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Fawn Smith

Forming Church Youth Group, 6-8th grade

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UUFF is in exploration to form a new Youth Group (6-8th grade) who will meet together regularly to support one another’s interests and accomplishments, learn and enforce the core values, and to just have a some fun. They would meet Sunday’s at 10am, plus other times as agreed!

Some of the things we would do in the Youth Group include attending theater performances – many times in which one of our children or youth is performing. We enjoy going on group hikes, and other fun outdoor activities. And we also like to host movie and pizza nights at the church.

These kind of activities depend on our members and friends caring for and participation to provide activities for our youth. Sign up to get to know our youth, and help them learn the UU values by your example! Sign up Here: I’ll Help RE!

Aug 25: Meditation & Change: A Reflection on the Monkey Mind

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Led by Rev. Jim Parrish.

Religious (and non-religious) folks talk about having a “spiritual practice” quite a bit, a practice of connecting with your inner self, or a sense of connecting with “something larger” than the self. A spiritual practice can be as simple as being fully present to the washing of dishes, walking in nature or, as referenced in this service, learning a meditation technique. I practice Vipassana meditation taught by S N Goenka from a line of Buddhist teachers – India to Burma and back to India. It is a mind/body integration kind of meditation that I find foundational to my spiritual practice. There are many other Vipassana practices that I think are very useful as well, and I’m going to explore them more. However, I do recommend this particular practice as a starting place. It is not easy to learn, the training using nine days of silence to build the practice, but it is thorough. I find that indeed, it can bring balance and equanimity to my thinking/feeling about life and its many vicissitudes, so I might make better decisions and not take things so personally. It’s not perfect, but as human systems go, meditation is a pretty good tool for getting along. Enjoy.

This is a link to the video shared demonstrating Anapana, or a breath meditation technique that is used to train for the full SN Goenka Vipassana technique. And this is a link to the Vipassana Center website.

A Bit of a Sabbatical

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Hi Y’all,

My Gratitude and Thanks to UUFF for a Sabbatical! As many know, I took June as a Sabbatical month from ministry to do some reflection, personal work – both physical and mental, some grieving, and to catch my breath. It was a good start, and I appreciated it so much! Besides enjoying my backyard mockingbird babies (second batch), I wrote my fathers Eulogy (the one that should have been given at his memorial), and that helps my continued work on other places of grief, love, and relations that are important to me. It takes time to process life, and we should all have this time when we need it. Part of the unfairness of our economic system is the lack of time for people to take care of themselves properly, let alone someone else, as we should… but I’ll come back to that another time.

For July I’ll be available now and again as I take Study/Leave time. I’ll be in the office part time, reading, writing, meeting with leadership, and doing some pastoral care. Check with Fawn in the office and she can get hold of me if needed, and not on a “do not disturb” part of the leave. Otherwise, we have leadership and volunteers for worship and pastoral care that are doing a wonderful job. At the end of July and beginning of August I’ll be on a silent retreat, then a week of time with family. The rest of August is work to get ready for the beginning of the church year in September! Second Sunday in September is our “Water Ingathering” where we fill our fountain and community Joys and Concerns bowl with water reflecting our Principles to begin the Fellowship’s year!

I’m looking forward to our Fall Season together! I love having New UU classes, new themes for the year to work with, and a dialogue around taking the Fellowship into the future. We shall have some fun together with a “UUFF Bake Off (and chili!) event end of September, so be thinking about recipes! I hope we will create more Music this year, open up Religious Exploration and worship, do more Social Justice work, and whatever else rocks us and the community – bringing our Principles to bear and into reality!

Peace,

Rev. Jim