WSUU Mid-Week Connection 

May you enjoy these invitations to resilience resources and spiritual practices, beloveds!
April 29, 2020 

Resilience Practices:
Naming 
Loss and Gratitude
 
An aspect of resilience practice includes naming and honoring our losses. Loss comes to us in many forms. It may be the death of a family member, a friend, a pet.  It may come in the loss of a home, a job, a relationship, a community, or a way of life.

In this moment, many of us are experiencing sudden loss:  a loss that occurs without warning and leaves no opportunity to prepare.  Some of us are experiencing a mbiguous loss:  a loss that provides no closure, perhaps a physical absence or a psychological one.  And some of us are experiencing c umulative loss:  multiple losses occurring at the same time or one after another, leaving us overwhelmed and with no time to process and integrate our experiences.

There is power in naming what we are experiencing.  As we breathe in and breathe out, and acknowledge - to ourselves, to a trusted friend, to a therapist, to a religious professional, to a family member - an honest accounting of our losses, we can begin to understand how held we are by a vast love.  

As we name our losses, the gifts of our lives become revealed to us.  And the revelation is most effective when we are the ones experiencing it, without anyone shoulding on us.  Only you can know and name what you are grateful for, in the midst of sudden, ambiguous, and cumulative loss. And naming and honoring your gratitudes is also an essential resilience practice.

I hold you in my heart, beloveds.
 
In faith,
Rev. Deanna Vandiver
Bridge Minister, WSUU
Affiliated  Community Minister for Love and Liberation, CLF
The Westside UU BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) community with the support of Rev. Deanna has arranged a  Pastoral Listening Session with Rev. Joseph Santos-Lyons (he/him) on Friday, May 1st at 5 PM Pacific time . This is a BIPOC-only gathering and will be accessed by Zoom conferencing.  If you identify as BIPOC and want to know more about this gathering, please contact WSUU Board Vice President  Roseanne Lorenzana

April 30-May 3, 2020 -

A very special resilience gift from New Orleans, Louisiana - 
Music for your body and soul!

WWOZ Presents Jazz Festing In Place: An On-Air Festival! WWOZ will broadcast 8 hours each day- 9am - 5pm Pacific Time, the same days and hours as the originally-scheduled New Orleans Jazz Fest! Tune in at  wwoz.org
Contemplative Moment

Need a few moments of calm contemplation? Take a breath in and out and click here to enjoy a beautiful gift from Chris Smellow, Music Director for Cedars UU Church, who wrote and performs Song of Celestial Love in this lovely video (4:11).

Creative Practice

A creative practice invitation from the Frye Art Museum - a Vegetable Stamping Activity that you can do at home with what you have in your kitchen - inspired by the work of Seattle-based artists Rob Rhee and Francesca Lohmann (6:28).

Click here to play with your food!
Community Connection Podcast
In partnership with South Seattle Emerald, Town Hall Seattle presents  Life on the Margins with c o-hosts Marcus Harrison Green (who preached at WSUU in January), Enrique Cerna, and Jini Palmer. In each bi-weekly installment of this residency podcast, they engage with the narratives and experiences of Seattle.



Resilience Resources in our wider UU community:

DRUUMM - Diverse Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries - a ministry for Black, Brown, & Native/Indigenous folks (BIPOC) in Unitarian Universalism, is offering a gathering explicitly for people identifying as black, indigenous, and people of color to cultural and spiritual practices of resilience and care. RSVP here.

BLUU - Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism - invites Black Unitarian Universalists and all Black people to join in online worship: Learn more here.

EqUUal Access - all Disabled Unitarian Universalists are invited to join EqUUal Access for online Worship and Connection.  Learn more here.

Our Unitarian Universalist Association has several publishing arms, each of which feeds the soul in different ways. Click here to learn more about UU publications available to you now.


Feeding your spirit, expanding your mind, working for justice
Westside UU Congregation | www.wsuu.org  |206.935.0418 | office@wsuu.org