Rev. Amy weaves us through a collection of scripture and stories that have inspired people to be resilient.

To attend on site, FULL VACCINATION STRONGLY RECOMMENDED: FUUBC strongly encourages all those who can be vaccinated to be vaccinated, including boosters as appropriate.

MASKING RECOMMENDED: FUUBC strongly encourages attendees at worship
services and other large gatherings to wear masks.

To attend by Zoom, click on this link: uuberks.org/zoom-worship. (If this is 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: 921 4271 5512#
   3) When prompted for the “Participant ID”, enter: #

Please plan to arrive or log on by 10:20-10:25 am to enjoy the gathering music, and,
for those on zoom, to establish a connection before worship is scheduled
begins. Zoom participant mics are muted throughout the service.

• Tonight’s Story is Peaceful Fights for Equal Rights words by Rob Sanders and illustrations by Jared Andrew Schorr
• Soul Matters shares:  Here is a story about speaking truth to power.  Every voice matters, no matter how small.  It’s time to make a difference.  The story shows different ways that people organize, protest, help and try to make a difference. 
• Watch it here.  Or find it here.

SUNDAY

9:45 AM :Adult RE 

• In Person: gerber room meeting room.  (Teens welcome with accompanying parent/guardian)

• Faith Formation – First Sunday in April: Discussion Topic: 3D printing,  AI, chat bots, robots in general,  machine learning, the metaverse,  and Web 3.0.

• Onsite Only 

9:45 AM: Children’s RE  

Elementary Ages:  Onsite/Online, email Erin Connolly by Saturday noon if you’ll be attending online

• On site: Kidspace Classroom 2nd floor * teens may help, let us know you’ll be coming

• Children’s RE – We prep for Coffee Hour! We make a treat to share and review responsibilities we will serve from 11:30 – 12 during coffee hour. 

10:30- Worship Service- All Ages

This morning we explore inspiration for resistance from scripture that have through the ages inspired people to be resilient.

• How to make visual art directed by breath 

• Coloring Sheet: How Could Anyone – coloring pages set

• Use a printed or hand labyrinth to find renewal as you attend worship this morning. Here’s a labyrinth you can print out and trace.  Labyrinth Printable

• Practice your Searching and Creative skills with A Challenge to get from one heart to the other Maze

10:30 – 12:30 Youth Group:  

Grades 7th – 12: Studio Review from our year so far and worship planning for our service in May.  

10:30 – Our Whole Lives: OWL, 4-6 

Session 9 of 10:  This ten-workshop curriculum is designed to help children ages nine through twelve to gain the knowledge, life principles, and skills they need to understand and express their sexuality in holistic, life-enhancing ways. Like the other Our Whole Lives programs for different age groups, this comprehensive, developmentally appropriate program introduces key topics like values, body image, gender and sexual identity, peer pressure, and healthy relationships with sensitivity and inclusiveness, yet without specifically religious doctrine or reference. There is a mandatory parent/child orientation.

Monday – Thursday 

Weekly posts on our covenanted RE Facebook page 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/UUBerks.RE.page/?ref=share
check out our Remind classroom. 
If you need to signup link here: remind.com/join/refuucbc

We are in the middle of our 2023 Service Auction. A big thank you to everyone that has donated your time and donations to the auction. It looks like it is going to be another successful event this year.

Here is the link to the auction website: uuberks.org/service-auction.

You will need to register and purchase a $10 ticket to be able to bid on Silent & Live Auction items. A single ticket can be shared by everyone in your household to bid on Silent Auction items, but you will need a ticket for each adult attending the Live auction in the church. If you just want to watch the Live auction over Zoom, there is no fee.

The first Silent Auction week started last Saturday and ends this Saturday, April 1st at 4pm, so get your bids in soon! The second Silent Auction week starts on Sunday, April 2nd at 12 noon. The Live Auction is a multiplatform event this Saturday (April 1st): you can attend in-person at the church or over Zoom. If you will be joining in over Zoom, we will be using the Zoom Sunday Worship link: uuberks.org/zoom-worship.

We need your help if you are planning on bidding during the Live Auction on Zoom: you will need to make a bidding paddle.  (For those coming into church for the Live Auction, we have your paddles already printed).

• Your bidding number can be found in your email from the auction, and also at the bottom of the Auction website screen once you’re logged in. To be safe, we will be sending them out again on Saturday morning.

• If you have a printer:

  • Open up this document

  • Scroll to the page with your bidding number and print that page

  • Fold the printed page in half lengthwise (for a short fat rectangle)

• If you do not have a printer

  • Fold a piece of paper in half lengthwise (for a short fat rectangle)

  • Using the whole side of the paper, write your bidding number clearly on one side and a “?” on the other.  (ie. Make it LARGE, so that it is easy to read and use a marker)

• To bid, hold your numbered bid paddle in front of your nose and mouth. If you only raise your hand, the paddle might go off-camera or be missed. Our FUUBC bid spotters will relay your bids to the auctioneers. Bid spotters can only see you if your video is on.

• The winning bidder will be asked to hold their NUMBERED paddle again, for confirmation.

• Use the back of your paddle (the side with a “?”) to get a bid spotter to unmute you.

Finally, if you would like to volunteer to help with the auction or have a question/suggestion, send us an email at g.service.auction@uuberks.org. Many thanks from the Service Auction Committee.

Join us on Sunday 4/2 @ 12:00pm for an in person Contemplative Companions session. We will be meeting in person at church after the service (and giving participants some time enjoy coffee hour). Participants are asked to bring a brown bag lunch. For further information contact Nadine.

The Helping Harvest Food Bank held at our church on the 3rd Saturday of each month, is tomorrow (Sat., March 18). To prepare, we need to set up a “store” in the Gerber Room with tables and shelves around 8:30 AM. We will receive a delivery truck from Helping Harvest around 9:30 AM, which contains hundreds of pounds of food that must be carried in from the street. We will unbox all of the items and place them on the tables and shelves. Once the “store” is ready, we will guide families through it, one or two at a time, and assist them in selecting items that they can take home for free. Afterwards, we will break down all of the boxes and put away the tables and shelves.

We require many volunteers to ensure that everything runs smoothly. Currently, we are in need of more help. Would you be able to spare a few hours on Saturday morning to assist us? Typically, things are slow until the delivery truck arrives, so we could use more help with unloading, managing the different food areas in the “store” and cleaning up afterwards. Last month we were done before 12 noon. If you have any questions, please contact Frank Wilder at 484-897-0234.

Are you curious what it would be like to be with UUs from all over the country and continent, right in our backyard?   Make sure to register for General Assembly happening this June from the 21st – 25th!  You can register for a day, a few days or full meeting. Check out https://www.uua.org/ga for more information.

Share the exciting news of the transition to clean energy with your congregation with a series of short films called Current Revolution, this year’s featured film of Faith Climate Action Week in April. These films show the possibility of a just transition to a clean energy economy where the well-being of workers and frontline community members is valued, instead of neglected. Trailer at https://youtu.be/gc6lKf2-KpU

FUUBC is part of the Giant charitable grocery scrip program that gives 10% of all gift cards sold back to our church. You can purchase cards as needed or sign up for a monthly gift card order that will be sent directly to your home the first week of each month.

When you receive your order you will also receive a return envelope to mail your check to the church. Checks can also be dropped in the Gerber room drop box or in the plate collection. Checks should be made out to FUUBC with giant card in the memo line.

If you would like to purchase Giant cards please return the form below to Melissa at office@uuberks.org. One time cards can also be purchased from Melissa at coffee hour twice a month.

Giant cards are available in $50 and $100 increments.

Giant Card Form

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”  (There is argument over who gets the attribution for this quote, but it is a good thought, eloquently stated)

Being involved in resistance against evil simply means doing something instead of nothing.  Resistance against evil might take some of us out onto front lines of a big battle.  But resistance also looks like refusing to think ill of somebody.  Or choosing to adapt your comfortable language to incorporate phrases or pronouns that require some work, some practice, some discomfort.  Resistance means not being idle or oblivious to encroaching evil, in whatever ways we can.

Resistance is both individual and corporate, to be examined then practiced as we can.  Usually when we realize that something is making its way into the midstream that has potential for harm, or might even have that feeling of being evil, we have to ask ourselves, individually and in a group, what will we believe?  What actions will we support and which will we resist?  And how will we resist?  Being a religious person does not mean being nice and friendly—yes, we may be nice, but it means knowing how to mount resistance against our family, friends, neighbors, and ourselves being mistreated.

Why might we be thinking about resistance, as a congregation?  While there are many answers to that query, let me give just a few ideas.  The three holidays at the beginning of April are all about resisting oppression, however different the forms or oppressors.  Ramadan for Muslims, Passover for Jews, and Good Friday and Easter for Christians all call their people to be resilient.  As Unitarian Universalists, we are bound together in our resistance to oppression.  Working together, holding a common view of freedom, is how we faithfully resist.

This month, bring a friend to any or all of the services, so that they might feel buoyed in their own journeys.  None of us is alone.

In peace with love,

Rev. Amy

Here’s a song in our hymnal that grew out of the Carlsbad Decrees in Germany, around the 1840s. It made it’s way into our hymnal, published close to 30 years ago in 1993 under the section ‘The Life Of Integrity’ as #291 Die Gedanken Sind Frei.

It became popular just eight years after it’s first round in the zeitgeist during the German Revolution. And again it sprang forth in Germany through the 1930s and 1940s. Rev Kimberley Debus writes in her blog, Notes From the Far Fringes, there was ‘at least one example of Nazi resistance, a member of the White Rose Resistance (Sophie Scholl) would play the song on her flute outside the prison where her father had been detained for calling Hitler ‘a scourge of God.’ ”

What thoughts do you resist? What thoughts do you embrace?

Take a listen to singers from The Community Church of Chapel Hill and pick out the line that helps you resist:

#291 Die Gedanken Sind Frei

translation of verse 1 is by Arthur Kevess and new lyrics from Elizabeth Bennett

Die Gedanken sind frei, my thoughts freely flower.
Die Gedanken sind frei, my thoughts give me power.
No scholar can map them, no hunter can trap them,
no one can deny: Die Gedanken sind frei!

My thoughts are as free as wind o’er the ocean,
and no one can see their form or their motion.
No hunter can find them, no trap ever bind them:
my lips may be still, but I think what I will.

A glimmering fire the darkness will brighten;
my soaring desire all troubles can lighten.
Though prison enfold me, its walls cannot hold me:
no captive I’ll be, for my spirit is free.

Ebee

by nadine j. smet-weiss
spiritual director

walking
into the world
this day
i elect
to step softly
upon concrete
and asphalt
open
brief
delightful
interactions
with people
i pass
on the street
graciously
yield
to drivers
racing through
red lights
refusing
to brace
or harden
i choose a
resistance
that seeks to
embody
love