AtholUU – E-Newsletter – February 1, 2017

First Church Unitarian of Athol
E-Newsletter – February 1, 2017

** Potluck Lunch @ Edith’s this Sunday – noon **   
Happy Candlemas or Imbolc or Ground Hogs Day
Religious Freedom issues below

EVENTS

Winter Vacation Potluck at “Edith’s Fireplace” (Edith & Donna’s home)
THIS SUNDAY
Date:  Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017
Time:  noon. 12:00 PM.
Info:  Please bring a dish to share.

February 12 – Building Social Justice Movements presentation in Orange
Interfaith Meeting —

Steve & Kathy are going if you would like to join them.

Laura Wagner of UU Mass Action to speak to people in the North Quabbin community about Building Social Justice Movements.  She will look at how an understanding of our past can impact our work in the present.  She will also speak about moving away from an issue focused way of thinking about justice and towards a model that recognizes the way in which the many pathways toward justice intersect.  More information about this organization may be found at:  http://www.uumassaction.org/

First Universalist Church
31 North Main Street
Orange MA

Schedule
10:00 AM – Service, followed by Coffee hour and light refreshments
12 PM — Noon   Gathering with Laura Wagner for question and answer period

Please feel free to come to both or either event.

Board of Management Meeting is Sunday, February 26, 2017, at noon, please bring a sandwich and Edith will make a soup.  We can hear about the Orange Interfaith meeting that Kathy and Steve will be attending.

We come back together for regular worship services:
Ingathering Worship Service
Sunday, March 19, 2016
   on the First day of Spring

COMMUNITY NOTES:

Your minister still has a mystery illness that has her vocal chords “red, swollen and angry.”  The Strep throat is gone.  But my speaking is still limited to a few minutes a day.  Otherwise, I type.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of Erin Pollard.  Erin briefly attended our church one fall, when her work schedule made it difficult to attend her regular church. Erin died on January 7, 2017 after a brief struggle with cancer. She was 36 years old. Her obituary can be found at http://atholdailynews.com/obituaries/erin-i-pollard.

Greetings from my predecessor Rev. Ralph Clarke  “to those who might still remember me.”  Rev. Clarke is presently the minister of the UU church in Mendon Uxbridge, MA.
“Yuup…” he said in a good old fashioned Downeast accent  “I’m down to one church now.” 

PROPOSED NEW MISSION STATEMENT

Paula Robinson proposed some nice grammar edits:

FCU Mission Statement        
January 14, 2017

We seek the truth in love and to help one another as a diverse spiritual community that is committed to compassion toward all living beings, social justice for all and the freedom to think and to learn. 

From:  Rev. Marilyn
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
All church’s need to be vigilant about the present attempts to limit our  Religious Freedom.   As of this writing, there are two major concerns that I see.   If you would like to discuss this, please hit “return” to me only.  I will see what people are interested in doing and follow up.

1)  Targeting one religion for discrimination or worse.   Example:  targeting Muslim Immigrants entering the United States, even if they are US citizens or have green cards.

2)  Using a limited exclusively Christian definition of religion, to ignore the religious liberty of other religions.  For example, the Pipeline being dug through North Dakota’s sacred Native American lands is not considered a threat to religious liberty. 

From the leader of our UUA New England Region:

Blessings … for the intense work ahead as we all do everything in our power to manifest beloved community in the face of all that stands against it.

In faith,
Sue

Rev. Sue Phillips
New England Regional Lead

IN CLOSING:
  Speaking of building walls … .this poem seems quite apt, especially near the end.

Mending Wall
By Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:  <—–
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”