The ASJ committee is excited to announce that together we raised over $2500 for this year’s Giving Tree! All gift card requests were fulfilled, allowing families to purchase presents for 19 children and food for special meals. Additional thanks to Lane Owsley for fixing up a donated bike that will fulfill a Green Leaf child’s special wish, Ann Lu for donating a Christmas tree to brighten a family’s living room this holiday, and Pam Green for the delivery of Farmer Frog food boxes the week before Christmas.
On January 15th our Special Collection will go toward Advocates for Immigrants in Detention Northwest, which serves immigrants in detention and when released, through welcoming services focused on transitional support and connection to vital resources for resettlement.
In October our collection of $770 benefited Honor the Earth, a native initiative to create awareness and support for Native environmental issues and to develop needed financial and political resources for the survival of sustainable Native communities. November’s special collection of $449 goes to the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, which serves Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska with trained, compassionate volunteer advocates running a toll-free hotline, help with paying for their abortion care, and help with transportation and housing for the procedure.
The ASJ Committee thanks WUUC members and friends for their generous support of our monthly special collections, which take place during services on the third Sunday of every month. Instructions for giving are posted during the service, and you can also donate anytime the following week at https://onrealm.org/wuuc/-/give/now, or by sending a check to WUUC at P.O. Box 111, Woodinville, WA 98072. Please make checks out to WUUC and write “ASJ Special Collection” in the notes.
If you shop at Amazon, please use https://smile.amazon.com/. Select Woodingville Unitarian Universalist Church as you charitable organization. When you check out and pay from the smile.amazon.com url, a portion of the purchase price of selected items will be paid to WUUC.
If you forget to use smile.amazon.com while shopping, you will still be able to access your shopping cart and pay by going to https://smile.amazon.com. This does not affect the price you pay for the items or any other rewards associated with your payment card. The church received $112.75 from Amazon for purchases between April 1st and June 30th.
If you shop at Fred Meyer, you can link your rewards card to the Fred Meyer Community Rewards program. Their reward program is slightly different. Fred Meyer pays annually based on the overall percentage of purchases by rewards members selecting WUUC. Please see https://www.fredmeyer.com/i/community/community-rewards for more details.
For more information, please contact Holly Beck (hbeck@wuuc.org).
The ASJ (Advocates for Social Justice seeks your input! Every member and friend of WUUC is invited to fill out the Special Collections survey at https://forms.gle/eQqDwycdG5D8PvD68. On the third Sunday of each month, WUUC donates the worship offering to a non-profit organization which supports our Unitarian Universalist values. The ASJ is conducting this survey to solicit member/friend input into which organizations should benefit from this offering in the coming year (Nov. 2022 – Oct. 2023). The organizations in this survey have been curated from prior year’s Special Collection recipients and/or nominated by Justice Ministry teams.
Our primary guiding principle for Special Collection recipients is that they support our UU values. We give priority to organizations who operate in our community (King/Snohomish Counties), to which our gift (typically $500 – $750) would have a significant impact, and who work to address the unique dynamics and effects of intersecting forms of discrimination. The organizations in the survey meet these priorities to varying degrees. Please take a moment to visit our survey and choose your top 10 organizations out of the 20 listed.
On October 16, our Special Collection sponsored by Advocates for Social Justice will go to Honor the Earth, a native initiative to create awareness and support for Native environmental issues and to develop needed financial and political resources for the survival of sustainable Native communities. Honor the Earth develops these resources by using music, the arts, the media, and Indigenous wisdom to ask people to recognize our joint dependency on the Earth and be a voice for those not heard.
In July we collected $661 for the Woodinville Storehouse Food Bank, operated by a coalition of churches and denominations serving the local community by providing nourishment and ministry to those in need. They are a faith-based non-profit that is unique in the quality of fresh food they provide including dairy, baked goods, fresh produce, meat and vegetables. August’s special collection of $331 went to JUUstice Washington, which strives to inspire, educate, empower, and nurture the capacity of Unitarian Universalists (UUs), as well as our community allies, to collaboratively advocate for and undertake social and environmental justice initiatives. They support legislative change that aligns with our UU values in Washington state and beyond.
The ASJ Committee thanks WUUC members and friends for their generous support of our monthly special collections, which take place during services on the third Sunday of every month. Instructions for giving are posted during the service, and you can also donate anytime the following week at https://onrealm.org/wuuc/-/give/now, or by sending a check to WUUC at P.O. Box 111, Woodinville, WA 98072. Please make checks out to WUUC and write “ASJ Special Collection” in the notes.
Join us on Saturday, November 5, 2022 @ 6 pm for a meeting of the WUUC Nonfiction Book Club, hosted by Alaine Davis and Lane Owsley at their home in Kenmore. We will be discussing Our Dogs, Ourselves: The Story of a Singular Bond by Alexandra Horowitz. RSVP to Alaine <alaine.davis@yahoo.com>.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Alexandra Horowitz, an eye-opening, informative, and wholly entertaining examination and celebration of the human-canine relationship for the curious dog owner and science-lover alike.
We keep dogs and are kept by them. We love dogs and (we assume) we are loved by them. We buy them sweaters, toys, shoes; we are concerned with their social lives, their food, and their health. The story of humans and dogs is thousands of years old but is far from understood. In Our Dogs, Ourselves, Alexandra Horowitz explores all aspects of this unique and complex interspecies pairing.
As Horowitz considers the current culture of dogdom, she reveals the odd, surprising, and contradictory ways we live with dogs. We celebrate their individuality but breed them for sameness. Despite our deep emotional relationships with dogs, legally they are property to be bought, sold, abandoned, or euthanized as we wish. Even the way we speak to our dogs is at once perplexing and delightful.
In thirteen thoughtful and charming chapters, Our Dogs, Ourselves affirms our profound affection for this most charismatic of animals—and opens our eyes to the companions at our sides as never before.
(Modified from Amazon.com)
Four times a year, the WUUC Book Discussion Group gathers to read and talk about a nonfiction book. You only attend the meetings about books that interest you, so we end up with a different group of participants every time. We meet to connect and talk about a book in depth. Anyone is welcome to suggest a book and/or lead a discussion. Contact Alaine to RSVP, suggest a book, or offer to host a future discussion.
I currently have the honor of being your Board President. I would like to take the opportunity to make regular comments on what the Board is up to. At our last meeting we had the opportunity to thank outgoing member David Simons for his service. He will be sorely missed. We also took the time to welcome our newest member Jeff Lu. I am looking forward to getting to know Jeff. We will be having a retreat September 9-10 and look forward to a time to get to know one another better and to set some goals for the coming church year. The rest of the Board includes: Jan Radoslovich and Jessica Belmont (co-vice presidents), Kermit Sprang (Treasurer), Terry Santmann (Secretary) and Linda Sherry and Jeff Lu (members at large).
It was brought to our attention by a member of the ASJ team that there is currently a proposal to make changes to Title IX that would explicitly name protections for transgender/non-binary students public comment. The rule is currently open for public comment until midnight September 12, 2022. The Board are strongly encouraging people to take the time to seriously review this and submit responses as they feel moved. To be clear, we are not asking for a formal endorsement from the congregation as a whole, but for individual support.
The Board meets the third Wednesday of each month from 6-8 pm and all are welcome to attend.
