that the trend in Coming of Age spaces, since returning to full operations post-pandemic, is increasingly to hold a larger CoA experience once every four years during high school rather than every other year for middle school. The reasons for this shift include the smaller group sizes that are still being experienced nationwide, as well as a shift in developmental readiness for the spiritual content of the program after our kids spent well over a year out of community, both socially and religiously.

I share this to say, do not worry that your child will miss their Coming of Age experience. I will not let that happen! This program is central to what it means to grow up UU! We will be thoughtful about how we evaluate and implement this shift, if that turns out to be the direction we need to move. And I invite you to be in conversation with me about your child’s spiritual and developmental needs as we evaluate this potential shift in programmatic rhythms. 

Those of you I’ve discussed this possible shift with have all said, “But what about OWL?” I know we have alternated these two programs annually as far back as anyone can remember. OWL has a wider reach and a waitlist of nonUUs hoping to get in, so as long as we can maintain an adequate number of trained OWL facilitators, there is no reason to shift away from our regular OWL schedule. If you are interested in becoming an OWL facilitator and helping to keep this vital program available to our community, come talk to me!

This past Sunday, we had our very first Children’s Chapel since the pandemic! Those of you who are newer UUs might be wondering what the heck a Children’s Chapel even is.

Whenever there’s a 5th Sunday of the month (about 4 times per year), instead of having our regular age-segregated RE groups, we have one larger group with all of the children and youth except those in the Rainbow Room. They’re a bit wiggly and disinterested in what we’ve got going on in chapel. 

As I explained to the kids, each time we gather for a children’s chapel, we will have three primary elements: shared singing, some kind of seasonal ritual, and some form of service. These are three practices that are vital to our community life. Shared singing lifts our spirits, rituals allow us to honor and witness one another and the earth in all our seasons, and service reinforces our interconnectedness with one another and our wider community. 

In November, our children’s chapel included learning and analyzing the song What We Need is Here, inspired by the Wendell Berry poem, Wild Geese, which was read for us by Michi Araki. Then we silently processed through electric candlelight to each gather a piece of bread and a cup of apple cider. In our quiet circle, we engaged in a mindfulness practice of thinking of the wide range of people and resources that went into us holding the food that we were about to share. From soil to farmers, millers to road construction crews, power grids and bank software, these kids thought of so many people and skills that made it possible for us to have bread and cider, including all in our Fellowship who give generously so that we can have a comfortable RE budget. 

When we had gobbled up all of the bread and had our fill of cider, we assembled winter care kits for each child to have in their car for when they cross paths with someone living outdoors. We talked about safety, and not approaching unknown adults without a trusted adult with them. We talked about what it would be like to have wet feet and have no way of getting dry in the bitter cold of winter. And we learned about the cool ways that family members of some of our kids already keep resources in their cars and bikes for those in need who cross their paths. 

It was a lovely return to our regular practice of Children’s Chapel, and I’m already looking forward to next time!

If you have any unmet needs for support, unanswered questions about how or why we do what we do in RE, please reach out any time! Our offerings exist because families share their dreams and needs, and we rely on your partnership! And if you ever want to be removed from our email list, just shoot me a note and I’ll make it so.  May we hold Love at the center of all we do together!