UUFA News – June 2025

The Merry Month of May at UUFA 

May was eventful  at UUFA. Thanks to Nellie and the Choir for our special Music Sunday on 5//18.  We were honored to have the Choir from the First UU Society of Marietta join us.  We enjoyed a deliciou potluck together and vowed to repeat this event again !!

The Membership team also hosted a fun day on May 3rd. Due to rain we weren’t  able to have our workday but much fun was had playing games. 

 

 

Welcome to our new members of the UUFA Community – May 11, 2025 

We are happy to have you all join our community.

 John Reagan, Jeff Wunderly , Daniel & Amy Trumble and Lish Greiner & Linda Sistrunk (not pictured)
Join along for the Athens Pride Parade and Street Fair !  UUFA will have a presence there and we need you to make that happen.
Saturday, June 7, Pride Parade and Street Fair. Meet at 10 AM on the street in front of Alden Library (look for the UUFA banner) The parade steps off at 11AM. We also need folks to set up and staff our table at the Street Fair. If you’re interested in supporting UUFA’s presence at these events please contact Susan at suusanw.uu@gmail.com or just show up and find us!!
Sunday Services in June – 11:00 AM – 184 Longview Hts.  – Neurodivergence and UU Principles
Sunday June 1 – As our understanding of neurodivergence expands, and we begin to see just how many people in our community are impacted, we are called to examine how the Unitarian Principles guide us to show up with compassion and care. In this presentation, Lish Greiner will share her personal journey as a late-diagnosed neurodivergent woman and as a mother fighting to help her daughter, a journey that has profoundly reshaped both of their lives. Through this lens, she will highlight key neurodivergent traits, how they appear in her life, and how understanding them can foster deeper compassion and connection within our community.
Sunday June 9 – Soul and Spirit, Body and Breathe; Reflection on An Intentional and Centered Life in a TIme of Chaos.  The Reverend Hilary Landau Krivchenia is a retired Unitarian Unitarian parish minister who is a facilitator of the Work That Reconnects and The Pledge to End Racism, a consulting hypnotist, and a Credentialed Spiritual Director. Dr Mary Lamb Shelden is fabulous. Rev. Hilary will consider the connection between the spirit of life and the passion for life, the thread that can guide our lives and give us fire in our hearts, the need for centering in these challenging days, and the gifts of peace, joy, and courage she has received in Spiritual Companioning through the last two years.
Dr. Mary Lamb Shelden is a lifelong, second-generation Unitarian Universalist, a credentialed religious educator and spiritual director, and a scholar of the Transcendentalist circle. She has attended eight UU congregations over the course of her life: two as a young person, four as a lay leader, and two serving as a religious professional. Formerly an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, these days she teaches college writing and the freshman seminar at Aurora University in Illinois. Mary will consider Thomas Moore’s idea of Soul as a way to think of our sacred human experience as grounded in the body — in its feelings, sensations, and encounters. She’ll also consider Parker Palmer’s admonition that the soul is strong, enduring, but also shy — like a wild animal — and how spiritual companioning can help create a safer, braver space in which the soul can emerge and make itself known to us.
June 15 – Reflections on Fatherhood

Jessie Roberson and Pete Mather will lead in a celebration of fatherhood, while discussing how it shows up in legal, cultural, and psychosocial dimensions of our lives.
June 22  – UUFA community will view the livestream closing service of the Unitarian Universalist Associations , annual General Assembly.  More details TBA
June 29 – Visiting friend, Bill White will join us again to deliver today’s service.  Details TBA
UUFA Board Meeting Summary for May 2025 – Submitted by Marilyn Zwayer.
In attendance (by Zoom): Richard Thieret (President), Pete Mather (President-Elect), Susan Westenbarger (Treasurer), Nellie James, Barb Harrison, Roberta Roberson, Jessie Roberson, Jeff Wunderly, Marilyn Zwayer (Recorder)
Pledges are slowly coming in.  Rev. Hilary K. will speak on June 8. In preparation for our annual fall water communion, we will  need to remind people to bring back water from summer travels, for our Sept. in-gathering service. All building users need to know not to move the speakers- that causes feedback issues.  Thank you, Wenda, for going downstairs and providing activities to any children in attendance.  If you have a talent or interest in working with our social media or wordpress based newsletter ? Please let Barb Harrison know.  Volunteers are wanted for tabling at the Pride Parade on June 7. We will begin doing a head count each Sunday to keep track of our attendance for planning purposes. We decided that the person counting the offering will also take a general head count. . We reminded ourselves that it’s important to  keep services limited to an hour, with talking encouraged afterwards, while enjoying nibbley bits. nThe next board meeting will be June 14th at 10:30, by Zoom.
News from UUA

Queerly Beloved

“Queer… not as being about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it), but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent it and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”
—bell hooks, 2014

I accidentally came out in a homily I delivered at Summer Seminary, a Unitarian Universalist program for youth considering becoming religious professionals. I had recently been leaning into my identity as a queer woman of color, and I said as much. I forgot, however, that I hadn’t mentioned this fact to my parents yet, who were watching the livestream at First Unitarian in Chicago from their couch in Corvallis, Oregon. When my dad picked me up from the airport a week later, he brought it up almost immediately. “So I wanted to ask… what does queer mean to you?”

I’ve flirted with a lot of different labels throughout the years, from ally to bisexual to lesbian, but none of them have ever felt quite right. Each has a special place in my heart for the communities I’ve been in solidarity with and the identities that I’ve claimed, but I keep returning to the word queer.

I’ve had conversations with LGBT elders about the word queer. Not everyone uses it; some have too many memories of it being used as a weapon against them to have it sit right with their soul. My middle school counselor hated the word because for him, “queer” meant strange and odd.

That’s still the first definition that comes up when you Google it. But for me, a mixed-race person of color, a gender expansive relationship anarchist, and of course, a Unitarian Universalist, queer is the perfect word not just to describe my sexuality but every part of me and what I embody.

As I’ve studied queer theology in seminary, I’ve actually become more and more convinced that Unitarian Universalism itself is a queer faith, defined not by a creed passed down through generations but by the real-world commitments we make to each other in the present.

Unitarian Universalism “queers” the idea of theology itself, not requiring the theos (God) to do the logos (talk). Our “God-talk” includes the atheists, agnostics, polytheists, and all those who endeavor to engage in the search for truth and meaning.

My queerness and my Unitarian Universalism are inextricably linked, informing each other at every bend in the road. I wouldn’t be who I am without either of them.

Prayer

Spirit of Life, queerly beloved, God of the strange and the odd and the imperfect and the beautiful, help us find the words that embody who we truly are.