By Kathy Fosnaugh
Stewardship Chair
Re-Emergence is the theme for this year’s annual budget drive as we anticipate increasing opportunities to gather together again this year and next.
Co-hosts for this year’s drive are Jane Flood and Linda McCrystal.
Both will provide information and updates on our drive at our All Supporters Get Together Feb. 12 and on Sundays during our drive, Feb. 27 – March 20. (Annual Budget Drive Kickoff)
Hi, I’m Winny Schnitzler!
There are holy rats who live in an Indian temple and are revered. There are lab rats who save our lives. (I had breast cancer, and the drugs which were developed by giving cancer genes to rats, saved my life.) There are pet rats who love their humans. There are wild rats who I keep out of my house.
There are two species of common rats, the ones who kind of look like hamsters and the ones who look kind of scary until you really look at them carefully and notice that they are actually cute. However, another species, which is very big, are known as Hero Rats. They detect live mines and tuberculosis in third world countries. They save thousands of human lives. I adopted one in Vietnam last year. I gave money for her care.
I volunteered at American Cancer Society for 16 years, in order to help raise funds for cancer research. That means I helped purchase lab animals. I am grateful to them, sad for them, and feel guilty.
In 2003, before my cancer bout and before my work with the cancer society, I fell in love with two beautiful female rats who became my pets. They can learn their names and respond to us when we call them. They are adorable and sweet, unless they have been mistreated and/or ill.
Since 2013, I’ve been a director at an animal shelter called Best Friend Rodent Rescue. We have a lot of abandoned animals who either were pets or were used as psychological experiments at a local university. I adopt the needy ones, so I get bit once in a while, but I also have ones who grow to trust and love me. I currently have 3 sweet critters. Please consider adopting pet rats at http://bfrr.org
Monthly Special Collections
Many thanks for donating to our November and December ASJ Special Collections. The November collection of $505 went to Lavender Rights Project, a grassroots organization providing legal services by and for trans and non-binary people, with a focus on serving the Black and Indigenous gender diverse community. 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 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.
By Linda Sherry
Worship Support Specialist
Each time I read this, I find that the questions deepen and take on more complexity and significance in my mind and heart. I invite you to take the time to settle in to read and re-read this offering from the Soul Matters theme for February.
The author is not credited.
Welcome to Widening the Circle
Is it possible that
being on the inside
leaves you out of the loop?
What if the margins
aren’t narrow?
What if that space of exclusion
is also a position of perspective?
What if being shut out
allows you to understand the insiders
better than they understand themselves?
Why do so many seek the safety
of that inner circle anyway?
Don’t we know that the circles
not only keep others out
but also the air?
Haven’t we learned that
it’s on the edge of circles
that hate makes its home?
So even if you weren’t among the ones
who put the circle in place,
by allowing it to linger,
don’t you carry the burden
of responsibility as well?
What if who we are
doesn’t end at the barriers
of our own skin?
What if sin is believing
that you can put the puzzle together
with only the pieces that belong to you?
What if heaven is the moment you realize
that none of us can get there alone?
What if the only true freedom
lies in the willingness to
fight against that which imprisons
someone else?
And what if these all questions
are a matter of life and death?
Or is it a matter of dying to live?
After all, didn’t the Nazarene say
we must lose our life in order to find it?
Haven’t all the sages said the solitary self
must perish for the larger We to live?
If that is true
then let’s widen the circle
until it breaks!
For as long as the circle exists
pieces and parts of ourselves
will always lie on the other side
of the line.
So let us push, pull,
twist and tear,
dig underneath
and climb over the top,
do whatever it takes to meet each other
face to face.
And having found each other,
let us stare
and struggle,
fight and forgive,
call in and call out,
until “me” and “you”
dissolves into “us.”
Is there any other way we become whole?
Find the February Soul Matters packet here.
By Carol Taylor
What’s the difference? ComCom is the group that manages our internal-facing communication channels: our google docs site where we securely share documents and our church @wuuc.org email aliases. You use your @wuuc email address to log into the secure site. It is up to each committee to manage their own secure documents and share permissions for group members. Contact ComCom@wuuc.org to set up or get added to an email group, to access your @wuuc email account, or to learn more about using google docs.
MarCom manages our external facing communication channels: currently our www.wuuc.org web site. If you have something that needs to be added or changed on the site, contact MarCom@wuuc.org. You will need to provide the written content needed and be able to answer these questions: Who is the content intended for? How will you let people know it’s there? Is it replacing existing content, or something new? It is up to everyone at WUUC to review the site content related to their specific area periodically to make sure it is up to date.
Join us after service on March 20th at the monthly Getting to Know WUUC presentation to learn more.
Do you wish more people could hear about all the amazing things happening at WUUC? Would you like to help share our stories? We need people to help lead and run our WUUC Marketing activities (Web site, Social media, Signage, Public Relations), both those with Marketing and Communications skills and those willing to do the leg work to help run more activities (right now our lean team just runs the Web site). If this sounds interesting and you’d like to help, please contact marcom@wuuc.org.