Unitarian Universalists
of the Salish Sea

Weekly Update
June 20, 2025

TOMORRO

Join us for our final spring service on Sat June 21 @ 5:00
"Flower Communion”

St Margaret’s Cedar Cottage
1530 E. 22nd, Vancouver
In-person/Zoom

Bring a flower this week to add to our collective bouquet, as part of our Flower Communion! 

The Flower Communion is a beloved Unitarian Universalist ritual, developed in Czechoslovakia in 1923 by Norbert Čapek. This ritual symbolizes the coming together of our wild and varied selves into a community, a bouquet, a collective, where each individual's unique beauty is also not diminished by this coming together, but rather enhanced. 

Come celebrate the unique beauty of our community! 

also TOMORRO

Register for our YEAR END GATHERING directly following our JUNE 21st Service

We hope you will join us for our 2025 Year End Gathering on Saturday, June 21 after our service until 9 pm. We will start with our Flower Communion followed by a dinner catered by Tamam. During and after dinner, we will share reports from the various UUSS teams and talk about our transition to Sociocracy. Then we will move into an opportunity to offer feedback on all aspects of UUSS’s activity including any barriers you are experiencing to participation. Finally, we will invite sharing of your ideas for the upcoming year.  We hope you will join us!

Please RSVP by filling out this short survey. It includes opportunities to share any dietary needs and also to ask for or offer rides to and from the event.

Come celebrate another wonderful year with us!

Join us for a Summer Potluck!
Sunday 27 on Bowen

Jilly and Michael Watson invite their UUSS friends to a Pot-Luck Lunch at their house on Bowen Island on Sunday July 27.

Bring a dish to share. Drinks will be provided. Watch the ferries go by from their deck (and maybe even see some whales).

Bowen Island is a 20-minute ferry ride from Horseshoe Bay.Either drive your car on to the ferry, or walk-on as a foot-passenger. You'll be picked up when you walk off on Bowen Island, and driven to their house.

A good ferry to catch would be the 10:35am from Horseshoe Bay.Ferry tickets have to be purchased at least 10-minutes before sailing time. If you come by car, you’ll need to arrive much earlier, to be sure of getting on. Parking at Horseshoe Bay is challenging.  BC Ferries have pay parking lots, but they can fill-up on week-ends.  And on-street parking is limited to 2-hours, and is monitored by by-law officers.

If you are planning on walking on to the ferry, one option is to catch the No.257 Express Bus to the ferry terminal (from Georgia St. at Granville in Vancouver at 9:36am; or from Park Royal in West Vancouver at 9:53am).

Ferries from Bowen Island return after lunch at 1:55pm, 3:15pm, & 4:40pm. 

RSVP to Jilly at 604-813-7954 jilly.watson@shaw.ca for directions and confirmation.

Sign up for Circle Meals!

Joy Silver is once again organizing small potluck meal gatherings over the summer and throughout the fall as long as there is interest.  If you would like to host, and/or be a guest, please indicate on the response sheet on the link below.  Joy will match up hosts and guests.  Hosts will receive a call from Joy, providing guest names.  Hosts will call their guests. Multigenerational meals are encouraged.

Let’s have a lot of fun getting to know each other better while we break bread over a meal of your choice.  Consider even a picnic during the summer months.

Sign Up Link

SOCIAL JUSTICE

Help Stop Bill C-5 

The government has introduced Bill C-5, Building Canada Act and is trying to push it through Parliament by Canada Day. This will circumvent proper Parliamentary procedure and eliminate the opportunity for public consultation on a Bill that grants sweeping power to the government to avoid environmental assessments and Indigenous consultation on projects that are deemed to be “in the national interest”. Who decides which projects qualify and what the parameters of qualification are is not specified. And, imagine this power in the hands of a government that you don’t agree with!

To learn more visit here. 

We need to make our voices heard ASAP! Please call, email or visit your Member of Parliament to tell them to ensure that Bill C-5 gets proper public consultation and that it must include both environmental assessments and Indigenous consultation and consent for all projects regardless of their importance to the country.

Stop PGRT pipeline

✍️ sign Dogwood's petition to @markjcarney urging him to review the PRGT pipeline  project under the Investment Canada Act, which is supposed to protect the country from hostile foreign actors (given Trump’s threats, this takeover of energy infrastructure by his Wall Street allies meets the criteria): www.dogwoodbc.ca/petitions/carney-stop-american-pipeline/ 

June is National Indigenous History Month, and also marks 10 years since the launch of the Truth and Reconciliation report. Read more here.

Call for action on Gaza

On the one-year anniversary of the Gaza Ceasefire Pilgrimage (May 22), a broad coalition of Canadian church leaders representing more than four million people wrote to the Prime Minister. Their message was urgent and unified: Canada must act now to end the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.  Read more here.

Dismantling Barriers: 
Talking About Joy as Resistance

 Thursday June 26 – 4:00 pm PT 

Join us on June 26th, 2025 from 7-8:30pm ET on Zoom for a workshop and conversation around joy as resistance.

As people prepare to move into summer mode, lets talk about joy as resistance and a key factor for the work of dismantling barriers.

Queer joy, trans joy, Black joy, Indigenous joy, Immigrant joy, working class joy, young joy, elder joy, there are so many kinds of ways to celebrate and practice joy as resistance.

It is one of my most core beliefs that we must facilitate intentional joy to encourage our faith and counteract the burnout that often comes with the work of dismantling. Let’s talk about it!