Change is hard and inevitable. Join us this Sunday as we consider how change helps us to become our best selves.

For Sunday’s worship, we are using the Zoom conferencing platform. It is easy to Zoom from a computer, tablet, or phone! Here is how you do it: With a computer, smartphone or tablet, click on this link to participate: uuberks.org/zoom-worship   (If it’s the first time you’re using zoom you may be prompted to download a launcher app).

To connect by phone (audio only):
1) Dial the phone number: 1-646-558-8656
2) When prompted for the “Meeting ID”, enter: 999-805-145-23#
3) When prompted for the “Participant ID”, enter: #

Please plan to log on by 10:20 or 10:25 am so that you can establish a connection before worship is scheduled to begin. Please note that your mic will be muted and will remain muted for the service. Our service concludes with “virtual coffee hour” when members and friends are unmuted.

Youth Service 2021 is coming soon! This year’s service is all about the good, the great, the positive, the fun, the uplifting… and we want to hear some of it from you!
In 2020 some of us fell in love with Some Good News, a weekly web series all about people celebrating the good things happening, and we are creating our own version: Some Good NUUws.

To help, please send us your videos, photos, or emails of any “good news” in your life. It might be a lost tooth, it might be an award, a promotion, a new puppy, even just a beautiful day outside. Nothing is too small. If it made you smile, if it made you happy, if it made you feel good, we want to hear about it so we can celebrate with you!

You can film a video or take photos with your phone and text them to 484-269-0880, or you can email kaifawn@gmail.com, using the subject “My Good News.” Our deadline is Friday, April 25. For a little inspiration, you can visit the Some Good News YouTube channel here (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOe_y6KKvS3PdIfb9q9pGug) or the Instagram page here (https://www.instagram.com/somegoodnews/)

Are you planning on attending this year’s virtual General Assembly? Consider being a delegate for our congregation. Delegates participate in workshops, and worship services and share what they have learned with our community. If you are interested in being a delegate please contact Board President Lynn O’Brien at  lynnmobrien@comcast.net

Do you wish to deepen your understanding of how race and ethnicity play out in our institutions and our daily lives? Are you ready to take a leading role to nurture a multicultural future in the face of opposing cultural currents? Come Join Us for this Life-Changing Weekend!

Weekend activities: The training includes presentations, discussions, videos, exercises, and small group work. This 2 ½ day workshop is open to anyone who wants to journey toward making a stand against racism. Church members and church leaders of any faith, as well as non-church members are all welcome!

Our goals are:

• To develop a shared analysis of racism and its individual, institutional, and cultural manifestations, and
• To begin to apply this common understanding to the history, culture, and institutional structure of our society, and to envision the next steps in taking action.

Agenda topics include:

• The history of racism and resistance to racism in the Americas
• Defining racism
• The effects of racism on people of color and on white people
• Dismantling racism
• Claiming and shaping an anti-racist identity

Trainers are Paula Cole Jones, Dr Leon Spencer and Lutricia Callair.

Questions:Contact Jean Cocuzza : jeancocuzza@yahoo.com ;
for more info and to register visit link below:
https://www.uua.org/central-east/calendar/jubilee-3-0621

Partial scholarships available contact treasurer@uuberks.org to apply.

First, are you currently eligible to receive the vaccine? If you don’t know, check this page. If you are eligible, supplies are limited so it can be difficult to schedule an appointment.

We want to make it easier for those having problems. If you’re interested you can go here to register or you can call 484-925-1684. You will be contacted by a team member. (To register for the vaccine note that some sites require the patient’s name, D.O.B, address, and phone number.)

Do you want to be part of a team from church to help members find vaccine appointments? We are looking for volunteers to help make appointments and those that need help. If you have access to a computer, you can go here to register or you can call 484-925-1684 (leave a message with your name and phone number). We will hold brief training/best practices sessions beforehand.

If you are in need of a church directory, would like to update your pledge, sign up for Egiving or just have general questions? Please contact our office administrator at office@uuberks.org

We were hit at one of our public meetings a few months ago. It was nasty and we ended up having to close the meeting.  Our community needs your help to prevent this from happening again in the future. We are pretty well protected against Zoombombing at our Sunday worship services, but less so at our public meetings like ADORE and Contemplative Companions. We are looking for volunteers that regularly attend these kinds of public meetings to help with security.

Basically, you will be elevated to a co-host role and have the ability to mute and remove disruptive participants if needed. It is very similar to what happens during our Christmas Eve service when we ask for volunteers to be in charge of fire extinguishers: we show them where the nearest extinguisher is and how to use it, in the case of an emergency.

We have a self-guided Google Slides presentation that goes over all the tools and some possible Zoombombing scenarios with solutions. The team is looking for volunteers to go through the presentation on their own and then attend a short 15 minute practice session to try out the tools. If you are interested in helping or have a question, please contact UUBerks IT Services at g.it.services@uuberks.org.

Did you know that we record every church service that we host on Zoom? We use our UUBerks YouTube account to host those recordings.
To find the recordings…

1) Open up a web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari,…) and navigate to our home page at  uuberks.org

2) Once the page opens, click on the (2) Service Archive button. It is in the green box on the right side of the screen
3) The Past Worship Services page will open in the browser window.  The services are sorted from “newest” to “oldest”.  Click on the title of a service to find the video.

4) A dedicated web page for the service will open.  At the bottom of the page, there is a video widget that you can use to view the recording. Click on the play button in the middle of the video widget to watch the video.

5) Once the video starts to play, you will see some buttons in the bottom of the video if you move your mouse cursor over the video widget. Click on the (1) CC button to turn on closed captioning, and click on the (2) Expand button to make the video full screen .  There is also a pause button (not shown in the image below) , in the lower left-hand corner that you can use to pause the video so that you can refill your coffee cup.

If you have any questions about this hint or other technology issues, contact UUBerks IT Services at g.it.services@uuberks.org

We have established a Zoom service tech line if you are having trouble logging into our Sunday service. If you do not get an immediate answer, leave a message and your call will be returned momentarily.Dial 484-925-1684.

• You can now give online on our website UUberks.org by clicking on the online giving tab or clicking
  here
• You can also give by downloading the GivePlus app on google play and the App store below. You can easily locate our church by zip code 19602

We start this month of Becoming off with Easter and each year it is a blessing to hear our trumpeters resound this joyous holiday.  As I grew up in the Unitarian Universalist faith, I always knew the Easter Hymn with Unitarian Transcendentalist, Samuel Longfellow’s, words “Lo, the Earth Awakes Again.”  Those of us who grew up in more Christian surroundings might know the tune as “Jesus Christ is Risen today, Hallelujah”

In our hymnal Singing the Living Tradition (SLT or the grey hymnal), published in 1993, it’s found in the topic section SPRING hymn #61.  Before it we find tunes with words from Harlem Renaissance poet, Langston Hughes, “In Time of Silver Rain.”  After it we find UU hymn writer Carl Seaburg, #62 “When the Daffodils Arrive”.

The hymnal preceding our grey hymnal was Hymns for the Celebration of Life and was published in 1964. This is where the Longfellow text was revised by the hymnal editors to fit the tune Easter Hymn.  The tune itself can be traced back to John Arnold’s Compleat Psalmodist, second edition in 1749.  This song has had a long history of becoming what we need it to be.  In this long winter, what have you discovered, what have you needed, what have you become? What are you awakening to?

by nadine j. smet-weiss

spiritual director

by nadine j. smet-weiss

spiritual director

entangled

graces my

doorway

for now

attending to

my comings

and my goings

imaging

my connection to

all that i come from

all that i am

all that I am becoming

day by day

moment by moment

breath by breath

ancient

newborn

form

transforming

life

letting go

free

emerging

entangled