Sunday Coffee Hour Is ON!  Woot!  Have you been missing coffee hour? Well, FUUSB Sunday morning coffee hour is on! We will be gathering together on Zoom at 11 a.m. on Sunday mornings. Coffee Hour will begin with a brief welcome from Christina, followed by three 15 minute sessions in "breakout rooms." Breakout rooms will be groups of approximately 8 -10 people. You can introduce yourselves, and chat with each other. After 15 minutes, the groups will be rearranged, so that you can gather with some new people. And after another 15 minutes we will rearrange the groups one more time.  

If you have internet access, you can join coffee hour by clicking on this link:  zoom.us/j/664917485

If you do not have internet, you can still join by calling  1-646-558-8656 and providing the meeting ID: 664 917 485. You won't be able to see everyone, but you will be able to hear and participate in the conversations!

So let's give this a try! I'll see you on Sunday; don't forget to bring your coffee!

Each Wednesday, Rev. Tricia will be waiting for you in a Zoom meeting room. Spend an hour, noon - 1 p.m., chatting with our minister and our fellow UUs.  

If you have internet access, you can join via this link:  zoom.us/j/105353699

If you do not have internet access you can join by calling 1-646-558-8656 (meeting ID: 105 353 699) and you will be able to listen and participate in this lunch date.

So mark your calendar and join in!

Please join me on Thursday, April 9, at 4:00 p.m. for a sharing of what's happening at the Meeting House including completed and planned projects. The session will be interactive and fun! It will be recorded in case you can't join us at this time.  

See you soon. 

David McFeeters,  Facilities Manager

During our online social hour last Sunday, Valerie Wood-Lewis asked me what I thought about the impact of the Coronavirus and social distancing on social justice and activism. I didn't have a chance to answer at the time and, truth be told, my thoughts about that have been changing over the past two weeks. During our first week of staying home, I couldn't imagine continuing any of my justice work (or supporting others in their justice work). It was all I could do to adjust to the new reality of my life and that of my family and our community. I didn't have the capacity for anything else. 

So I am beginning the work of picking up my justice work, but remembering to be gentle with myself. To do what I can and not berate myself for what seemed doable last month, but feels like more than I can handle right now. And remembering to hold space for others to find what capacity they have for the work. Together we'll find what capacity we have left and we'll do our best with what we have. You'll find articles about two pieces of work that I've picked up elsewhere in this eNews. 

Does it seem crazy to be planning a 4th of July Community BBQ amidst all this distance and uncertainty? Well, maybe it is. I don't know if we'll be able to have a 4th of July BBQ, but here's what I do know. Whenever we find our way to the other side of this time of physical separation we find ourselves in, there will still be hungry people in need of a meal. And we will all of us - First UU members and friends and our Old North End neighbors - be in need of community. So crazy as it seems, I say we plan a Community BBQ and we hold it whenever we can - on the 4th of July or the 15th of August or the 10th of September. Whenever it is that we can finally gather together again. 

So yes, it feels a little crazy. Or maybe it's just a leap of faith, but the first planning meeting for the First UU 2020 Community BBQ will be Sunday, April 5 at 1:00 p.m. It will be a Zoom Meeting - here is the link to join: zoom.us/j/807424760 

If you don't  have internet access you can join by phone using this number: 1-646-558-8656 (meeting ID:  807 424 760).

If you're new to Zoom, check out one or both of these videos for first-time Zoom users: 

youtube.com/watch?v=9isp3qPeQ0E
youtube.com/watch?v=kh50kVaIdAY

If you're interested in helping plan the BBQ and can't make this meeting, email me at  [email protected]  and I'll make sure to keep you in the loop and schedule future meetings that you can attend. 

 

Sunday, April 12 from 12-1 p.m.

In February 2020 the Membership Team started conducting a session after services once a month called "Staying Connected." Primarily for newish members, it is also open for anyone wanting to get more connected to the Society and its mission and work. 

In April we are going to have this over Zoom. This is a drop-in session. We will go around the "room" collecting and answering questions. We got great feedback from our February session. Hope to see many of you online with your Easter bonnets on or not.

It is very informal so no matter how many years you have been attending FUUSB, join us on April 12 at moon.

Click on the following link to join the Zoom Meeting:

zoom.us/j/586369862

If you don't  have internet access you can join by phone at 1-646-558-8656 (meeting ID: 586 369 862).

As I think about justice work in the time of COVID-19, one way I think about it is focusing on work that supports groups that are helping marginalized people during this pandemic. The Committee on Temporary Shelter or COTS is one such group. During this pandemic, COTS shelters, Daystation, and support services all remain open (with new practices to ensure the safety of staff and guests) to serve homeless people in our community - a group very much at risk of COVID-19 infection. So while we won't be able to walk together this spring as we have in years past, COTS is holding a Virtual COTS Walk this year and they need our support now more than ever. 

There are two ways you can help First UU support COTS. First you can join our First UU for COTS team, led once again by Nina Harrington and Kathryn Wyatt. Thank you, Nina and Kathryn! Once you've joined (brief instructions below), you just need to contact people you know who might help you support COTS and ask them to visit your online donation page (which will be automatically set up for you) and make a donation. Online ways to do this include email, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever social media you prefer. The more team members we have, the more money we can raise for COTS! 

If you don't want to join the team, keep an eye out here in future eNews articles or our UU Facebook group or an email and find a First UU team member that you can support with a donation. 

If you want to join the team, go to the COTS Walk  registration page and click the Join a Team button. Search for our First UU for COTS team (just entering UU in the search box will find us) and click the Join button to join our team. The rest is name and address stuff you can figure out. All of the types of walkers you can register as will say "Virtual Walker..." That confused me at first, but that's just because this year's walk is a Virtual Walk. We'll learn more about what that means soon, but for now, raising the money COTS needs is priority one. 

Hello Everyone,

In times like these, when people are most vulnerable, scammers crawl out of the woodwork. Recently many of you may have received suspicious emails seeming to come from Rev. Tricia. One of the emails had a subject line of MANY BLESSINGS! These emails were indeed scams. The email address was not Rev. Tricia's email address (her actual address is [email protected]). 

Please know this: neither Rev Tricia, nor any staff member of FUUSB, will ever send you an email asking for assistance in this way. We will not ask you to buy a gift card or wire us money; we just won't do that.  

So please just hit delete when you see an email like this.  Do not respond in any way. No need to notify us, because we've probably already seen it. We  encourage you to report these messages to the Attorney General's office - those reports can only come from people who receive the scam emails.

Also, your FUUSB staff is working hard to provide you with online worship and many ways to stay connected during this time. We're trying to get the word out in as many different ways as possible. If you know of someone who does not have any internet connection to the Society, please give them a call and let them know what's going on. Give them some connection to their FUUSB family.

Taking care of each other and our community!

Christina Fulton,  Director of Operations & Finance