Category: Community

Community social gatherirngs; mens and womens groups; covenant groups, neighbourhood groups and news from the communications, membership and care and concern committees.

Mystery Pals Deluxe 2021

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Tangible Connection and a Break from Monotony

I feel a great desire for spring, for unplugging, for tangible connections to people. Zoom and video calls help me connect with people far away, but boy am I missing people’s prescence! How about some old-fashioned letter writing? It’s the time of year when we roll out Mystery Pals letter exchange for children, youth, and adults of all ages.  Some wonderful friendships and connections across generations have been made through this annual event–and if you haven’t tried it out yet, I encourage you to sign up!

This year we are forming a small organizing team to spice up our exchanges. Each Pal mails their letters to UCV and we send it on with Artist Trading Cards, art or activity prompts, or poetry slipped in.

Who?

Anyone age 4-104 can participate if you have regularly attended the Unitarian Church of Vancouver for six months or more, are known by someone in our church leadership (RE Director, Minister, Board, or committee member, small group leader), and can commit to exchanging weekly letters throughout April by Canada post (envelopes and stamps supplied.) 

When?

April is the month of mail exchange and early May is our Reveal Party where you find out who exactly your Pal is. The reveal party will be facilitated in whatever way is deemed safe at the time–either a zoom party or outdoors if public health allows.

How?

Sign-up with our Breeze form at https://ucv.im/pals by March 15th.

Kiersten and our Pals team will match folks up and assign each Pal pair a famous Unitarian to identify with. You will receive a Letter Writing Kit with addressed envelopes, stamps, and paper at the end of March to get you started. Write an introductory letter to your Pal, mail it to the church and it will be sent on. Watch your mailbox for a response and keep exchanging letters throughout April.

UCV community links and a virtual literature stall

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UCV community links keep us connected in these otherwise isolating times. Here is a short list of these links:

https://ucv.im/live … Livestream link for Sunday church services (active at 10:55am every Sunday).
https://ucv.im/oos … An online version of the current Order of Service
https://ucv.im/coffee … Virtual coffee hour – every Sunday immediately following the service
https://ucv.im/give … How to donate from anywhere
https://ucv.im/events … The most frequently updated list of UCV events
https://ucv.im/sermons … A text-based archive of sermons – a virtual literature stall
https://ucv.im/core … An archive of core documents: board minutes, annual reports, …

For these UCV links and more, click here to go to the list at https://ucv.im/ucvlinks-more.

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Please note a particular item in the list: a link to a list of sermons – a virtual literature stall (lit stall).

After the livestreamed service at ucv.im/live you can go to the list of sermons at ucv.im/sermons to view or download a copy of the prepared text for the sermon if the speaker already provided one.

 

The above is a lit stall post first published on June 9, 2020. The featured image shows the cover of the Order of Service for the preceding Sunday, when a short list of UCV community links like the one above was included. The date now displayed with this post is the date of its latest material update.

The post at ucv.im/ucvlinks is this post. You also can find this post at vancouverunitarians.ca/links.

Or search this website for “links” – with or without quotes – and see this post as the top result.

In the bulleted list below are the three latest posts tagged as lit stall posts.

If you haven’t read it already, please see the post about lit stall posts for more information.

Virtual Coffee Hour: What would you like to talk about and with whom?

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Coffee hour starts at 12 noon. Join at ucv.im/coffee

Breakout rooms are set up with a variety of options including some of these:

  • sermon discussion – share comments about today’s service hosted by a member of the Connect and Engage team
  • open discussion – you just want to connect with some other Unitarians – talk amongst yourselves and perhaps meet some new people!
  • (Please let us know, preferably in advance, if there’s a topic you’d like to discuss so it can be added.)

Please make sure your name and any additional information (pronouns, location) are in your name rather than your phone # or name of your device (ipad)  From: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/200941109-Attendee-controls-in-a-meeting

You can now choose your own breakout room and go back to main session to choose a different one. You need to have updated your zoom client within past two months.

When others leave your breakout room, you can return to the main session to be placed in a different room.

Co-hosts: There will be several co-hosts on to make sure we’re only letting in identifiable UCV folk.

It helps us to know it’s you if you have updated your zoom profile with a name we’d recognize and also your picture. Click here to see how to do that https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201363203-Customizing-your-Profile.

We like to continue to keep the main session as a “welcome table” – Just like the entrance to Hewett Hall there’s not space for people to congregate there so I hope you’ll move along and find your group.

If you’re not familiar with zoom, please join the monthly zoom practice session if you can.

On Sunday, just click here to join us: ucv.im/coffee

All members and friends are welcome to join. Watch our Sunday service on youtube and then join us for coffee. Visitors welcome. You can come directly after the service, or drop-in at any point.

 

Zoom Update

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Virtual coffee hour hosts

  • John Smith – 1st Sunday
  • Donna – 2nd Sunday:  includes Book group at 12:30 pm
  • Erin – 3rd Sunday
  • Nan – 4th Sunday – includes Refugee committee at 12:30 pm

Usual breakout rooms include: Sermon discussion, open discussion and whatever you suggest.

Volunteer opportunity: We’re looking for someone to host 5th Sundays and be a backup if one of the regulars isn’t available. Training and a nice team available to help.

Facilitators for break out rooms always welcome. There have been rooms for discussion of indigenous studies, anti-racism and could be on the monthly soul matters theme.

If you’re not sure how to contact the hosts, the office staff can help you access an online directory (“Breeze”) or look up contact info for you.

Zoom Practice: We are now meeting once a month on the first Tuesday at 4 pm. Mary, Donna and John facilitate and we usually have Unitarians from across Canada join us.

The series of tech workshops is now complete for now. Contact John Henderson or office staff if you want links to handouts and videos on slack, breeze and what’s app.

Here are some links that might help you make your zoom meetings more interactive:

Zoom Icebreakers: 10 Activities to Energize Your Zoom Meetings

https://teambuilding.com/blog/zoom-games

 

Zoom Youth Group Games

 

https://www.bustle.com/p/21-icebreakers-thatll-make-your-zoom-happy-hours-the-highlight-of-your-day-22774216

 

View at Medium.com

If you use some of these, I’d love to have you post on our googlegroup or members facebook group which ones worked for you.

And here’s an article on limiting zoom fatigue.

https://hbr.org/2020/04/how-to-combat-zoom-fatigue

 

Note from the Board Chair – Jan 1, 2021

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Dear Unitarian friends,

I hope you had a rejuvenating winter break. It is a new year, a fresh start, and a lot of exciting work lies ahead. I have two invitations for you to consider in the coming weeks which both further the mission and the vision of our church.

Because we as Unitarians are committed to creating a more inclusive, compassionate and equitable world, I am organizing a Decolonizing Practices Workshop for staff, board, and members that will be run by professional Indigenous consultants.

I would like us all to have the opportunity to get better informed on decolonizing our practices and how to diversify our organization’s membership and board to include more Indigenous people and persons of colour. We need to identify the barriers to our organization and to develop the solutions. This one-day workshop will also include a half-day on the history and ongoing colonization in Canada.

The Decolonizing Practices Workshop will be in early spring and hopefully live and in person. If Covid prevails, we will pursue an online format. If you are interested in this, please let me know so I have an idea of interest and numbers. If the numbers are high, I may have to organize two workshops. president@vancouverunitarians.ca.

Secondly, I would like to invite you all to an Ideas Forum for the Upgraded Sanctuary to generate ideas together for how the new space could be used and be more productive.

This Ideas Forum will be on Sunday Jan. 17th at 12:30 on zoom. Galen Elfert and Dianne Crosbie will be on hand to answer any questions about the lighting/sound upgrades and the new chairs.

The seed behind the Sanctuary Upgrades was planted by Steven, and furthered by a generous donor. Then we asked ourselves, could our beautiful Sanctuary become a cultural and spiritual destination, a hub for various performance and spiritual groups to meet, worship, rehearse, perform, share ideas?  In this way, could we attract a younger and more diverse demographic to our Church, boosting accessibility by allowing for more varied and inclusive styles of music/art/worship?

We as a congregation are welcoming and wish to diversify our membership. So let us be pro-active and create a space that is inviting to various creative interests, ages and spiritual practices. Let us not only create that space, let us intentionally seek out and invite communities into our space. Our new Membership and Outreach staff person will definitely help with the marketing and outreach end of things, but what else can we envision for this space and how can we fill it?

Come with your ideas and let’s imagine together! I look forward to seeing many of you there and sharing our thoughts.

Best wishes for the New Year,

Diane Brown, UCV Board President.

Trans Day of Remembrance – Nov 20

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We will be acknowledging Trans Day of Remembrance on November 20th.

There are two events to mark in your calendars:

We are very happy to have Morgane Oger present on trans rights in the workplace for our November 18th Action Evening: All Genders Welcome

In addition, for our November 25th Action Evening, Glenn Deefholts will read from his recently published book Genderfluid: A Way of Being

Please click the links above for the action evenings Zoom link and additional information about our speakers. See you there!

Mairy Beam

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Mairy invites you to watch her latest play, What Difference Does it Make? on youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQU6WT6Igs8

This play is set in Vancouver in March 2020 as COVID becomes our new reality.

Here’s more information about Mairy from the enewsletter from Playwrights Theatre Centre.

Mairy Beam is a non-binary playwright and director who recently moved to Vancouver, giving her the opportunity to join the land and water protectors who are fighting the expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. Inspired by the drama in the BC Supreme Court, she has written a documentary theatre piece, Irreparable Harm? A tale of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Arrests. After attending PTC’s Block P workshop, she is producing Irreparable Harm? along with the Sinister Sisters Ensemble. Her recent plays include Body Parts, produced in the New Ideas Festival in Toronto in March 2019; Out and About, produced in 2017 in Vancouver at the 4 x 3 Fest and in Toronto at Gelato Fest; The Next Mary, which was included in PinkFest 2018 in Toronto; and Let Me In, which was read as part of the 2018 Bodacious Series in North Vancouver. She has also directed several plays for Theatre Out of the Box in Toronto.

UCV Connections

At UCV, Mairy is chair of the HR committee, chair of the Earth Spirit Council and very involved in GSA and circle dance.

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Children and Youth RE Fall Update

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Our Youth are very busy this year, many of you will have heard directly from them this past Sunday. This amazing, resilient, group of young people continue to meet for two hours each Sunday and run a Dungeons and Dragons campaign on Wednesday nights.

Children and Youth RE Fall Update

by Kiersten E. Moore

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Coming of Age Orientation night – One mentor’s perspective

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To This I Give My Heart: Coming of Age Orientation

One mentor’s perspective

by Mary Bennett

Seven mentors and seven youth (mentees) gathered in Hewett Centre on Sunday, September 20th, most in person and another 4 via zoom, to begin a year-long journey of getting to know each other. Olivia Hall, youth coordinator, and Kiersten Moore, DRE, facilitated an evening of games and conversations, some one-on-one and some in the whole group. The photo shows us playing “All my friends and neighbours…”

We had a couple of introductory exercises, the first included: what pet would you have if you could have any pet at all (including imaginary ones). Responses included elephants, monkeys, octopuses as well as dogs and cats and one person said, “No thanks. I don’t want a pet.”  

Then we paired off with our partner and were asked to come up with the one thing we would choose if we got to name something to help save humanity. I expect other pairs had the same kind of free-ranging conversation that my partner and I had. The final results were intriguing: phytoplankton; the internet, Steven Spielberg’s computer, fresh air…  What would you choose? Get ready for the zombie apocalypse now in case you’re asked.. 

Each pair will meet on their own once a month. As well as having a bit of fun together, our mission is to  work through the Coming of Age journals* we were given. 

When asked to share what we hoped to get from the program, there were responses of friendship and learning. After the broad concepts, one mentor said,  I just want to get to know my mentee better. The mentee beamed. 

While leaving the hall, a friend said to me: “Who’s the mentor and who’s the mentee? These young folx are so interesting and interested, the hardest part for us adults may be to keep up.”

For myself, I see my role as being a bridge between our religion and this one young person. I’m looking forward to exploring our history especially as my mentee is interested in history. 

Often the young people write their own Credo (statement of belief) and may present to the congregation. If my mentee chooses to do this, I can be a coach and/or cheerleader. Speaking to the congregation, I believe, is an honour and a challenge, an opportunity I have personally appreciated very much and grown from.

Next month, there might be a post by another participant, or a pair, from this program so you can have a glimpse about how it evolves.

 

Report from Harry Potter Camp 2020

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The Hogwarts Camp was a great success this year. We asked participants to let us know what their favorite parts were and how they enjoyed it so it could be shared with the whole congregation! Below is a detailed account of the fun from one of the members. If you are interested in helping volunteer with Youth programming, please check out the CYRE volunteer information page.

I think that this was my favourite Harry Potter camp yet. My favourite parts were the Quidditch matches. I was the commentator for Quidditch, which was fun. My brother enjoyed it too, especially how the leaders let the kids choose some of their own activities. We had two groups, Dumbledore’s Army Creators, and Dumbledore’s Army Explorers. We created a newspaper called the Daily Prophet (I was a reporter!) and also a movie, which is being edited right now. There were lots of familiar kids and also a few new ones. The leaders were kind and funny and energetic. I had a great time 🙂

– Benjamin Malcolm, daily prophet chief reporter, age 9