 District Assembly 2015
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Walking A Faithful Path
Registration is Now Open!
District Assembly 2015 will be held Saturday, April 25, 2015 at the First UU Society of San Francisco. We are very excited about the possibilities for this year's program, which will be on the theme "Walking a Faithful Path."
We have a wonderful day planned, including two vibrant services organized by our worship team, Rev. Theresa Novak, Rev. Russ Menk, and Music Director Shawn Reifschneider; an innovative all-generations morning program; an array of dynamic and interesting workshops; and opportunities to discuss some of the current challenges and opportunities facing the PCD today.
We will also be holding our PCD-UUA Annual Meeting - it's never to early to organize your congregation's delegates for this important meeting.
Join us for dynamic worship, workshops, connections, and celebration!
Watch the PCD Web Site and this newsletter for more information.
PS: Has your congregation elected your delegates to the PCD Annual Meeting? Would you like to be a volunteer for an hour or two, helping at the registration desk or providing a welcoming, hospitable presence for our participants? Do you have special skills in Audio-Visual technology that you would be willing to volunteer for the day? If so, then please contact District Administrator Chuck Rosene at (510) 530-1437 or [email protected].
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
|
 DA2015 Workshops
See the DA205 website
Big Faith * No Borders in the Pacific Western Region
Rev. Nancy Bowen, UUA Congregational Life Staff and PWR Regional Lead
Covenant-Based Conflict Resolution
Rev. Cat Cox
Fair Compensation
Rev. David Sammons
Living The Seven UU Principles Through The Practice Of Compassionate Communication
Jared Finkelstein, Certified Trainer with the Center for Nonviolent Communication, and
Gregory Rouillard, M.Div., Certification Candidate with the Center for Nonviolent Communication
Mutuality: A Community of Contemplative UU Instructors and Yogis
Rev. Jamil Scott
The Transcendentalists Revisited
Rev. John Buehrens
Transylvanian Unitarians - Walking A Faithful Path
Rev. Dr. Sandor Kov�cs, with members of the Bal�zs Scholars Committee, Arliss Ungar, Chair
Walking The Talk: Multiplying Social Justice Impact With Partnerships
Rev. Leslie Takahashi and Members of the Mt. Diablo UU Church
|
Our Whole Lives
Jr. / Sr. High OWL Facilitator Training
Registration is Now Open!
Our Whole Lives curricula were developed by the Unitarian Universalist Association in partnership with the United Church of Christ, with the goal of providing comprehensive values-based sexuality education for every age group. This intensive weekend workshop provides the skills and training required to facilitate Our Whole Lives classes for grades 7-9 &10-12.
Friday, June 19, 5:00 pm - Sunday, June 21, 3:00 pm, Hosted by: UU Church of Palo Alto.
Facilitators, Karen Rayne, Ph. D. and Derby Davidson, Director of Religious Education at Redwood City.
|
|
 How to Be An Adult in Spirituality
Come and hear from this acclaimed author and teacher who has taught around the nation and at Spirit Rock. He will speak about spirituality and the importance of grace. This is a return engagement following his well-received workshop at MDUUC in 2013.
David Richo, Ph.D., M.F.T., is a psychotherapist, teacher, workshop leader, and writer who works in Santa Barbara and San Francisco, California. He combines Jungian, poetic, and mythic perspectives in his work with the in-tention of integrating the psychological and the spiritual. His books and workshops include attention to Buddhist practices.
Facilitator: David Richo, Ph.D., M.F.T.
Date: Saturday, March 14th
Time: 9:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Location: Bortin Hall
Cost: $30 per individual
Food: Bring a bag lunch. Drinks and desserts will be provided.
Registration: http://tinyurl.com/mduuc-richo
|
 Creating Beloved Community:
A Workshop for Congregational Teams
Saturday, March 21, 2015
9:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Rev. Tera Little and Rev. Deborah Holder
As religious/spiritual people, we are called engage in social transformation in ways that restore community and build right relationships among us all. What attitudes and practices of this emerging new framework draw out what is best in others and ourselves?
Sponsored by Pacific Southwest District and Pacific Central District; Hosted by UU Fellowship of San Luis Obispo.
Congregation Fee: $75.00/Team
Bring a learning team! This will help you more effectively impact change in your congregation.
Congregation Fee includes: lunch and materials
Home hospitality will be available if requested by March 1, 2015.
First come, first served; Contact:
[email protected]
Register Your Team Online: http://tinyurl.com/m88nchc
Registration questions? [email protected] or (661) 425-2297
For a full-sized poster for your congregation, please download:
http://www.pcd-uua.org/currentsdocs/2015beloved.pdf
|
 Available Fall 2015 Cluster Retreats: Congregational Staff Teams or Boards "Listening to oneself requires a place where one can hear one's self think... one needs a sanctuary to restore one's sense of purpose, put issues in perspective, and regain courage and heart..." Leadership Without Easy Answers by Ronald A. Heifetz Religious leadership requires vision, dedication, and the ability to inspire and mobilize people to address 21st Century religious challenges. Yet, we are too often susceptible to getting caught up in the challenges of ministry and mission to create time away for renewal, reflection, and recalibration. These one-day cluster retreats are intended to provide a space of sanctuary for congregational staff teams or congregational boards to restore a sense of purpose, put issues in perspective, and regain courage and heart to carry the congregation's ministry and mission forward. Both retreats will focus on spiritual practices for effective leadership and sustainable ministry and mission, cross-congregational connections, healthy adaptive systems, self and team care. There will be time for worship, spiritual practices, cross-congregational connections, and time for teams or boards to meet together. For information: [email protected] |
Contact us:
PCD Board of Directors
Congregational Life Staff
Congregational Life Staff
PCD District Administrator
Katrina Leathers
PCD Youth Chaplain and
PCD Coming of Age Coordinator
Pacific Central District - UUA
4100 Redwood Road, #344
Oakland, CA 94619-2363
(510) 530-1437
|
|
Our Religious Lives
Joshua Searle-White, Ph.D.
Congregational Life Staff
As you know if you've been reading my columns for the past year and a half, I think that relationships are at the heart of our religious faith. How we treat each other both within and outside our congregations is everything. In our relationships we have an opportunity to live out our spiritual values, to challenge ourselves to more depth and more authenticity, and to enjoy the fruits of being fully alive. When I travel to congregations I meet people who are engaging, intelligent, hard working, and filled with longing for real community. Yet those same people (and I include all of us in this) often have our hopes for real relationship stymied by getting into tangles with each other. And most of those tangles, it seems to me, have to do with our troubled relationship to power, authority, and leadership.
So we in the staff thought that it might be time for us to take some time as a community and explore some of those questions of power and authority and to do so in a way that is light-hearted and fun - because after all, we are all just human beings trying to find a way through life. So why not approach ourselves with love and compassion and lightness in the process?
This is what our District Assembly morning program is going to be about. After our dynamic opening worship, we will explore what it means to walk a faithful path in our relationships with each other. It will be open and accessible to anyone from middle school on up, and it will be engaging and interactive. After lunch, we'll have an array of interesting workshops, an Annual Meeting that will include the announcing of the first-ever PCD Good Works Award recipient, another dynamic worship to close the day, and a fellowship hour at the end hosted by the San Francisco congregation.
I hope you'll join us. It will offer you ideas and feelings and, most importantly, the opportunity for new experiences with your fellow UUs. Who knows? It might be the opportunity you have been looking for.
Take care,
Josh
Joshua Searle-White, Ph.D.
Congregational Life Staff
[email protected]
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
|
 Covenanted Community Life
Rev. Jeanelyse Doran Adams,
Congregational Life Staff
"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."
Martin Luther King Jr.
A small plaque, with these words, sits on my desk. When I need guidance on walking a faithful path I ponder these words and ask for courage to take the first step.
Today, as I write, I am contemplating what walking a faithful path means for our time and beyond. I wonder what our legacy will be. President Obama's speech from Selma is still reverberating in my heart and mind. These words surprise me; "We are the people Emerson wrote of, "who for truth and honor's sake stand fast and suffer long;" who are "never tired, so long as we can see far enough."
Sometimes "far enough" does not feel adequate or is pretty foggy. Other times it seems invisible. This is where our faith "In Forms" us with the will and the courage to honor promises, to work in love toward justice and mercy, and to remain committed even in the darkest moments.
Joan Chittister contrasted commitment and enthusiasm in her book "Songs of the Heart:Reflections on the Psalms". Chittister described how they are often confused. She said, "Enthusiasm is excitement fed by satisfaction." Where as commitment is a "...quality of life that depends more on the ability to wait for something to come to fulfillment."
Chittister does not prescribe idly waiting for something to come to fulfillment, instead she counseled not to give into despair when enthusiasm diminishes. Chittister said, "Commitment is that quality of human nature that tells us not to count days or months or years, conversations, or efforts or rejections, but simply to go on going on..."
For me, this is one practice of covenant. Staying committed to the promises and high aspirations of Unitarian Universalism even when we fall short. We will fall short. Falling short it is one way of learning. Correcting were we fall short is how we grow. If our great aspirations ever come into full view I hope we will set higher ones. At this District Assembly we will explore and begin to name those aspirations, what gets in the way, and how we continue personally and collectively walk a faithful path. I invite you to join us on the journey, and take one more faithful step.
In faith, Jeanelyse
Rev. Jeanelyse Doran Adams
Congregational Life Staff
[email protected]
|
|
 PCD Chalice Lighter Program
The Chalice Lighter program is an exciting opportunity to promote and strengthen Unitarian and Universalism in the Pacific Central District-UUA. Donors help spread the light of liberal religious values through the District by making a donation to growth initiatives in our member congregations. Some of those initiatives have included funding a congregation's first minister or religious education professional, new buildings and building improvements, seeding a spin-off congregation, and developing outreach ministries. You can be a contributor to our current Chalice Lighter effort in support of the Create Meaning Northern Nevada outreach program of the UU Fellowship of Northern Nevada. You may donate to this program via PayPal by visiting the PCD-UUA Chalice Lighter webpage. |
 Russell Lockwood
Leadership School
ENROLLMENT IS NOW OPEN!
Big Faith - No Borders is not simply a tag line in the Pacific Western Region. Big Faith - No Borders is a practice. When the Mountain Desert District gifted Russell Lockwood Leadership School to the Region it meant releasing it to grow and change to meet the needs of leaders across the region. It meant releasing the school to travel around the region. The decision was filled with some loss and with great excitement. The decision was a risk. We could not assure that people from across the Region would attend.
Russell Lockwood Leadership had always been an evolving learning lab. Last year's school was open to people through the Region. A couple of brave souls crossed borders to attend in Alta. This year leaders from all four Districts crossed borders to arrive in Portland. Now it is truly an evolving Regional learning lab.
Russell Lockwood Leadership School will be in Seattle, August 8-14, 2015.
|
Chalice Camp East Bay
August 10 to 14, Chalice Camp East Bay, 9:00 to 5:00 (extended care 8:30-5:30), Lake Temescal in Oakland -- It's not too early to start planning for summer. This years theme: Identity and Justice. We explore the history of institutionalized oppression, especially racism, in our country and how we as UUs create possibilities for a more just world. Chalice Camp is a fun filled week-long summer day camp for children entering 1st through 6th grades. Chalice Camp deepens children's and youth's connection to one another, their understanding of themselves as Unitarian Universalists and expands their knowledge of Unitarian Universalism and their capacity to be articulate about our faith. The activities during the week include daily worship, group building exercises, games, drama, art, study, and a service project. |
 Mosaic Project Outdoor Camp in Napa, CA
Dear Friends, Please see below the announcement about this summer's UU Mosaic Peace Camp, June15-19 at The First Unitarian Church of San Jose. Rev. Dan Harper is also offering an Eco-Justice Camp, http://ecojusticecamp.com/ June 23-26 in Palo Alto.
You get 10% off if children do both camps. I need to update the peace camp website (with Dan's help). Blessings, Geoff Tikkun olam Spirituality Tikkun olam is a Hebrew phrase that means "repairing the world" (or "healing the world") which suggests humanity's shared responsibility to heal, repair and transform the world.
Children, youth and adults will join together once again in the spirit of Tikkun olam as we deepen our skills as peacemakers in the creation of the Beloved Community in San Jos� at the 2nd Annual Unitarian Universalist Mosaic Peace Camp, June 15-19 at the First Unitarian Church of San Jos�.
When we see the brokenness of our society as evidenced by the killing of unarmed people of color in Fergusson and New York and countless other localities across the country we might be tempted to resign ourselves to the fact that America is a violent society. But we know we are much more than those "if it bleeds it leads" stories that drown out the good work that is being done everywhere by youth organizations, like our own Third Street Community Center (TSCC) http://www.3street.org/ and the Mosaic Project, http://www.mosaicproject.org/of Oakland. These two organizations and our church once again meet at the intersection of peace education and camp fun this June. Open to all children from 1st-5th grades with opportunities for middle school youth to be Counselors in Training (CIT's). The peace camp brings together children of all faiths to practice a Tikkun olam spirituality; repairing the brokenness of the world by our commitment to becoming peacemakers in our lives. Spread the good word of peacemaking and let families know about this opportunity. Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me and you! Contact: Rev. Geoff Rimositis for more information and to register yourchild. [email protected] , |
|
 UU High School Youth Opportunities
UUA Summer Seminary
July 29, 2015 - August 3, 2015
Denver, CO
The purpose of Summer Seminary is to provide an opportunity for youth (must have completed grades 10-12 or the homeschool equivalent during the 2014-2015 school year) to explore what it means to be a religious professional in a Unitarian Universalist context.
Interested? Check out previous grads sharing about their experiences at: http://blueboat.blogs.uua.org/?s=Summer+Seminary
For more information:
http://www.uua.org/re/youth/events/summerseminary/
Applications are open until March 15th.
|
|
|
|
|
