You are welcome here! Interested in learning more about the congregation, our faith, and our community? Our Connections Team would love to help get you started. If you'd like to join us for online Sunday worship services, contact us here. And if you’d like to find out more about how to get involved email us.
Sunday's Worship Service
Ring the Bells that Still Can Ring, Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, Senior Minister, and the River Road Choir, including recorded elements of Clif Hardin’s “Requiem”
Sun., Apr. 11, 10am. Zoom Live format
9:30-10am: Early-bird; 10am: Service; 11am: Breakout Rooms
Watch for one link in the Saturday email: once you log on with the Zoom link, you are where you need to be for all the morning's activities.
Recording will be posted on YouTube.
This service will serve as a time to honor and remember all that we have lost in the last year. It will be a time to grieve, to give praise, and to begin becoming something new as we emerge into the spring and beyond. After the online service, which will feature the debut of new videos of our choir singing further elements of Clif Hardin’s “Requiem”, join us live in the River Road parking lot from 12-2pm to participate in a communal artwork through the Naming the Lost COVID Memorial Project.
Sunday's Extend the Offering will support the environmental justice initiatives at McElderry Park in Baltimore and Langley and Clifton Parks in Silver Spring.
River Roaders have already begun working with these communities to restore the community garden in McElderry and to grow fresh produce in aeroponic towers in Langley and Clifton Parks to create and maintain healthy food sources for under-served communities. You can read more here about April's initiative. Please support these works by giving generously throughout the month. You may contribute online by clicking here and selecting Food Justice from the drop-down menu, by Text-to-Give at 73256, or by check to RRUUC, indicating Food Justice in the memo line.
Notices & Online Ministry Offerings
Contemporary Issues Forum: A Universal Human Urge to Connect through Mark-Making (Art), Sun., Apr. 11, 11:45am-12:45pm, Zoom
Craig Kraft, Neon Artist and Smithsonian instructor, is a nationally known neon artist, whose works include Lightweb in Silver Spring and Falling Man in NYC (CraigKraftStudio.com). Says Craig, “Neon is primarily a contemporary marking tool used for messaging, sculpture statements, and architectural lighting”, but for the past seven years, he has traveled to 27 ancient caves on three continents to view firsthand the earliest marks made by Homo Sapiens up to 40,000 years ago. He then captured, in light, the forms of these ancient marks juxtaposed with contemporary symbols. Craig says, “With neon light, it’s not just about the glow; it's what the glow means!"
EVERY DAY IS EARTH DAY...but look out for special invitations to action on Earth Day, Sun., Apr. 18! At the service, RRUUC's Earth Ministry will offer an interactive look at all the ways our congregation is already vigorously building a Green Sanctuary. After the service at 11:30am, BRING THE GREEN SANCTUARY HOME by participating in a short Zoom seminar led by Walter Weiss on how to switch to buying clean electricity for your home, too! Register for this workshop or receive our news by sending an email to Earth Ministry.
Grounding: Happy Anniversary!
It's been a year since Grounding has been bringing us together. Thank you, Joe!
If you can shovel and handle a loaded wheelbarrow, and you'd like to lend a hand on the grounds for some immediate, socially distanced work, see details at the end of this week's installment and send an email to Grounds@rruuc.org. Thank you!
COVID-19 Advisory Committee Information about Vaccines and Vaccination
Find information curated by our COVID-19 Team here.

Montgomery County has opened their pre-registration website for groups 1b and 1c. We encourage eligible members to preregister! Find info at MoCo's vaccine webpage https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/covid19/vaccine/.
Social Justice News
La Clinica del Pueblo’s Annual Walk-a-Thon on Sat., May 1
On May 1, La Clinica del Pueblo is sponsoring their Second Annual Walk-a-Thon. This is both a fundraiser and a healthy life initiative. Walk wherever you are, for however many steps you want, at the same time (and wearing the same T-shirt) as other LCDP supporters. Registration fee of $30/adult and $15/child includes the signature event T-shirt. Register on La Clinica's website.
Take action in support of Voting Rights: S.1 For the People Act
Spread the word to your friends and family in any state to contact their senators. The For the People Act (S.1) has provisions for easier voter registration, early voting, vote by mail, ending gerrymandering, campaign finance reform, stop dark money transfers, require corporations disclose political financing, and more. This is vital legislation to protect and expand everyone's voting rights. UUSJ has made an easy-to-fill-out form for your friends and family to send a note to their senators. They just need to fill in their contact information, and the system will send the message directly to their senators from the email address they provide. Click here for the UUSJ form.
As part of our ongoing commitment to the activists who are interrupting gun violence on the streets of our cities, we are saddened yet honored to memorialize the names of those in our area lost to gun violence over the last week. These lives continue to matter: Annapolis: victim not identified. Baltimore: Robert Bates, Fabian Mendez, Kenyon Jones, Ashley Lambert, and Marcus Wilson. Capitol Heights: three victims not identified. Columbia: Alleen Hartlieb and Kyle Hartlieb. District of Columbia: Anthony Davis, Julius Hayes, William Evans, Michael Benbow, George Evans III, Keosha Ferguson, and Darius Burts. Essex: Alpha Smith, Silvesta Daye, Jr., Douglas Green, Olivia Green, and Joshua Green. Hyattsville: Devin Solomon. Laurel: Justin Xavier Stinson. Owings Mills: victim not identified. Rosedale: Nyatiaha Faltz and Grantley Herbert. Suitland: Marceese Norman. Upper Marlboro: Anthony Lamont Frost. Every life lost to gun violence shatters the world for each of us, and every life saved by those who interrupt the violence helps knit us back together.
Shared Programming & Community Events
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Virtual Easter Egg Hunt remains active throughout April
The virtual UU Easter Egg hunt across the continent on UU websites will remain active throughout April. You can spend the whole month exploring the UU net (did you know a UU actually invented the World Wide Web?).
The hunt begins here.
Subscriptions
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River Road Unitarian Universalist Congregation | 6301 River Road, Bethesda, MD 20817 | 301-229-0400 | connections@rruuc.org | www.rruuc.org