President's Column
Last issue I tasked about a vacancy we had on our board, well we lucked out and Amy Beltaine has volunteered to serve out the last few months of this unexpired position and stand for election to a full term this fall. Also, there's another reason to congratulate her, as she was ordained as a minister at the UU Congregation of Salem (Oregon.) So, welcome aboard Rev. Beltaine!
2. GA Plans.
We've been working with Kishgraphics for the last several months to develop a new website for CUUPS. Those of you who came to our booth at GA got to see a mock-up for the front page. This week the Board has been drafted into "proofing" the chapter section of the website. We are pushing to get this out and public before Samhain. But we'd rather have it accurate than immediate.
For the first time since 2007, CUUPS will be hosting an official General Assembly Program! Saturday at 1:45pm in rooms 218-9 in the Convention Center CUUPS invites GA registrants to a celebration of the Summer Solstice. If you want to sneak a look at the plans for the service, you can see them on the CUUPS @ UUA GA Facebook group. Also, as always we will have a booth in the exhibit hall, with the other Theological Interest Organizations. This year, they've given us a very nice location next to the UUA Bookstore.
3. Annual Business Meeting We will also have our Annual Business Meeting that evening at 7pm at the CUUPS Condo Unit #807 at 604 S. 3rd Street. This is about 3 blocks from the Convention Center, and since it's offisite CUUPS members who are NOT registered at GA are welcome to participate in the meeting. Even with this, we realize that Louisville, Kentucky is a LONG way from most of our homes, so we're going to *try* to get our meeting online as a webinar or a Google hangout so that you don't have to come to Kentucky to be part of our Annual Meeting. More information about that will be posted as we find out what
resources are available at our meeting site
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| Out For Blood |
Book of the Month
Out For Blood
Margot Adler (Author)
Starting as a meditation on mortality after the illness and death of her husband, Margot Adler read more than 260 vampire novels, from teen to adult, from gothic to modern, from detective to comic. She began wonder why vampires have such appeal in our society now? Why is Hollywood spending billions on vampire films and television series every year?
In the last four decades, going back to Dark Shadows, we have created a very different vampire: the conflicted, struggling-to-be-moral-despite-being-predators vampire. Spike and Angel, Stefan and Damon, Bill and Eric, the Cullens - they are all struggling to be moral despite being predators, as are we. Perhaps our blood is oil, perhaps our prey is the planet. Perhaps Vampires are us.
Margot Adler is a former board member for CUUPS National from late 1980's thru 1996. She is also a long time NPR news reporter, and the author of Drawing Down the Moon, the classic book on Contemporary Paganism, Wicca and Goddess Spirituality. She is also the author of Heretic's Heart, a 1960's memoir.
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CUUPS Bulletin is a publication of the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans, Inc.
The CUUPS Bulletin is available for free to anyone interested in UU-Paganism. To subscribe visit the CUUPS website and fill in the form at the bottom of the webpage.
Corporate Officers: Pres. - David Pollard, Vice Pres. - John Beckett, Secretary - Niko Tarini, Treasurer - Imari Kariotis
At large Board members: Rev. Amy Beltane, Rebecca Crystal, Rev. Dr. Christa Landon, and Joseph Wolfarth.
CUUPS Bulletin Readership:
Apr 2013 - 3,712 Sep 2012 - 3,614
Jun 2012 - 3,549
Dec 2011 - 3,490 May 2011 - 3,295 Mar 2011 - 3,260
Oct 2010 - 3,020
Sep 2010 - 3,015
Jul 2010 - 2,923
May 2010 - 2,831
Mar 2010 - 2,762
Jan 2010 - 2,727
Dec. 2009 - 2,677
Oct. 2009 - 2,668 Jun. 2009 - 2,542 Mar. 2009 - 2,456
Sep. 2008 - 2,352
Jul. 2008 - 2,332
May 2008 - 2,309
Apr. 2008 - 2,263
Mar. 2008 - 2,112
Feb. 2008 - 2,028
Jan. 2008 - 1,720
Dec. 2007 - 1,408
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Greetings!
Welcome to the June 2013 issue of the CUUPS Bulletin. This is a relatively short issue being sent off just as General Assembly is about to start. Here are a few of this month's highlights: - CUUPS will be at the Louisville General Assembly June 19-23. As usual, most of our events will be on Saturday - for the first time since 2007, our Summer Solstice ritual is part of the official GA Program.
- A beautiful prayer which was featured on the Facebook page of our sister organization in England, the Unitarian Earth Spirit Network.
- CUUPS Prison Ministry Coordinator, the Rev. Christa Landon has an article about May and Beltaine.
- Lastly, Margot Alder has a new booklet available to those who have a Kindle e-reader.
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Bring in the May, Beltane & Sexuality
By Rev. Christa Landon, D.Min.
We know these things to be true, of the world and of our own souls: Winter came and passed in its season, and now spring returns, and the fruitful summer shall come. When the sun sets on April 30, Beltane begins, the ancient feast of flowers, when the Goddess and the God of the greenwood discover one another. And because of their delight, new life shall be generated. We know these things to be true, of the world and of our own souls. Beltane begins the light half of the year, the season of outward growth. In Minnesota it begins the planting season; we break the ground. We open our homes and our hearts to the sweet breath of spring and hear the sweet music of birds in courtship. We represent the sacred marriage of the God and Goddess by dancing in a ring around a Maypole, which is sometimes itself wreathed in flowers. The Maypole is one of those survivals of ancient Celtic Paganism which could go back millennia. I will read from one of the historical records, entitled, "Anatomy of Abuses" by Phillip Stubbes, 1583. "The order of [their Maygames] is thus. [The night before] May [Day] ... all the young men and maids, old men and wives run where they spend all the night in pleasant past-times. In the morning they return bringing with them birch and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies withall... "But the chiefest jewel they bring from thence is their Maypole, which they bring home with great veneration, as thus, They have twenty or forty yoke of oxes, every ox having a sweet nosegay of flowers placed at the tip of his horns, and these draw home the Maypole (this ... idol, rather) which is covered all over with flowers and herbs bound round with strings from the top to the bottom, and sometimes painted with variable colors, with two or three hundred men, women, and children following it with great devotion. And thus being reared up, with handkerchiefs and flags hovering in the top, they strew the ground round about bind green boughs around it, set up summer halls, bowers, and arbors hard by it. And then fall they to dance about it like as the heathen people did... "I have heard it credibly reported...that of forty, threescore, or a hundred maids going to the woods overnight, there have scarcely the third part of them returned home [as virgins]. These be the fruits which their past-times bring forth." Samuel P. Huntington has noted that the Islamic Fundamentalists and the Puritans have a great deal in common. "Both are reactions to the stagnation and corruption of existing institutions; advocated a return to a purer and more demanding form of their religion, preach work, order, and discipline." [Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, Simon and Shuster, 1996.] That is what believers understand. But the religion their revolutions seek to "restore" is a fantasy of the good old days; all religious scholars agree that Fundamentalism emerges only as a reaction AGAINST modernity, and is never really a reproduction of the past. Fundamentalist revolutions of any faith invariably end in repression, bloodshed and -- unless they are stopped -- nightmare theocracies. [See Barbara Ehrenreich's article "Christian Wahhabists" in The Progressive (online at www.progressive.org).] So how can Pagans respond, in this time and this place, with those who are now with us, to the coming holy day of Beltane? We dance, we sing, we celebrate the sacredness of sexuality. We honor the sexuality of lovers who discover each other in joy and delight, and respond with devoted care for their partner's whole being. We uphold the equal dignity and rights of the Masculine and the Feminine. We hold that the liberty and the True Will of each person is sacred. We understand that true consent never exists in relationships of unequal power. We honor the sexuality of the aging, whose hearts too need the warmth of love and caress, who are so often disrespected by the commercial obsession with youth and conventional beauty. We resist the cultural bias against elders being sexually active. We decry the efforts of the health industry to prevent elders in care from living with their lovers, and the laws which financially penalize elders if they marry. We honor the vulnerable sexuality of children. In the name of Artemis, protector of the virgins and wild things, and we protect the right of children to be educated about sexuality in age-appropriate ways and to be unmolested by adults. We uphold the importance of healthy boundaries so that children can grow at their own pace to know a sexuality undamaged by the imposition of fear, power, or commercialism. We know that the Virgin goddess blasted those who dared to blast the rosebud to force it to open before its time. We honor the maiden as well as the Mother and Crone. Paganism upholds the Sacredness of Sexuality and pleasure as a radical alternative to most religions in the past two millennia, which treated both the natural world and the flesh as the domain of the devil or at best as an illusion, or distraction from Spirituality. Christian detractors try to reduce Paganism to mere egotistical and short-sighted hedonism, "sex, drugs, and rock and roll." They want to impose their madonna/whore dichotomy on us, as if there were no third way between sex only for procreation and impersonal sex without responsibility. The media play into their hands with lurid portrayals. And there are some - not many but some - who are drawn to Paganism because that is what they want, not a religion, not a transforming faith in the sacredness of Nature. These last sometimes come as predators among us. In the depths of our tradition there is a true alternative to the commercialization of sex, whereby people treat one another and their own bodies like commodities to be ranked, bought, sold, and discarded. In the depths of our religion, there is a source of healing for all those whose sexuality has been wounded by people who took advantage of their vulnerabilities. In the depths of our religion, there is a foundation for a new sexual ethic, an ethic which values pleasure AND the well-being and freedom of choice, an ethic which recognizes the responsibilities inherent in relationships of unequal power, and ethic which honors the whole of our natures and needs and community. Blessed Be, Christa Landon �Christa Landon. All rights reserved. For permissions contact cuupstc@gmail.com
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What's Happening with CUUPS Media?
CUUPS has a brand new website, the CUUPS Bulletin (this publication) is coming out more frequently than in the past couple years, there's a very active and growing presence on Facebook, also we've got a 8x year Prisoners Companion coming out for Pagan/ Earth-Centered members of the Church of the Larger Fellowship - on the other hand, The CUUPS Podcast has been on hiatus for the past year, and several Pagan and UU organizations are actively making webinars and video productions, we have yet to produce any for CUUPS.
For most of the past year, much of our focus has been on getting our re-vamped website up and running. Now that's been accomplished, we're trying to figure out our next steps. Do we resume production of our audio podcast, or try a video podcast or webinars. The biggest question that we don't have a ready answer to - is what would be most useful for you? We will also be asking people this at General Assembly. If you have talents along these lines, and would like to help us, please let us know.
In the meantime, to get a hold of the past 27 issues of the CUUPS podcast, either go to iTunes and enter "CUUPS" in the search bar. Or, go to the CUUPS Podcast webpage and download them directly.
If your chapter or congregation is doing something you'd like featured via CUUPS media, please let us know! You can contact us at podcast@cuups.org
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Chalice Lighting for Midsummer
The light is at the height of its power
The Sun Shines fiercely.
But now that power must wane
Descending into darkness to be reborn.
Light and darkness dance in the crucible of desire and bring forth life.
So, we light this chalice flame to represent life, hope, love and laughter.
Yvonne Aburrow is active with the Unitarian Earth Spirit Network in England. This comes from her book Many Names.
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CUUPS Annual Meeting
The Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans will hold their 2013 Annual Business Meeting at 7pm Saturday, June 22nd, 2013. The location is at Unit #807 at 604 S. 3rd Street. This is three blocks from the Louisville Convention Center where the UUA will be holding the General Assembly.The reason it is off-site from the General Assembly is so that CUUPS Members who are not registered to General Assembly can attend. While this is great for our members in the Louisville area - it's still a problem for other members across the continent. So, for the first time, we're going to try to have some sort of live internet presence - possibly a webinar, or a Google hangout. We've got wifi at our meeting location so, it's possible - depending on their bandwidth. Once we're at the condo, and see who we have with the right kind of technical expertise available we will post info about it on the CUUPS Facebook page, and possibly our website as well. What will we do at the Annual Meeting? This is the main time each year that our boardmembers get to talk to the membership face-to-face, or themselves face-to-face for that matter. So, we'll put together a Nominating Committee to help find new folks for next years board, and we'll select the candidates for this year's board election. We'll also have reports about certain aspects of CUUPS - Imari will speak about our finances, Rev. Christa Landon will speak out what we've been doing in prison ministry, and David Pollard will speak about various media projects. Also, the folks present (in person or via internet) get a chance to ask questions.
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New Chapters Are On the Way!
Over the past couple months a few new chapters have popped up across the country. Honestly, we've been so focused on getting the new website up and running with the existing chapters that we've been a bit slow in getting them aboard - but we did want to publicly acknowlege these groups: We've also got several groups working on becoming chapters.
As a reminder, instead of having just one board member handle all chapter requests - as of last Fall we've divided them up among four of our board members, and please note we have a new rep for the Central Time Zone, John Beckett who just recently joined out board:
Eastern Zone: If your chapter is in the Eastern Time Zone, and you live north of Virginia, your contact is Niko Tarini.
If you like in the Southeast, your contact is Joseph Wolfarth.
Central Zone: If your chapter is in the Central Time Zone, your contact is the John Beckett.
Mountain Zone: If your chapter is in the Mountain Time Zone, your contact is Rebecca Crystal.
Pacific Zone: If your chapter is in the Pacific Time Zone (or in Alaska or Hawaii), your contact is Imari Kariotis.
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