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The First Unitarian Universalist Society of New Haven

608 Whitney Ave,

New Haven CT 06511

203-562-4410

E-mail: newhavenuu@

Website:

Board of Trustees:

Francis Braunlich, Pres.

Paul Raspe, Treasurer

Ben Ross, Vice Pres.

Elizabeth Neuse, Clerk

Steve Hall, Trustee

for Worship

Maria Pinango, Trustee

Mark Mitsock, Trustee

Gaianne Jenkins, Custodian

Office and Library: 2nd floor

Children’s Program: in the Children’s Preschool, in rear building

New Haven/Leon Sister City Project: office 2nd floor

Newsletter Editor: Elizabeth Neuse

Newsletter deadline: 20th of every month. Comments, announcements welcome!

December Worship Services: Sunday at 10:30 a.m.

Child Care provided

December 4: “Tools: A Personal History.” The service will trace the reality and image of the tool from the paleolithic to the present with emphasis on the spiritual and philosophical implications of tool use. If you have a beloved hand tool, please bring it along. Coordinated by Anne Cherry.

December 11: “Fresh Start.” A service with Shula, Philip and Ben of music, poetry and reflections on where we are in the cycles and what we are willing to look at. Grace emerges in the ebb and flow, not just the flow. The waning reveals a blessing different from the waxing.

December 18: "TBA--Christmas Service" coordinated by Terri O'Brien Stephens.

Tuesday, Dec. 21, 7:30 P.M., "The Very Least and Rarest of All Things: A Liturgy for Yule." The kernel of the seed is its potential; the rest is nutriment and protection. A passage from Thoreau's extended essay entitled "Wild Fruits" leads us into a meditation and sharing on our own year's spiritual kernel: the ancient celebration of the Solstice. Service coordinated by Mockingbird, aka Francis Braunlich.

December 26: “The Day After Christmas.” Enjoy songs and stories associated with December 26 in a candle-lighting service with time for private holiday reflections as we listen to live and recorded music. Paul and Julia Raspe will lead us in this tradition between Christmas and the New Year. Paul has designed and hand-crafted yet another ornament for you to take home. Julia and Paul Raspe, coordinators

Calendar of Other FUUS Events

Wednesday, Dec. 1, 7:30 p.m. Worship Committee meeting, planning services for 2011. Submit suggestions to the committee: Steve, Francis, Gaianne, Sheila, Elizabeth, Terri, Mark.

Wednesday, Dec. 8, 7:30 p.m. Board of Trustees meeting, conducting the business of the society.

Friday, Dec. 10, 8:00 p.m.: Christian Fellowship meets. Contact Bob or Terri for info and to confirm, (203) 467-7868.

Tuesday, Dec. 14, 7:30 p.m. Buddhist Dharma Group. Led by Todd Wormell. All are welcome!

Wednesday, Dec. 15, 7:30 p.m. CUUPs meeting. Contact Gaianne at (203) 562-4410 or Francis at (203) 562-0672 to put things on the agenda.

Wednesday, Dec. 22, 7:30 p.m.: Thinking the Sacred Earth, an informal discussion group that explores religions, philosophies, ethical systems and spiritual practices, past and present, that have set aside an

anthropocentric view of the cosmos in favor of biocentrism. For more information and readings, call Mark at

203-878-1952.

Tuesday, Dec. 28, 7:30 p.m. Ultimate Tuesday Drumming at the Meetinghouse. All ages, all acoustic instruments welcome. Contact Steve 203-288-0303.

Community Events:

Sat., Dec. 4 & Sun., Dec. 5: Join Our Classes--Saturday: 10:30am to 3:00pm. Classes: “An Overview for both beginners & advanced; what would you like to probe further?”

Brown Bag Lunch: 12:30pm to 1:30pm. 1:30 pm to 3 pm; “Self Care for all “

Sunday: 10:30am-2:30pm. Program includes: connecting circle, meditation, networking, non-denominational prayer basket, and workshop. Brown Bag Lunch: 12:30pm to 1pm

Workshop: 1:00 to 2:30pm “Sacred Time." Presenter, Joan St. John

Act 11 Counseling & Synthesis at Stratford Center - Professional and Personal Development. Beginners and Graduates Welcomed! Learn to center yourself and find your way in these challenging times!

We provide coffee/tea & cookies--bring lunch & a journal to write in.

Fees: Saturday classes: Student committed to classes $75. First time class $25. Grads $25.

Sunday workshop: $20 * We always provide sliding scale and work swaps (we're all in this economy together!) Please RSVP for Res., and for any questions: Cynthia Russell, PhD 203-377-2421 psynnie@aol.co 2225 Main St., Stratford, CT

Sunday Gift Swap: Bring a Recycled Wrapped Gift or a Gift under $10

Sat., Dec. 4, 10 a.m.– 3 p.m.: New Haven/León Sister City Project will hold its annual Holiday Fiesta and Gift Bazaar at 608 Whitney Avenue. Please Note the Location Change! Shop for a cause! Fair-trade overseas crafts/ most produced by co-ops. Locally produced items as well. Pottery! Calendars! Soaps! For more info call: (203) 562-1607.

Mon., Dec. 6, 6 p.m. Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice again marks the cost of the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by placing the Nov. stone on the Memorial Cairn at the intersection of Broadway, Elm and Park sts, inscribed with the Nov. death total of US military personnel and the approximate numbers of Iraqi and Afghani civilians killed. A public reminder that the wars are not over, no matter what presidents and generals may say.

Sat., Dec. 11, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. Annual Bioregional Holiday Craft Fair--A wide variety of crafts by local artists. Come and join us for some time together, plus holiday treasures made by people you know. Artisans include: Janet & Liz—Rubberstampers; Shula—Hats, Prayer Flags & other Sewn Crafts; Diane—Hats & Scarves; Maria & Domingo—Photographs; Richard—Painted Wooden Items; New Haven/Leon Sister City Project—A Variety of Crafts and Items from all over the World.

Sat., Dec. 18, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.: Pre-Solstice Walk and Potluck Lunch. Bring something to eat, drop it off at the UU. Walk to the top of Whitney Peak for a brief Solstice Ceremony, and then return for a lunch together. UU Society, 608 Whitney Ave. Info:

Splinters from the Board of Trustees Meeting, Nov. 10, 2010:

The Greater New Haven Roof company came and inspected the roof. They worked for half an hour. So far there has been no leak.

$666. went to the Preschool Scholarship Fund from the Sunday loose collections.

There is a new cabinet in the office for radio equipment and the office is being cleaned up. Ben is also looking for window replacements at Urban Miners, esp. for the 3rd floor.

Sunday services are set until March. Anne and Liz are newcomers who will be doing services.

Ben volunteered to be the Board rep on the Nominating Committee.

Theresa is pushing to get the ceiling and walls painted before we put in the new carpet. The Home and Garden Committee meets every 3rd Sunday to discuss improvements to be made to the meetinghouse.

Gaianne reported the last time we had electrical work done was in 1999-2000. We need to get another electrician to recheck the wiring, esp. in the basement. Most likely we need heat sensors and a fire alarm to meet the fire marshal’s minimum standards. Gaianne also got approval to put small solar panels on the south side of the building, where they will blend in with the brick.

Got Purpose? II: Turning Ourselves Inside Out Sat, Dec, 4, 9:00am - 2:00pm

with Doug Zelinski, Director of Leadership Development Workshop for the Clara Barton District, UUA

Location: Sheraton Springfield Monarch Place Hotel, Springfield, MA

* Would you like annual goals that matter and progress that can be measured?

* Do you wish it were easier to attract new members and recruit volunteers?

* Have you wished journalists looked to your congregation for the “liberal slant” on news?

* Have you wondered how your own spiritual growth is connected to social justice work?

Just like people, flourishing congregations embrace a particular "calling". This workshop explains the "call" and how a congregation discerns one that is responsive to its time, location, special gifts and the particular needs of the community. It is this calling that eventually gives shape and breath to a mission statement that matters.

Registration deadline: Nov. 29 Cost: $75 individual; $300 team of 4-6

Unitarian values underscore Gaskell's novels: English novelist Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) wrote about social issues and the role of women in society. By Kimberly French From UUWorld, Winter 2010

Gentle reader, if you lament that Jane Austen penned but six novels, there may be a solution: Elizabeth Gaskell.

Gaskell, a Victorian novelist whose 200th birthday is being celebrated throughout England this year, is Jane Austen with a social conscience. When she died in 1865, the London literary journal The Athenaeum called her “if not the most popular, with small question, the most powerful and finished female novelist of an epoch singularly rich in female novelists.” Though less well known on this side of the pond, her popularity has been increasing in recent years, thanks to several recent BBC productions of Gaskell’s work.

Her novels—best known is Cranford, produced as a miniseries with Judi Dench and Imelda Staunton in 2007 and 2009—feature smart, lovable heroines who, like Austen’s, know how to deliver a zinger and appeal to the sensibilities of a liberal persuasion today.

The daughter of a Unitarian clergyman, the young Elizabeth Stevenson was raised by an aunt in the country market town of Knutsford, the model for Cranford, after her mother died. Some of the situations in her novels, such as a cow who is dressed in flannel pajamas after it falls into a lime pit, are based on true incidents. At age 21, Elizabeth married the Rev. William Gaskell, minister of Cross Street Chapel, a Unitarian church in Manchester. They had four daughters, and both Gaskells were active in the ministry, teaching Sunday school and championing the plight of the poor.

Gaskell lived in the English Midlands during the Industrial Revolution, and her religious and political leanings hone the edge of her prose. Starting with her first novel, Mary Barton, a love story set in the Manchester slums, Gaskell provoked outrage, even among the more enlightened cotton mill owners attending her husband’s church. But her witty narratives and pointed subtexts quickly found an audience. Some compared her social observation skills to Friedrich Engels. Charles Dickens invited her to contribute to his journal Household Words, which published many of her stories. On one occasion, he called her “my dear Scheherezade.”

In North and South, which depicts the formation of a union and a violent strike, the opinionated heroine falls in love with a mill owner, and her minister father questions the Trinity and leaves the church. Though Gaskell didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a Unitarian writer, she betrays her affiliation in passages such as: “Margaret the Churchwoman, her father the Dissenter, Higgins the Infidel, knelt down together. It did them no harm.”

Her multilayered fiction seamlessly weaves together story lines, sometimes even showing conflicts between workers’ and women’s rights. At the same time, she portrays a wide range of everyday characters—women and men; landed nobility, industrialists, poor servants, and workers; conservative and liberal—with a good degree of sympathy to all. Therein lies her skill and readers’ delight in her work.

Twice, Gaskell’s books brought her public scandal. Her novel Ruth, an indictment of the moral rigidity that forced unmarried pregnant women into prostitution, shocked even some among her more tolerant readership. Some Cross Street parishioners burned the book. Gaskell stirred up more serious trouble with a biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë, which Brontë’s father asked her to write. She apparently repeated statements made by family members about others and avoided a libel suit only with a retraction and withdrawal of the second edition.

Today Gaskell’s reputation as a beloved novelist is enjoying a revival. In September, her name was added to a stained glass window in the Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey in London. And throughout this year, special events celebrating her life and work will be held in Manchester and Knutsford.

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Every Sunday at 9:30 a.m. Join us for a half hour of meditation before the service!

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