Church Phone: (781) 878-0650 (leave message on machine) Church e-mail:
Minister: Rev. Gretchen Robinson Home: (508) 226-2910 e-mail:
Religious Education Director: Deeya Pavelle Home: (774) 526-3652 e-mail:
Prudential Committee:
Kareen Arena: Co-Chairperson Home: (781) 878-1988 e-mail:
Cheryl Gardner: Co-Chairperson Home: (781) 878-0521, e-mail:
Margaret Holmes: Clerk Home: (781) 982-2893 e-mail:
Aaren Arena Home: (781) 878-1988
Jason Carter Home: (781) 447-1147 e-mail:
Susan Curran Home: (781) 767-4230 e-mail: susan_curran@comcast..net
Gary Paul Home: (781) 293-2447 e-mail:
Katie Tierney Home: (781) 982-9576
Treasurer: Phil Berry Home: (781) 878-6162 e-mail:
Asst. Treasurer: Danny Howland: Home: (781) 871-0471 e-mail:
Music and Worship: Becky Paul Home: (781) 293-2447 e-mail:
Building & Grounds: Paul Arena Home: (781) 878-1988, e-mail:
Music Director: Lillian Cunningham-Hall Home: (781) 878-3396
Flower Committee: Debbie Arena Home: (781) 878-4470
Church Secretary: Bob Smith Home: (508) 583-8860, e-mail:
Visit our website: http://www.channingchurchrockland.com
Our Annual Yard Sale
This Saturday - Sept 22!
Our annual yard sale will be held outside, under a canopy from 9 to 2 pm
A BIG THANK YOU!!!
I want to thank everyone so much for all your support during my hospital stay and during my recovery at home. Thank you for the flowers, the phone calls, the meals, the cards and the visits. You don’t realize how much these things really mean until you are the one who is on the receiving end. Some days I would be so down and bored and then I would get a phone call or a card, or Margaret would deliver a meal from another church member and I would just perk right up again.
Thank you for keeping me going. See you in Church!
Love,
Susan Kavka
From the Minister
The new Channing Church year has begun with a great flurry of activity! Just think, a whole year of programs and worship services lies ahead of us! Be sure to look through this newsletter and choose which offerings you want to attend or participate in.
Many take place in the church or the district. Others take us beyond the Rockland area. The new UU NE Conference is about strengthening leadership for laypersons. It's held in Worcester on October 27th. The event combines the energies and resources of our local district (the BCD-Ballou Channing District. Website is http://www.bcduua.org/) and two others. It's intended to be like a mini-General Assembly. And while the cost may seem a bit high, it might just be the right next step for you. It will grow your understanding of this faith and will expand your understanding of what's possible for our membership to accomplish in the future.
Yesterday, I preached on leadership after reading 11 books on the subject over the summer for a study group I am in. I learned about our need to develop "inner leadership" before we go out and lead others. Leading ourselves--now there's the hard part--leading others is easy by comparison! That's why I encourage members and friends to avail themselves of opportunities such as the NE Conference. It's good to expand our horizons and learn new things.
The leadership sermon should go on line shortly. I'm hoping that when you miss a service and want to read the sermon, that you'll access it on line at our website (Many, many thanks to Paul Anderson for his excellent work reviving and revamping the Channing website!) If you want a hard copy of the sermon call the office or talk to me. We'll try to have reprints available.
Okay, back to capital L-Leadership. We are all leaders, even those who never saw themselves as leaders before. Parents are leaders. Teaching another person something makes you a leader. Leadership isn't something fancy, something only special people do. It's seeing a need or an opportunity and then discovering within us the initiative and then taking some sort of action. Leadership is inviting people to join in our vision for something better in the future. Leadership is inherently spiritual. It needs to spring from intentions that are ethical and respect followers.
In reality, we are often followers and leaders in turn. At Channing Church the lay leadership make the church run. I won't recapitulate my sermon here, but suffice it to say that attending church and participating in church life can pay enormous benefits. It grows our spiritual life, as well as our personal life. We bring new understandings to our work life and our interactions with others. We carry with us the confidence and insights that we gain from this AMAZING FAITH we share.
And that's the point: we share this faith! We want to share it with more and more people. Our Events Committee will be mounting several public programs over the next year. We hope that people from the area who attend will discover, as one person said, what 'a treasure Channing Church is.' The idea is to address pressing local and national issues, perhaps showing a video or having a speaker and then having discussions and sharing.
The famous anthropologist Margaret Mead said, "Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is to introduce people to one another." That's what we'll be doing: introducing people to one another. It's an act of leadership. It's an act of radical hospitality. Please join us!
The Book of Our Lifetime?
(Note: Last month the church received the following interesting e-mail)
Dear Colleagues,
The book of our lifetime has just been published. It is The Lucifer Effect by Phillip Zimbardo. Phillip Zimbardo conducted the Stanford University Prison Experiment 30 years ago (dividing college students into prisoners and guards--and the guards became so abusive they had to end the experiment early). Zimbardo's life's work has been trying to explain what happened.
This book intersects powerfully with theological ideas of good and evil. It offers a remarkable analytical framework for understanding how and why widespread injustices persist. I've found the paradigm shift in my own worldview so compelling that I've just started writing a theology blog for The Lucifer Effect website. I encourage everyone to have a look: www.lucifereffect.com.
The theology blog is part of my journey, as the book's subtitle says, to understand how good people turn evil.
In faith, Jennifer
(Note: Jennifer is Rev. Jennifer Brooks, Minister of the UU “South church” on Nantucket, MA)
PRUDENTIAL COMMITTEE NEWS
Submitted by Cheryl Gardner
In August, the Prudential Committee met for a Calendar Planning meeting. Upcoming events are listed on the big calendar on the desk in the office. If you or your committee plan a new event, please list it on the calendar for us, so we can keep sight of the "big picture" of events at the church. And if you need to see when the church is available for an event, the calendar should give you some idea of what's going on when.
On the first Sunday of church we held a celebration for Lillian Cunningham Hall. It hardly seems possible that Lillian has been sharing her music with Channing Church for thirty years!We want to thank her all the beautiful music she's given us, for her consistent presence at our church, for playing anything we asked her on short notice and for being such a professional.Thanks, Lillian, for sharing yourmusical giftswith us!
We also want to welcome Deeya Pavelle as DRE. She's bringing a wonderful new energy to our church and to our RE program. Welcome, Deeya! Deeya has also offered tohandle some of our public relations, so if you have a church event you want to publicize, speak with Deeya about getting the news out.
New Committee Member's Kit for the Coming Year
Rubber band for flexibility
Paper clip to hold it all together
Band-aide for when your feelings have been hurt
Candy Kiss for when you need a hug
Heart that is caring and compassion
Eraser to make all those little mistakes disappear
Pencil for writing down notes, ideas, concerns and joys
Binder Clip for keeping all those notes and wonderful ideas together in one place
Post-it-notes to remind youof things that need doing
Marbles for those days that you are sure you have lost yours.
Channing Unitarian Universalist Church
Annual Meeting Minutes, June 10, 2007
Meeting called to order at 11:35 am
Head Count: 25 legal voting members present
Reading of the Warrant completed
Minutes of the May 7, 2006 Annual Meeting approved
Committee Reports:
Minister’s Report: Accepted
Prudential: Accepted
Religious Education: Accepted. Becky Paul reviewed the report and need to consider a RE Director.
Music and Worship: Accepted
House and Grounds: Accepted. To be considered is a bathroom upstairs in RE, perhaps review cost when the downstairs bathroom becomes handicapped accessible. The process is going forward to sell the land. There will be a cong. meeting after the land is officially sold to discuss the use of the money.
Fund Raising: Accepted. Yard Sale September 22, ’07. Please get in contact with people on Fund Raising Committee if you would like to store your things in the church. 50/50 raffle a big success.
Assistant Treasurer: Accepted. Promised pledges to date is about $18,000.
Treasurer: Accepted. If pledges were up to date we would have a balanced budget. Members requested updates in the newsletter about how behind pledges are. Phil Berry will put in newsletter.
Committee on Ministry: Accepted
Budget Review and Discussion:
1. Budget was accepted with the addition of a RE Director, financial reimbursement for this position is to be reviewed.
2. Use of Endowment: It was voted and apporved to use $20,000 of the endowment for 2007-2008 budget. It was also voted and approved to pay back the endowment after the sale of the land with interest.
Election of Officers: Approved
Other Business: None
Adjourned: 12:42 pm.
Religious Education News
By Deeya Pavelle, Director of Religious Education
What an adventure! I wasn’t sure I would have anything to say after just starting the Church year. But I was wrong! The young people were so excited to start their new year and I was actually nervous! Being an extrovert and a teacher and lecturer I never experience nervous stomach symptoms. Well, there is a first time for everything… I think I was so concerned because I appreciate the leap of faith you took in hiring a DRE and choosing me.
I left my music at work and so asked for some ideas for our opening song. Libby saved the day and suggested Twinkle, Twinkle. It was so sweet and even our teenagers sang along. We giggled and laughed. The joys and concerns were wonderful, we were thankful for the arrival of autumn, cats, new jobs, and saddened by loss and death. We learned about the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, which literally means Head of the Year, and casting off negativity with bread crumbs cast into the river and inviting the New Year to be filled with sweetness as we dipped slices of apple into honey.
Then we learned about the month of Ramadan and that is has three sections of ten days and the focus is on charitable works. The month ends with the celebration of Eid, which involves food! Yea!
The young children have changed their name to Peace Spirits and have a new banner and are working to create a new border around their class. The teens have decided that they want to learn the history of religion and religions of the world.
So the year is off to a good start and we will be starting our doll project by dying the fabric for the bodies. Aaren has offered to help on doll days, so that will be fun as well. Thank you Aaren!
See you next Sunday,
Deeya and the Frog
Our Peace Quilt won a First Place ribbon in the Marshfield Agricultural Fair this summer!! Congratulations to all the members of Channing Church who worked together to create this beautiful and inspiring symbol of hope and peace.
Congratulations to….
Charlotte Anderson, Debbie Arena, Abigail and Wendy Budwey, Danette, Sara and Maddy Carter, Cheryl, Jessie and Sophie Gardner, Becky, Jordan and Sydney Paul, Marc and Katie Tierney, and Madyson Willette.
Raffle tickets for the Peace Quilt are still available
$2.00 ea. or 3 for $5.00.
The next venue for this traveling quilt will be in October at the Haven for Healing Women’s Retreat in Hanson, MA.
If you know of any other opportunities to share the quilt with the public, please let us know. Your support goes a long way to provide funds for our Religious Education Program. Thank you.
My Heart is Moved
- Songs that guide us through the narrows to a deeper understanding of who we are as planetary and cosmic beings.
Carolyn McDade and Friends
Invites the community to sing the music from this new release.
- Songs giving us an emotional entry into the profound wisdom of the
Earth Charter and songs that pull us beyond the curve of time to
establish our grounding in the community of life.
Sunday, October 21, 4:00pm
First Universalist Society of Franklin
262 Chestnut Street, Franklin, MA
Worship Services
Sunday, September 23: Gretchen Robinson will lead our service.
Sunday, September 30: “UUA Association Sunday,” Led by Becky Paul. “We are better together.” Come to church on Sunday, September 30th when we join with thousands of Unitarian Universalists across the nation to celebrate our shared commitment on Association Sunday. We increase our spirit and influence and combine our resources to make Unitarian Universalism a stronger voice for liberal religious values in this country.
“Now Is the Time……to ‘Grow Our Faith…..’ To let the world know we are here, and to welcome those who seek our community of peace, justice, and love. Now is the time for our congregations to grow stronger and more effective because our religious values are sorely needed to help heal a wounded world.” William J. Sinkford, UUA President