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Dear UU Parents and Guardians,

Back in the Building at Full Capacity! 

Sunday School Ingatherings for K-5th graders in person begin this Sunday!!!

Check your eblast from the office for the registrations to attend service with your family. 
We'd LOVE to see you!
Childcare is provided for children 5 and under. Middle and high school can join as helpers, or attend service with parents (see below for 2 special events in June)

Please check HERE for the document for health and safety precautions for Sunday School 
We ARE continuing online on Zoom for now if you are not yet comfortable coming into the building. 

Special Middle and High School Events for June! 

MANDATORY REGISTRATION FOR THESE 2 EVENTS HERE!!!

June 9th and 16th from 6-7:30pm

Middle and High School Youth are invited to meet up for socializing and to celebrate Pride month! 

June 9th - 
Join the LGBTQA Welcoming Committee for a rainbow decorating party in preparation for Pride Month and the Pride Parade! Regardless of your position on the rainbow, (LGBTQ or Ally) we can all celebrate togetherness. Fabric markers, paint, poster-making materials, yard signs, and a few white bandanas will be provided. Bring anything else you'd like to decorate with rainbows (ie: shirts, hats, shoes, etc). This year, the Unitarian Church will participate in the Pride Parade where 'the people are the rainbow'! Help make our sign, your own sign, or your outfit for Pride, or simply join to meet-up and say hello if rainbows aren't your thing. ALL 6-8th are welcome to join. 

June 15th - 
More Pride month fun and shenanigans! 
Meet to check-in with one another after a long year, and do some other exciting activities.
REMEMBER TO REGISTER WITH LINK ABOVE!!!

*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/805185601        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.

*Middle and HS *
Plans are in the works for what will happen this summer - stay tuned.

In June, middle and high schoolers are welcome to attend the Ingatherings with our K-5th graders as assistants, or can attend service with parents.

We also are holding 2 fun events in June! See above for info.

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 the 10th at 8pm
  https://zoom.us/j/5036046295    

Wednesday July 16th at noon

Link: 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- Four Funny Potatoes

https://youtu.be/VfEJuIQvR1A
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K-5: Soul Matters Theme: Play
These materials come to us from the Soul Matters Curriculum team
At the Table

Around the Neighborhood
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Bonus Resources for Parents With the theme of: Play
Wise Words 
Let us arrive as children to this huge playground – the universe.
Roger Bourland
 
In play we move below the level of the serious,
as the child does; but we can also move above it--
in the realm of the beautiful and the sacred.
Johan Huizinga
 
If I get to pick what I want to do, then it's play...  if someone else tells me that I have to do it, then it's work.
Patricia Nourot

They are enlightened who join in this play knowing it as play, for people suffer only because they take as serious what the gods made for fun. 
Alan Watts
 
In rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time’s continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world’s ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may unfold.
Diane Ackerman
 
To play is to listen to the imperative inner force that wants to take form and be acted out without reason. It is the joyful, spontaneous expression of oneself.
Michelle Cassou and Stewart Cubley
 
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
anonymous
 
We don’t stop playing because we grow old, but rather we grow old because we stop playing.
Karl Groos
 
To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!
Charlie Chaplin

It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe, do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu-lila, lila meaning "play." And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance.
Alan Watts
 
I realized that the way of play was a part of all religions. St. Paul proclaimed himself a 'fool for Christ.' Jews honor the Sabbath, that time to stop working and to take pleasure in life. Hindus say that the universe was created as 'lila,' divine play. (After all, the Omnipresent Eternal One needed something to do.) Muslim Sufis teach through jokes about Mulla Nasruddin, a laughable sage/fool. Native Americans celebrate bawdy trickster-figures. (Try attending a Cherokee "Booger Event.") Buddhists practice meditative games of breathing, attention, and joyful presence. Zen teachers poke fun at dogma, as in master Feng's pronouncement: 'The Buddha is a bullheaded jail keeper, and the Patriarchs are horse-faced old maids!' It seemed the whole world was playing with Spirit in a thousand delightful ways.
Drew Leder
 
The world of play favors exuberance, license, abandon. [In it,] selves can be revised.
Diane Ackerman
 
Time is a game played beautifully by children.
Heraclitus
 
Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.
Charlie Parker
 
The children sat in a circle around him & he said, I don’t believe in life anymore & no one said anything for a while because he was older than they were & maybe knew something they didn’t, but then someone said, let’s play a game & someone said, Spy & someone else said, Chase & soon there was no one there but the man sitting alone.
StoryPeople

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.
Tom Robbins
 
I count that day lost when I am not moved to laughter or tears, but even more if I have not played.
George Sheehan
 
I tell you; we are here on Earth to fart around and don’t let anybody tell you different.
Kurt Vonnegut
 
Life is for sure the greatest game that you’ll ever play.
Steven Redhead

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