Happy New Year! Welcome to 2023. I hope everyone had a satisfying and fun-filled Christmas break. So much planning, shopping, thinking and cooking goes into making Christmas a special time – and now it’s over for another year. I hope yours has been a good one.
The UFL Board, staff and committees are gearing up to keep our chalice flame lit and shining brightly through 2023. We’ll be welcoming everyone back to our Clarke Road sanctuary, or by logging in via Zoom to our Sunday services. There’s a lot going on, as you’ll see in the pages of our monthly Chalice newsletters.
To keep the flame lit takes a lot of dedicated effort, and for that, we’d like to recognize and welcome your efforts. If you’ve volunteered for a UFL volunteer role (large or small) in the past, would you like to continue, or try something different? Have you thought of something that we should or could be doing? There’s lots to do! I’ve listed a few ideas below, and we can discuss everyone’s ideas, and maybe combine your efforts with those of others. We all form part of a great team – and 2023 is our chance to rally round, cheer and help make the UFL even better.
One of the first jobs to hand is working on our 2023 annual pledge campaign. We need 1, 2 or more volunteers for that. It’s a short-term project, running through February. The program has run successfully in the past, and we’ve accumulated plenty of experience that makes the campaign an annual success story. Please get in touch with Lori or me if you’d like to learn more.
Members have put forth many more ideas of things we could try. We could plan more social events this year. Remember the fun movie and pizza nights we used to organize? How about Sunday pot-luck lunches? Perhaps you’d like to support our new partnership with the PFLAG group, which meets at Clarke Road twice a month? Or get involved with this year’s London Pride campaign? Help serve meals to the homeless? Let’s see what we can do, in the spirit of UU volunteerism, human rights, peace and justice for all – and anything else I’ve forgotten.
Well, I know many people make New Year’s resolutions, so why not include “doing more with the UFL” one of your big ones for 2023? Let’s make it a great year! You always get more out than you put in!
With best wishes from the UFL Board of Trustees, I am Brian Keith (Board President).
I hope each and every one of you had a wonderful holiday season. Ours was filled with family and friends and I find myself very grateful for all I have re- ceived.
I continue on my placement journey as a spiritual care student at the Southwest Forensic Center for Mental Health and will be taking one course in the next se- mester to go along with this. I have learned so much already and there is much more to come. In spiritual care counselling it seems to be about listening and presence in hard times. It is difficult to not attempt to forward your own agenda in these conversations. Words of wisdom (and I often have more to offer, than others always want) are not always called for and this is important to remember this in our interactions with others. It is important to let others provide the cues in order to help them work things out.
We are embarking on our new partnership with PFLAG after a wonderful
Christmas party in December as a launch for them to use our building this year for their meetings. In January I will be looking for volunteers to provide a meal for the Goodwill Circles program as soon as I know the date. We are working on social media and the website this month. Argyle Basic Needs meeting will be at the fellowship on Jan 19th. Details to follow.
We hope that the pandemic will settle and we can get back to even more normal- cy in the spring. As always please call me with any questions or concerns at 519- 859-1640.
Lori Otte
Director of Congregational Life
Plans are coming together to help address the growing challenges of inflation and food insecurity in our community. By the second Sunday in January, we hope to have a Hospitality Cupboard up and running at the UFL.
The plan is to have a modest but permanent stock of canned goods, rice, pasta
and juice boxes. The items will be available to members, friends and visitors who attend at the meeting house on Sunday mornings. There are no plans to advertise the food cupboard outside of the UFL community at this time.
We will be monitoring the use of the cupboard as well as carefully noting the best before dates on the packaged food. We will be noting the successes and short
comings of this project and reporting to the board.
When we have a better idea of needs, we will be asking members of the congre- gation for donations of specific items. In the meantime, anyone who is interested in helping with this project is asked to speak to Eileen Howay or Judith Warren
Worship Leader: Bob Harrington
Our theme for January is Transformation. I would like to start the year with something different, - a YouTube video. It is titled INNER WORLDS, OUTER WORLDS.
It is a beautiful video that will help us understand the nature of consciousness and how itcomes to manifest in and through us. If we can understand it even a little bit it will initiate life-enhancing transformations in our lives
Worship Leader: Brian Keith
We will learn about the City's efforts to iden- tify and cancel racism and discuss efforts that each of us can make to identify harmful atti- tudes and promote full equality. There are more kinds of racism than just skin colour. Be prepared to examine your prejudices (they may be more common than we'd care to acknowledge) and unearned privileges. No penalties will be imposed, but you'll come away with an opened mind and greater appre- ciation for the people who make up our won- derful world.
Pianist: Melanie Cancade Zoom
Hostess: Lori Turner-Otte
Worship Leader: Lori Otte
Service Leader: Alison Konrad
Worship Leaders: Alex Kapitan/Teo Drake
Gender-based oppression is a continuing reality of our world, so it shouldn't be a sur- prise that sexism and transphobia get in the way of our ability to live into our potential in UU congregations. In this service guest speakers Alex Kapitan and Teo Drake will help us consider how gender roles, assump- tions, and expectations hurt us all, and how we can dismantle the barriers within our- selves and our congregation that prevent us from creating a truly inclusive space for people of all genders
In this service, we will begin by choosing images that reflect our individual thoughts and feelings about spiritual transformation. Then we will consider what psychologists have learned about this deeply complex and personal phenomenon
