Category: Recent News

The monthly e-newsletter selects about 5 news posts with this category. Priorities are news relevant to a wide number of people and especially of interest to visitors or new folk.

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

 

January, 2021 – Imagining The Future For UCV

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We are travelling the “road ahead”, our ministerial transition. We have made great progress on our first developmental/transition task, “Coming to terms with history”, and we continue to build our history wall. Please visit or revisit UCV Stories to discover our past and to add your own memories and stories.

We begin our second transition task this month – “Discovering a new identity”. The UUA’s Janus Workbook, created to support ministerial transitions, describes this second transition task as “Illuminating the congregation’s unique identity, its strengths, its needs, and its challenges”. Simply put, it is time to imagine the future we want to become, to stretch ourselves, to look into our crystal balls, and to use our imaginations to reshape our reality and transform UCV into the congregation we dream to be. Our imaginations are the magic that will get us there.

Our Soul Matters theme for January is “Imagination”, and Reverend Lara explains in her January 2021 In the Interim that we will explore imagination in various ways during this month. Unleashing our imaginations will help our Vancouver Unitarians world come alive – an exciting step in our “road ahead”!

from Transition Team, Rob Dainow, Chair

 

Food Security, Youth, and UCV

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UCV has made a donation of $12,000 to the Broadway Youth Resource Centre (BYRC) towards a food security program with grants received from Vancouver Foundation’s Robert and Anna Koerner Foundation Community Fund. BYRC is a one-stop youth space that provides a wide range of social, health, education, employment, and life skills services to youth. The food security program focuses on food justice and food security for youth, in particular in the East Vancouver area. It will offer Fresh Food Kits that include produce, dairy, and proteins to youth and families, weekly Food Kits that include non-perishable food items and pantry goods, as well as hot meals for youth available on a drop-in basis during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also gives youth the opportunity to develop cooking skills, to learn about how to grocery shop on a budget and how to access more sustainable sources of food including community gardens, food co-ops and food hubs.

More about our financial support for organizations

Have you noticed – The Swamp Has Been Cleared!

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Yes, it is true. Take a look at the entrance to the pre-school. Impressive new flagstones and underneath, a new drainage system. And no more alligator sightings! We also have new tenants, Vancouver Child Study Centre which precipitated major upgrades in the pre-school area of Hewett Centre and the Memorial Society (founded here at the church) is now renting from us. Both represent the kind of community organizations consistent with our mission as well as providing desirable revenue to UCV.

 

 

Imagination Month for Kids and Families

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Kiersten is currently on a well-deserved break. As she puts it, “I’ve put down every ball I had up in the air.”

So here are some ideas and invitations to be part of our various programs for kids, youth and families. And first a chalice lighting for this month:

May the light of this chalice, spark our imaginations.

May it lead us back to the stories and characters

that romp and roam the corridors of our minds.

In the warmth of this chalice, may we remember again

how thankful we are to have others who love us,

and guide and accompany us, as our own stories unfold.

The Soul Matters theme for January is Imagination — so watch out! or better still, dive in!

If you’d like to receive the package for families, please let Kiersten know.

December saw a flurry of activities in the kids, youth and family programs.

The highlight might have been the Winter Solstice play. The kids tell me the hardest part was the two minutes of sitting silently.

For me, that was also the most moving part.

Kiersten did an amazing job of writing, casting and directing.

As well, though programs on zoom happened regularly coordinated by Olivia, our youth coordinator, volunteers including Mairy and Nan and the Tween ukulele group with Donna Brown.

UCV and our young people are always a fount of imagination. What could possibly happen when we actually focus our attention on that theme for the whole month?

 

Can you imagine yourself as part of the extensive team who plan, facilitate or support programs for our kids and families?

I’ve taken on a role to assist with communications and especially multigenerational activities and I can tell you it’s very nourishing and Kiersten is a dream to work with. It’s a sincere pleasure to support her and therefore support our families and the broader congregation.

For a list of kids, youth and family programs with contact and date/time, click here.

by Mary Bennett

 

Invitation to Fire Communion Sharing

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Hello, UCV friends,

Patrick Dubois and I, Mary Bennett,  are again leading the Fire Communion worship service on the last Sunday in December (the 27th). Wendy Bryan will once again be “Mistress of the Cauldron”, ready to toss on a sprig of rosemary to mark your contributions.

We will miss seeing you line up in the aisles with your sprig of rosemary to toss on the burning cauldron but have dreamed up a few ways you can participate. It is a communion after all, even though we won’t be physically in the same place!

  • Leavings and Longings: Send me about 3 sentences explaining a “leaving” (loss, change, moving on) over the past year or a “longing” for the coming year. These will be read aloud during the service.

  • The context can be seen in the order of service below. Your submissions might be related to Covid, or not. Just email them to me, and I’ll be grouping them and possibly editing a bit for brevity. Please make clear to me whether I should use your name and if so, whether your first name, your full name or your family name (eg “the Bennetts”).

  • Create a cauldron of your own to use during the service on Sunday December 27 at home. You could burn symbolic sprigs or something written on a (small) piece of paper. Your cauldron could be a pillar candle immersed in a large bowl of water. If you use sprigs, it’s good to dry them for a week or so first.

  • For safety have a fire extinguisher, blanket and/or large jug of water nearby, especially if you’re with kids. Besides the obvious, it’s a good demo for how to safely enjoy the pleasures of candles with minimal risk.

  • Our communion, our togetherness, is important. We want to feel that we are all together once more mourning the past and looking forward to the future, however you set up your own environment to experience that. Whether or not you decide to light something afire to symbolize what you are leaving behind or perhaps light a fresh candle for what you are longing for, you could take this time to share your “leavings” and then “longings”. If you are watching the service alone, you might want to initiate a new journal to record your responses. If you want to really go big, the “recipe” for our flaming cauldron can be found here https://maryunitarian.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/fire-communion/#more-434  It looks exciting but is actually very safe. (I had so many inquiries in the past, I made a blog post.) Flash paper, again, is exciting and actually safe.

All are welcome to participate. All ages and stages. I’d love to hear from kids or family groups.

You’re free to forward this invitation to anyone in our congregation.

Thanks.

Mary, Patrick and Wendy

(excerpt from Order of Service)

Lighting the Cauldron of Transformation

Communion

A Litany of Leavings

We will share messages from our congregation about losses and endings over the past year as we add sprigs of rosemary to the cauldron to transform our losses.

We’ll have a period of music: At home, you may share aloud or write about your own losses and leavings from 2020

A Litany of Longings

We will then share messages of what you are longing for. The past year has required many of us to leave “normal” life behind. We will share some of our congregational members’ longings and then light candles as the cauldron consumes the leavings.

During the period of music, you are invited to share what you are most longing for in the coming year.

 

Our UCV Congregational History Wall 

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Overview of Our History Wall Project

Effective transition after a settled minister leaves starts with a collective review of how the congregation has been shaped and formed. It is a way to claim and honour our past, our major milestones and evolution and engage and honour our griefs and conflicts. It is done in a spirit of community and mutual respect.

If you are interested in particular about the online wall, information is at the bottom of this page.

Board Announcement about the Congregational History Wall
Presented by Leslie Hill on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020

As you’ve been hearing for a few weeks now, the Transition Team is working hard to establish a Congregational History Wall; a physical one in Hewett Hall and an online one on our website.

Loren Mead, writing about a change in ministers, says:
“Every congregation is strengthened immeasurably by its history, but every congregation has also been deeply wounded by its past. It is both the heir and the victim of its story.”

As I’ve been looking backward at the decades portrayed on our History Wall, I’ve found answers to questions I didn’t know I had. I’ve learned that Greenpeace wasn’t the only organization that had a founding meeting here. Vancouver’s Gay Alliance Toward Equality (GATE) found space here when it was denied by other institutions. Alice James booked the Fireside Room for the first meeting of the Vancouver Status of Women. She and Phillip Hewett became agents of change together; she fed him some ideas that he incorporated into sermons. Members of that group later reported to Phillip that a UCV Associate Minister was sexually abusing some of his clients in the Unitarian Family Life Centre. From the ashes of that debacle, Alice James chaired a committee to work out the restructuring of that organization and that lead to the founding of Oak Counselling, which still offers its services at UCV.

This congregation’s history is rich and detailed and this is our opportunity to add to it. You don’t have to have been here a long time to have favourite memories, poignant moments, troubling concerns, inspirational awakenings. Maybe it’s been a sermon, or social action, or a standout Forum, or the work of our young people.

Scroll down to learn more about the Online History Wall or contact Leslie Hill if you have contributions for the Physical History Wall in Hewett Hall.

Ministerial Transition Team

Learn More About the Ministerial Transition

Progress Photos of Our History Wall in Hewett Centre

Our Online History Wall – UCV Stories

For those among us who prefer to contribute from a distance, we have an Online History Wall – UCV Stories. You can contribute all kinds of digital documents – texts, documents, pictures, and audio and video files – all from the comfort of your own home! We are also creating a digital archive of what is on our History Wall in Hewett Hall so that everything will be in one place.

Go to padlet.com/vancouverunitarians/stories to add your stories and peruse the many posts. The user-friendly site includes a practice area. Remember, this is a work in progress!

Paul Prescod has taken the lead to set up this Online History Wall and he welcomes more volunteers, so please contact him if you are keen to get involved!

Life Member Award presented to Keith Wilkinson

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by Mary Bennett

At the AGM on November 15, I got to deliver these words and propose the motion to make Keith Wilkinson a Life Member. It passed unanimously. Of course.

Unitarian Church of Vancouver

Life Member Award

November 15, 2020

By Mary Bennett

I received the UCV Life Member award in 2017 and so was given the honour of making a motion for another UCV life member. I enthusiastically accepted.

In June of 2017, Rev. Steven Epperson sent me an email several days before that Sunday saying he hoped I’d be at UCV that week. I was a bit taken aback. And a little suspicious.

For starters, I was in those days always there on Sunday mornings and secondly any email I’d ever received from Steven previously was more about getting something on the website or such request.

So I was actually relieved when I was NOT named as an unsung hero award as I’d begun to wonder if someone had nominated me for that award. I’m not particularly “unsung” around UCV so I was concerned that the intent of that award had been misunderstood.

I was very touched and, at least for a while, I was moved to do even more than what I had been doing.

The congregation gives out this award only occasionally and to people who have served both this congregation and the wider Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist movement.

The person recommended by the board has served this congregation in many capacities including board member, treasurer, membership committee chair, finance and canvass.

I’ll have a bit more to say about the proposed recipient, but first would like to put to you a motion:

MOTION: that LIFE membership be awarded to Keith Wilkinson in recognition of exceptional and long service to our congregation and to the wider Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist community.

Moved:  by Mary Bennett; Seconded by Mairy Beam, Board Secretary.

So now I can address Keith directly without him wondering if it’s him we’re talking about.

Welcome to the UCV Lifer Club, Keith.

The award didn’t come with any instructions, a manual or even a position description or spreadsheet. 


You and I have often collaborated on Unitarian tasks where I have grand ideas and, although you also have grand ideas, I count on you to put those ideas into a manual or a spreadhsheet so they can be shared with others.

Let’s make sure the next recipient gets some terms of reference so when their friends ask what it means, they’ll be able to answer more clearly than I was able to when I was asked. “Um. It’s just an honour,” I’d say.

My basic understanding of the award is that we are now officially UCV “Lifers” – UCV can’t get rid of us and we can’t get rid of UCV.

Further, I’ve taken it to give me permission to go where “no one has gone before.” In my case, I found myself speaking up with my own opinion more often even if I felt it was out of sync with others.

I also found myself more carefully considering my various involvements here. To some degree I accepted the award as permission to “rest on my laurels” or at least to pick my spots. Three years later I’m still in that discernment process as I let go of some responsibilities and get involved in some new areas.

So in your case, this might mean you’d give up on making spread sheets for committees or conversely would feel empowered to make spreadsheets whether or not asked!

Many people on this call will have worked with Keith in one capacity or another but might not know as much about his involvement in the Canadian Unitarian Council. So I reached out to some of his CUC board colleagues to send their comments and congratulations.

Here’s a message from Vyda Ng, CUC Executive Director

Keith was a member of the CUC Board of Trustees, and its President for two years. During that time, Keith brought an increased sense of organization, introduced efficient processes, and became the Board’s ‘policy wonk.’ He combed through CUC policies, updated the Board Policy Manual, reviewed and revised other documentation, and left the Board with a set of well-organized documents.

It was my pleasure to work with Keith – his dedication to and love of the national Unitarian Universalist community shone through.

And from Jane Ebbern, Calgary Unitarian, and past president of CUC.

Keith was such a wise member of our CUC board – always calm and steady in times of stress and great at de-escalating a situation. I would serve on any board with him at any time in future.

And when he wasn’t being wise, he was great fun to drink red wine with (lots of quantity and quality) and discuss the issues of the world. I only regret that he doesn’t live in Calgary so I could see him more often.

This award is an honour well deserved.

Jane Ebbern, Past President CUC Board of Trustees.

And from our own Kiersten Moore, CUC Board member currently.

Keith was outgoing President when I came on the CUC Board in 2018. His guidance through updating and clarifying the Policy manual was so graceful. He made the effort engaging and understandable instead of tedious. I have enjoyed his wisdom and calm leadership both at the CUC and here at Vancouver Unitarians.

–Kiersten Moore, BC Rep for CUC Board of Trustees 2018–present.

CONGRATULATIONS KEITH. Let’s together for a coffee or glass of wine soon and make up some Terms of Reference.

Many notes of congratulation and appreciation appeared in the chat at this point!