Saturday, February 18, 2023, from 6 to 9 p.m.

Please join us for a Mardi Gras celebration and fundraiser with tasty Cajun food, libations and music. The party takes place in the Heritage UU Church Great Hall on Saturday, February 18th, from 6 to 9 p.m.

Dinner will be accompanied by New Orleans style jazz and a murder mystery! You may choose to join the investigation after dinner or simply enjoy friends and music. Reach out to Kay Inskeep if you are interested in a leading role in our mystery.

While much of our Cajun meal will be catered by Allyn’s Cafe, please let Meredith Meyer know if you are willing to help with any small side dishes or desserts. You can contact Meredith at:

Please note that this will be an adult-focused event; no childcare will be available.

CLICK HERE to purchase tickets.

Saturday, January 28, 2023, streaming 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Are you yearning for greater depth in your spiritual life? Delve deeper with Rev. John Buehrens.

This year’s spiritual theme is Transcendentalism. The first Unitarian Transcendentalist on the Pacific Coast, as of early 1860, was the Rev. Thomas Starr King. He gave the first Unitarian lectures in Portland in 1862. He also exemplified key spiritual practices of the Transcendentalists that need renewal among us today: personal reflection (often in the form of keeping a journal), and deep interpersonal connections crossing conventional boundaries.

Rev. John Buehrens served as UUA President from 1993 to 2001. A prolific author, his most recent book about UU heritage is CONFLAGRATION: How the Transcendentalists Sparked the American Struggle for Racial, Gender, and Social Justice (Beacon, 2020).

In addition, Rev. Buehrens will offer a workshop entitled, “God Optional: Theologies Among Us Today.” John Buehrens and Rebecca Ann Parker surveyed the hope-filled thought patterns in progressive religion today in their book, A House for Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion in the 21st Century (Beacon, 2010). While their framework borrows from a heritage of Judeo-Christian systematic theology, it also makes room for humanist, indigenous, and non-Western a/theologies. All such thinking, however, needs to meet some overriding and important tests to be effective, tests which will be revealed in the workshop.

The cost for a virtual livestream ticket is $35. There is also an option to attend in person at First Unitarian Church of Portland, Oregon. Scholarships are available.

Click here for a full program guide with schedule (Note, times are listed in Pacific Standard Time, PST).

Registration is open until 4:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on Sunday, January 22nd. You will receive a link to join via email on January 23rd. Register at:
https://www.firstunitarianportland.org/events/sfad23/

1/5/2023.

Wednesday, December 28, 2022, 7:00 p.m.

Join us in the sanctuary for Vespers, an hour of peaceful contemplation in community. Through readings, singing, silence and reflection, we seek to nurture a sense of calm and communion with the holy. Let us welcome the darkness of winter and reflect on the year past together.

If you have questions, please contact Mimi Sinclair or Steph Tacy.

Sunday, January 8, 2023, after the worship service.

All good things must come to an end, and that includes the displaying of our 2022 Christmas Tree. Please stay after church on Sunday, January 8, and help us take down and pack away the Christmas Tree and other Sanctuary decorations.

Wednesday, January 18, 2023, at 7:00 p.m.

With more than a million copies sold, all those readers can’t be wrong about Heritage Book Club’s selection entitled The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles. The meeting will happen on January 18, from 7 to 9 p.m., in the Heritage Room. Curl up in front of a warm fire for this lengthy read about four boys in the 1950s as they set off on a mission, crossing the United States.

As we move into 2023, the Babes with Books’ (BWB’s) reading selections and meeting dates are as follows:

• February 15 – The Silent Patient, by Alex Michaelides
• March 15 – Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus

All meetings are held from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Heritage Room, unless otherwise announced.

Please bring your ideas for future reads to the January 18 meeting so we can fill out our list for several more months. Please assure that your suggestions are available in sufficient quantities (~10) from the library before suggesting them.

All women (be they members or friends) are always invited to any BWB meeting, whether they have read the book or not. Unless otherwise announced, approximately a month in advance the meeting’s book selection will be available on hold for the Heritage Book Club at the Anderson Township branch of the Hamilton County library.

For inclusion in the BWB Google group emails, contact the Heritage office.

Do you think you might want to be a voting delegate at the upcoming UUA General Assembly, which occurs June 21–25? It is possible to be a GA delegate by traveling to its location in Pittsburgh, or by connecting remotely through the Internet.

For more on GA in general, see this article from the December Heirloom: General Assembly 2023. The broader GA program includes lectures, workshops, worship, entertainment, and talking with UUs from all over the continent. All of this can be a great experience, whether you are a delegate or not and whether you attend in person or remotely.

Indications are that most of the business of this year’s GA will be about two things: The UUA Presidential election and the Article II Bylaws revision. For more information, see the accompanying article, The 2023 General Assembly Has Important Business.

Lay member delegates from our church generally pay their own registration fee, which can range from $0 (or a donation) for people who participate remotely in only the business sessions, to $400 for people who participate in person and register by February 28, to $600 for people who participate in person and register late. The registration fee can be reduced or eliminated by being accepted to work in volunteer jobs at GA, and some financial assistance is available from the UUA. Scholarship assistance is also available from Heritage Church, and those needing such help should contact Rev. Bill Gupton (email below). More information on registration fees is on the UUA website page for General Assembly Registration.

Heritage UU Church can have up to four lay member delegates at GA. (Our Senior Minister is automatically a delegate by virtue of his position, and our Director of Lifespan Faith Development can be a delegate automatically if certain conditions are met.) Heritage Church also can (and probably will) appoint alternate delegates. The decision on who will be our church’s lay member delegates will be made by our Board of Trustees, and the Board plans to do this at its February 13 meeting.

If you would like to be considered for a delegate role, please send an email to both our Senior Minister, Rev. Bill Gupton, and our Board President, Julie Kane. The deadline to apply to be a delegate is February 5, 2023. In your email asking to be considered, please indicate why you want to be a delegate, and state what you consider to be your qualifications to be a delegate. Email addresses are provided below.

Rev. Bill Gupton:

Julie Kane:

12/14/2022.

Rev. Bill Gupton, our Senior Minister, will be on winter break (a combination of vacation and study leave) from December 25 through January 18. He will be available only in case of emergency, by cell phone.

2022.

Feder bequest use of funds: The Board has decided to allocate $78k (the $70,453 remainder of the original bequest, plus some additional funds) as follows:

• $25k: Put towards endowment
• $25k: Held for future church roof replacement (our church roof is nearing the end of its usable life)
• $10k: Renovation of church bathrooms
• $5k: For security team to spend as needed
• $5k: For technology team to spend as needed
• $5k: For DLFD to spend on children’s space/programs
• $3k: Held for sealing church parking lot this spring

Congregation survey on Reimagining Church: As part of our ongoing Reimagining Church process, the Board is working on putting together a congregation-wide survey to help guide our future actions. The Reimagining Church retreat in September generated a wide range of thoughts and ideas, and this survey is part of our effort to focus these thoughts into concrete, actionable items. This survey will hopefully be launched in December and will be open through January.

Music Director search: A search committee has been established for this position. Five members were originally on the committee, but one subsequently left. The four remaining members are Alison Lang-Hickey, Roger Miller, Joann Meyer, and Kate Wells.

Diversity Day: HUUC will host a Diversity Day event on March 4, 2023. There will be two speakers at the event, and it will run from 9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Rebecca Pace is handing over logistical planning for this event over to DLFD Laci Adams.

Additional signers on Schwab account: Because we only had one valid signer on our Schwab account (Bob Booth), the Board added two additional signers: Reid Hester (Finance Committee chairperson), and Luke Walczewski (as a backup).

Revised COVID policy language: To keep up with the ever-changing COVID landscape, the Board loosened our “masks are strongly requested” COVID policy language to the following: “Masks are optional. Any persons exhibiting fever, cough, or shortness of breath, or other symptoms of COVID-19 should avoid any in-person meetings of any size.” The Board also decided to remove signs from the building doors regarding masks.

Feder bequest use of funds: The Board continues to give thought to the best use of this generous bequest. Our community has many different needs and priorities, and the Board is trying to best use these funds for the benefit of the church overall.

Tuesday, January 24, 2023, 7 to 9 p.m.

Patriarchy could be defined as “a system that encompasses a worldview, arrangements about how we live as humans with each other on this planet, implicit blueprints for what kinds of institutions we create, and guidelines for what to do with our young to prepare them for the system itself. The underlying principle of patriarchy is separation and control. The separation is from self, other, life, and nature.”

Come along to what is sure to be a lively and deep discussion of what the patriarchy is and how it affects both women and men. Yes, the patriarchy affects men too.

This session arose from the discussion in the fall of 2022 and will include men. No need to have attended any of the other sessions. We welcome you if you did attend the others as there will be some new information discussed.

The meeting will take place in the Heritage Room. Open to all members and friends of HUUC. Facilitated by Tracy Jo.

12/24/2022.