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MARCH 26, 2014 ~ Weekly Update
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USLC Office Hours: Monday and Tuesday 10am-1pm.
Office Phone: 919-471-3504
Office Administrator email: cagnc@msn.com
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Sunday, March 30 , 2014 - 10:30 am
UNITY THEME FOR MARCH: EXPRESS WHOLENESS
Affirmation: I am whole in mind, body, and Spirit
Check out unity.org/resources.
LESSON FOR TODAY: Living in the Heart of Desire
Desire in the mind and desire in the heart two different things. The desire to have is different than the desire to become.
SPECIAL MUSIC: Sandy Hemenway
Childcare provided for the service.
MEET & GREET follows the service ~
spend time munching and mingling,
as you greet old friends and meet new ones!
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Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) |
FUN FIRST FRIDAY every month at 7-8:30pm.
SPECIAL EVENTS
MARK YOUR CALENDARS
PRAYER VIGIL - Sunday from 5-6pm. This is your opportunity to lift the consciousness of USLC into prosperity in all of its forms. Join in quiet meditation, clear your consciousness of any lack or limitation, allow the flow of Spirit to pour forth from you...and watch the shift at USLC. Prayer works! Drop in anytime.
BOOK STUDY GROUP. Living Originally by Robert Brumet. One group will be meeting on Thursday evenings at the home of Jeanie Rodgers, 605 Quartz Drive, Durham...8.3 miles from the Center. Join us as we discover how to "live originally". Next week: Thursday, April 3th
FUN FIRST FRIDAY: SPRING INTO EASTER, April 4 at 7pm. Hop on in to USLC for an Easter Themed Fun First Friday! Join us for a fun, family frendly evening with games such as "Pin the Tail on the Bunny", Easter Bingo, and a duck race. Also...decorage craft eggs for an Easter Tree. So put on your bunny ears or best Bonnet and help us build community!
WALKING THE LABYRINTH AT BRINKLEY MEMORIAL BAPTIST CHURCH, April 13th-18th. We are sponsoring this activity to be held during Holy Week. Our commitment is to provide volunteers on different days and times to help with setup, take down and hosting. Please sign up for a specific time. Look for the flyer to participate in the walk...a truly spiritual experience open to all!
COMING SOON
DINNER AND DISCUSSION,Wednesday, April 23rd at 6:30pm. Mark your calendar for our monthly get together. Pasta is on the menu.
SOUP SUNDAY, After the Service, April 27th. Want to share your favorite recipe? Sign up to bring soup to share. Donation: $2 to support our General Fund.
ONGOING
PRAYER AND HEALING MINISTRY GATHERING. Healing prayer, guided meditation, and opportunity for hands on healing. Be still and know. Every 1st Sunday at noon and 3rd Monday at 7pm, Fillmore Chapel. Next meeting: <Monday, April 6th at 7pm.
BOOKSTORE: Featured Books. Check out our Featured Book table for books referenced by Rev. Paula during Sunday lessons in March and April. Powerful writings to transform your life.
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PAULA'S PERSPECTIVE
"I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
Or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
But because it never forgot what it could do."
Naomi Shihab Nye
from The Exquisite Risk by Mark Nepo
We do a lot of striving and reaching in the course of our life. We want to make a difference in a way that is recognized, acknowledged and rewarded. We want to solve the biggest riddle or be the last man standing or the winner on American Idol. We think fame would be great...it would prove that we are worthy and important. When we are gone from this life our legacy would live on. We want the world to remember what we were made of.
Not you? Well, maybe it's just that you want to have your say...on stage. You want others to know that it was your idea, that you said it first, that you are in charge. Hey...somebody look this way...at me...over here...I'm the one!
The never-ending search outside of our self for validation of our own worth seldom brings us what we really want from life...peace, serenity and humble confidence. If we have enough courage we can find these in our ordinary lives. We find them when we practice awareness and appreciation of the gentle breeze, the suddenly blue sky or the fury of wind and rain. We experience them sitting with our morning coffee or over conversation with a friend. We can find these feelings when we open ourselves up to possibilities...rather than to always see obstacles.
In the ordinary-ness we can remember why we are here...to love and to be loved...to care and to care for...to be what we came here to be. Never forget what you can do...in your own unique and essential way.
Be the buttonhole!
Peace always
Paula
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WOW!
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When community life is based on voluntary work, I think it is a very good thing. It is justified because people depend naturally on each other. Living in a community is rather like living in an enormous family that meets our needs.
Dalai Lama
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| Sundays:
10:30
Celebration Service & YOU/Uniteen classes
(Childcare available)
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Directions: Exit 175 off of I-85. Turn NORTH on Guess Road; Turn right onto Carver Street. Go approximately half a block; USLC is located in the small business park on your left.
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YOU CAN HELP USLC GET FREE MONEY!!!
Pick up a gift card from Carla; $5 is already on it to get you started.
Take the card to Kroger Customer Service Desk and put your grocery money on the card. (Be sue you do this at least 12 hours before you plan to use it. It takes time for it to be put in Kroger's system.)
Do your grocery shopping with the gift card. This does not affect your regular rewards from Kroger.
Every time you use your card to by groceries or gas at Kroger, the amount is credited to USLC toward a 5% reward when our total reaches $5000...that's $250 for the Center.
NOTE: You continue to recieve all your regular Kroger rewards.
Encourage friends and family to join our fund drive.
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Join us on Meetup.com
And forward this newsletter to your friends!
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COMMUNITY ZONE
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
President: Ginny Brendlen
Vice President: Janice Escott
Treasurer: Jeanie Rodgers
Secretary: Mary Lea Richards
Member at Large: Jim Kimbrough
Workshop: Healing the Past, Building the Future, April 26, 9am-4:30pm. Popular A.R.E. speaker Peter Woodbury, MSW, will explain Edgar Cayce's concepts of karma, grace, and reincarnation, as well as discuss tools for forgiveness from the Cayce readings. Attendees will experience guided imagery and past-life regression, leading to understanding the soul's purpose and the limitless potential of your incarnation in this lifetime. Commons Room, ERUUF, Durham. $50. Scholarships available. Registration: Linda 919-790-9130.
Next service project? How do you want to support our local community? The Board is open to suggestions.
Food & Fellowship. Sign up to provide a snack for our time of fellowship after the service. A great way to build community and support your spiritual home.
CD's of Sunday Lesson available for $3.00. Check at the Sound Booth after the service.
Financial Report
Income February: $10,290
Expenses February 14,743
Profit (Loss) ($ 4,453)
KEEPING UP: What's happening in your neighborhood? Are you traveling, hosting visiting friends or relatives, having a yard sale, announcements, other activites? Send your information to rodgers.jean@gmail.com by Tuesday of each week.
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FEATURE
THE LIFE OF CARE
Excerpts from The Exquisite Risk: Daring to Live an Authentic Life by Mark Nepo
...wisdom itself is a threshold that we are called to cross into a yet deeper experience of living. It implies that the deepest experience exists beyond the doorways that knowledge opens...
This all confirms that our penchant for thinking and speaking in concepts and words is only one way into the depth-experience of life. ...our journey through the days is one of self-education: of calling forth through experience that which is already present within us, until we find the world within us and ourselves in the world. And such a way demands that we listen to more than just what we think we have to say.
...I think I'm ready to receive the heart of it now. For whatever chance there is to go beyond our suffering, we each will need to say yes a lot. And if there is a chance to inhabit wonder we each will need to listen to as many languages as we can. It's left me to meditation on light and waves and leaves and wind. It's made me ponder, if the sun thinks by radiating light, then is its language warmth? If the ocean thinks by undulating its mass of waves, then is its language wetness? If a tree thinks by converting light to sugar, then is its language the sprouting of leaves? And if the wind thinks by moving through everything unseen, then is its language how it bends us? It's made me realize that I am tired of only thinking like a man and pray for the courage to radiate, to undulate, to sprout, and to move through everything unseen...
So all we've been exploring comes down to this. In the life of care, here is nothing to accomplish, only endless things to care for. Nothing to be mastered. Only an effort to lean into everything that is alive. Nothing to regret in what has brought us this far. Only gratitude that, as a human being, our humanness is a constant cocoon that keeps shedding to reveal that small, luminous portion of Universal spirit which we are privileged to be guardians of in our brief time on earth. Beyond the virtues of knowledge, the gift of such care is that it opens the well of being that makes life bearable.
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