Join us on Friday, August 12 at 7 p.m. at the WUUC Church Campout at Rasar State Park in Concrete, WA for a meeting of the WUUC Nonfiction Book Club. We will be discussing These Precious Days, a collection of essaysby Ann Patchett. RSVP to Alaine <alaine.davis@yahoo.com>. RSVP not required, but helpful for planning purposes.
If you aren’t attending the campout, but are still interested in reading and discussing the book, consider volunteering to lead a Zoom discussion on the same day!
These Precious Days, a collection of essays from beloved novelist Ann Patchett, spans decades but leads to our present moment. As the title of her collection suggests, she is grateful and acknowledges all the luck she’s had.“We don’t deserve anything,” she writes. “Not the suffering and not the golden light. It just comes.”
Patchett’s essays are sharp and honest. She confronts her faults frequently while also remaining candid, unafraid to talk about getting a prestigious award or acknowledging that she’s a pretty big deal. She writes too about getting rid of her possessions and a year of no shopping, about her love of Snoopy and getting her MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop—a program helped her understand the importance of community, something she nurtures with her bookstore in Nashville.
Each of the essays in These Precious Days is moving, but the title essay stands out. Patchett starts it off with Tom Hanks and you don’t see what’s coming, and that’s just how we’ve all felt that last year and a half. After all this waiting, it’s always nice to be surprised by love.
Modified from The Chicago Review of Books
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.
All donations are by appointment only. No walk ins, guests, or people under age 16 are permitted on site. Please check in with photo ID, and all donors and staff are required to wear face masks.
“After 10 months of blood and platelet infusions, tomorrow is my husband’s bone marrow transplant, the only true cure for his cancer. I have over a 100 donors to thank for getting us to this point. Thank you all for your selfless donations, it is truly appreciated.”
The Rummage Sale will be on Friday and Saturday, June 3-4 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
This is a big fundraiser for WUUC. Help is needed during and after the sale. Questions? Reach out to members of the committee: Leslie Morton, Dewey Millar, Linda McCrystal, Marlene Katz and Tevina Flood. Thank you!
As you have probably heard by now, I will be moving away this summer to pursue a new career opportunity in Texas. I want to thank you all for your support and love during the past few years. It has been such an honor to serve as your DRE. As I head off on a new adventure in the Lone Star State, I hold you all in my heart. You are a truly special congregation and have so much to share with the world.
My prayer for you is that you support one another, especially the children and youth in your midst. Don’t assume that someone else is doing the work of teaching the young people. It takes a village to support healthy growth. You are an important part of that village.
Thank you for a wonderful experience, and taking a risk on a brand new DRE three years ago. You have meant the world to me, and I will miss you. I’ll leave you with these words from Laila Ibrahim:
“I guess after plan A fails, I need to remember there’s still a whole alphabet out there.”
Who of us doesn’t need a little help remembering that? Especially after enduring Covid for so long. The war in Ukraine, hatred and violence across the nation, the ongoing reckoning with racism, the world’s inability to deal with climate change. And political division. You get the point.
It’s easy to feel demoralized, daunted and defeated these days. With so many things going wrong, it’s easy to overlook the many things going right.
For Unitarian Universalists, this tunnel vision is the central tragedy of the human condition. Which is also why blessings are so core to our faith. They are our way of widening our view.
As UU’s we don’t say a lot of blessings. But we do point to them. For us, blessings are not so much about giving something to each other or receiving something from on high, as they are about helping each other notice all that’s already been given. To notice and to live into blessings prompts us to live in balance and experience joy and gratitude even when tumult surrounds us.
And it’s not just about widening our view to see the gifts and blessings themselves; it’s about widening our understanding of life. Pointing to blessings repairs our relationship with life, allowing us to see it as generous instead of indifferent or threatening. And that’s no small thing. Because when the world seems stingy with us, we start getting stingy with others. In contrast, those who feel blessed have little trouble passing blessings on. Life spills into us and we spill into others.
And in that overflow, it does indeed get a whole lot easier to notice that there is, most certainly, a whole alphabet out there.
Submitted by Linda Sherry, and modified from the June 2022 Soul Matters materials. Soul Matters is a UU guide for monthly themes available to All UU Congregations. Please consider bringing these themes to your WUUC small groups, circle suppers, even committee meetings. And to those you know outside our community – just imagine if more and more people could balance their life, to sooth their suffering by including and embracing the blessings, wherever they can be found. — and they are everywhere when you know how to look.
