"Art and Spirituality" 
(rescheduled from February after storm cancellation)

 Sunday, April 6 at 11:00am

Mollie Nye House, 940 Lynn Valley Road, North Vancouver

Save the dates! 

On Saturday, April 26, UUSS Worship Circle has invited Liz James, founder of Mirth and Dignity and the UU Hysterical Society, to speak as part of our service. Here is a brief description of the service entitled Inherent Mirth and Dignity:

What do you do when the life you’d imagined for yourself is stuck in committee? Join us for the story of the UU Hysterical Society...The practical joke that accidentally turned into a 230,000 person UU community on Facebook. It’s a story of feeling lost, finding yourself, and UUism-outside-the-box with with UUHS founder, Liz James. 

On Sunday, May 4, Liz James will be at Mollie Nye House to lead UUSS in a workshop called  The Church of Our Imagination, a congregational/community development workshop. In it, we will look at strategies for congregational adaptation. This isn’t a “How to use Facebook” style workshop. This is about changing how we think about ourselves. We will talk about what it looks like to get the word out in a viral world, how to re-envision what the “main part” of what we do really is, what streamlined governance and a failure friendly culture can really look like, and more. This is a story heavy workshop, with lots of examples of how UU communities are successfully adapting (as well as some jokes, discussion and a game thrown in).

More information to come next week!

Last week our Treasurer gave an update on our finances and thanked our amazing donors for their generous gifts.  If you haven't received your tax receipt yet, please email Ryan.

Celebrating Trans Day of Visibility on March 31    

Rev. Samaya Oakley of Calgary Unitarians is preparing for the congregation to mark Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31, an event she hopes other UU congregations across Canada will honour as well. 

“If I could, I would love to wave my magic wand and have every Canadian UU congregation across Canada do something to visibly say to the trans community in which they’re located that they are welcome,” she says. “Even making sure that their trans flag was outside of their building. Just something to let the trans community know across Canada that Canadian UU congregations can provide a home, If they’re looking for a spiritual home.”

Calgary Unitarians’ service on March 30 will feature a panel discussion of the book Authentic Selves, the Unitarian Universalist Association’s common read for 2024-25, which will be followed by a four-session group discussion over the subsequent weeks. Oakley believes the interviews with trans and non-binary people within the book make it important reading for UUs.

“The subjects in the book share their real lives, their revelations, challenges, and  joys,” she says. “And the common read invites us to explore the nature of living authentically and the ways connections among us help us to thrive.”

Oakley believes that marking Transgender Day of Visibility is a critical action for UUs to take in these times.

“The way I look at it is If we truly are on the side of love, if that is what we profess, then when we say We honour and affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person, then that means we honour the inherent worth and dignity of every single person,” she says. “And that’s why I think it’s so important that we honour this day because it’s a day that celebrates trans lives.”

In addition to marking this day, Oakley encourages UUs to act year-round by supporting organizations advocating for trans rights, considering recertification as a Welcoming Congregation, and making space for a variety of gender options on congregational registration forms.

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