News and Links
Summer Services Begin June 28th – Worship Leaders Invited
Jan's latest sermon can be easily reached via her ew blog. Just click here.
Click here for our Religious Education (RE) blog that provides an overview of our RE program during tjhe church year.
Click here for Picture Gallery
Click here for Directions
Church Services and
Sermon Topics
Summer Services:
All are at 9 AM in the Meeting House.
June 28 Eric Kluz
July 12 Jeff Watson
July 19 Bev Burgess
July 26 MaryAnn Cushing
August 2 Diana Kornet
August 9
August 16
August 23
August 30
Note: No Sunday services on July 5
and September 6.
25% of our non-pledge plate offering from
February through August will continue to go
directly to Wellspring, at the counsel of our
Outreach Committee. Wellspring is a
comprehensive, multi-service, non-profit agency
serving people in need on the South Shore.
Other Happenings
Take a Faith and Action Minute to Make a Difference in Home Sweet Home in Massachusetts
Our Unitarian Universalist Mass Action network, headed by Nancy Banks, has alerted us to the opportunity to contact our state senators on the matter of affordable housing. On May 13th, the Senate Committee on Ways and Means released its FY 2010 budget. The proposed budget includes $2.4 billion in cuts to state programs and services. Included in these cuts are approximately $42 million to affordable housing programs. The Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program (MRVP) would be cut in half. The consequences? Between 2,500 and 2,900 households would be on the edge of homelessness—a lose-lose for all of us! MRVP currently helps 5,200 low income households with rental assistance. The average income of households served by this program is less than $11,000. Almost all (79%) households served by MRVP are extremely low income, and many have incomes below 15% of area median.
What can we do? We can phone our senators today and ask them to restore funding to MRVP. It takes about one minute. Please contact your Senator at 617-722-2000 and ask them to support Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz's amendment to restore funding to MRVP to match the House budget appropriation. We can let our senator know that we’re prepared to pay higher taxes to protect these and other critical services. It’s a win-win for all of us! To find your senator, visit http://www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/myelectioninfo.php. For a direct phone number to your Senator, visit http://www.mass.gov/legis/memmenus.htm.
Our Cohasset Food Pantry needs you to help hungry neighbors! Please contribute. Many are hungry amid this time of economic turmoil. Many are more than full. May those of us with an ample store of food and more share with those of us who are struggling. We can do this through our Cohasset Food Pantry. Our Outreach Committee reminds us to keep those baskets in the Meeting House and at the entrance to the Parish House full. Items especially needed right now include: toilet paper, toothpaste, paper towels, shampoo and conditioner, soap, etc.
If you wish to receiive your newsletter in hardcopy
form, please phone or e-mail Sandy Bailey, First
Parish Administrator, at 781-383-1100 or
SandyBailey@firstparishcohasset.org. |
From the Minister
“The sweet June days are come again,” we sing, echoing the words of Samuel Longfellow. June, that threshold month of summer, and summer, when beach and bike trails beckon and sails billow and our summer services begin here at First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Cohasset. We gather in worshipful community from June 28 through August 30 (July 5th excepted) in the centuries old space of our Meeting House. Beginning at 9 AM and running for roughly a half hour, these services are led by you, individuals, families, friends, worship leaders all. We hope you’ll join us.
Summer begins for me in Salt Lake City, with the General Assembly of our Unitarian Universalist Association. Close to 4,000 Unitarian Universalists are gathering from near and far—as far as the Khasi Hills of Northeastern India, where over 35 Unitarian Universalist congregations thrive. At this General Assembly we will elect a new president of our UUA. We’ll amend, debate, and vote on a prospective Statement of Conscience on Peacemaking. We’ll engage in workshops that embrace that many ways for us to practice our faith. We’ll return to our congregations brimming with ideas and strategies for spiritual vitality, growth, and justice making. And I will conclude two terms, spanning eight years, on our UUA’s Commission on Social witness. I’ll return in ample time to perform a memorial service on July 3rd and a wedding on the 4th of July.
Summer’s easier folds allow for meetings to plan and organize. Summer’s easier schedule allows for catch-ups and visioning. Yet hunger and the economy and all that chafes against our highest possibilities abide. Challenges of home and world erupt. Uncertainty prevails. So please call me if you’d like a visit or an on-the-spot conversation. On your trips to the market, please remember some items for our Cohasset Food Pantry, received in the foyer of our Parish House. On your visits on-line, please remember that we’ll post periodic e-mail updates. On your vacations away, please visit some other UU congregations and bring back fresh ideas.
On those summer mornings, let’s rise in gratitude that we are here at all. On those summer evenings, let’s linger awhile on the beach, on our sun porches, and gaze into the stars, reminded that our faith lives all summer long, calling us into our larger selves, reminding us of sweet June days and nights that lean into eternity.
Beyond all seasons, I love you each and all,
Jan
|
