|
Weekly Communicator
November 16, 2023
| |
|
Minister's Musings
“When we focus on our gratitude, the tide of disappointment goes out and the tide of love rushes in.” Kristin Armstrong
I am looking forward to seeing you all on Sunday. We will celebrate the blessings of our community, welcome new members, feast together at potluck and express our gratitude for all of our blessings.
Please join us after this Sunday's service for a Potluck. If you are able, please bring a dish to share with everyone.
Upcoming Themes for Sunday Services:
- November 19 With Gratitude Sue (in-person) - Lesley
- November 26 Reluctant Ministers and Messiahs Sue zoom -Gary
- December 3 Mystery Mary Cline Golbitz zoom - Leslie
- December 10 Faith is to be at home in the awesome spaces of uncertainty. Sue zoom - Leslie
- December 17 Solstice w/CUUPS Sue (in-person) - Lesley/Melyssa
revsue@uucfm.org
WhatsApp call or message: +506 8891 2847
US phone number: 603-395-7559
Facebook Messenger: Sue Gabrielson
Skype: suegabes
|  | |
Community Sharing for November
Our Community Sharing partner in November is Alliance for Fair Food. The Alliance for Fair Food (AFF) is the vibrant, diverse ally network of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), the internationally-acclaimed farmworker organization transforming human rights in the U.S. agricultural industry. The principal focus of the Alliance for Fair Food is the Campaign for Fair Food, a farmworker-led, community-powered movement that successfully holds major food retailers accountable to the highest human rights standards in their produce supply chains.
| |
Please send all newsletter articles by
12pm Wednesday for publication in Thursday's newsletter.
Send articles to newsletter@uucfm.org
Newsletter articles should be limited to 250 words. Send artwork or photos in jpg format. If multiple posting dates are desired, please include that in your request.
**Please do not send requests to the office manager email**
| |
CUUPS
From the CUUPS Corner we have gone into another cycle and we are switching gears a bit. Please mark your calendar because we are now in holiday time.
-
Nov 18th - 1:00pm - Classroom 2. A new year approaches and we are looking to do some things a bit differently.
-
Nov 23rd - this is the big one! After much deliberation we are going to host a gathering for whomever wishes to attend for Thanksgiving, however it is more what we are grateful for and to honor our indigenous people, flora and fauna- turkey is not the focus. It will be a shared dish and will be a bit organized as to who will bring what. We have many that are solitary, in need of a good place to come. Foods can be vegan, vegetarian, of other cultures, a favorite to honor tradition. We will be in the hall. Time will be afternoon and I will update on that for sure. It is informal, not a mandatory dress c0de and open to all!
Please contact Joy @ hawkmistrs@aol.com for any questions, or if you want to help.
In December we will be doing a Soup and Sides again - theme will be Yule Time. More to come on that.
Thank you for all the support you have given us. It is so appreciated.
|  | |
Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Countering Fascisms in Our Communities and Beyond
November 27th on Zoom
Marge Gonzalez and Cat Pivetti will continue to curate a biweekly series of conversations on what we can do to recognize the rising use of fascist strategies in multiple communities, and on what we can do individually and in collaboration to protect all our communities from this rising flood. We hope that we can examine a range of materials together, including lectures, films, speakers and more, that will strengthen our ability to notice the language of fascism and to take effective action against it.
In just the past week, we have seen a dramatic acceleration in the overt use of fascist strategies close to home. A local newspaper announced that Collier County Schools is removing 400 books from the shelves. The Lee County County Commissioners voted unanimously to sever ties with the American Library Association. A woman in Hillsborough County invested her own funds to buy DEI books to place in boxes on short poles, painted the boxes herself, and set them out so that county residents would have a free source of books to borrow. Hillsborough County took them down. For more information about these library-related events, please see our Library post, or contact Cat.
In a week and a half, on November 27 at 6:30, we'll discuss the presentation that Ruth Ben-Ghiat gave on November 11th at Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota: Fascism at Our Doorstep-- and What to Expect Next. She is an expert and skilled presenter on this topic, and she raises significant concepts in relation to historical events. We expect an interesting and helpful discussion, and we hope you come!
For more information contact Marge Gonzalez, margaretgonzalez@me.com or Cat Pivetti (equalrightscommittee@uucfm.org). I (Cat) will send you Zoom links before we meet. This may seem odd, given the topic, but Marge and I are really looking forward to this meeting.
|  | |
Men’s Group
The Men’s Group will be meeting for monthly luncheons. We will be meeting on the third Thursday all season at 11:30. We are looking forward to seeing as many UU men as possible. No reservations needed; just show up for lunch and camaraderie with other UU men.
We will meet at the Cross Creek Golf Club clubhouse. You can order from the regular menu or the golfers’ menu and we will get separate checks.
|  | |
Welcoming Congregations
on the Trans Day of Remembrance
Welcoming Congregations embrace their Queer and Trans members, as they, in turn, honor the memories of their Transgender siblings who were murdered in the past year. It is not necessary to be as old as Cat (that's me), to remember when there were far fewer names to honor. And yet these are only the names of those whose murders are acknowledged, those whose murders were not hidden. These are also not the names of those who chose to die, many of them youth and children, rather than pretend to be people they were not. There never was a choice. We are who we are.
These are the names of those who were killed by people very like the people from whom so many of us barely escaped. We live now, so that we can name those who did not escape. We take this responsibility seriously.
We name those who were killed, so that we will remember that we must do more than hold vigils, more than participate in these mass funerals. We pick up the torches that they have dropped. We commit to working to create a safer place for us all.
For more information or to help carry out this work, in our congregation and maybe beyond it, contact Cat Pivetti (equalrightscommittee@uucfm.org).
| |
Libraries in the Flowering of Fascism:
Our Library Protects Books
on Diversity, Equity,and Inclusion!
Local libraries and library associations came under under attack in multiple ways in the past week week. Lee County Commissioners voted unanimously to sever ties with the ALA. Collier County Schools removed 400 books from schools. And Hillsborough County disrupted a grass roots attempt to make books on diversity, equity and inclusion available to borrow for free. Welcome to 1933 in the Weimar Republic.
If you want to know more, here are some links. This first one is difficult to open if you don't subscribe to Tampa Bay Times (which is a great newspaper to subscribe to if you want to follow education news in Florida). To read more,
Click Here
From Lee County:
Click Here
But here, in our very own UUCFM, we are making a safe place for BOOKS! Our books do not need to fear for their lives because we protect them! Children, youth, and adults can read books that soon might not be available in many other places in Florida.
Check them out!
What can we imagine that is more important? Do we want our children and grandchildren to grow up to be passionate, informed, critical readers? Would you like to be part of this noble cause? You can be a Volunteer Librarian, one of the most important vocations on earth! You can be part of our discussion of how to make BOOKS available while still protecting the books and the librarians who serve them! You can read the books that others want to hide from you!
Check them out!
For more information or to come to our next meeting, contact Cat Pivetti (equalrightscommittee@uucfm.org).
|  |  | |
Social Justice Book Group
on Zoom!
We are reading Eli Clare's beautiful and brilliant book, Exile and Pride. We've read a few chapters already, but the conversation about this book is very easy to join in the middle, since most of the chapters can also stand alone as essays. Try it, you'll like it!
This stunning book draws the connections within intersections of Queer/Trans identities, Disability, and histories of trauma, all within the context of beautiful landscape, climate activism, and grief. Please join us on Zoom this coming Wednesday, November 22, at 2:30 pm as we walk through a world that most people have never entered.
For more information, pages to read, and Zoom link, contact Cat (equalrightscommittee@uucfm.org).
|  | |
Volunteer of the Month
The Volunteer of the Month is Judy Burget, our chair of the Membership Committee, Her warmth and enthusiasm make us feel we have come back to where we belong every Sunday morning. Judy is a long time member and many visitors catch her loving devotion to our community. As Cary Grant never said, “Judy, Judy, Judy.”
|  | |
Wendy Rose, Itch Like Crazy
Poetry, Native American Heritage Month, Fascism,
AND the Trans Day of Remembrance
These are difficult times. The Transgender Day of Remembrance is the only funeral some of us will be able to attend for our Transgender siblings. The ones we remember and honor, this 20th of November, are only different in a few ways from us who are still here today. We leapt for cover fast enough to escape the bullets fired at us. We survived the physical assaults, the beatings, and the rocks thrown at us. We did not choose death after other assaults that were not really worse than death. We chose to stay and to fight for our own sakes and for the sakes of those we will mourn this Monday. We remember what Audre Lorde said: "We were never meant to survive."
The National Day of Mourning, which many of us honor with a funereal meal on November 23, is painful in its similarity to TDOR, and also painful in its difference. Whole peoples, who had inhabited the Americas for 22,000 years, were hunted, enslaved, and murdered until, in mere centuries, only a fraction remained. They were not meant to survive.
There are those who are both Indigenous and Transgender. They are a favorite target of fascist rhetoric, sometimes used against them by those they once befriended and by those they thought were friends. We recognize their pain and fear as we read their poetry. We hope that our minds and hearts will be always open.
Please join our journey through some of this poetry on Zoom this Saturday evening, at 6:30 pm. Contact Cat Pivetti (equalrightscommittee@UUCFM.org) for information, this week's poems, and the Zoom link.
|  |  | |
Connect with us and Facebook or Instagram by clicking on the icons below. | | | | |
