UPUCC Continues 'Hybrid' Worship (In-Person and Online as well!)
- Don your masks and ‘join in’ for our joyful steps toward ‘normalcy’!
- As an unabashedly liberal group, in this instance we will move more cautiously, asking all present to wear masks and socially distance while indoors. The service (and future worship services) will be live streamed to allow all to participate.
- Children are certainly welcome. We continue holding children’s classes, keeping protocol with masks, physical distancing and hand sanitizer use. Please come prepared for outdoor play, weather permitting!
- Youth Group meets each Sunday at 12:00 pm. Contact tyler@upucc.org for details.
Sunday 10:30 am Worship Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87850109590?pwd=UloxR1BqWG9na01FM0FESmJ1MWRCUT09
Meeting ID:
878 5010 9590
Password: 001672
Dial in- 929 436 2866
Sunday Forum 9 am - Join in person or online:
May 15th – Compost Now: We’ll discuss how starting a composting ministry in UPUCC continues our climate justice work and how partnering with Compost Now will make this easier. We’ll cover all things composting, including why we need to compost, how composting can further reduce our carbon footprint, what can and can’t be composted, strategies for keeping compost during the week, and more. Bring your questions!
May 22nd – Active Hope regroup: As we (hopefully) emerge from the pandemic, we’ll revisit the book, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in Without Going Crazy, to explore ways to intentionally move forward. We’ll review the principles of Coming from Gratitude, Honoring our Pain for the World, Seeing with New Eyes, and Going Forth as we explore practices that help us identify our own hopes for the future and ways to deliberately live into those hopes.
May 29th – Memorial Day Weekend (no forum)
Forum Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83482803068?pwd=TFF2eXdCd2JQdGdNOHdMOGFiTmdKUT09
Meeting ID: 834 8280 3068
Passcode: 918716
Dial in: 301 715 8592
Monday Evening Progressive Bible Study Offers Lenten Study Mondays 7 pm
Meeting each Monday evening virtually at 7:00 p.m. Facilitated by Anthony Neff anthonerd@gmail.com
Through May 23 Study on the Gospel of Mark
Rather than focus on Mark as a purely written account, we will explore the role of Mark in a predominantly oral culture. Recent scholarship hypothesizes an original 'performance scenario' of Mark prior to its capture in writing. This analysis argues that the performance of Mark itself was a means to draw audiences into a non-imperial world based on mutual service rather than hierarchical domination. What could we take away from Mark if we viewed it as an oral performance told by a storyteller? Will 'hearing Mark' as a complete story, rather than just reading specific verses in isolation, change our understanding? We may even attempt to 'tell the story' to each other!
May 16th – Who Performed Mark? So what would happen if we tried to “listen” to the full story in the Gospel of Mark instead of reading select passages? Because this would take at least an hour and a half to get through the entire gospel, we’ll break the story up into two sessions. (Yes, this means we won’t be “listening to the full story,” but it will give us an idea of what the process would be like – and allows time for discussion.) Before we start our listening, we will review the Plot, Setting and Characters of the story, along with techniques used to enrich the telling of the story.
May 23rd – Listening to Mark, Pt 2: We will finish “listening” to the story of Mark told by our professional storyteller (via video), and talk about the experience. Does it lead to new understandings or appreciation of the story? Would we want to attempt to try to tell the story ourselves at UPUCC at some point?
Monday Evening Study Zoom link:
https://zoom.us/j/94118673022?pwd=NHNSNmFiS3lWT0lWRU9HMzQwR0FLdz09
Meeting ID: 941 1867 3022
Passcode: 674350
Tuesday Book Group 6 pm online
Beginning May 17th, the Tuesday Night Book Group will be reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Dr. Kimmerer is a “mother, scientist, decorated professor and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She eloquently and beautifully uses the indigenous cultures’ sacred plant, sweetgrass, as a poetic metaphor to explain the origins of plant, animal, and human life on Mother Earth, their intertwined respectful and reciprocal relationships with each other, the loss of this reciprocity, and the hope of ecological restoration to return the gifts of Mother Earth and the balance that once was.”
Contact Kathy Dobbs kdcorgi56@gmail.com if you would like to be part of this weekly online group.
Saturday Meditation Group online 1st Saturdays 10 am Practiced for centuries and is well-known for its many benefits, meditation can reduce stress, lower blood pressure, reduce anxiety, increase compassion, and more! UPUCC is carrying on this ancient practice- each first Saturday of the month at 10 am, for one hour. We enjoy this time out from busy-ness to focus and redirect our minds, and invite you to come join us. Absolutely no experience required. Contact Joanne Kennedy Frazer jkennedyfrazer@aol.com if you would like to be part of this monthly group.
If you've missed our virtual worship services, you can find the videos here.