“Totes” is a program that serves students at Maywood Hills elementary school throughout the school year with food for weekends when school meals aren’t available. Please remember these kids when you go shopping. You can find our current needs by going here.
Questions or comments? Contact Grace Simons or John Hartman.
| Our WUUC annual pledge drive is underway. The annual budget drive is the time each year when we reflect on the importance of WUUC to ourselves, our families, and to our greater social mission. We believe it is essential that we have a vibrant Unitarian Universalist Church presence in our local community to provide an open-hearted and open-minded welcome to all who may seek us out. A well-funded, fiscally sound church speaks of the commitment and dedication of its members to the Unitarian Universalist faith and its sustaining principles and beliefs. Visit https://wuuc.org/re-emergence/ for all the details and pledge now! |
Monthly Special Collections:
Many thanks for donating to our December and January ASJ Special Collections. The December collection of $830 benefitted the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, a nonprofit, nonsectarian organization advancing human rights together with an international community of grassroots partners and advocates. The January collection raised $530 for Camp Unity Eastside, which provides safe shelter and support for homeless adults in a community setting while they are working to obtain stable housing. The Camp Unity community promotes resilience, relationships, self-confidence, and hope.
On March 20, the Special Collection will benefit JUUstice Washington, which strives to inspire, educate, empower, and nurture the capacity of Unitarian Universalists (UUs), as well as community allies, to collaboratively advocate for and undertake social and environmental justice initiatives. They support legislative change that aligns with 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, and select ASJ Monthly Collection from the drop-down list, 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.
Hi Everyone,
WUUC’s Advocates for Social Justice is joining JUUstice Washington as they focus their legislative advocacy positions and actions on the Take Action Network, a web platform designed for those who want to be more civically engaged in Washington State.
Please click on https://www.takeaction.network/users/new?invitation_token=heauycUyneq62Eu28HmFHg to join the Take Action Network. You’ll be provided with an initial profile that will allow you to follow JUUstice Washington’s legislative advocacy work and actions (and those of other advocacy organizations) that most relate to your primary issues and the types of events and civil actions of most interest to you. TAN also allows you to customize the information you receive. We hope that you will include actions and events from JUUstice Washington in your TAN list of sources.
See you there!
And, of course, we will continue to provide more information and additional events on the JUUstice Washington website (http://juustwa.org) and though our direct communications with you. To learn more, you can also join the 3rd Tuesday Emergent Conversations each month organized by our JUUstice Washington Revitalization Project interns Sahar and Elle. Check the website for more information.
We will be making available TAN training information in the coming weeks to help you get the most out of this new resource.
We also encourage Washington UU congregations to facilitate their members joining TAN.
Hello WUUC! My name is Emily Kuo-Lillie. I am married to Rev. Dan Lillie. I am thrilled to share a bit of my journey that led me to becoming a bone marrow donor and now a donor care coordinator with the National Marrow Donor Program, also known as Be The Match.
After graduating from nursing school in 2014, I began working at a pediatric hospital in Denver. While I cared for a wide variety of patients, I quickly found my love for pediatric hematology and oncology nursing. This very special patient population inspired me to join the Be The Match Registry. With a simple cheek swab you are placed on the registry with the hopes that someday you could answer the call to help a patient with a life-threatening blood cancer or other type of blood disorder. I was also moved to join when I learned that people of color have a significantly lower chance of finding a bone marrow donor because of a lack of diversity on the registry.
In July 2020, I got that life-changing call that there was a child in need of a bone marrow transplant, and I was their match! At the time our daughter Natalie was just 5 months old and we were about to move to Washington so Dan could begin working as your minister. Thankfully, Be The Match was able to arrange my donation here with the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. My short surgery was a major success, and the team was able to collect all the healthy stem cells my young recipient needed. That same day a courier traveled by plane, train, and automobile to deliver my cells to the other side of the world.
I was so moved by my donation experience and the exceptional care I received that I applied to work as a donor care coordinator with Be The Match in October 2021. Now I get to help other donors prepare for their donations and advocate for their needs. I keep my former pediatric patients and my bone marrow recipient close to my heart as I do this work. It is an honor to take part in this life-saving work!
There are a few major misconceptions that I wish to clear up about Be The Match. First, more than 80% of donations do not require surgery but instead involve 5 days of medication follow by an apheresis procedure similar to donating plasma. The less common surgical procedure takes about 90 minutes, the pain is minimal, and most donors fully recover within a couple weeks.
While only 0.3% of individuals on the registry go on to donate, all 12.5 million members of the registry are incredible symbols of hope. Joining the registry is free and easy, and even if you do not donate, perhaps you will inspire someone else to join the registry who does match with a patient. As a Unitarian Universalist and humanist, I believe we are all on this Earth to find ways to support and help one another as we journey through life. Please reach out to me if you have any questions about Be The Match or visit www.bethematch.org to learn more!
By Linda Sherry
Worship Support Specialist
For me, the word Faith is difficult – what does Faith even mean?? Personally, the idea of faith in God, is quite foreign to me. So how does Faith play out in the Unitarian Universalist perspective? What is Faith, if it does not refer to God? Does the word have any meaning or significance for me?
Yes, it does, and faith mysteriously sustains me. Perhaps we can explore our own perspectives on Faith with each other this month.
Here are some thoughts adapted from the Soul Matters materials for this Month:
The word Faith didn’t enter the English language until the 1200s after the Norman invasion, via the Old French ‘feid’ — in turn from the Latin ‘semper fidelis’ (always loyal). Its meaning then had nothing to do with belief in the absence of evidence, but rather with keeping promises and being worthy of trust; it was not a statement about belief, but about behavior. Over time, the religious notion of Faith came into play and came to suggest: One who is faithful to God is one who keeps God’s commandments. Faith, then, was believing that if one keeps to God’s commandments, God will reward them, either now or in the afterlife.
Sometimes talking about faith can wind us in circles. Ultimately, faith is too complex, visceral and personal to be easily defined, much less shared.
All of us know what it’s like to lose our faith. We’ve been betrayed by a relationship, let down by our church community, or convinced that life just won’t get better. For many, our greatest faith can sometimes be the belief that life and others don’t deserve our faith in them.
But sometimes our doubts need to be doubted. Sometimes life and the people around us need to be given a second chance.
More often than not, we can’t find or renew our faith on our own. It takes others. It takes exchanging ideas with others. It takes observing other and realizing that their commitment to justice renews our faith that a better world is possible. Their compassion and kindness (even when they have struggles of their own), renews our faith in humanity. Their bravery reignites our faith in ourselves.
So who is that “other” for you? Whose faithfulness renews your own?
And perhaps most importantly, have you told them?! Why is that so important? Well, simply put, telling them they sustain your faithfulness helps them sustain theirs. It keeps them going. It’s a gift to them. A gift that honors the gift they gave you.
So let me say, right here and right now, that this beloved spiritual community, of which YOU are a part, gives me strength to get through the rough stuff – helps me know that there’s always someone who will take my arm when I lose my balance, who will remind me of what a difference I CAN make, and reminds me that the values we share are worth living fully — You give me the faith to go on.
Thank You
Linda
Find the March Soul Matters packet here.