UUCSJS Midweek Message

• Announcements
• Notes from the Board
• Caring Team
• Events This Week
• Explore Our Monthly Theme
• This Sunday
• Last Sunday
• Connect to Our Faith

To have your announcement placed in the Midweek Message, please send an email to admin@uucsjs.org by Noon on Wednesday.

Planning a special event? The Communications Team can help. Visit https://uucsjs.breezechms.com/form/42685e for more information.

We will be meeting on Friday, June 17th at 7:00pm by ZOOM (www.tinyurl.com/uucsjszoom) .

All are welcome to join the discussion !!!!!

THE ADDRESS BOOK by Deidre Mask

This book is a deeply-researched dive into the surprising histories and meanings that lie behind the seemingly mundane way we name our streets and number our houses and buildings. Powerful insight into the ways these addresses not only structure our lives but function as a tool to classify and track people, reflecting the divided of class, race and power.

Diane Dreby will lead discussion.

Contact a member of the Caring Team

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
• Barbara Morell at (215) 805-7599 email: morellb@msn.com

Click on the graphic below or visit the calendar at uucsjs.org for more information on events and meetings.

CLICK HERE to reserve the Zoom Room or to add your event to the calendar.

As we collectively attempt to process the trauma, pain, and senseless violence of the past several weeks, I find myself repeating Aracelis Girmay’s phrase: you are who I love. I’m thinking about how heavy the world feels and how hard it is to breathe under that weight. I’m thinking about self-care and the ways we talk about it and the ways we don’t. It’s easy to accept the weight of the world’s suffering into our hearts and onto our bodies. It is easy to become heavy with the burdens of the world.

You are who I love.

Many believe that religion is the place where we find answers and meaning to the unanswerable questions. For some, religion is the place where answers to the unanswerable questions about evil and violence, death, injustice, and cruelty reside. My Unitarian Universalism doesn’t give me answers to unanswerable questions, but does give me a faith big enough to hold my questions in a place beyond answers.

To be human is to not have answers. To be human is to feel as though the enormity of sorrow, anger, grief, and pain will pull me into the undertow. My Unitarian Universalist faith reminds me that this is simply the way of it: our hearts are meant to crack open under this enormity of grief. Because of this cracking and unknowing—because of this stumbling and holding one another—you are who I love.

Us, human, here, breaking and crying, crumbling and loving still: you are who I love. Your tenderness, your rage, your hope and hopelessness, your justice-seeking, your protesting, your loving us anyway: you are who I love.

We do not need to fear the how of putting-back-together. We will come back together because it is what humans have always done: fallen apart and witnessed the crumbling; come together and tethered ourselves to each other.

We are an angry and beautiful people. We hold our questions, our rage, our not-knowing, our loss, our devastation, and even in the uncertainty, we know we are made to hold one another.

Prayer

Spirit of Life, hold us in our questions, our rage, our not-knowing. Hold us as we learn, imperfectly, to hold one another. Guide us in our reassembling—in the ways we gather ourselves and one another up in love.

Rev. Dr. Laura Solomon (she/her) is the Assistant Minister of Spiritual Growth at the UU Church of Silver Spring (MD). A graduate of Meadville Lombard Theological School, Laura is passionate about living a life of authenticity and love while working towards freedom and liberation. Laura lives in Sykesville, MD with her dog Maizel Roo and her rats, Ginsburg and Nova.

Website: uua.org/braverwiser

Jessica Dunn Safonof, UUCSJS Director of Religious Education

What is a blessing? Is it as simple as what you say after a sneeze? There are blessings at the dinner table, counting your blessings, and sayings like "you are a blessing." What do you think blessing means? Join us as we begin a month of "celebrating blessings" with an interactive, all ages service.

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.

Here you will find ways to learn about and connect with our faith and opportunities to connect with other UU's from outside our congregation.

Click on the images for more information.

Sunday Services 10 am in person and livestreamed on Facebook.

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