Backpacks for Hunger Suggested Food List

Think about nutrition, ease of preparation, kid appeal, and single portions.  Remember, cereal meets nutrition criteria, but one box will fill a backpack!    Please, nothing perishable, nothing  heavy, nothing large, nothing open, and nothing in glass.  Here is a suggested food list from the program:

Small Canned or pouch tuna	Juice Boxes
Small Canned or pouch beef stew	Chef Boyardee
Small Canned or pouch baked beans	Pudding cups
Vienna Sausages	Fruit Leather
Small Cans or pouches of cooked chicken	Cheese or peanut butter crackers
Jerky	Canned spaghetti sauce
Individual soups	Pasta
Crackers in “no air” packaging	Canned or dry beans
Peanut butter in small jar or packets	1 lb bags of white or brown rice
Jelly in squeeze bottles	Small boxes of Pasta
Granola Bars	Flavored noodle or rice packets
Cliff Protein Bars	Instant Oatmeal packets
Nutrigrain Bars	Easy Mac and Cheese
Small packs of raisins	Ramen Noodles
Individual bags of : snacks, crackers, chips, fruit snacks, cereal	Individual applesauce, fruit in cans or plastic containers

Summer 2017 Garden Tours

Summer Garden Tours

July & August 2017

Sunday tours of church members' and friends' gardens are back!  The tours will be 4 to 6 pm, when gardens aren't quite too wilted, should be really lovely and a nice chance for community. They'll occur any week it isn't storming. Questions? Email Mary McAlister at maryalmc@gmail.com or Kris Johnson at kristinejhnsn@gmail.com

Sunday, July 2- HOLIDAY Weekend.- no Garden Tour.

Sunday, July 9 - Jim Dolan. 769 Grove St., Worcester. From church take Harvard St. past the Art Museum, turn left briefly on Salisbury St. and then first right onto Grove. It winds around past Indian Lake and becomes Rt. 122A. 769 is almost in Holden directly in front of the St. Peter's-Marian High School.

Sunday, July 16 – - James and Linda Tartaglia, 6 Old Colony Road, Worcester. From church, turn right onto State St. then turn right onto Harvard St. Continue onto Tuckerman St. and turn left onto Salisbury St. Old Colony Road is a right off Salisbury St. (heading west) about 3 blocks BEFORE Flagg Street. 

Sunday, July 23 -Randy Bloom, 2 Congress St., Worcester. From church turn right onto Main St. through downtown to right onto Pleasant St. before City Hall. At top of hill before gas station turn left onto Crown St. (sign missing) and then right onto Congress St. Please Carpool - limited on-street parking.

Sunday July 30 - Diane and John Mirick, 160 Mirick Rd, Princeton. From church get to Lincoln Sq. and take 290 East briefly to 190 North. Take exit 5 and turn left onto Rt. 140. Follow winding country road to blinking light and turn left onto Rt. 62 and later right into Rt. 31 (before Princeton Ctr.)  Go past Merriam Rd. to 2nd left onto Mirick. Go approx. 1.5 miles, past Beaman Rd. and uphill to house with big red barn on left. Park by barn.

Sunday, August 6 - Sten and Liz Gustavson, 82 Uncatena Ave., Worcester.  From Church take Lincoln St. and onto Burncoat where it forks to left. Cross 290, pass Burncoat schools to light by convenience store: turn right. Uncatena will be a left a little way downhill, #82 is on left just after you turn.

Sunday, August 13 –  Ken Lundquist and Elizabeth Mullaney, #5 & #7 Congress Street, Worcester. From church turn right onto Main St. through downtown to right onto Pleasant St. before City Hall. At top of hill before gas station turn left onto Crown St. (sign missing) and then right onto Congress St. Please Carpool - limited on-street parking.

Sunday, August 20 - Peter Haroutian, 676 Pleasant St.. Worcester. From church take Highland St. across Park Ave. to Newton Square rotary, entering at 6 on a clock face and exiting at 9 onto Pleasant St., past tennis courts to house with enormous tree opposite last court. 

Sunday August 27 - 4-6pm at the Engvalls, 22 Vincent Avenue, Worcester.  A lovely cottage and gardened slopes complete with bee hives and chickens. Directions from Church: Right up State St., Right for 1 block to Left onto Highland. St.  Then Left onto Park Ave.  Go almost to Webster Sq. and turn Left onto Lovell St. by Coes Sq. triangle. Later at traffic circle take 2nd exit onto Ferdinand St., then Left onto Circuit Ave. Then a Right onto Cabot St. briefly and Right onto Vincent Ave.
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Adjunct Garden Tour Saturday, August 12, 1-4 pm Sherwood-Bershad Residence, SterlingRain Date: Sunday, August 13, 1-4 pmFundraiser for First Unitarian Encore (Music) Fund (Suggested donation $5)

Floral Symphony in four movements

Rhapsodie in Green (vegetable gardens)
Organic Obbligatos (orchard)
Perennial Ballads (mature perennial gardens)
Chromatic Cultivars (classical chamber music outside in gardens)

Performing: Alesia Tringale, soprano; Madeline Browning, flute&recorder; Anthony Ho, recorder; Jerry Bellows, recorder; Patrick Chatham, cello; Will Sherwood, harpsichord. Special guest appearance at 1:30 pm – Internationally acclaimed organist Peter Krasinski – performing Elgar’s Enigma Variations on the pipe organ (indoors)

More information and RSVP:  www.SherwoodPhoto.com/gardens

Summer 2017 Weekly Schedule

Church Office Hours:

Monday - Thursday, 9:30  a.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Closed on Fridays

Please call the church office in advance
if you need access to the building.
Staff takes vacation during this time. 

Every Monday throughout the summer: 

5:30 p.m. Meditation Group will continue to meet throughout the summer in the Chapel.  

On Wednesdays throughout the summer: 

7:00 p.m. Tibetan Teachings 

In the Bancroft Room.

7:00 p.m. Private Rental
In the Landers Room.

On Thursdays throughout the summer: 

6:30 p.m. Kundalini Yoga

In the Chapel.

Sundays throughout the summer:

9:00 a.m. Court Hill Singers Rehearsal

In the Bancroft Room.

10:30 a.m. Worship

In the Bancroft Room

Goal Setting Update

Wendy Innis

On Sunday, June 4, a committed, hardworking group looked into the future to help us plan for the next year. Based on our mission and our long-term goals, actions can we take to make our church better? These caring members worked thoughtfully in teams and as a whole group.

We began by reflecting on our Mission:

Honor the Sacred

Connect with Each Other

Serve Justice

The next step was a review of the 6 Five Year goals formulate by the Prudential Committee last June.

1. Create a diversity of modalities of spiritual experience for members, friends, children, and youth.
2. Build relationships with diverse mission partners in Worcester
3. Ensure that all participants of our faith development ministries are able to articulate their faith and apply it to their daily lives.
4. Develop ministries which overcome loneliness amount participants
5. Ensure that new comers, new members, and established members report higher levels of welcome and connection
6. Expand and deepen opportunities for charity, service, justice for members, friends, children and youth.

We then divided into the 6 groups with each person choosing the goal they wanted to work on and began the task of prioritizing the actions to make that goal come alive for this church year. Each group discussed their goal for 15 minutes, and then prioritized three most important actions for their goal. From those three actions, each group chose a single, most important action for their goal.

The results were:

1. Engage entire congregation in "Time for all ages."
2. Catalog connections - institutional and personal - skills and interests.
3. To create opportunities to create our own faith statements
4. Develop small groups around interests and/or spirituality
5. Create formalized procedures for welcoming, tracking and communications with newcomers.
6. Become community leaders with governmental officials, policies with ages 12-25

Now came the hard part. We wanted to prioritize these actions to find the one(s) of the six the group thought most important. Each participant chose their top two actions from the 6 actions.

And the action receiving the most votes was:

Develop small groups around common interests and/or spirituality

The runner-ups were pretty evenly split. Each group cared so passionately about their goal and many other great actions were suggested. Thank you to all who came to the goal setting for participating in so caringly and lovingly a manner.

Our church is indeed doing well!

Wendy Innis

Moderator

Guidelines - Book Submissions

Guidelines & Information:

·       From one to 500 words

·       Initially, three items can be submitted at any time before the deadline.  Mark them 1, 2 and 3 indicating your preference in case not all can be published.

·       Use a popular typeface, double space & one inch margins

·       Or handwritten copy that is clearly written (we will type it)

·       Copy MUST use appropriate language for general readership

·       No controversial topics, ie. political issues

·       Submissions limited to members and friends who attend

·       Artwork must be reproducible and reducible to booklet size with high contrast

·       Possible upcoming writers workshop for children & youth also one for adults

·       Tentative deadline June 2017

Voices Among Us - Monday, November 28

“As we recover from the bruises from this year’s Presidential election, perhaps a different perspective on citizenship will speed the healing. “Ken Mandile

Other voices and visions offer ideas that help guide us throughout our lives. Their messages can suggest direction and meaning. Come for the potluck at 6 PM and/or the program from 7-8 PM in the Chapel.

Ken Mandile will discuss some views on what it means to be a good citizen, with particular focus on Teddy Roosevelt’s “Citizenship in a Republic” speech.  An excerpt, “Man in the Arena” quote (“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…”). 

There was a more important point of Roosevelt’s speech that was lost in the focus on this one powerful quote.  It is not the hero that will determine the success of a republic, “… success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average woman, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of life”.  

Upcoming presenters: January 23, Jay Lavelle; February 27, Steve Knox; March 27, Lee Bona

A "Must-see" CD Release Party

A"Must-see" CD Release Party November 19th

The John Henry’s Hammer Coffeehouse (JHH) concert series is pleased to announce

that on Saturday, November 19, 2016, 7:30-9:30pm, we will host a special CD Release Party for Claudia Schmidt and Sally Rogers featuring their latest collaboration entitled We are Welcome.  Schmidt, who performed at JHH last year expressly promised to return bringing Rogers for this special event. Attendees of last year's concert are still talking about how Claudia touched us by expressing in spoken word and song what we profess in our Seven Principles.

The new CD comprises of seven original tunes by Schmidt, three by Rogers and four more by other songwriters. The two nationally known singer/songwriters have toured and written songs together over a span of thirty-something years even though they’ve lived in different states for the past few decades.  There is a natural chemistry about these two women that makes singing together a very dynamic experience.

Michigan native Schmidt has spent years traveling from across North America to European venues ranging from small clubs to 4,000 seat theaters, and festival stages in front of 25,000 rapt listeners. Having recorded nineteen albums comprising of original songs, exploring folk, blues, and, more currently, jazz idioms, she is known for featuring her acclaimed 12-string guitar and mountain dulcimer performance skills.

Rogers, a nationally renowned recording artist with numerous awards, has fourteen recordings and a music video to her credit.  Her songs have been published in hymnals and national school music textbooks.  She has also composed folk operas, cantatas and has written a children’s picture book published by E.P. Dutton.

JHH is thrilled to have these two powerful performers grace our stage, and hope Worcesterites and more will come out to enjoy what promises to be a highly entertaining evening.  Don't miss it!  Spread the word!

Concert Info:  The doors open at 6:30pm, with a light dinner available; show runs from 7:30-9:30pm. 

Tickets:  $20/door.  Online:   www.brownpapertickets.com