Rogue Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (RVUUF) Ashland, OR

Rev. Carolyn Colbert, Interim Minister
Mark Turnbull, Guest Musician; Jane Manning, piano

My notion is that we live in an ever-flowing sea of prayer. You may disagree with this notion. You may be very uncomfortable with even the idea of prayer. Or delighted. Yet, it is difficult to escape something so universally present, since, it is said, there are really only four prayers.

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Music by Brian Kerns with the RVUUF Choir,
Tami Marston Director and Jane Manning, piano
And Rev. Carolyn Colbert, Interim Minister

Our former Director of Music, Brian Kerns, returns to share the latest addition to his Chinese New Year suite of twelve compositions honoring each month of the Chinese Calendar. Expect dragons. And a parade. Then, plan to stay for an Intergenerational birthday party after the service. There will be goodies to share and a circle to be part of as we find out who else was born in your Chinese birthday month.

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Rev. Alex Holt, Guest Preacher
Carolyn Colbert, Worship Leader
Music by Tami Marston & Jane Manning

Addiction is still seen as an awkward topic in any community or social situation. Craving and desire are a normal part of human nature but genetics, disease, and brain chemistry create adverse reactions to substances or behaviors. How do we UU's respond to hidden issues of addiction and recovery? Can we propose ways to heal that move beyond traditional 12-step or other recovery models?

Our guest this morning, the Rev. Alex Holt , is chair of the UUA's Addiction Ministry Team. He serves our Yakima congregation as their interim minister as well as the mentoring minister to All Souls UU Congregation in Lacey, WA.

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Tami Marston, Worship Leader
The RVUUF Choir

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Rev. Carolyn Colbert, Interim Minister
Mary Rexford, Worship Associate

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger may be the most complicated. Anger has such a potent capacity for good or evil. Used to probe for truth, challenge and change injustice it has its uses. Used to erode affection and trust, or diminish and destroy someone's spirit, it eats us up.

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Note: Daylight Savings Time Begins: Set your clocks ahead one hour before bed!

Rev. Carolyn Colbert, Interim Minister
Clayton Gordon, Worship Associate

"There is something in us that yearns for transforming experience, for serenity, for the deep joy that comes from connection to something sacred, something far beyond the mundane and the petty."

These words were written by Rev. Peter Morales, one of the two excellent candidates for the presidency of our denomination. It was his spiritual yearning that first brought him to a UU community. As we welcome our newest members, we'll explore the word and the journey. newletter article: Welcome and Recognition of New Members

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Rev. Carolyn Colbert, Interim Minister

A few years back a Vision and Mission statement was adapted by RVUUF as a guide to why you come together as a liberal religious community, and how you want to accomplish your purpose. The Long Range Planning team, out of which the Strategic Plan for your future has evolved, crafted an excellent statement. But like many of our best ideas, it crawled into a filing cabinet and was lost for awhile. Now it’s been found and wants very much to walk among you again.

Food Bank Offering

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Rev. Carolyn Colbert, Interim Minister

Another chance to revisit one of the seven deadly sins. Spring seems the right time to talk about lust. It’s such a lusty season. And there are some important insights hiding in the pairing of our lust and our earth. Some good. Some, well, pretty sinful.

Our 3rd Sunday Social Action Special Offering for April will go to La Clinica del Valle. La Clinica staff provides medical, dental, mental health and social services to residents of Jackson County who struggle to access affordable and quality health care. Through federal grants and local community donations, La Clinica is able to offer significant discounts for their services. La Clinica operates nine health centers in our area. Five of these centers are school-based; an additional four centers are located in Phoenix, Medford, and Central Point.

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Rev. Carolyn Colbert, Interim Minister
Tami Marston, Music Director; Jane Manning, pianist

Poet Jack Gilbert once wrote “Courage is not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches. Not the exception. .. .” No, courage is the steady and clear accumulation of days of long accomplishment. This is true in a life, and true in a religious community.

Food Collection for Ashland Emergency Food Bank.

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Celebration Sunday And Flower Communion

Today we celebrate the dance of this remarkable spiritual cooperative. There’ll be special music, lots of singing, time to consider and make your yearly pledges so we can continue to dance into our future, learning new steps, deepening our talents, and offering more justice and joy, more hope and healing to each other and the world. May we have this dance with you?

Come Celebrate with Rev. Colbert, our musicians, and the Stewardship Team and stay for the special All Church Brunch. All are Welcome!

Bring a flower or two to place in our community bouquet in honor of our “Saints.” After our Brunch and the announcement of your generosity, take a different flower home with you as a symbol of all the many unique gifts we share with each other.

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Celebration Sunday -- Our 2009 – 2010 Stewardship Campaign
  Flyer with longer description
  UUA Suggested Fair-Share Guide

Religious Exploration Sunday

Louise Pare, Director of Religious Education
Rev. Carolyn Colbert, Homily

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Annual Congregational Meeting after the Service: Elections, Adoption of 2009-20010 Program Budget. Light lunch & childcare provided.

Rev. Carolyn Colbert, Interim Minister
Mary Rexford, Worship Associate

Summer seems like the right time to explore the possibilities of slothfulness. They are many and, they are not only tempting, but essential. Come lounge lazily and prepare for the joys of summer.

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RVUUF welcomes special guest speaker Dr. Jean Houston. In this passionate, provocative and frequently hilarious talk, Jean Houston will address the creation of a new kind of spirituality, one that she calls Partnership Spirituality.

What is unique in this model is that you are not a dependent, you are a partner with the Divine purpose, the Universal Planner. It involves moving from a life of serial monotony to a life of Second Genesis. It requires a movement from the metaphysical sadomasochism of a dysfunctional theism to ways of building in Partnership with Spirit a new matrix for mind and manifestation. As Meister Eckhart said, “we go beyond god to God.”

The knowledge we gain shows us how to activate the constructive imagination and how to hold in thought and feeling the intention and energy for healing, wholing and co-creation. It shows us how to stop boring God by waking up to the fact that we are here in Godschool to learn the principles of world making and the evolving of self and society. Evolution is seen to follow involution wherein we discover that our minds are star gates, our bodies celled of mysteries that give us keys to the emerging phase of our existence.

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Dr. Houston is the author of more than twenty books including A Passion for the Possible, The Possible Human, Public Like a Frog, A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story, The Passion of Isis and Osiris, and Jump Time. A world-renowned scholar, philosopher and researcher, she is regarded as one of the principal founders of the Human Potential Movement, and the first to incorporate the labyrinth as a tool for spiritual exploration in modern times.

Along with her husband Dr. Robert Masters, Dr. Houston founded The Foundation for Mind Research. She is also the founder and principal teacher of the Mystery School, a program of cross-cultural, mythic and spiritual studies, dedicated to teaching history, philosophy, the New Physics, psychology, anthropology, myth and the many dimensions of human potential. Recently she created the Jean Houston Foundation, an independent, non-profit leadership training organization -- see the Foundation site for other RVUUF events during the coming week.

Our Women’s Group will introduce us to some of the remarkable UU women of the nineteenth century, who led the battle for women’s rights. Featuring Selma McAlaster and Margaret St. Clair, with Worship Associate Clayton Gordon.

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Ann Hackett and our Welcoming Congregation Committee

Please join the community in acknowledging the gays among us during this worship service. It will be informative, humorous and heartfelt. You will hear: Potent Messages, Great Music, Wonderful Humor, a Presentation by "Teen Theater". Music by Don Black.

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Worship Leader: Bill Scarvie

In this service we will explore the moral imperative of the Earth Community described in David Korten’s recent book, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. Korten writes, “The organizing principles of Earth Community are so closely aligned with the principles of my faith that I cannot affirm and promote one without affirming and promoting the other.”
An interactive workshop follows this service

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Worship Leaders: Members of the Humanist Group

Religious Naturalism is an approach to spirituality that is devoid of super naturalism. It seeks to find inspirational and ethical responses to nature as revealed by scientific inquiry. Our presenters will be Les Jensen, Roy Kindell and Bev Barber from the Humanism Study Group. We will explore the history and value of Religious Naturalism and its relevance to Humanism and Unitarian Universalism. We will also follow up on themes presented to our fellowship by Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow last month. Ample time will be allotted for discussion - questions and answers.

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RE Program 2009-2010 Flyer

Rev. Carolyn Colbert, The RVUUF Choir,
Tamara Marston, Director, and Jane Manning, Accompanist

Long ago when people began to gather into communities, ceremonies of renewal and revival, water, like fire, was central to their sacred rituals. Like us, water sustained and nurtured them. Water, the foundation and origin of all life. Quenching thirst, moistening parched land, restoring spirits and connecting all people.

This morning, as we re-gather from our summer travels, both outward and inward, we bring a small container of water representing our separate journeys to pour into the common bowl of our shared lives as a religious community. This is an intergenerational service followed by a homecoming picnic.

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Rev. Colbert, Interim Minister
The RVUUF Choir, Tamara Marston Director; Jane Manning, Accompanist

It was scientist Albert Einstein who said
  “Never lose a holy curiosity.”
And theologian Paul Tillich who reminds us that
  “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.”
Bring your doubts and your questions and your hunger for “truth”
and we’ll explore an essential element to religious wisdom.

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Special Collection for UNETE -- a volunteer-led movement of farmworkers and immigrants in rural Southern Oregon educating their community and advocating for worker rights, humane immigration policy, and full participation in the decision-making processes affecting their lives.

Rev. Carolyn Colbert
The RVUUF Choir; Tamara Marston, Director

There are time when the world’s endless needs simply get to be too much. Times when the heart just shuts down and joy gives way to apathy and inspiration is taken over by resignation. It’s called burnout and it happens to the best of us. Is there a cure? Let’s talk.

Ashland Emergency Food Bank Offering

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Rev. Carolyn Colbert
The RVUUF Choir, Tamara Marston, Director

As we welcome UU’s from around our area for a weekend of delving into spirituality, we’ll take a look at how we might nurture and strengthen our spiritual searching by understanding our spiritual “type.”

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Special Offering. This Sunday we are joining together with thousands of Unitarian Universalists in affirming our common bonds and purposes on the third annual Association Sunday! Our liberal faith is needed to help heal our wounded world, and now is the time to pool our resources to help Grow Our Diversity, through new programs to develop spiritual communities that are more welcoming to ALL people.

Funds raised by this Sunday’s Special Offering will be used by the Unitarian Universalist Association as part of the ongoing effort to Grow Our Faith.

With your participation in Association Sunday, we will continue our efforts to build the beloved community. Through this year’s Growth in Diversity funding initiatives, we will 1. expand the Building the World We Dream About curriculum and associated resources and training, 2. support congregations that are working to create a Unitarian Universalism that is racially, culturally, and economically diverse; a part of this support will be in the form of grants, and 3. enable UU congregations and districts to minister effectively to youth and young adults who identify as people of color or multiracial, and to their families, in the areas of spiritual development, racial/cultural identity development, and leadership development.

Come ready to give generously to help grow our diversity and faith; we are better together!

Rev. Carolyn Colbert, Interim Minister
Tamara Marston, Song Leader; Jane Manning, Pianist; Mark Turnbull, Guitar

“I am convinced," says Carlos Castaneda, “that the way of the warrior is an exuberant and powerful way to live.” While James Hillman asks, “Do we, as a species, need war?” I wonder, is it possible, given our species ongoing love of war, that we could utilize the attributes of the warrior to walk the path of the warrior for the greater?

We return to Standard Time today.
Set Your Clocks back an Hour before you go to bed and enjoy an extra hour of sleep.

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Ashland Emergency Food Bank Offering every first Sunday of month.

Rev. Carolyn Colbert, Interim Minister
The RVUUF Octet, Tami Marston, Director; Jane Manning, Pianist

As we welcome and recognize our newest members we’ll look at what must be an archetypal longing for that one true place, deep in the human spirit, we each call home. We know it’s not just feather pillows or leather recliners, though in the secular world “stuff” does become a metaphor for comfort. What, in our spiritual lives, does it mean to be at home?

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The Young Adults of RVUUF will be hosting a service to reflect on their sophomore meeting, CONtinuum, in Washington and how, together, the YAUUs of the west coast are forging a community of their own to cross the bridge to adulthood and pilot their own ship in the sea of chaos armed with their faith and fellowship. Don’t miss this lively service! (related article)

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Rev. Carolyn Colbert, Interim Minister
Music by Tami Marston, Jane Manning, and Mark Turnbull

Love, truth, light, hope, are the universal messages of all the ancient celebrations that cluster around this time of year. But they don’t come easily or gently. Today we’ll turn the star wheel toward the internal work of wintering.

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Donations of Warm wear offerings for our Annual Mitten Tree.

Christmas Eve Candle Light Service. We come together to hear the ancient stories, sing the familiar songs, and take time in the close and holy darkness to be with our families and visiting friends, bringing our memories and our love in celebration and gratitude. Offerings of warm wear for the Mitten Tree are welcome.

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