Greetings!

As we approach the end of another RE year I’d like to express my gratitude to those who’ve made our program possible.  Three teams of teachers led our 4-6th grade students through the UUA’s Amazing Grace Tapestry of Faith RE Program which focused on UU beliefs and values.  Lisa Dalgleish and Emily Hecht taught the first week of the month, Trish and Harvey Johnson taught the second week of the month, and Sharon Roberts and Gloria Weberg taught the fourth week of the month.  The third and occasional fifth weeks were filled in with intergenerational services and other activities.  Our students will lead the May 23 service and share some of what they’ve learned during this past year.

Thank you also to Louis and Sharon Orlando for hosting BUUF’s Halloween Party, Jim McConnell for our cabaret pizza party (and including our students in leading parts of our weekly services), and Lisa Dalgleish for initiating an all-ages monthly game night, which the adults seem to enjoy as much, if not more, than the kids!  Thanks also to all of you who helped make this year’s BUUFlympics a real Olympic event!

Not all of our activities were successful.  Although our high school poetry program did not last long, I’d like to thank Charles Long and Janice Zerfas for their efforts and willingness to lead the couple of classes that were taught.

And, most of all, I’d like to thank our students.  Their regular attendance and enthusiasm made it a pleasure to teach and learn with them!  Thank you Eve and Liam, Nicky and Lillie, Emily and Larkin, and Emily and Eliza!  And thanks to you, too, Mike, for attempting the poetry sessions and all the other help you’ve provided this year!

Our Tuesday evening Adult RE Speaking of Faith get-togethers continue to spark conversation on topics of all kinds.  These get-togethers have been hosted by nine different BUUFers during the past year.  Thanks to all of you who host and attend, and especially to Gary Cook who initiated this “gender-neutral” event!

As always, please let me know if you have ideas for adult or children RE programs that we may be able to provide to our fellowship.  Your comments are always welcome!

Your DRE,

Dave Sarra

Greetings!

Our 4th-6th grade students have decided that charity begins at home and held their first fund raiser after they presented BUUF’s Winter Solstice Service. They decided that any money raised will be earmarked for updating BUUF’s kitchen, beginning with an automatic dishwasher. In the long run a dishwasher will help us go “green” and save money on the disposable products we use each week. They offered ornaments, cards, baked goods, and sang tunes for small donations, having worked hard in preparation over the past month. Including the service offerings they raised over $250.00!

Eve Roberts-Berndt introduced our coverage of winter solstice celebrations by outlining some of their ancient origins and informing us that the root of all these cross-cultural celbrations and rituals is the battle between light and dark.

Nicky Orlando told us about the twelve days of solstice celebrations held in Mesopotamia over four thousand years ago which included visiting friends and exchanging gifts, religious processions with lights and songs, door to door singing, and feasting on the final day of the celebration.

Eliza Sarra continued with her description of Saturnalia, the Roman celebration when slaves would temporarily become masters. Many Romans celebrated the virgin birth of Mithra, the god of the unconquerable sun, on December 25, before Christianity became the official religion of the empire in the fourth century.

Larkin Johnson described the Dongzhi Festival, China's winter solstice celebration for over 2,500 years, as a time when businesses would close and families would gather at their ancestral temples to worship before feasting.

Lillie Orlando told us of how the pre-Christian northern Europeans believed that spirits lived in trees: evergreens, including holly and ivy were revered because they remained live and fresh during the coldest, shortest days of winter; Druid ceremonies included tying apples and other offerings to the branches of ritural trees at the winter solstice; and bells were sometines hung in evergreen boughs to protect against evil spirits.

Emily Johnson followed with a powerpoint presentation which described how the tilt of the Earth on its axis causes the seasons to change.

And Emily Sarra told us about Soyal, the Hopi solstice celebration, when ceremonies are performed to call the sun back from its winter sleep. The Hopi make offerings to an effigy of a plumed snake to appease it so that it does not swallow the sun god. There is music, dancing, praying, and exchanging of gifts. Like many societies, the Hopi connect the return of the sun with a triumph of good over evil.

In class, they are now studying Unitarianism and Universalism and should soon be well-versed in our history and our present stance in the world. We will continue to follow the Amazing Grace sessions as outlined in the UUA’s Tapestry of Faith programs. Our high school age student(s) have decided to provide child care services for BUUF rather than continue with the Poetry sessions.

We will take a break from our Speaking of Faith get-togethers during the December holidays and return to our regular schedule in January.

On January 5th Gary Cook will host “Gay Marriage: Broken or Blessed? Two Evangelical Views” which is described as follows: “Our culture's acrimonious debate on the morality of gay marriage has been framed in religious — largely conservative Christian — terms. With Richard Mouw and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, we go behind the rhetoric to explore the human confusion, hopes, and fears this subject arouses. We'll name hard questions that these religious people on both sides of the issue are asking themselves, and that they would like to ask of others.”

On January 12th Joanne Krettek will host “Sustaining Language, Sustaining Meaning---an Ojibwe Story” which is described as follows: “Novelist and translator David Treuer is helping to compile the first practical grammar of the Ojibwe tongue of his tribe. Treuer describes an unfolding awareness of aspects of his personality, of a sense of what brings him joy, an understanding of what makes him human — that the Ojibwe language distinctly conveys.”

On January 19th Dave Sarra will host “Tatanka Iyotake, Sitting Bull” which is described as follows: “As some Lakota make an annual pilgrimage on horseback to Wounded Knee in memory of Sitting Bull's death, we'll pull out some of the lesser known threads of the legacy of this complex leader and American icon. And we'll explore why his spiritual character has animated his own people in the last three decades more openly than at any time since his death in 1890.”

I hope you all enjoy the Winter’s Solstice and any other subsequent holidays you may celebrate this time of year as we look forward to the lengthening of our daylight hours!

Your DRE, Dave Sarra

Greetings!

While I try to be cognizant of the wonders of being alive and living on this beautiful planet throughout the year, it is during the holiday of Thanksgiving when those feelings are most easily expressed.   In fact, I celebrate Thanksgiving twice each year.  Once in October when Canadians express their thanks for a bountiful harvest, during which time I visit with friends, many of whom I don’t often see throughout the year and who usually spend American Thanksgiving with their families.  And then again in November, usually travelling and feasting with relatives and friends in other parts of the country.

For me it’s a personal holiday during which I focus on my family and friends.  I don’t subscribe to the Pilgrims’ Christian view that their God played a role in the 1608 kidnapping and enslaving of the Patuxet boy of about twelve years of age, named Squanto, who became tri-lingual during more than a decade living in Spain and England before returning to his homeland in order to make possible the survival of the Pilgrims and the first American Thanksgiving in 1621. This event has since contributed to the Euro-Christian belief of Manifest Destiny, which, in turn by the horrendous damage done, has led many Native Americans to consider Thanksgiving a day of mourning.

On November 15, I’ll lead our 4^th-6^th grade class in deciding which ideas/causes for fundraising or COSA for Kids projects the students want to pursue.  The following Sunday is Gary’s Intergenerational “Show and Tell,” when I hope our kids will have much to show us!  Then on the fifth and final Sunday of November I’ll lead the class again in a discussion and preparation for the Sunday Service our RE program will present on December 20.

Those of us attending the most recent Speaking of Faith get-together decided to postpone the November 17 program on “Pagans: Ancient and Modern” to allow many of us to attend the Root Beer Summit on race relations and ethnic diversity in Benton Harbor (see calendar).

On November 24, Julie Williams will host “Preserving Words and Worlds” which is described as follows:  “The Hill Museum & Monastic Library rescues manuscripts from across the centuries and across the world.  We explore this with a Benedictine monk and an Ethiopian scholar who have led some of its most intriguing work.  In their lives as in this work, the relevance of ancient manuscripts to people of the present, and the cultural cargo of the past itself, are revealed in a new light.”

On December 1, Joanne Krettek will host “TV and Parables of Our Time” which is described as follows:  “Diane Winston appreciates good television, studies it, and brings many of its creators into her religion and media classes at the University of Southern California.  In what some have called a renaissance in television drama, we examine how TV is helping us tell our story and work through great confusions in contemporary life.”

On December 8, Linda Lobik will host “The Ethics of Eating” which is described as follows:  “Barbara Kingsolver describes an adventure her family undertook to spend one year eating primarily what they could grow or raise themselves.  As a citizen and mother more than an expert, she turned her life towards questions many of us are asking.  Food, she says, is a “rare moral arena” in which the ethical choice is often the pleasurable choice.”

May all your food choices this Thanksgiving be both ethical and pleasurable!

Your DRE,

Dave Sarra

Greetings!

We’ve hit our stride with our Amazing Grace class, with each pair of teachers having taught one class.  With interest from both students and teachers we’ve decided to incorporate other ideas and events into the curriculum which will follow the concept of Amazing Grace.  We will have guest speakers to stimulate a COSA for Kids program that will provide an opportunity for our students to participate in at least one community outreach/social action program of their choosing.  Our past autumn programs have included UNICEF, Heifer Project, and Guest at Our Table.  We may continue with one or more of them while adding new projects such as helping Animal Aid locally or helping children in countries as far away as Sudan.

Our teacher schedule is simple with Lisa Dalgleish and Emily Hecht teaching the first Sunday of each month, Trish and Harvey Johnson teaching each second Sunday, and Sharon Roberts and Gloria Weberg teaching each fourth Sunday.  I’ll teach each third and fifth Sundays or have a project prepared or we’ll participate in an intergenerational service.

So far we’ve covered the first three sessions:  Exploring Right and Wrong, Curious Faith, and Being Good, Being Bad.  The schedule for the rest of October and November, always tentative to change, will be as follows:

October 18       Dave

October 25       Sharon and Gloria – Session 4: Telling Right From Wrong

November 1     Lisa and Emily H. – Session 5: Unitarian Universalism

November 8     Trish and Harvey – Session 6: The First U

November 15   Dave

November 22   Intergenerational BUUF Creativity Service

November 29   Dave

Our high school Exploring Our Values Through Poetry class has begun, all be it with only one student.  Charles Long has taught the first class, Listening and Speaking with Poetry, and will teach the second, Surprised by Beauty.  Janice Zerfas, Lisa Dalgleish, and I will eventually share the teaching of future classes with Charles.  The third session is titled Keenly Observing Nature and the fourth is called Who and What Guides Us?

Our adult Speaking of Faith get-togethers continue to meet on Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m., and average about five to eight BUUFers along with friends and relatives.  I encourage anyone interested in an extended Circle Talk with refreshments to join us!  This month Jackie Krettek, Joanne’s mother, hosted “The Beauty and Challenge of Being Catholic: Hearing the Faithful,” and Julie Williams hosted “Ethics and the Will of God: The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”  Both of these programs stimulated a great amount of conversation.

The following programs are scheduled:

October 20       Tom Hackley and Emily Bettencourt will host “The Sunni-Shia Divide and the Future of Islam,” which is described as follows:  “We seek fresh insight into the history and the human and religious dynamics of Islam’s Sunni-Shia divide.  Our guest says that it is not so different from dynamics in periods of Western Christian history.  But he says that by bringing the majority Shia to power in Iraq, the U.S. has changed the religions dynamics of the Middle East.”

October 27       I will host “Pagans: Ancient and Modern” which is described as follows:  “An environmentalist who pursued the ecological impulse of paganism, from its ancient roots to its modern revival in Europe and North America, discusses his observations about the spirit of paganism and its influence on everyday Western culture—and even on old-time religion.”

November 3     Gary Cook will host “The Morality of Nature” which is described as follows:  “From a non-theological angle, two scientists, Jelle de Boer and Ursula Goodenough, trace how natural disasters have sometimes fueled religious agendas and movements, and how strictly scientific perspectives can both challenge and illuminate religious questions.”

November 10   Gary Cook will host (yes, two weeks in a row!) “Religious Liberty in America: The Legacy of Church and State,” which is described as follows:  “We speak with people who are exploring the dynamic between religion and public life in novel---and sometimes uncomfortable---ways.  Listen as Krista and our guests discuss the origins of the separation of church and state, the loss and reemergence of religious expression in tribal public life, and the American public school system.”

I can’t think of anything better with which to sign-off than to repeat Viola Moore’s sentiments:  “May the music of falling leaves and lake breezes lift our hearts as we move into our 51^st year of witness to life which is all praise and celebration.”  I hope to see you all at some of BUUF’s many events!

Your DRE,

Dave Sarra