Archives: Services

What exactly happened to the UUA Principles and what do the new Values mean for our Fellowship?

,
A year ago, the UUA approved changes to Article II of the UUA bylaws including the creation of new Values in place of the Principles. Confused? Come to the service to learn more about the changes and join us in a discussion about our individual thoughts about the Values and how our Fellowship might incorporate them.
 
Catherine Stevens lives in Jericho with her husband and their two dogs. She recently retired as a resource development director for non-profits and is looking for an opportunity to continue helping on a project basis. She and her husband like to travel, to learn about other cultures and history. Closer to home, she travels to Mills Riverside Park almost daily to enjoy nature with her dogs. Catherine is a member of the MMUUF and has served on the Sunday Service Committee for 15ish years.
Kristen Hayden-West is a member of the Mt. Mansfield Unitarian Fellowship where she serves on the Membership and Sunday Service committees. Beyond her work as a Curriculum Designer for the State of Vermont, and her side hustle flipping thrifted items on eBay, she enjoys being active outside and getting together with friends and her two adult children.

Gratitude, Meditation & Movement: Finding focus when everything feels like too much!

Practicing gratitude in the face of caring for parents with chronic illness, adapting to a new community, and finding time to write, meditate and teach yoga can be challenging at times. Sarah will share some of her favorite readings & tools, teach a short meditation, and offer you ideas to consider bringing a practice of gratitude into your life.
Sarah Ward, is a friend of MMUUUF, and was a member for over twenty-five years.  She now lives in Woodstock, VT with her husband Scott, her mother, Bonnie, and their two dogs, River & Pippin.  Sarah teaches yoga and meditation at Artistree Community Art Center in Pomfret, and writes fiction.  She is currently working on a historical fiction novel about a murder that happened in her home town of Piermont, NH in 1875. She loves writing, reading, swimming, traveling and sharing a cup of tea and a long chat with a friend.

Tending to Home in an Uncertain Time

MMUUF fellowship member Mike Sweeney will share his thoughts on what it means to have a strong sense of home, his experiences of losing and rebuilding a sense of home for himself and his family, and the importance of doing the human work in our spiritual and other local communities to tend to our collective home as a way to cultivate strength and protection during an uncertain time.

Mike Sweeney currently serves as the fellowship’s treasurer and religious education director and enjoys singing in the fellowship’s “Last Minute Choir.” He is also a justice of the peace in Jericho and chair of the Jericho Democratic Committee. Mike has had various jobs through the years, but his most important have been as a homemaker for his family and dad to his two now teenage children.

The Mutual Gifts of Intergenerational Connection

,
Marissa Birne appreciates the opportunity to share stories of the older adults who have shaped her life—through their wisdom, humor, traditions, and love—and reflect on how older generations can find meaning in sharing stories and experiences with younger ones. While offering her reflections on the mutual benefits of intergenerational connection, she will invite MMUUF to consider: What have you learned from older people who have made a difference for you? And what are you hoping to pass on to younger people in your life to help them grow, thrive, and develop their own sense of purpose?
Marissa Birne is the Associate Director of Education at the UVM Center on Aging, where she oversees educational opportunities in gerontology and geriatrics, including a ‘Grand Friends’ service-learning program. She previously fostered multigenerational connection among senior living residents and volunteers of all ages as the Program Manager for Youth, Arts, and Volunteer Initiatives at an elder care organization in Massachusetts. In her free time, she enjoys practicing yoga, volunteering as a mentor with Big Brothers Big Sisters, and spending time with loved ones.
Molly Jo Krupkin is a senior Human Development and Family Sciences major at UVM. She is from Chicago and she absolutely loves living in Vermont. In her free time Molly Jo plays ice hockey, cooks, plays games with friends and reads. Her favorite book she read this year was called The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. Molly Jo is new to learning about aging and the complexities of the topic, and she is excited and eager to continue engaging and learning!

Christmas Eve Service

Our theme for this service of songs and readings is “Coming Together”. We will close the service with our tradition of lighting candles and singing Silent Night so if you are joining us virtually, please have a candle ready at home. All are welcome!

What’s Next?

Ann Bonanno will share her thoughts and musings about what happens to our essence when we die. She will offer a brief overview of various religious beliefs and welcomes the Fellowship to share their beliefs, or wonders, on this topic.
Ann Bonanno is a member of MMUUF and has chaired the Sunday Service Committee for the past decade or so. Ann’s spirituality is based in the natural world and the connections between all living things, and she suspects her life’s goal is to become a tree.  Ann believes strongly in living in gratitude and spends some time each day grateful for the beautiful state of Vermont and the MMUUF community.

My Bag of Worries

Gaye will offer reflections about how practices grounded in UU faith may help us move beyond worrying events and anxious times. How do we carry our pain and fears? How do we take care of ourselves and our communities? She will also reflect on how our lay-led faith community can balance the desire to serve as a place of refuge with also being a welcoming community to all. And while she’s still working on the service, she’s very clear that she will not fully answer those questions and is counting on others to share their thoughts and strategies for moving through anxious times and events, individually and as a community.
 
Gaye is a long-time member of MMUUF. She’s retired from a nonlinear career that included baking, managing mission-focused organizations, legislative service, and leading a grantmaking organization. Now her days change with seasons, but consistent elements include trying to keep up with her 90-something friends and role-models and serving on the board of VTDigger, a nonprofit news organization. She lives in Jericho with her husband, Chuck Lacy, and their two cats.

Becoming Braver Angels: Depolarizing the United States

Tired of all the “us vs. them” dialog surrounding the recent elections? Come listen to a brief talk by Braver Angels Ambassador Mary K. Dennison. Braver Angels is a national non-profit organization whose mission is to address the political polarization that exists in our country

Things That Don’t Go Together: How Religion and Politics Don’t Mix

This Service will discuss how religion, especially fundamentalism, has come to dominate politics and why that is a recipe for disaster in a democratic society that upholds the principle of the separation of church and state.
Rev. Dr. Kenneth Langer is currently the Minister at the First Church in Barre Universalist Church in Barre, Vermont where he was ordained. Before becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister, he was a college music professor for over twenty years. He is a composer and the author of several books on spirituality and the arts.

Unsettled

In honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, Rev. Nicoline shares how the process of truth and reconciliation currently underway north of the US/Canada border has transformed how she thinks about concepts like identity, citizenship, and the country she calls home.

A lifelong Unitarian Universalist, Rev. Nicoline Guerrier has served the UU Fellowship of Plattsburgh, NY as minister since 2018. Previously a “bi-vocational minister” who combined ordained ministry with social work, she is also biracial, and almost bi-national, as she resides in Montreal and commutes to the US for work.