Each January I recommend a great book or two via my minster’s newsletter column. This practice started as a way to encourage folks – including myself – to curl up in a comfy chair, with a warm beverage and a good book – during the long dark nights of winter – to learn, to laugh, and to consider the ways of the world and our part in its unfolding. The recommendation also started as an alternative to the practice of making New Year resolutions.

So, as we begin a new (calendar) year of ministry together at UUCUC, I make three suggestions below. In return I invite you to share your recommendations – with me and for one another via a later eUniter or eNews and/or through the UUCUC members and friends Facebook page. 

The year ahead will have challenges and opportunities, sorrows and joys, frustrations and delights. For some, there is a deep knowing that the arc of the moral universe is really going to need all of us tugging on it to keep it bending toward justice. UUA President Peter Morales, writing recently to his ministerial colleagues said, “it would be folly to act as though we are in a normal transition between administrations. We must prepare to provide sanctuary and resist.” (To read his complete text, click here: https://www.facebook.com/peter.morales.1420/posts/10153933113112294)

What we offer – as individuals and as a people of faith – is always needed. We share a particular set of values that we have inherited and that we are called to carry forward: reason, freedom, and tolerance. We grow and change along the way. Our understandings deepen especially as we encounter other beloveds with whom we share this precious planet, this gift of Life. And so may our commitment toward peace, through justice and love, and not waver. 

Here are three titles on my winter bookshelf:

• For the soul that is called to justice: "The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justice Movement" by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (UUA study guide at: https://www.uua.org/sites/live-new.uua.org/files/third_recon_disc_guide.pdf)
  
• For the heart that is called to listen and craves tools to understand others: "That's Not What I Meant!: how congregational style makes or breaks relationships" by Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don’t Understand.
  
• For the young at heart, the lover of story, and for just plain fun: "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (Hogwarts Library Book) by J. K. Rowling, Newt Scamander

I hope that if you pick up one of these your imagination is stirred, your values affirmed, your courage broadened and your love expanded in ways that lead you, and me, together, to love one another into our fullest selves.

In faith,
Rev. Joanne

Thank you to all of the generous donors of poinsettias who made it possible to have enough plants to fill all twenty-four windows in our Sanctuary and five more plants to add beauty elsewhere.  The red blossoms are truly beautiful and add to the warmth of the room during our winter celebrations.  This year’s donors are: Sally Babbitt, Sam Beshers, Christine Cahill, Barb and Bill Childers, the Cobb Family, Chuck Cooper, Roch Ducey, Joe and Sandy Finnerty, Leon and Kathy Frizzell, Jerry Frye and Priscilla Kron, Jennifer Greene, Sandy Hannum, AJ Herzog, Jennifer Hunt and Kristi Mercer, the Loui family, Marie McEnroe, Karla Peterson, and Cindy Wakeland.

Please join us to learn more about the history and philosophy of the Unitarian Universalist Church.  You'll also learn about the governance of UUCUC, activities and opportunities available to our church community, religious education offerings for adults and for children, and about the role you'll be asked to play as a steward of our church. 

At the completion of this class, you'll be invited to become a member.

This class will be led by Interim Minister, Rev Joanne Giannino and Membership Coordinator, Sherry Bohlen, with sharing from representatives from Religious Education, Membership Committee, Stewardship Committee, and the Board of Trustees.

Light lunch (including pizza from Pizza M!) will be provided.  Child care is available.

To sign up for the class, email Sherry Bohlen or call 217.417.1148.

Film Viewing Followed by Discussion
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Doors open at 2 pm
Film starts at 2:30 pm

Powerful, infuriating and at times overwhelming, Ava DuVernay’s documentary “13TH” will get your blood boiling and tear ducts leaking. It shakes you up, but it also challenges your ideas about the intersection of race, justice and mass incarceration in the United States, subject matter that could not sound less cinematic. Yet Ms. DuVernay — best known for “Selma,” and a filmmaker whose art has become increasingly inseparable from her activism — has made a movie that’s as timely as the latest Black Lives Matter protest and the approaching presidential election. (Selection taken from NY Times review by Manohla Dargis)