September 2021
Your monthly news & updates

NUUC Reopening for face to face Worship on September 12, 2021

connecting via Zoom will remain an option
Vaccination (for 12+ only) and face masks required

We have all worked extremely hard during the pandemic to keep our families, congregations and communities safe, while longing for the time when the pandemic is behind us. Unfortunately, vaccine hesitancy, breakthrough cases in vaccinated individuals and the alarming contagiousness of the COVID-19 Delta variant (even among the vaccinated) call for re-evaluation of many of our plans.

The Delta variant setback has many of us, feeling frustrated, heartbroken and exhausted. We are not where we hoped to be. We are all coming to terms with the reality that the pandemic will be with us in various forms for some time.

And creating a space for those who choose to gather in person for worship is increasingly important for our ongoing social, mental and spiritual health. Therefore we art still committed to reopening our building for worship on September 12, although we will be requiring vaccination (only for those 12 years and older) in addition to the already established requirement for masking while on church property. While vaccination will be a community expectation, we will not be asking for proof. In making this recommendation, we are following the most current guidelines of the Unitarian Universalist Association. We will continue to offer virtual attendance at worship through Zoom for those who either cannot, or prefer not, to attend in person.

There will be a greeter at each entrance with a supply of masks for those who haven't brought their own. Due to the mask requirement, we will not be having coffee, food or drinks after the service.

While our sanctuary is far too small to accommodate social distancing between all attendees, we are making some provisions for those who prefer not to be too close to others. The service will be screened in Fellowship Hall to provide additional seating space in case the sanctuary exceeds capacity, and there will be limited distanced seating in the chairs to the right of the sanctuary entrance.

As we greet each other in person again, please be aware that our comfort levels will differ, and obtain consent before touching others. Red stickers will be provided that can be put on name tags as a visual cue to others to keep as much distance as possible, if that is what you choose.

We will continue to monitor the number of COVID cases in Franklin and Delaware Counties. If the risk level becomes severe, or if some other aspect of the situation changes to reflect new dangers, we will return to offering virtual services only, and reopen again when it is safer to do so.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns! board@nuuc.org

P.S. Greeters Wanted!

We are looking for greeters for once we reopen for face to face worship. We'll have one greeter at the front door, and one at the back. You can sign up to greet using this link.

Religious Education and Children's Programming Plans for Fall 2021

It is hard to believe we haven't had face-to-face Religious Education in almost a year-and-a-half. I can't believe how much our children and youth must have grown during this time and am eager to see them again. And yet, with no vaccines available for children under 12, we simply can't resume gathering them together normally. In fact, the Unitarian Universalist Association recommends that in-person RE happen only outdoors for the time being. So, like all congregations we have adjusted plans yet again. Our kids are resilient, and we hope you'll encourage them to join us in a new way.

To that end, starting September 12 for in-person Religious Education we will offer two options. First, for vaccinated children ages 12 and older, we invite them to attend worship, fully masked. We are also working to create periodic in-person, socially distanced and masked opportunities for this age group--stay tuned. Second, we invite those ages 4-11 to join us for Outdoor Playtime during service each week, weather permitting. During this time we will have games and activities that support social distancing, with an emphasis on nature exploration. Playtime will coincide with service from 10:30-11:30 AM Sundays, providing a safer alternative to service for unvaccinated children. While we wish we could also offer nursery services, we simply cannot maintain a safe environment for children under age 4 either in the nursery (no ability to social distance) or outdoors (dangers of road, parking lot, etc...). However, if a parent/caregiver wants to accompany a child under 4 to Outdoor Playtime and take full responsibility for their child, we welcome them to join us outdoors.

We are also excited to share that we are joining a consortium of congregations from around the country to jointly offer Remote Religious Education. Here, our children from 1st-12 grade will meet and gather virtually with others from across the country, including Madison and Eau Claire, Wisconsin; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Huntsville, Alabama; and Corpus Christie, Texas. The age groups and times are:

Children's Chapel (1st-5th grade): 10-10:30 AM Sundays
Upper elementary Children's Chapel (3rd-5th grade who want an age-specific experience): 10-10:30 AM Sundays
Youth Group (6th-12th grade): first 3 Wednesday evenings of each month at 6:45 PM

Our involvement in this consortium is just beginning, so more details on this opportunity and general RE registration will come in an RE-specific email to the congregation in the next few days.

Finally, as you can imagine, all of these RE options will require a full team of Religious Education volunteers. Please consider volunteering, especially if you have volunteered with RE in the past or have other experience working with kids. All volunteers will be background-checked and onboarded for the format (in-person or remote) for which they're volunteering. Also, our Board has graciously approved hiring paid RE teachers to ensure that we have the qualified adults we need to keep our kids connected during this pandemic. As soon as our job announcement for paid teachers comes out in the RE email, please share it with potentially interested and qualified people you know! You can email me at jaultman@nuuc.org with questions or to volunteer!

Thank you for supporting our children and youth during this time when it is all too easy to disconnect and isolate. We need each other, including our young people.

Jennifer L. Aultman, M.A.
Director of Religious Education
North Unitarian Universalist Congregation

Meet Meredith Krueger, Our New Intern Minister

We are excited to welcome our new Intern Minister! You can read more about her below. And if you are interested in serving on the Intern Minister Committee, which meets once a month for the purpose of providing feedback to the Intern Minister, please contact minister@nuuc.org

Dear NUUC,

My name is Meredith Krueger, and I am pleased to be serving as a ministerial intern for your congregation beginning September 9. I am currently a student at Methodist Theological School in Ohio (MTSO), where I just completed my second year. 

I grew up attending First Unitarian Church in Cincinnati. When I was a baby, my mother sought out a UU church because of its open and affirming stance. Her religious background is Quaker and my father’s is Catholic, and I inherit much from both these traditions; yet my understanding of religious identity is fundamentally shaped by my experience growing up in UU community. In many ways my church held space for the integration of other aspects of my identity. At the end of high school in 2007 I completed religious education and became a member of First.

From these beginnings, I developed a deeply appreciative while endlessly questioning sense of spirituality. My core sense of faith is also informed by my experience as a community organizer in my early to mid-twenties. In the fall of 2011, I heard the radical universalist message of the Occupy movement and joined in the efforts to promote it at Ohio State where I was in college. As the general assemblies dissipated in 2012, I was part of a group of student activists committed to finding a way to reignite the movement. We learned the practice of community organizing and studied the history of the U.S. Black liberation movement. During this time we created an institution aimed at sustaining these movements, the Ohio Student Association (OSA). Our longer-term movement-building work was, at its best, a form of ministry. Doing this collaborative and uncertain work shaped my understanding of the practice of faith. 

At Ohio State I majored in economics and geography, and much of my study was focused on sustainable agriculture and food system development. The year after graduating from college, after a brief time as an intern for National Geographic, I worked as a full-time organizer for the OSA. I entered graduate school at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2013 and continued teaching there until 2016. I earned a master’s degree in human geography, focused on feminist theory and political economy. By the time I finished my master’s, the revolutionary idealism that had given me life had evolved into something that felt very constricting. The sense of purpose that I experienced around the movement had started to become in me an exclusionary, critical, and rigid way of seeing the world. I did not fully realize this until my first son was born, and I was reintroduced to an awareness of the source of life with such force that it broke through the layers of cynicism formed during my time in academia.  

I was shown in a new way that I was not the source of my own life, that I came to be through something more powerful than my own will or understanding. This revelation ignited the desire to return to work in service to the world, out of a sense that the spirit giving life to our world was abundant and that it existed without my effort. 

With this inner change still in process and amidst the other transitions, I returned to work toward developing sustainable food systems as the coordinator of the Ohio food policy network, and as part of the food waste research team at Ohio State. My interest in spiritual traditions and the question of how they would continue to evolve grew during this time, leading me to apply to MTSO in early 2019. 
Last year, I completed a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. CPE is an action-reflection model, and in it I was guided to understand the role of the chaplain through frequent and rigorous reflection written individually, one-on-one with my supervisor and peers, and group reflection. I organized worship services for the chapel, visited patients and staff on the units I was assigned to, and served as the on-call chaplain. I am now a contingent chaplain at the hospital, which means I am occasionally asked to cover on-call shifts. 

I had my first direct experiences of faith as a student activist and community organizer, and I still believe that our salvation will be worked out materially, as Occupy demanded. I also recognize now that our responsibility as people of faith is to live in service to the message of salvation, not to do the saving. And I found that the nature of community that is formed in movements is ephemeral, despite my and others’ efforts to sustain it. I have great admiration for churches and other communities of faith who participate in a long-term practice of gathering in reverence for the forces of meaning in our lives.

There are many spaces in the modern world that affirm the value of our lived experiences like communities of faith do. But what makes me passionate about doing religious work is that churches are fundamentally structured to do so in community. The esoteric healing arts of tarot and astrology fascinate me and have put me in meaningful relationship with others. But unlike the structure of the church or religious community, these tools can be worked with individually or one on one. While dominant cultural patterns under capitalism encourage us into highly individualized expressions of spirituality, communities of faith in their core structure work with the immanent power of the collective.  

I have great respect for how UU churches in particular move within the tension between worlds that have been categorized as “religious” and “secular,” refusing to take a comfortable place within either and instead forging space in which we can be held as we evolve. I have experienced in my own life that this stance of radical acceptance allows for truly open-ended exploration and integration. It is an expression of faith; and it holds space for spiritual transformation. 

From the perspective of an internship, I hope to learn about the unique ways that NUUC sustains its community within an evolving social world. In simpler terms, I hope to learn how a church operates! I also want to learn from real experience in parish ministry, to help me discern whether it is a part of the world in which I want to contribute longer term. I am so eager to meet those who gather in your congregation, and to learn about your lives.

Thank you for taking the time to read more about me, and for giving me this opportunity. I look forward to meeting you soon!

Sincerely,
Meredith Krueger

Ways to Connect
Creative Fellowship
Are you longing for connection in these difficult times? Do you have unfinished craft/art/sewing/knitting or other projects that you would like to work on but haven’t? If so please join Commissioned Lay Minister Teri Cornell in Creative Fellowship! We will have a zoom meeting once a month (the first Thursday of each month from 6:30PM-8:00PM) and we can work on our projects, exercise our creativity, and talk about whatever is on our minds and hearts. No need to sign up, just drop by using the same Zoom link that we use for regular NUUC worship service (see below).

The Second Monday Morning Covenant Group,
Second Monday Morning Covenant Group, September 13, 10:00 until noon, discussing, “What Would You Die For?”

Wednesday Noon Check In
Join us using the regular NUUC zoom connection at noon everyday Wednesday for informal check- ins and chat with your fellow members. Use the regular Sunday morning Zoom login, or write minister@nuuc.org for a direct link.
NUUC's Women's Group meets the last Sunday of the month at noon (next meeting September 26, in Fellowship Hall after worship). The topic is , “What Experience or Scene in Your Childhood Helped Shape Your Personality?”
Questions? contact martykeith@zoho.com

Interested in the Once a Month Brown Bag Books? September 21, noon, The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett.

Soul Matters Small Groups
We currently have three different Soul Matters Small Groups virtually meeting, for regular in depth check ins, and for exploring together different spiritual themes. New members are welcome at any time, write to minister@nuuc.org
Mowing at NUUC: We Need Some Help
The Building & Grounds Committee is requesting help with the mowing. They would like to get 1-2 volunteers each month from the congregation to mow just one time during the season through October. The other weeks will be handled by B&G Committee volunteers.  
 
We have a zero-turn riding mower, which can be used for almost all of the mowing. For a few small, tight areas, which the zero-turn mower cannot handle, we then use a self-propelled push power mower. Using a zero-turn mower is fun and allows the mowing to be done in about half the time. If you are not familiar with using a zero-turn mower, we will give you some brief training for about 15 minutes that gets you familiar enough with the mower to comfortably mow the main parts of the yard. You will still trim the edges of the yard with the self-propelled push mower. But, some people prefer to use the push mower to mow the entire yard instead of the zero-turn mower. 
 
Please consider volunteering to mow one time this season. If you would like to help the church handle the mowing, you can see the mowing sign-up schedule posted at this weblink: tiny.cc/NUUC-mowing . To get scheduled, just pick a date that works for your schedule and then contact Bob Keith at bobkeith@zoho.com or 740-369-1919. You also can contact Bob if you have questions or would like more information.

SOCIAL JUSTICE NEWS 



UU JUSTICE OHIO NEWS
FUNDAMENTALS OF LEGISLATIVE VISITS AND MAKING THE ASK: Wednesday, September 8th OR September 15th at 7 pm – 8 pm - Free Online Event
The #OurVoicesTogether Coalition is offering this workshop on two different evenings and is designed to help you plan for and engage in a productive meeting with your Ohio State Legislators during the Sept. 22 #StatehouseStomp event regarding the anti-protest bills. It will also be helpful for other legislative visits you might want to make. Register for either date at https://us02web.zoom.us/.../tZIudO2uqTwoH9dtM0e...
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
 
 
SEPTEMBER LEGISLATIVE UPDATE: Thursday, September 16, 2021, At 7 pm – 8:15 pm
The Ohio Legislature will come back into session in September. What will they be talking about? What bills are coming up? Join us for a discussion of what to expect this fall with Tadd Pinkston of Pinkston Law, Rev Joan VanBecelaere, and others. Register in advance at https://us02web.zoom.us/.../tZIuc... After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
 
 
STATEHOUSE STOMP - Wednesday, September 22, 2021• 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, Galbreath Room at the Ohio Theatre•39 E. State Street, Columbus, OH 43215
Whether we’re Black or white, Latino or Asian, Indigenous or newcomer, we want our families to be healthy and whole. But today, as Ohioans march together in anger and mourning over the brutal shootings of Black Americans by police, a handful of politicians are trying to turn us against one another. They hope that by spreading lies about our collective demands for justice and silencing us by criminalizing peaceful public witness, we will turn against these efforts to ensure a better future for us all. We reject their attempts to divide us, and we will raise our voices together on Sept. 22 for Andre Hill, George Floyd, and Casey Goodson Jr, until justice is truly for all.
 
UUJO is teaming up with the Buckeye Environmental Network (BEN) and Organize! Ohio to raise public awareness and opposition to proposed Ohio bills threatening our First Amendment Rights. More info at http://bit.ly/ourvoicestogetherinfo. Join us as we meet at the statehouse to stomp out anti-protest bills as we educate legislators on why these bills are bad for Ohioans. (HB 22, HB 109 & SB 41). Connect with others who want to stop these bills, pack the schedules of Ohio legislators and rally outside the statehouse on September 22nd. You are welcome to join for legislative visits 9am -4 pm and take a break for the rally from 1-2pm or choose one. You must register in advance for legislative visits at http://bit.ly/statehousestomp.
 
Sign-Up to join a pre-planned group visiting legislators.
  • We’ll be based in the Galbreath Pavilion at the Ohio Theatre.
  • We'll provide training via zoom leading up to Statehouse Stomp and we'll provide training first thing in the morning on September 22nd.
  • We ask for your zip code so we can attempt to arrange a visit with your legislator or a legislator nearby. We can't make any guarantees which legislators you will visit. It will depend on who responds to our request.
  • We'll group you with 2-3 other people in your area. If you already have a group of 3-4, please provide the names of your group members. We will do our best to keep you together, but can't guarantee it. (All group members MUST register for us to attempt to schedule you.)
  • We'll provide bagels and coffee for breakfast and a box lunch.
 
Schedule for the day:
8:30 am - 9:00 am - Arrive at the Galbreath Pavilion at the Ohio Theatre (elevator accessible)
9:30 am - Training - Successful Legislative Visit Tips
10:00 am - Legislator Visits begin
10:30 am - Repeat Training - Successful Legislative Visit Tips
11:00 am - 1:00 pm Legislator visits
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm LUNCH - grab a box lunch between visits
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Rally on the Statehouse steps
2:00 pm - 4:00 pm Legislator Visits
 
COVID Considerations
Rally, 1-2pm - Masked and social distanced. On the Statehouse Steps (outside).
 
Legislative Visits - We invite you to Columbus to join us for the rally and in-person legislative visits. Masks will be required in the Galbreath Pavilion (in the basement of the Ohio Theatre, where we will have our home base for the day and morning training). The Galbreath is a large indoor space with plenty of room to spread out. 
Some legislators do not schedule Zoom visits, but we are working to get one or two set up for those who do not want to be in-person at all. If you want to attend the rally and would like to do the virtual visit(s), you are welcome to spread out in the Galbreath Pavilion and use the Wi-Fi there or use Columbus Commons Park if it's a nice day. If you prefer Zoom, please indicate that on the form when you sign up.
 
 
INTERFAITH ASSOCIATION OF CENTRAL OHIO (IACO)
 
OPEN POSITION ON IACO COUNCIL: The Interfaith Association of Central Ohio (IACO) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to create an interfaith community based on understanding, friendship, and trust. IACO puts this mission into action by:
Ø Educating the public about customs and practices of different faith traditions.
Ø Advocating for social justice, peace, and human dignity.
Ø Promoting interfaith gatherings and events that address local and global concerns.
Ø Partnering with other faith and peace-focused organizations.
 
IACO is made up of nine member faiths including: Bahá’i, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islam, Jain, Jewish, Sikh, and Unitarian Universalist. IACO’s council serves as its policy board. This group is made up of three representatives from each of the member faiths. The council meets every other month to discuss current issues to which IACO can take positive action and to plan interfaith opportunities.
 
Currently there are 2 UU representatives from First UU Congregation serving on the IACO Council. NUUC has provided the third representative in previous years and has the opportunity to fill the current vacancy. If you are interested in interfaith work and serving on the council, contact Pam Patsch for more information at bealight2010@icloud.com. You can also visit the IACO Facebook page to learn more about how the organization is fulfilling their mission.

 
NUUC WORSHIP SERVICE ZOOM LINK


Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 754 112 6323
Passcode: 152468
One tap mobile
+16468769923,,7541126323#,,,,*152468# US (New York)
+13017158592,,7541126323#,,,,*152468# US (Washington DC)

Dial by your location
    +1 646 876 9923 US (New York)
    +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
    +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
    +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
    +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
    +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
Meeting ID: 754 112 6323
Passcode: 152468
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kcyKVeakVc
lace article copy here. Be sure to make the articles short and concise as people tend not to read much more than a couple of paragraphs. Place article copy here.