August - Perseverance- Wk 1

Dear UU Parents and Guardians,

August 8th-           10am Service and CHILDCARE
                                 11am Zoom Sunday School
                                 **We are now in the 'mid-yellow' and our step plan for church says that we will switch back to offering online Sunday School only in an effort to keep children more safe. 
                                      Childcare is offered during service. Everyone is required to wear a mask in the building. 
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Wednesday Night YoUUth Night
All 6-12th graders are invited
6-7:30 In PERSON
11th and 18th
Masks required
SOCIAL JUSTICE THEMED!!! You don't want to miss this! 
Register HERE
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We're hiring! 
Preschool/Nursery Co-teachers
1 lead
1 assistant
Sundays from either 9-12:30 or 8:15-1pm depending on whether we are doing 1 or 2 services

Also hiring a childcare provider for Wednesday and Thursday evenings 5:45-9pm
Must be 18+
Must have the Covid vaccine
Please send me a message if you are interested in applying, and for more details. 
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Volunteers needed! 

We need teachers and assistants for K-12th 
Teachers plan EASY lessons (with guidance)
and assistants show up as an extra set of hands
Commitment is 7-10x/church year

Chalice Connections volunteers: 
K-5th graders
Focus on RELATIONSHIPS - share your interests, talents, hobbies - connection to Unitarian Universalism
Commitment is 1-4x/church year

I need to hear from possible volunteers NOW to know if we'll be able to have a functional program this next year! Please contact me as soon as possible if you are interested. 
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Events for All Ages at the Church - Save the Dates! 
August 7 (Saturday morning): UCL Talent Show POSTPONED!!! Stay tuned
August 19 (Thursday evening): Third Thursday at 6300 A Street, with A Street Band
August 22 (Sunday afternoon): Lawn Games at 6300 A Street.
September 2 (Thursday evening): Tent Revival 2.0
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*Zoom Sunday School *

Zoom Sunday School at 11am
Approximately 30 minute program geared towards K-5, but is open to all ages
Sundays at 11am
We typically have a chalice lighting, story, guided discussion, and/or activity such as a scavenger hunt or art project to be done at home as part of these lessons.
Link: https://zoom.us/j/5036046295     Password: unitarian
Online classes will continue as long as we have regular attendance. If many people shift to in-person, or don't attend over summer, we will re-evaluate.

DISCORD for Middle and High School
We invite all Middle and High School students from Omaha and Lincoln to join us for discussion and community through this app.
'Would you rather' questions - Thoughts along our monthly Soul Matters themes - 'Big questions' related to UUism.
Also - a "Pet Page"!!! So much fun.
***Be aware that once joining Discord, it opens up the app to multiple pages which will need to be moderated by students themselves and their parents/guardians for security.

https://discord.gg/3NuSj6f
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*Parent and Guardian Chat:*
The chance for parents and guardians to check in with me for 'open office hours'
Every other Thursday 8pm and every other Wednesday noon (I close the meeting after 15 minutes if no one checks in)

Thursday Aug 12th at 8pm
  https://zoom.us/j/5036046295    

Wednesday August 18th at noon
  https://zoom.us/j/5036046295      
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Family Open Circle: 
Information can be found on their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1081904435272577
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Videos This Week: 

Chelsea's Story- 
The Kissing Hand
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K-5: Soul Matters Theme:

Soul Matters breaks in June/August
I will still provide resources for parents, and a story each week. 
Lesson plans will return in September
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Bonus Resources for Parents With the theme of: Perseverance

Wise Words 
This morning I have been pondering a nearly forgotten lesson I learned in high school music. Sometimes in band or choir, music requires players or singers to hold a note longer than they actually can hold a note. In those cases, we were taught to mindfully stagger when we took a breath so the sound appeared uninterrupted. Everyone got to breathe, and the music stayed strong and vibrant… So let's remember the advice of music: Take a breath. The rest of the chorus will sing. The rest of the band will play. Rejoin so others can breathe. Together, we can sustain a very long, beautiful song for a very, very long time. You don’t have to do it all, but you must add your voice to the song.
- Amiee Van Ausdall 
To sustain a stay in a dry and barren desert, it is necessary to be about something great enough to be worth a lifetime of unrewarded effort. There are simply some divine cravings in life—the liberation of the poor, the equality of women, the humanity of the entire human race—that are worth striving for, living for, dying for, finished or unfinished, for as long as it takes to achieve them. No single capital campaign will do the trick. No one speech will change the climate. No single law will undo eons of damage. It will take a million lives dedicated to the long haul and heaped on top of one another. That’s why the Zen saying “O snail, climb Mount Fuji, but slowly, slowly,” is so important. If we are to persevere for the long haul, we must not overdrive our souls. We must immerse ourselves in good music, good reading, great beauty and peace so that everything good in us can rise again and lead us on beyond disappointment, beyond boredom, beyond criticism, beyond loss. Then life has vision again; then going on seems both possible and necessary.
- Joan Chittister
 
I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.
- Nelson Mandela
 
Success is a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired. You quit when the gorilla is tired.
- Robert Strauss
 
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
- The Dalai Lama
 
She stood in the storm, & when the wind did not blow her away, she adjusted her sails.
- Elizabeth Edwards
 
The universe always falls in love with a stubborn heart.
- Anon
 
Big shots are only little shots who kept shooting.
- Christopher Morley
 
The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places.
- Unknown
 
Still I Rise
Maya Angelou
Full poem found here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46446/still-i-rise
“You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise…”
Read by Maya Angelou: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAYm1uJeSxQ
 
Maya Angelou turned forty on April 4, 1968. She had planned a big party in Harlem, with many of the day’s black intellectual elite among the guests. History had other ideas; Dr. King’s assassination sent Angelou into a weeks-long depression. It was fellow writer James Baldwin who helped her dig out of it. Angelou recalls Baldwin’s assistance in her book A Song Flung Up to Heaven, where she writes that laughter and ancestral guidance got her through:
“There was very little serious conversation. The times were so solemn and the daily news so somber that we  snatched mirth from unlikely places and gave servings of it to one another with both hands...
I told Jimmy I was so glad to laugh. Jimmy said, “We survived slavery. . . . You know how we survived?
We put surviving into our poems and into our songs. We put it into our folk tales. We danced surviving in Congo Square in New Orleans and put it in our pots when we cooked pinto beans. . . . [W]e knew, if we wanted to survive, we had better lift our own spirits. So we laughed whenever we got the chance.”
- Kenny Wiley, from Nights Can Be Tough
 
Heartbreak is how we mature; yet we use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream, a child lost before their time. Heartbreak, we hope, is something we hope we can avoid; something to guard against, a chasm to be carefully looked for and then walked around; the hope is to find a way to place our feet where the elemental forces of life will keep us in the manner to which we want to be accustomed and which will keep us from the losses that all other human beings have experienced without exception since the beginning of conscious time. But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way... If heartbreak is inevitable and inescapable, it might be asking us to look for it and make friends with it, to see it as our constant and instructive companion, and even perhaps, in the depth of its impact as well as in its hindsight, to see it as its own reward. Heartbreak asks us not to look for an alternative path, because there is no alternative path. It is a deeper introduction to what we love and have loved, an inescapable and often beautiful question, something or someone who has been with us all along, asking us to be ready for the last letting go.
- David Whyte