Welcome back to coffee hour!
Greetings, good people.
It is mid-February and I don’t know about you, but I am yearning to be outdoors again without requiring multiple layers of clothing. The sun shines brightly through my window and the sky is blue and beautiful, yet when I step out of doors, the cold wind feels like a bitter betrayal. It looks nice out, but looks can be deceiving.
This is the time of the year in my home state of Maine where things begin to get, well, a little squirrelly. The weeks of late February and into March are cabin fever season. It’s too cold to go outside and do anything, and everyone is well and truly tired of being cooped up in the house. When I was a newspaper reporter, this was the time of year we saw increased police reports of domestic assault and drunken fights amongst family members. Everyone yearns for a break in the weather so they can get outside, fill their lungs with air that does not threaten to freeze them solid in a single breath, and move around beyond the confines of the house. In Maine, even mud season is preferable to cabin fever.
I remember one particularly bitter winter. It was one of those years when it seemed like it snowed every few days with barely time to dig out and clean up between storms. Roadside snowbanks grew so high that it could be dangerous to leave your driveway and try to get onto the road because you couldn’t see if there was oncoming traffic. It was one of those winters. I was attending a meeting of recovery-minded folk in a church basement in Bar Harbor, and one of the speakers lamented the never-ending cycle of storms and bitter cold. “Will spring ever get here?!” They very nearly wailed in desperation and frustration.
An old-timer spoke next. (An old-timer is someone with many years of sobriety, and occasionally also many years of life behind them.) This old-timer was an old guy in work pants and flannel, with well-worn boots, and a heavy coat laid over the chair behind him. This was a guy who knew both winter, and Maine, as well as a thing or two about sobriety. He spoke for a bit about taking all things, not just sobriety, one day at a time. Get up, see what needs doing, and go do it. One foot in front of the other, that sort of thing. He spoke a little bit about faith, but not so much about a faith in God, specifically, but a faith in the natural order of things. He was a man who charted his living with the rise and fall of the tides, the phases of the moon, and when the seasons changed. As for that year’s elusive spring, well, he was not worried. “It’ll come,” he said. “It always has.”
Spring will come, friends. Warmth will return. For today, we get up, see what needs doing, and set about getting it done.
Stay warm.
Rev. DC
Rev. DC is available for pastoral care appointment Wednesday through Friday 10am to 3pm. Email minister@uucsjs.org to schedule an appointment.
Need Help?
Team members can provide you with support during/after an illness, a death in the family, or other loss or hardship. They can find you resources, run errands, or provide meals in time of need.
Reach out to:
- Tracey Catino at (609) 674-8721 email: Traceysnaps@msn.com
- Denise O'Meara at (610) 316-7495 email: denome53@gmail.com
- Helen Utts at (609) 338-3391 email: HelenUtts@aol.com
- MaryLou DeMaria-Berhang at (201) 247-5635 email: MLberhang@gmail.com
- Tony Zitelli at (201) 463-2800 email: happy85a@aol.com
Opening and Closing on Sundays
This Sunday, February 20, we will be having a 10 minute training on opening and closing the building. If you have a key and are first in the building on Sunday mornings or for meetings, this is important for you to attend. Please come to the foyer directly after the service for a walk-through of the procedure. If you cannot make it this Sunday, there will be another training. Stay tuned!
UUCSJS BOOK CLUB for February
Meeting on Friday, February 18th at 7:00 pm on ZOOM (www.tinyurl.com/uucsjszoom).
Anyone is welcome to join the ZOOM meeting. Questions: email Barbara Morell
ANXIOUS PEOPLE by Fredrik Backman
The author of this poignant, charming novel has an innate ability to capture the human spirit, get under his characters’ skins and relay his characters thoughts and feelings in a way that makes us feel as if we know them, as if we are friends with them, and at times as if we are them.
Barb Morell will be leading the meeting
AMERICAN DIRT by Jeanine Cummins is March selection.
How Big is Your Comfort Zone?
-Rev. DC Fortune
Our “comfort zones” are the areas of experience and thinking that are comfortable to us. New ideas and new experiences can enlarge our comfort zones, but that stretching is often uncomfortable and disorienting. Join us as we examine how we can widen the circle of our comfort zones.
PLEASE NOTE: This service will be in person at UUCSJS and streamed live on our Facebook page. A recording will be available later in the day on our YouTube Channel.
Eastern Service Workers Association Needs Your Help!
Several Caring Committee members have been volunteering with the Eastern Service Workers Association this winter.
Low-income workers need immediate attention to food, clothing, and advocacy by way of ESWA’s benefits program. This winter has been particularly tough. Many evictions going on as Covid rent moratorium expires. The goal is for the longer term solutions to their poverty.
An exciting milestone has been reached to help in this mission. A dilapidated building behind their office has been slowly renovated by all-volunteer individuals with carpentry, painting, electrical and plumbing skills. The final task for this to become much-needed ESWA Members Service Center is to lay the floor. A kind contractor’s very reasonable quote for his labor is able to be covered through donations. What remains is the $2,700 bill for materials. They are able to cover $1200 of that. We offered to try to raise the remaining $1500. I have personally “hit on” family and friends to the tune of $775. $725 remains.
We hoped that you good people might consider donating. I personally would be glad to take anyone over to ESWA in Pleasantville so you can be impressed first hand, and possibly consider volunteering. More volunteers are urgently needed! They didn’t have enough to get out the Tamales.
Thanks beforehand for your generosity!
Denise OMeara, on behalf of Caring Committee and ESWA
Support Afghan Refugees Relocating in South Jersey
We have an opportunity to support Afghan refugees who are relocating in South Jersey. I have had a couple conversations with Cheryl Dunican-Hein from the Cherry Hill UU. She and her husband are longtime social justice advocates. Specifically, Catholic Charities has the government contract to facilitate resettlement of Afghan refugees in our area. There is a sum of money allocated for each refugee. Catholic Charities is looking to partner with us. The Atlantic City contact is Jose Sanchez.
There are three types of support needed:
- Transportation to and from medical appointments.
- Instructors for English as a Second Language. You do not need to be certified.
- The donation of furniture plus drivers and trucks to pick up the donations and deliver them to the individuals in need.
Contact Janet Longo 609-226-6596 if you are able to contribute to any of the above.
UU Faith Action NJ Statewide Common Read
Registration is now open for discussion sessions on the common read of The Social Life of DNA, sponsored by the UUFANJ Reparations Task Force. Sessions will be conducted over Zoom on Feb 23, March 9, March 23, April 6, April 27, and May 11 from 7:00-8:30pm.
The common read curriculum is prepared with leadership by Dionne Ford, author, and Dr. Mahdi Ibn-Ziyad, Reparations Task Force Co-Chair.
About The Social Life of DNA
In The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome, Alondra Nelson details how DNA testing is being used to grapple with the unfinished business of slavery: “to foster reconciliation, to establish ties with African ancestral homelands, to rethink and sometimes alter citizenship, and to make legal claims for slavery reparations.” In her deep dive into the intersection of genetic ancestry and racial politics, Nelson gives an overview of US reparations projects over the past century including one in our backyard – the African Burial Ground in New York City. Now a national monument and the oldest and largest known excavated burial ground in North America for both free and enslaved Africans, the African Burial Ground was a major factor in the development of consumer DNA testing, a multi-billion dollar industry.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the South Jersey Shore
Email: admin@uucsjs.org
Website: www.uucsjs.org
Location: 75 S Pomona Rd, Egg Harbor City, NJ, USA
Phone: (609) 965-9400
Facebook: facebook.com/uucsjs
Twitter: @UUCSJS