Pancake Breakfast- This Sunday!

We’re looking forward to kicking off our New Year with a time to share pancakes together as a faith community. This Sunday, January 12 at 9:30 AM, we will be skipping RE for a good old fashion Pancake Breakfast.

We are looking for some pancake flippers, helpers and drink and side donations. Please click below to help out. Thank you!

Pancake Breakfast Sign Ups – https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0C4EADA62DA1FD0-pancake

• Board Game Sunday – January 12

• Committee Sunday – January 26

• Installation of Rev. John – Saturday, March 29

The transformation of the world begins with one big leap of a step: tell a better story about who we are.

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.

“Welcome the New Year and Welcome Back Ebee Pancake Breakfast!”

Let us start the new year in community joining together to start our day nourishing our bodies and souls! 

Starting at 9:30am join us for PANCAKES – we will stop serving around 10 to give everyone time to eat and clean up to begin before service. 

Please sign up below to join us for pancakes! 

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0C4EADA62DA1FD0-pancake#/

10:30am Youth Group – Meets upstairs in Chalice House

• This week’s topic is Fantasy and The Spiritual Life

This Month’s Theme is “Story” – 

• This month’s bedtime story is “The Day You Begin” by Jacqueline Woodson. 

There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you.

There are many reasons to feel different. Maybe it’s how you look or talk, or where you’re from; maybe it’s what you eat, or something just as random. It’s not easy to take those first steps into a place where nobody really knows you yet, but somehow you do it. Everyone has their own story

• Purchase it for your home library

• Find it at the Library 

Our OWL program begins again starting in January 2025 – OWL will be geared to kids in grades 4-6. Covering a range of topics, including sexual health, gender identity, and relationships. The program is based on the principles of inclusivity, justice, responsibility, sexual health, and self-worth. 

If you are interested in learning more please sign up!https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0C4EADA62DA1FD0-53158707-owlinterest

Please check our Facebook Page for events and activities to continue your Religious Exploration at home 

Weekly posts on our covenanted RE Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/groups/UUBerks.RE.page/?ref=share

Please check out our Remind classroom.
If you need to signup link here: remind.com/join/refuucbc

Register for 2024-2025 learning year: each year we need a new registration – fill yours out today www.uuberks.org/registration

Join our neighbors and friends at Penn State Berks for a day of service – tending to the natural world. To sign up – contact RE Exec team member, Jayné P. Meet up at 9 am at the Alumni Pavilion on Penn State Berks Campus.

1. Appointed Lauren to serve out board term to May 2026

2. Discussed board goals and timelines to meet goals

3. Discussed upcoming events and how to keep congregants aware and involved: General Assembly, Rev. John’s installation

You’ve marked your calendars when our save the dates were shared and now it’s time to signup! Join us for a time to nurture deep, sustained and courageous climate engagement.  Like our faith – it is impossible to do this work alone!  We need you.

Visit the link below for more info and to signup today:

https://uuberks.org/Climate

Do you enjoy board and card games? Join us after coffee hour on Sunday, January 12th. We hope to start at 12:30 and finish up by 5PM.  The plan is to have multiple tables set up with a different game at each table. Please bring a few of your favorite games and a snack to share, I plan to bring popcorn and the game Catan. Feel free to invite friends who enjoy board games as well.

I hope to see you there

Meditation and mindfulness practices offer an excellent opportunity to explore presence, deepen self-awareness, and connect as a community. With this month’s theme of “The Practice of Presence,” Martin Smith invites anyone interested in meditation—whether you’re a seasoned practitioner or completely new—to join in creating a supportive group. Martin is a trained Buddhist meditation instructor with nearly 15 years of experience. In the new year, he envisions forming a group that meets regularly and fosters practices that can transform how we engage with ourselves, our family, our community, and the world. If this resonates with you, please reach out! We can co-create a meditation group within the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and the larger Reading community. Share your interest, and we’ll work together to identify meeting times and collective goals.

Please use this Google Form to let us know your interest.

1. GRIP (Katy Bodenhorn)
2. Opportunity House
3. Family Promise of Berks County (Cyndi Dimovitz)
4. Reading Public Library (Felix Pena)
5. South Of Penn
6. LGBT Center
7. Berks Stands Up
8. Helping Harvest
9. Safe Berks
10. Planned Parenthood

If you would like to Champion one these causes, please email g.social.justice@uuberks.org. The schedule of Special Plate collections will be announced in January. We look forward to building communities of love with these hard-working organizations.

It takes a village to run FUUBC, and our committees are the heart of that village. Join us during Coffee hour on January 26th, to explore the different committees and find your place! We’ll have a table with information and sign-up sheets.

The Building Keepers are excited to announce a new, streamlined way to submit maintenance requests! Now, you can easily report any issues using a convenient Google Form accessible from your smartphone or laptop. This digital system will help us track and resolve projects more efficiently.

Here’s how to submit a request:

1. Look for QR Codes: Scan the QR codes posted around the building using your smartphone’s camera app.
2. Direct Link: Alternatively, you can access the form directly by visiting this link on your laptop or phone’s browser:  https://uuberks.org/bk-ticket

We appreciate your cooperation in using this new system. It will allow us to better serve you and maintain our facilities effectively.

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

Happy New Year!

Our Soul Matters theme for January is “Living Love Through the Practice of Story.” Now, I’m a storyteller at heart, so in some regards this a constant running theme for me. I tend to view a lot of life through the lens of story. Story has great power in the ongoing process of creation. The stories we tell shape our progress through the world and can serve to transform us as a people. Our Unitarian Universalist principles are not only a list of values, but also an aspirational story that we tell ourselves about the people we want to become and the world we hope to build. Our new statement of values is much the same. On a congregational level, our statements of mission and vision are generative stories about our purpose and our hopes for the community.

Some stories, however, are not written quite so concretely – or at least not as publicly available. Every organization has stories about “the way we do things here” that may or may not match its mission, or stories about people past that might take on the patina of legend over time. I call these the implicit stories. One of those implicit stories we carry here at UU Berks is the story of covenant: a story about how we promise to be with one another. It’s a story implied by the values we share as Unitarian Universalists, by the words and songs we share in worship, and by some of those unspoken “the way we do things” stories. Indeed, “covenant” is referenced in our foundational documents, including our church policies. But that covenant has never been made explicit before. But it’s now time to get that story written down.

Part of the Unitarian Universalist story is the idea that since we’re not a people with a creed, it is our covenant that holds us together. Indeed, we can trace our roots back to the early Pilgrim churches, including the church at Plymouth colony that placed the opening words of its covenant on its walls – “We purpose to walk together in the ways of the Lord [or Love], made known and to be made known to us.”

The congregation has endeavored in the past to put our covenant into words. Sadly, like so many things, the pandemic hampered the project’s momentum. When I arrived, it was clear that this covenant work was “unfinished business” that would need attention at the start of my ministry with you. As we begin 2025, we will once again take up the work telling the concrete story of our covenant. We’ll begin this month by putting together a steering team for the project. Some of you will be hearing from me directly with an invitation to join the team. However, please don’t wait for my email. If the work of building covenant sounds interesting to you, if you’re reading this and think “I feel called to take this on; I think I can serve this way” please don’t hesitate to come and talk with me. This will be a challenging and rewarding way to make a difference in the life of 1st UU Berks. I’m excited for us to tell this story together.

❖

Some of you have connected with me on Facebook over these past few months, and I’m grateful for those connections. However, with the end of fact-checking and the turn rightwards that the parent company Meta is taking, I’m feeling a need to spend much less time there. I won’t be deactivating my account, as it’s still a great tool for connecting myself and the congregation to the wider Berks County community, but I’ll be refraining from personal posting for the time being. In addition, I’ll still accept friend requests as it’s a great way to stay current with your lives.

I’ll be spending more time on Bluesky from here on out. You can follow me there at

@jcullinan.bsky.social

Hope I’ll see you there!

John

The practice of story.  That’s our theme for the month of January.  Good stories have a beginning, middle and an end.  Great stories don’t get old when you repeat them.  As I return to you from parental leave and we begin this month of practicing stories – I’m thinking of the lullabies that have been echoing in my house as of late and how they fit the form of a story.  They’ve got a beginning, middle, and an end.  Lullabies are often shared on repeat.  One in particular goes like this:

Tender Shepherd

Tender Shepherd

Let me help you

count your sheep

One in the meadow,

Two in the garden,

Three in the nursery

fast asleep.

Somedays the words get old so we hum it, or make up new words to the melody.  The point of the story though is to tell our child that we’re here, that her dad and I love her, and that she can rest.  It’s a story we repeat until our little one is slumbering once again.

What stories do you repeat in your life?  What stories do you reach for?  Do they work for you?  Do you need new ones?  What do your stories sound like? Are they quiet and steady or are they roaring and halting?   Before we end the month of January – I’d love to hear what stories bring you comfort.

Looking forward to making and sharing music with you once again,

Your director of music,

Ebee

by nadine j. smet-weiss

spiritual director

how we tell

our life story

to ourselves

or to others

depends upon

the lens

we choose to

view it through

reflect

for a moment

upon any few

of the lenses

you have chosen

over time

then

look at your life

through the

lens of love

for full clarity