Monday, March 07, 2005
March 2005 Newsletter
Captain’s Log
We somehow started a discussion about Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) with my children one evening at dinner. By implication Fat Tuesday is a day when we go wild with food and drink. I was explaining that Fat Tuesday is followed by Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. UUs have not traditionally put much stock into Lent, but Andrea and I proceeded to tell the boys that there were 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. This was the same number of days as the Bible says Jesus spent in the wilderness preparing himself for his ministry. That number 40 has a habit of coming up in the scriptures!
The idea is that we usually give something up for Lent in order to spiritually purify ourselves or make ourselves more healthy. To me this sounds like winter fat. There are all those things we have been eating prior to Fat Tuesday and the lack of exercise all winter. This happened to me as I jumped on the scale one morning and screamed that it was time to give up ice cream. I had reached my upper limit of weight, and there was only one direction to go. Both the traditional religious calendar and my scale were asking, What can you give up to become a healthier person?
We are giving things up all the time in order to achieve certain desired results. A few years back I gave up smoking and eventually found that I had more breath to climb the hills near my home, and I smelled better and might keep my teeth longer, to say nothing about living longer in general. My brother was told to give up smoking forever if he intended to live at all. We give up things - it may be foods because of health risks, spending habits because we are plunging into debt, possessions because our things begin to define us more than our relationships. Lent is a time of reflection. What will make me a better person? What will free me to be more loving, more giving?
One problem is that asking what you are going to give up sounds so negative. Easter comes early this year, and March also happens to be our canvass month. One way of approaching a budget is to ask what are we going to cut, or give up in order to balance things rather than exploring what new initiatives we can stretch to afford. When it comes to pledging which approach do we take? Do we ask ourselves what I am going to give up of my hard earned money? This sounds like you really don’t want to do it, but you will if you have to. Spiritual growth is hard to come by if it feels like you are dragged there kicking and screaming. Here I am back on the scale again saying ok I’ll give up ice cream if I have to, but I don’t really want to.
This is missing the point, isn’t it? I am a healthier happier me when I take the time to enjoy walking, and more tired and sluggish when I sit at home. Maybe it is a matter of words. I don’t mind giving up being a couch potato. I suppose it is a matter of how I become the best me. I like myself better when I weigh less. Getting there is not what I give up, but what I want or what I do for a healthier me. What we give to the church makes our free faith grow in proportion to what we give. When we spend all our time saying we never have enough, then we look at things from a deficit and what we really give up is our ability to dream of new possibilities. If we’re worried about what is being taken away all the time, or what we are losing, then we expect to start carving up the budget rather than expanding it. I would like to think about what we can dream about creating by giving to build a healthier church. With Easter the tradition speaks of a resurrected flesh. What will bring us or the church to life? Not a grudging giving up, but a joyous celebration of extending and preserving all the great gifts of love we have received.
Mark
Sermon Topics
Sunday, March 6, 2005, 11:00 A.M.
The Natural Life - Mark W. Harris
In the world of multi-tasking and electronic gadgetry and full schedules, we all have a little bit of trouble focusing on anything. What would help us pay attention?
Music: FPW Choir is singing.
Greeters: Bob and Missy Shay
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Sunday, March 13, 2005, 11:00 A.M.
March 13 - “Sharing the Journey” - Mark W. Harris
The stories of our lives are filled with great religious meaning. How do we discover what that is? One way is sharing those stories in the context of a small group. This sermon is an introduction to a new program of small spiritual growth groups (What we used to call our covenant group)
Greeters: Anna Glover and Ruth Greene
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Sunday, March 20, 2005, 11:00 A.M.
“Rites of Spring Darrick Jackson
This service will celebrate Ostara, the pagan holiday that honors the beginning of Spring. What can we, as Unitarian Universalists, learn from the traditions of Ostara.
Music: Guest Musicians: Beatrice Affron, violin and Debbie Thompson, cello.
Children’s Choir is singing
Greeters: John Gorman and Jean Merkl
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Sunday, March 27, 2005, 11:00A.M.
March 27 ”The Resurrected Flesh” Mark W. Harris
Our Easter service will have a special story and special music, and a sermon on the significance of the body and faith development People seemed obsessed with the use of personality tests. I am in a small minority of UUs who is “Sensing” in the Myers-Briggs test. How do my senses fit into my faith?
Music: The Boston Shawn and Sackbut Ensemble will play music of the Renaissance.(see article under Musical Musings)
Greeters: Charmian Proskauer and Stephen Gustin
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Coffee Donation
Thanks to the unknown person who left coffee, paper supplies, and other useful goods in the FPW kitchen recently. These are much appreciated and will be put to good use.
Please let us know who made this generous donation!
Bios for FPW newcomers Fall 2004.
We are pleased to have welcomed the following people to our membership rolls this past fall. They were welcomed in December. Another ceremony will be scheduled for spring. Please speak to Rev. Mark Harris if you wish to become a member of First Parish.
Nicholas and Michelina (Chela) Tawa live in Brighton, have two sons, and previously attended the First Unitarian Church of Newton. One son and family live in Washington, D.C. and the other son and family live in Medfield. Nick is Professor Emeritus at U.Mass/Boston, where he taught music history and musicology. His area of specialty is American music and how it relates to American society and culture. He has written a number of books on this subject--the latest will appear in February 2005. Chela worked as Director of Community Relations at the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare. Before that she spent many years at United Community Services (a United Way agency) as Senior Planner in Public Policy advocating and lobbying on behalf of health and welfare issues before the Massachusetts Legislature.
Kevin Otto has lived in Watertown for over ten years and visiting FPW for three years‹finally committing! Kevin works as a product development consultant, running his own professional services practice. He worked with Roger Kamm as a professor at MIT for eight years before leaving to work on his own.
Katja Hóltta has just moved to Watertown and started attending FPW with Kevin Otto. Katja is from Helsinki, Finland and has been studying for her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at MIT. She and Kevin were married in Finland in January.
Jan Stonehouse Klein is a native of Massachusetts. She has been a nurse for thirty years, specializing in psychiatric nursing. She had a great education in holistic medicine while living in California for ten years. She is an animal advocate and interested in wildlife rehabilitation. She is now living in Belmont and does home care and guided imagery.
Among Us
Our thoughts of sympathy go to Brigitte Bender and her family on the death of her mother, Katherine Bender. Her mother died on February 14 at the age of 93 in her hometown in Germany after a long illness. There will be a Memorial Service at First Parish in the future.
A warm welcome to the following First Parish friends who have signed the membership book: Kim Peters (and son Jack), and Michelle Klosterman and Ed Drozd, who will be married here in June.
Book Group
FPW Book Group -will meet again on Tuesday, March 15th at 7pm. This month’s book is Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels. Pagels first became known years ago when she published The Gnostic Gospels. Mark Harris will be the facilitator. If you like to learn about alternative versions of Christianity, as in the fictionalized Da Vinci Code, come experience the real life Gospel of Thomas. The April book will be the The Kite Runner, and the date is April 19.
The Amateur Historian
This year marks the 375th anniversary of the founding of Watertown and our
very own First Parish. At this writing, nobody knows for sure how the Town
will celebrate. Rest assured, there will be something for everybody. It’s
time, too, for the Amateur Historian to get back to work. For starters, I
have rewritten my piece, ”Life Along the Charles”, part of a summer lay
service during which Carol Berney and I collaborated.
We like to think of the Charles River as this delightful natural resource that
graces our urban setting. But in many ways, the river is quite unnatural
with dams and fish ladders that don’t work properly. Right from the
beginning, in the 1600’s, the Europeans exploited the Charles River and
changed its natural course. We can see evidence of their engineering
tinkering today.
Our first stop in history takes us to the founding of Watertown in 1630. The
first homes and the first meetinghouse stood on land that now belongs to
Mount Auburn Hospital. The original land grant incorporated parts of
Cambridge, including the area around Fresh Pond, Weston, the first town to
break free in 1713, Waltham, incorporated 1738, most of Belmont, and sections
of Concord, Lincoln, and Wayland. I call all of these towns “Greater
Watertown”.
Before the Charles River Dam, located by the Science Museum, closed out the
sea in 1908, the river’s estuary began at Watertown. The natives took
advantage of the tides to catch fish in their weirs. The Europeans copied
Indian ways with a vengeance. All that fishing going on in Watertown caused a
lot of grumbling from people living upstream, who wanted their share of the
catch. The protection of inland fisheries, not just along the Charles, but
other rivers, like the Merrimack, forced the Massachusetts Legislature to
take action. In 1709, the General Court enacted the first law to protect the
river fisheries. It was a losing battle, as we shall soon find out.
Roger Thompson writes in Divided We Stand: Watertown, Massachusetts,
1630-1680: “In 1634 Thomas Mayhew requested the loan of Governor Winthrop’s
ox team to haul lumber for the building of the town’s first water mill, which
also required a dam and water race.” Up until that time, all grain,
including the unfamiliar corn introduced by the natives, had to be ground by
hand. Windmills were impractical in this valley because they failed to catch
the west winds. Mayhew built the mill right about where Sasaki’s is today.
You can see markers for the mill on the river walk.
Mayhew’s mill was the first of many to impede the flow of the Charles River.
>From an article written in the Boston Globe (April 9, 1995) by Sam Bass
Warner: “It was the millmen of the 18th and 19th centuries who transformed
the Charles from a gravelly New England stream into a series of lakes.
Twenty dams and lakes survive today, most owned by the Metropolitan District
Commission. [Now the Dept. of Conservation & Recreation.] These dams were
encouraged by a ferocious law passed by the Legislature in 1795. An Act
for the Support and Regulation of Mills’ allowed anyone who owned two sides
of a stream to erect a dam and to flood his neighbor’s land without
permission. The aggrieved neighbor was to wait upon a grand jury and receive
from them an award of an annual fee. In consequence, both the fish who used
to swim upstream and the farmers who used to hay the meadows were damned
out.” The act codified common law practice. According to Professor Attila
Klein of Brandeis, the law favored industry over agriculture and natural
resources. “The turning of the tide,” is the way my colleague Laura Reiner
put it. Not long after the 1795 Act, Francis Cabot Lowell with his master
mechanic, Paul Moody, incorporated the Boston Manufacturing Company in
Waltham. In 1813 they built the first integrated textile mill in the world
and started a revolution, the Industrial Revolution. We are still
recovering.
Turning back to the 17th Century, I want to relate to the next turning point
along the Charles River: the founding of Harvard College by the General Court
of Massachusetts in 1636. Tax dollars from the six towns of Boston,
Cambridge, Charlestown, Dorchester, Roxbury and Watertown went into Harvard’s
coffers. Here’s a tidbit from a footnote in Thompson’s book, Divided We
Stand: “In 1650 and 1651 a bushel of apples and a lamb were sent to the
college by Watertown to help finance the education of Samuel Phillips, the
son of the deceased pastor.”
The same year Harvard College was established in 1636, the General Court
granted some “venturesome” residents of Watertown permission to establish a
new town upstream: Dedham. These hardy souls engineered two diversions of
the Charles River that are still extant: Mother Brook in 1639 and the Long
Ditch in 1649. Ron MacAdow writes in his book on the Charles River: ”The
new town needed a mill to saw logs into boards and to grind grain, but an
attempt to found a mill on the Charles River came to nothing. The town
decided that East Brook, a tributary of the Neponset River, would offer
excellent mill sites if it could be provided with more water. In 1639,
Dedhamites dug a ditch through Purchase Meadow, diverting Charles River water
to the head of East Brook, which became known as Mother Brook. From that day
to this, the Charles has fed the Neponset. Local farmers applauded the
diversion on the theory that it helped drain water from the hayfields of the
river meadows.” Later on, the need for more hay inspired the idea for the
Long Ditch, also dug by hand, in 1654. Today, this passage, one half mile
long, connecting the Dedham Loop, is much beloved by canoeists. And with
that, I leave my history.
Katherine Button
The Amateur Historian
Calendar
3/2 Parish Council , 7:30 pm
3/5 Canvass Dinner at church 5:30pm
3/6 Aging Group at 9:30am
3/6 Introduction to Paganism 4:00 pm
3/7, 3/14,3/21,3/28 Choir meets at 6:30pm
3/9 Parish Committee meets at 7:30pm
3/10 Worship Committee at 7;30 pm
3/13 Growth committee at 9:30 a.m.
3/13 Info Session on Covenant Groups at 12:15 p.m.
3/13 Introduction to Paganism 4:00 pm
3/13 Canvass Dinner at church 5:30pm
3/15 FPW Book Group meets at 7pm
3/22 Women and Work meets at 6:30pm
3/22 Social Action Committee at 7:45 pm
3/23 Fellowship Committee at 7:30 pm
3/26 Benefit Concert 8:00pm
3/27 Easter Sunday
3/28 Building and Grounds at 7:30 pm
3/29 Finance Committee at 7:30 pm
EASTER AND SPRING FLOWERS
If you would like to order flowers to decorate the sanctuary for Easter, and then to take home, please fill out this form and mail it to the church or place in the newsletter box on the church office door by Sunday, March 13 at the latest! Please make checks payable to First Parish. All plants come in 6" pots. The lilies are a single stem with 4-6 blooms. Cost: $7 for lilies, $6 for the others.
Name _______________________ Phone_______________
Number of plants: _______ Tulips
Color preference?
____ Jonquils ______ Hyacinths _____ Lilies
Total enclosed: _____________________________________
In memory of: ______________________________________
In honor of: ________________________________________
A gift of :__________________________________________
Mark Your Calendars: Coming Events
April 2 - Annual Dinner
April 6 - Hobby Night
April 10 - Men’s Breakfast - event to organize a men’s group
May 1 - Newcomer Breakfast
May 7 - All church Rummage Sale
June 12 - 375th Lecture with Roger Thompson
June 18 - Church outing at Cedarhill in Duxbury
R.E.flections by a chaliceD.R.E.amer
by Roberta Altamari
Canvas season is here and for the first time, I don't feel too shy to talk about it. I am beginning to understand the pledging process better and the question of how much money I am going to give to the church no longer leaves me feeling awkward. I think this is because my pledging philosophy has evolved so much during the last few years.
When I first came to First Parish, I likened my pledge to a donation to charity. Just like any other non-profit organization, the church needs money to survive. It can't exist without generous donations from people. So my family pledged the most money we could afford to give to our favorite charity.
A few years later when my older daughter was really benefiting from the great children's programs at First Parish, I started to rethink my pledging philosophy. Maybe our pledge to First Parish isn't just a charitable donation. After all, I don't usually personally gain anything from a charitable donation. I send the money simply knowing the organization is doing good work for the community, but not expecting anything in return.
At First Parish, we get a lot in return for our pledge dollars. Access to a wide variety of top quality programs. With the rapidly rising cost of children's classes and activities, it was impressive to realize just how much our daughters were getting out of our First Parish membership. So when I took that into account, my family pledged the most money we could afford to give to our favorite children's program.
This pledging mind set is often referred to as "pay for service". Some churches get stuck in this mind set and start charging people fees to participate in many of their programs, such as religious education. Or a church or temple will insist on a minimum donation to use their services. And most times, people pay it. That's why some UUs sometimes wonder if we should switch to similar systems.
It wasn't until this year that I fully understood why we shouldn't use a "pay for service" system. We lose too much of our faith in the "pay for service" system. Church isn't a place that just serves us with programs. And more of us benefit from each program than participate in it. How many times have I enjoyed listening to the beautiful music of our choir even though I'm not singing in it? And how many times have I been sincerely impressed by the work of our Social Action Committee even when I'm not helping them? And how many times have I been inspired simply watching our children put their UU faith into action as I realize that our world will one day be a better place because of them?
Church is our faith community. The best gifts we get from belonging to First Parish are beyond accessing monetary value. How do you put a price on the affirmation we get from gathering together with like-minded families? Or the celebratory and healing energy we share during life's joys and sorrows? Or the inspiration we feel when we witness loving compassion expressed in worthwhile community service or social action projects?
If I'm thinking of church as much more than just a charitable organization that provides my family with valuable services, how can I possibly know how much to pledge? American culture today offers me no guidance. I've grown up in a society that highlights individuality and getting the most for your dollar. Sure, I've been taught that you try to be nice and help others in need, but unfortunately the bigger lesson was that you work hard to keep most of it for yourself.
Just when I thought this new concept of pledging was too abstract and foreign for me to comprehend, the First Parish community helped me make sense of it all. In the same way that we each uniquely contribute the skills and energy we have to share, we also give our money. For the First Parish community to be healthy and prosper, we need generous donations of time and money from each of our members and friends. Some give more and some give less, but somehow these individual donations magically come together to create the life of our community.
What I like best about our pledge system is that it is based on respect and not guilt or pressure. The Finance Committee of the church honestly informs us the amount of money we need to run our programs for the coming year. Then members and friends are inspired by the plans for the coming year and pledge as generously as possible for their situation. Very few people actually see the individual pledges, so the only pressure comes from one's self to give the amount that he or she feels is right. Understanding this, my family will pledge the most money we can afford to give to be an active part of an amazing community that encompasses so much that is meaningful to us.
I find it ironic that this is the first year I am speaking so publicly about pledging. Since the R.E. committee is asking for a significant budget increase and a big part of that is to fund more paid hours for me, I should be shyer. But with UUA guidelines of fair compensation, attendance charts highlighting consistent increases, and detailed examples of my workweeks that all support this request, I am excited to talk about it. These additional funds also include us starting youth group and a children's choir for older kids. And allow us to maintain the same creative and engaging spark that fuels all of our religious education programs. Our requests for additional funding are an enthusiastic sign of our growth.
We have lots of reasons to give more than ever this year. To support and empower this community we so highly value. To continue on this path of sponsoring top quality, enriching programs and events. And to celebrate our connections to this wonderful church family. Please pledge generously.
Announcements:
The R.E. Committee is hosting Social Hour for the month of March and is inviting all families to assist. The kids seem to love helping with this!! Check these dates to see which Sunday your child's group with be doing the table set up and please bring some food to contribute.
March 6: UU Explorers (7 to 10 year olds)
March 13: Rainbow Seekers (4 to 7 year olds)
March 20: Principle Activators (10 to 13 year olds)
March 27: Treasure Hunters/ Friendship Finders/ Chalice Babies (4 and under)
Your Spare Change is needed!
Please bring in your spare change during the month of March for the Chalice Children to use in their Spring community service projects. Collection jars will be at Social Hour all month! Half of all collected money will be used to purchase supplies to do a community service or social action project voted on at their Children's Annual Meeting on March 6. The other half of all collected money will be donated to a non-profit charity selected by the children at their Annual Meeting.
Help our youth help our world!
See Emma Day and some of her friends at Social Hour mid March as she sells homemade jewelry and crafts to benefit the victims of the recent Tsunami. Please support their great efforts!
Be a First Parish "Sunny Bunny Pal"!
Spring is hopping here soon and we'd like to help spread the warmth of the season. Each participating Bunny will send at least 2 cards, drawings, or notes to their secret pal during the month of March. On Easter Sunday, all of the secrets will be revealed and each Bunny will give their pal a very small gift that symbolizes Spring. RSVP to Roberta by Sunday, March 6 if you would like to be a "Sunny Bunny Pal". Folks of ALL ages are encouraged to be Pals (as we will try to make matches across the generations to help everyone make new friends.)
Musical Musings
We have a real treat in store for us! Marilyn Boenau, a new member
of FPW, is a musician and member of the Boston Shawm and Sackbut
Ensemble. They have agreed to play for the Easter service. Marilyn is
a free lance musician who plays historical bassoons and directs Amherst
Early Music, Inc., a non-profit organization that presents early music
weekend workshops and a summer festival. Marilyn comes from a Unitarian
family, and joined FPW in the spring of 2004.
The following is information about the group from Marilyn's
publicity.
The Boston Shawn and Sackbut Ensemble was created in 1981. The
Ensemble ploys court and popular music from the vocal and instrumental
repertories of the 15th through 17th centuries---the music one might
have heard in any of the great capitals or thriving villages of
Europe. Throughout the Western world, all during the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, musicians were employed by cities, town, courts and
cathedrals to enliven public events.
The Ensemble uses several different instrumental combinations to
create a special authenticity of sound for each style and repertoire
presented. The shawms are ancestors of the oboe family and the dominant
wind instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries. The Sackbut is the
Renaissance trombone and the predecessor of the slide trombone. The
cornetto, an instrument combining elements of brass and woodwind
technique, produces a uniquely expressive and vocal sound. We also may
hear dulzians which are the forerunners of today's bassoon family. The
Ensemble also plays a beautiful matched set of Renaissance recorders
which produce a sound very much like a small organ.
The Boston Shawm and Sackbut Ensemble has been a favorite of
Boston audiences for many years, and have given concerts all over the
United States and Europe.On Easter Sunday, we at FPW will get to hear
one of the finest and best-known early music ensembles!
Patty
Introduction To Paganism
Our Intern Minister, Darrick Jackson, will be leading a class on paganism on March 6 and 13, 4-6 pm. This class will explore the history of paganism, different pagan traditions, holidays/celebrations, and relationship to other religions. All are welcome to attend one or both sessions. Class participants will be invited (not required) to participate in worship on March 20. Please contact Darrick if you are interested in attending the class.
A Midshipman’s Musings
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend an anti-oppression training at the UUA. This training was presented by an organization called VISIONS, Inc. It made me think about oppression in a different way, using a model that was very different from what I had been exposed to before. The more I think about think about this training, the more I see how it can apply to any transformation in our lives.
I really liked the guidelines for the session. It really created a safe space for us to explore this sensitive topic. The first guideline was “Try on”. This basically asks us to try an idea before dismissing it. Next is “Ok to Disagree”, which is followed by “Not Ok to blame, shame or attack (others or self)”. These two together are important, because it upholds that we all have different opinions, and yet cautions us against using those opinions against another. Guideline number three also affirms that this is not to be a hurtful process. The fourth guideline asks us to “Use a self-focus and take 100% responsibility for your own learning.” This is very important. This guideline asks us to check-in with ourselves first before responding. This is so that we understand why we have the response we have. We may change our response once we realize where it is coming from. It also encourages us to use “I” statements. It feels much safer to say, “we believe” instead of, “I believe.” But saying “we” runs the risk of speaking for others in the group, who have not given you the authority to speak for them. Guideline number five is “practice both/and thinking”. We live in a dualistic society. Everything is either one thing or another. Both/and thinking defies this type of thinking by saying that there is room for difference. Finally, the last guideline asks us to” honor confidentiality”. All six of these guidelines work together to create an environment that is conducive to exploring new and difficult ideas.
Central to the workshop was understanding Visions, Inc.’s model called Multicultural Process of Change. This model starts with a current societal view based of monoculturalism, and aims to create a view based on pluralism. Monoculturalism is familiar to some of us as the idea of the “Melting Pot”. It says that there are no differences and that we are all the same. However, our “sameness” is defined by qualities of the dominant group. In contrast, pluralism acknowledges all of the differences and similarities and utilizes them. We can think of it as a “Salad Bowl.” In a salad, each ingredient is distinct but the combination works together to make an appetizing meal.
The Process of Change work on four different levels: personal, interpersonal, institutional/systemic, and cultural. The idea is that we first operate on a personal level, and we then take this into our relationship with others. Our relationships with others influences the systems we create to work within. These systems influence our culture. On each level, we are asked to “Recognize, Understand, and Appreciate Differences.” This is what brings about change from a monocultural to a plural society.
The rest of the workshop worked on applications of this model. It has intrigued me so much, that I am looking at bringing Visions, Inc. to do a workshop at Andover Newton, as well as with the Continental UU Young Adult Network. I would like to use this model as a source for my own ministry. There is much change needed in the world, and I feel that this is one way of doing the work.
Blessed Be.
Darrick Jackson
Covenant Groups / Spiritual Growth Groups
On March 13, Mark will be preaching on Sharing the Journey, a look at how the stories of our lives can be filled with religious meaning. How do we find opportunities to share those stories with others? Social hour after church is usually not a good way to have deep conversations that help us identify and refine our religious values and beliefs. Would you like to feel more affirmed in your beliefs, share your stories, and support one other in your search for meaning in life? What if we had a group or groups where this was possible meeting once a month? We had this for a couple of years with the Covenant Group, which stopped meeting last spring. It was a great group, but only a few people took advantage of this opportunity to get to know one another. Would you like to take part in a new Covenant or Spiritual Growth Group. Our group always had a focused topic such as God, fear, guilt and shame, anger, hope, reconciliation, etc. After church on the 13th there will be a brief meeting with Mark to learn more about these spiritual growth groups. If you cannot be there, but would like to join such a group, please let Mark know. This is a wonderful way to build a stronger, deeper, religious community.
Canvass Dinners
Don’t forget to sign up for a canvass dinner, Time is short!!!. Call the church office or John Portz today to let us know your preference of the eight dinners offered. Forms will be available on Sunday, March 6, but by then they will have already begun. Don’t miss out! Please refer to your canvass mailing to plan which dinner you will attend.
Annual Dinner
The Annual Dinner is coming on Saturday April 2, 2005. As with last year, the dinner this year will be a celebration of the end of our canvass period. We will begin at 6:00 p.m. downstairs. How about some cuisine celebrating our 375 years as a congregation? Maybe New England fare such as Fish chowder, corn bread, or baked beans? Does anyone want to take on an organizing task of making a planned potluck with some of the above mentioned items? OR Shall it be a regular potluck? Dinner will be followed by our usual extravaganza talent show. If you would like to sing, dance, play, or tell jokes, please let Diane Shepard know. We need your talent in the show!! This is always a great event.
March Aging Group
The next meeting of the Aging Group will be March 6 at 9:30am.
Jeanne Stolbach, Senior Housing /Health Care Consultant will be leading a discussion on “Planning While Aging.” Jeanne has worked as a consultant in Newton for many years. Her background is in accounting and she assists independent retirees and families. She can also address issues for those approaching Medicare status and how we can prepare best for the future. This is a meeting for all ages!!
Social Action / Giving Box
The Social Action Committee needs your support for the annual benefit concert on March 26. See the flyer elsewhere in the newsletter. If you can bake or help out the night of the concert, please sign up during social hour in the next few weeks. Tickets are also on sale during social hour. Look for the Social Action table, and listen for the sounds of Jacqueline Schwab.
The Giving Box for March and April will be the Alliance for the Homeless. We will publish a list of items in the next week. A special thanks for all your contributions of books in January and February for the Teen LEEP program.
Women and Work
Women and Work meetings are usually held on the 4th Tuesday of each month from 6:30 - 8:30 PM in the Conference room. All women (working or not) are welcome. For more details email Kathy Warren at kwarren@juno.com , or speak to her in church.
March meeting - Open discussion on March 22 at 6:30 p.m. Topic : To be Determined. Listen for announcements at church.
April meeting - Tuesday, April 26, 6:30 - 8:30 PM. Carole Katz will lead a discussion on Supervision and Leadership. We'll explore good and bad supervisors we have known, and suggest steps for improving our supervision and leadership skills. Carole Katz is the VP of Marketing at the Watertown Savings Bank.
UU Vacation Travel
Do you dream of inexpensive vacation travel to interesting destinations where you can stay in the homes of friendly people who share your ideals and are happy to provide directions and advice for their area?
The UU bed and breakfast directory UU’re Home (formerly Homecomings) can help you fulfill your dream. For 25 years, we’ve provided a network of hosts in the United States (and a few abroad) who enjoy meeting new friends and who are happy to open their home to like-minded people.
The directory is published every year in April. For a copy of the 2005 directory, please send a check for $18 to UU’re Home, 43 Vermont Court, Asheville, NC 28806. UU’re Home has just launched a new web site at www.UUreHome.com
Alaskan UU Adventure
Five Alaska UU fellowships invite other UUs from “outside” for our UU
eco-spiritual/intercultural programs in July, 2005. See the REAL Alaska!
Stay in UU homes in Anchorage, Seward, Fairbanks, Juneau and Sitka
and enjoy discussions and dinners with Alaska UUs. See whales, sea
otters, sea lions, seals, bears, moose, caribou, wolves, Dall sheep, puffins,
eagles and other birds in the wild from the Arctic Ocean to the Inside
Passage in the south. Visit Denali’s Mt. McKinley and Kenai’s fjords and
glaciers. See totem poles, native arts, dancing, story-telling. Rev. Dick &
Mary Weston-Jones, leaders. Visit website www.wuurld.org, e-mail
dick@wuurld.org, or phone toll-free 1-888, 998-8753 for a brochure.
Reservations due April 1.
Captain’s Log
We somehow started a discussion about Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) with my children one evening at dinner. By implication Fat Tuesday is a day when we go wild with food and drink. I was explaining that Fat Tuesday is followed by Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. UUs have not traditionally put much stock into Lent, but Andrea and I proceeded to tell the boys that there were 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. This was the same number of days as the Bible says Jesus spent in the wilderness preparing himself for his ministry. That number 40 has a habit of coming up in the scriptures!
The idea is that we usually give something up for Lent in order to spiritually purify ourselves or make ourselves more healthy. To me this sounds like winter fat. There are all those things we have been eating prior to Fat Tuesday and the lack of exercise all winter. This happened to me as I jumped on the scale one morning and screamed that it was time to give up ice cream. I had reached my upper limit of weight, and there was only one direction to go. Both the traditional religious calendar and my scale were asking, What can you give up to become a healthier person?
We are giving things up all the time in order to achieve certain desired results. A few years back I gave up smoking and eventually found that I had more breath to climb the hills near my home, and I smelled better and might keep my teeth longer, to say nothing about living longer in general. My brother was told to give up smoking forever if he intended to live at all. We give up things - it may be foods because of health risks, spending habits because we are plunging into debt, possessions because our things begin to define us more than our relationships. Lent is a time of reflection. What will make me a better person? What will free me to be more loving, more giving?
One problem is that asking what you are going to give up sounds so negative. Easter comes early this year, and March also happens to be our canvass month. One way of approaching a budget is to ask what are we going to cut, or give up in order to balance things rather than exploring what new initiatives we can stretch to afford. When it comes to pledging which approach do we take? Do we ask ourselves what I am going to give up of my hard earned money? This sounds like you really don’t want to do it, but you will if you have to. Spiritual growth is hard to come by if it feels like you are dragged there kicking and screaming. Here I am back on the scale again saying ok I’ll give up ice cream if I have to, but I don’t really want to.
This is missing the point, isn’t it? I am a healthier happier me when I take the time to enjoy walking, and more tired and sluggish when I sit at home. Maybe it is a matter of words. I don’t mind giving up being a couch potato. I suppose it is a matter of how I become the best me. I like myself better when I weigh less. Getting there is not what I give up, but what I want or what I do for a healthier me. What we give to the church makes our free faith grow in proportion to what we give. When we spend all our time saying we never have enough, then we look at things from a deficit and what we really give up is our ability to dream of new possibilities. If we’re worried about what is being taken away all the time, or what we are losing, then we expect to start carving up the budget rather than expanding it. I would like to think about what we can dream about creating by giving to build a healthier church. With Easter the tradition speaks of a resurrected flesh. What will bring us or the church to life? Not a grudging giving up, but a joyous celebration of extending and preserving all the great gifts of love we have received.
Mark
Sermon Topics
Sunday, March 6, 2005, 11:00 A.M.
The Natural Life - Mark W. Harris
In the world of multi-tasking and electronic gadgetry and full schedules, we all have a little bit of trouble focusing on anything. What would help us pay attention?
Music: FPW Choir is singing.
Greeters: Bob and Missy Shay
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Sunday, March 13, 2005, 11:00 A.M.
March 13 - “Sharing the Journey” - Mark W. Harris
The stories of our lives are filled with great religious meaning. How do we discover what that is? One way is sharing those stories in the context of a small group. This sermon is an introduction to a new program of small spiritual growth groups (What we used to call our covenant group)
Greeters: Anna Glover and Ruth Greene
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Sunday, March 20, 2005, 11:00 A.M.
“Rites of Spring Darrick Jackson
This service will celebrate Ostara, the pagan holiday that honors the beginning of Spring. What can we, as Unitarian Universalists, learn from the traditions of Ostara.
Music: Guest Musicians: Beatrice Affron, violin and Debbie Thompson, cello.
Children’s Choir is singing
Greeters: John Gorman and Jean Merkl
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Sunday, March 27, 2005, 11:00A.M.
March 27 ”The Resurrected Flesh” Mark W. Harris
Our Easter service will have a special story and special music, and a sermon on the significance of the body and faith development People seemed obsessed with the use of personality tests. I am in a small minority of UUs who is “Sensing” in the Myers-Briggs test. How do my senses fit into my faith?
Music: The Boston Shawn and Sackbut Ensemble will play music of the Renaissance.(see article under Musical Musings)
Greeters: Charmian Proskauer and Stephen Gustin
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Coffee Donation
Thanks to the unknown person who left coffee, paper supplies, and other useful goods in the FPW kitchen recently. These are much appreciated and will be put to good use.
Please let us know who made this generous donation!
Bios for FPW newcomers Fall 2004.
We are pleased to have welcomed the following people to our membership rolls this past fall. They were welcomed in December. Another ceremony will be scheduled for spring. Please speak to Rev. Mark Harris if you wish to become a member of First Parish.
Nicholas and Michelina (Chela) Tawa live in Brighton, have two sons, and previously attended the First Unitarian Church of Newton. One son and family live in Washington, D.C. and the other son and family live in Medfield. Nick is Professor Emeritus at U.Mass/Boston, where he taught music history and musicology. His area of specialty is American music and how it relates to American society and culture. He has written a number of books on this subject--the latest will appear in February 2005. Chela worked as Director of Community Relations at the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare. Before that she spent many years at United Community Services (a United Way agency) as Senior Planner in Public Policy advocating and lobbying on behalf of health and welfare issues before the Massachusetts Legislature.
Kevin Otto has lived in Watertown for over ten years and visiting FPW for three years‹finally committing! Kevin works as a product development consultant, running his own professional services practice. He worked with Roger Kamm as a professor at MIT for eight years before leaving to work on his own.
Katja Hóltta has just moved to Watertown and started attending FPW with Kevin Otto. Katja is from Helsinki, Finland and has been studying for her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at MIT. She and Kevin were married in Finland in January.
Jan Stonehouse Klein is a native of Massachusetts. She has been a nurse for thirty years, specializing in psychiatric nursing. She had a great education in holistic medicine while living in California for ten years. She is an animal advocate and interested in wildlife rehabilitation. She is now living in Belmont and does home care and guided imagery.
Among Us
Our thoughts of sympathy go to Brigitte Bender and her family on the death of her mother, Katherine Bender. Her mother died on February 14 at the age of 93 in her hometown in Germany after a long illness. There will be a Memorial Service at First Parish in the future.
A warm welcome to the following First Parish friends who have signed the membership book:
Kim Peters (and son Jack), and Michelle Klosterman and Ed Drozd, who will be married here in
June.
Book Group
FPW Book Group -will meet again on Tuesday, March 15th at 7pm. This month’s book is Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels. Pagels first became known years ago when she published The Gnostic Gospels. Mark Harris will be the facilitator. If you like to learn about alternative versions of Christianity, as in the fictionalized Da Vinci Code, come experience the real life Gospel of Thomas. The April book will be the The Kite Runner, and the date is April 19.
The Amateur Historian
This year marks the 375th anniversary of the founding of Watertown and our
very own First Parish. At this writing, nobody knows for sure how the Town
will celebrate. Rest assured, there will be something for everybody. It’s
time, too, for the Amateur Historian to get back to work. For starters, I
have rewritten my piece, ”Life Along the Charles”, part of a summer lay
service during which Carol Berney and I collaborated.
We like to think of the Charles River as this delightful natural resource that
graces our urban setting. But in many ways, the river is quite unnatural
with dams and fish ladders that don’t work properly. Right from the
beginning, in the 1600’s, the Europeans exploited the Charles River and
changed its natural course. We can see evidence of their engineering
tinkering today.
Our first stop in history takes us to the founding of Watertown in 1630. The
first homes and the first meetinghouse stood on land that now belongs to
Mount Auburn Hospital. The original land grant incorporated parts of
Cambridge, including the area around Fresh Pond, Weston, the first town to
break free in 1713, Waltham, incorporated 1738, most of Belmont, and sections
of Concord, Lincoln, and Wayland. I call all of these towns “Greater
Watertown”.
Before the Charles River Dam, located by the Science Museum, closed out the
sea in 1908, the river’s estuary began at Watertown. The natives took
advantage of the tides to catch fish in their weirs. The Europeans copied
Indian ways with a vengeance. All that fishing going on in Watertown caused a
lot of grumbling from people living upstream, who wanted their share of the
catch. The protection of inland fisheries, not just along the Charles, but
other rivers, like the Merrimack, forced the Massachusetts Legislature to
take action. In 1709, the General Court enacted the first law to protect the
river fisheries. It was a losing battle, as we shall soon find out.
Roger Thompson writes in Divided We Stand: Watertown, Massachusetts,
1630-1680: “In 1634 Thomas Mayhew requested the loan of Governor Winthrop’s
ox team to haul lumber for the building of the town’s first water mill, which
also required a dam and water race.” Up until that time, all grain,
including the unfamiliar corn introduced by the natives, had to be ground by
hand. Windmills were impractical in this valley because they failed to catch
the west winds. Mayhew built the mill right about where Sasaki’s is today.
You can see markers for the mill on the river walk.
Mayhew’s mill was the first of many to impede the flow of the Charles River.
>From an article written in the Boston Globe (April 9, 1995) by Sam Bass
Warner: “It was the millmen of the 18th and 19th centuries who transformed
the Charles from a gravelly New England stream into a series of lakes.
Twenty dams and lakes survive today, most owned by the Metropolitan District
Commission. [Now the Dept. of Conservation & Recreation.] These dams were
encouraged by a ferocious law passed by the Legislature in 1795. An Act
for the Support and Regulation of Mills’ allowed anyone who owned two sides
of a stream to erect a dam and to flood his neighbor’s land without
permission. The aggrieved neighbor was to wait upon a grand jury and receive
from them an award of an annual fee. In consequence, both the fish who used
to swim upstream and the farmers who used to hay the meadows were damned
out.” The act codified common law practice. According to Professor Attila
Klein of Brandeis, the law favored industry over agriculture and natural
resources. “The turning of the tide,” is the way my colleague Laura Reiner
put it. Not long after the 1795 Act, Francis Cabot Lowell with his master
mechanic, Paul Moody, incorporated the Boston Manufacturing Company in
Waltham. In 1813 they built the first integrated textile mill in the world
and started a revolution, the Industrial Revolution. We are still
recovering.
Turning back to the 17th Century, I want to relate to the next turning point
along the Charles River: the founding of Harvard College by the General Court
of Massachusetts in 1636. Tax dollars from the six towns of Boston,
Cambridge, Charlestown, Dorchester, Roxbury and Watertown went into Harvard’s
coffers. Here’s a tidbit from a footnote in Thompson’s book, Divided We
Stand: “In 1650 and 1651 a bushel of apples and a lamb were sent to the
college by Watertown to help finance the education of Samuel Phillips, the
son of the deceased pastor.”
The same year Harvard College was established in 1636, the General Court
granted some “venturesome” residents of Watertown permission to establish a
new town upstream: Dedham. These hardy souls engineered two diversions of
the Charles River that are still extant: Mother Brook in 1639 and the Long
Ditch in 1649. Ron MacAdow writes in his book on the Charles River: ”The
new town needed a mill to saw logs into boards and to grind grain, but an
attempt to found a mill on the Charles River came to nothing. The town
decided that East Brook, a tributary of the Neponset River, would offer
excellent mill sites if it could be provided with more water. In 1639,
Dedhamites dug a ditch through Purchase Meadow, diverting Charles River water
to the head of East Brook, which became known as Mother Brook. From that day
to this, the Charles has fed the Neponset. Local farmers applauded the
diversion on the theory that it helped drain water from the hayfields of the
river meadows.” Later on, the need for more hay inspired the idea for the
Long Ditch, also dug by hand, in 1654. Today, this passage, one half mile
long, connecting the Dedham Loop, is much beloved by canoeists. And with
that, I leave my history.
Katherine Button
The Amateur Historian
Calendar
3/2 Parish Council , 7:30 pm
3/5 Canvass Dinner at church 5:30pm
3/6 Aging Group at 9:30am
3/6 Introduction to Paganism 4:00 pm
3/7, 3/14,3/21,3/28 Choir meets at 6:30pm
3/9 Parish Committee meets at 7:30pm
3/10 Worship Committee at 7;30 pm
3/13 Growth committee at 9:30 a.m.
3/13 Info Session on Covenant Groups at 12:15 p.m.
3/13 Introduction to Paganism 4:00 pm
3/13 Canvass Dinner at church 5:30pm
3/15 FPW Book Group meets at 7pm
3/22 Women and Work meets at 6:30pm
3/22 Social Action Committee at 7:45 pm
3/23 Fellowship Committee at 7:30 pm
3/26 Benefit Concert 8:00pm
3/27 Easter Sunday
3/28 Building and Grounds at 7:30 pm
3/29 Finance Committee at 7:30 pm
EASTER AND SPRING FLOWERS
If you would like to order flowers to decorate the sanctuary for Easter, and then to take home, please fill out this form and mail it to the church or place in the newsletter box on the church office door by Sunday, March 13 at the latest! Please make checks payable to First Parish. All plants come in 6" pots. The lilies are a single stem with 4-6 blooms. Cost: $7 for lilies, $6 for the others.
Name _______________________ Phone_______________
Number of plants: _______ Tulips Color preference?
____ Jonquils ______ Hyacinths _____ Lilies
Total enclosed: _____________________________________
In memory of: ______________________________________
In honor of: ________________________________________
A gift of :__________________________________________
Mark Your Calendars: Coming Events
April 2 - Annual Dinner
April 6 - Hobby Night
April 10 - Men’s Breakfast - event to organize a men’s group
May 1 - Newcomer Breakfast
May 7 - All church Rummage Sale
June 12 - 375th Lecture with Roger Thompson
June 18 - Church outing at Cedarhill in Duxbury
R.E.flections by a chaliceD.R.E.amer
by Roberta Altamari
Canvas season is here and for the first time, I don't feel too shy to talk about it. I am beginning to understand the pledging process better and the question of how much money I am going to give to the church no longer leaves me feeling awkward. I think this is because my pledging philosophy has evolved so much during the last few years.
When I first came to First Parish, I likened my pledge to a donation to charity. Just like any other non-profit organization, the church needs money to survive. It can't exist without generous donations from people. So my family pledged the most money we could afford to give to our favorite charity.
A few years later when my older daughter was really benefiting from the great children's programs at First Parish, I started to rethink my pledging philosophy. Maybe our pledge to First Parish isn't just a charitable donation. After all, I don't usually personally gain anything from a charitable donation. I send the money simply knowing the organization is doing good work for the community, but not expecting anything in return.
At First Parish, we get a lot in return for our pledge dollars. Access to a wide variety of top quality programs. With the rapidly rising cost of children's classes and activities, it was impressive to realize just how much our daughters were getting out of our First Parish membership. So when I took that into account, my family pledged the most money we could afford to give to our favorite children's program.
This pledging mind set is often referred to as "pay for service". Some churches get stuck in this mind set and start charging people fees to participate in many of their programs, such as religious education. Or a church or temple will insist on a minimum donation to use their services. And most times, people pay it. That's why some UUs sometimes wonder if we should switch to similar systems.
It wasn't until this year that I fully understood why we shouldn't use a "pay for service" system. We lose too much of our faith in the "pay for service" system. Church isn't a place that just serves us with programs. And more of us benefit from each program than participate in it. How many times have I enjoyed listening to the beautiful music of our choir even though I'm not singing in it? And how many times have I been sincerely impressed by the work of our Social Action Committee even when I'm not helping them? And how many times have I been inspired simply watching our children put their UU faith into action as I realize that our world will one day be a better place because of them?
Church is our faith community. The best gifts we get from belonging to First Parish are beyond accessing monetary value. How do you put a price on the affirmation we get from gathering together with like-minded families? Or the celebratory and healing energy we share during life's joys and sorrows? Or the inspiration we feel when we witness loving compassion expressed in worthwhile community service or social action projects?
If I'm thinking of church as much more than just a charitable organization that provides my family with valuable services, how can I possibly know how much to pledge? American culture today offers me no guidance. I've grown up in a society that highlights individuality and getting the most for your dollar. Sure, I've been taught that you try to be nice and help others in need, but unfortunately the bigger lesson was that you work hard to keep most of it for yourself.
Just when I thought this new concept of pledging was too abstract and foreign for me to comprehend, the First Parish community helped me make sense of it all. In the same way that we each uniquely contribute the skills and energy we have to share, we also give our money. For the First Parish community to be healthy and prosper, we need generous donations of time and money from each of our members and friends. Some give more and some give less, but somehow these individual donations magically come together to create the life of our community.
What I like best about our pledge system is that it is based on respect and not guilt or pressure. The Finance Committee of the church honestly informs us the amount of money we need to run our programs for the coming year. Then members and friends are inspired by the plans for the coming year and pledge as generously as possible for their situation. Very few people actually see the individual pledges, so the only pressure comes from one's self to give the amount that he or she feels is right. Understanding this, my family will pledge the most money we can afford to give to be an active part of an amazing community that encompasses so much that is meaningful to us.
I find it ironic that this is the first year I am speaking so publicly about pledging. Since the R.E. committee is asking for a significant budget increase and a big part of that is to fund more paid hours for me, I should be shyer. But with UUA guidelines of fair compensation, attendance charts highlighting consistent increases, and detailed examples of my workweeks that all support this request, I am excited to talk about it. These additional funds also include us starting youth group and a children's choir for older kids. And allow us to maintain the same creative and engaging spark that fuels all of our religious education programs. Our requests for additional funding are an enthusiastic sign of our growth.
We have lots of reasons to give more than ever this year. To support and empower this community we so highly value. To continue on this path of sponsoring top quality, enriching programs and events. And to celebrate our connections to this wonderful church family. Please pledge generously.
Announcements:
The R.E. Committee is hosting Social Hour for the month of March and is inviting all families to assist. The kids seem to love helping with this!! Check these dates to see which Sunday your child's group with be doing the table set up and please bring some food to contribute.
March 6: UU Explorers (7 to 10 year olds)
March 13: Rainbow Seekers (4 to 7 year olds)
March 20: Principle Activators (10 to 13 year olds)
March 27: Treasure Hunters/ Friendship Finders/ Chalice Babies (4 and under)
Your Spare Change is needed!
Please bring in your spare change during the month of March for the Chalice Children to use in their Spring community service projects. Collection jars will be at Social Hour all month! Half of all collected money will be used to purchase supplies to do a community service or social action project voted on at their Children's Annual Meeting on March 6. The other half of all collected money will be donated to a non-profit charity selected by the children at their Annual Meeting.
Help our youth help our world!
See Emma Day and some of her friends at Social Hour mid March as she sells homemade jewelry and crafts to benefit the victims of the recent Tsunami. Please support their great efforts!
Be a First Parish "Sunny Bunny Pal"!
Spring is hopping here soon and we'd like to help spread the warmth of the season. Each participating Bunny will send at least 2 cards, drawings, or notes to their secret pal during the month of March. On Easter Sunday, all of the secrets will be revealed and each Bunny will give their pal a very small gift that symbolizes Spring. RSVP to Roberta by Sunday, March 6 if you would like to be a "Sunny Bunny Pal". Folks of ALL ages are encouraged to be Pals (as we will try to make matches across the generations to help everyone make new friends.)
Musical Musings
We have a real treat in store for us! Marilyn Boenau, a new member
of FPW, is a musician and member of the Boston Shawm and Sackbut
Ensemble. They have agreed to play for the Easter service. Marilyn is
a free lance musician who plays historical bassoons and directs Amherst
Early Music, Inc., a non-profit organization that presents early music
weekend workshops and a summer festival. Marilyn comes from a Unitarian
family, and joined FPW in the spring of 2004.
The following is information about the group from Marilyn's
publicity.
The Boston Shawn and Sackbut Ensemble was created in 1981. The
Ensemble ploys court and popular music from the vocal and instrumental
repertories of the 15th through 17th centuries---the music one might
have heard in any of the great capitals or thriving villages of
Europe. Throughout the Western world, all during the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, musicians were employed by cities, town, courts and
cathedrals to enliven public events.
The Ensemble uses several different instrumental combinations to
create a special authenticity of sound for each style and repertoire
presented. The shawms are ancestors of the oboe family and the dominant
wind instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries. The Sackbut is the
Renaissance trombone and the predecessor of the slide trombone. The
cornetto, an instrument combining elements of brass and woodwind
technique, produces a uniquely expressive and vocal sound. We also may
hear dulzians which are the forerunners of today's bassoon family. The
Ensemble also plays a beautiful matched set of Renaissance recorders
which produce a sound very much like a small organ.
The Boston Shawm and Sackbut Ensemble has been a favorite of
Boston audiences for many years, and have given concerts all over the
United States and Europe.On Easter Sunday, we at FPW will get to hear
one of the finest and best-known early music ensembles!
Patty
Introduction To Paganism
Our Intern Minister, Darrick Jackson, will be leading a class on paganism on March 6 and 13, 4-6 pm. This class will explore the history of paganism, different pagan traditions, holidays/celebrations, and relationship to other religions. All are welcome to attend one or both sessions. Class participants will be invited (not required) to participate in worship on March 20. Please contact Darrick if you are interested in attending the class.
A Midshipman’s Musings
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend an anti-oppression training at the UUA. This training was presented by an organization called VISIONS, Inc. It made me think about oppression in a different way, using a model that was very different from what I had been exposed to before. The more I think about think about this training, the more I see how it can apply to any transformation in our lives.
I really liked the guidelines for the session. It really created a safe space for us to explore this sensitive topic. The first guideline was “Try on”. This basically asks us to try an idea before dismissing it. Next is “Ok to Disagree”, which is followed by “Not Ok to blame, shame or attack (others or self)”. These two together are important, because it upholds that we all have different opinions, and yet cautions us against using those opinions against another. Guideline number three also affirms that this is not to be a hurtful process. The fourth guideline asks us to “Use a self-focus and take 100% responsibility for your own learning.” This is very important. This guideline asks us to check-in with ourselves first before responding. This is so that we understand why we have the response we have. We may change our response once we realize where it is coming from. It also encourages us to use “I” statements. It feels much safer to say, “we believe” instead of, “I believe.” But saying “we” runs the risk of speaking for others in the group, who have not given you the authority to speak for them. Guideline number five is “practice both/and thinking”. We live in a dualistic society. Everything is either one thing or another. Both/and thinking defies this type of thinking by saying that there is room for difference. Finally, the last guideline asks us to” honor confidentiality”. All six of these guidelines work together to create an environment that is conducive to exploring new and difficult ideas.
Central to the workshop was understanding Visions, Inc.’s model called Multicultural Process of Change. This model starts with a current societal view based of monoculturalism, and aims to create a view based on pluralism. Monoculturalism is familiar to some of us as the idea of the “Melting Pot”. It says that there are no differences and that we are all the same. However, our “sameness” is defined by qualities of the dominant group. In contrast, pluralism acknowledges all of the differences and similarities and utilizes them. We can think of it as a “Salad Bowl.” In a salad, each ingredient is distinct but the combination works together to make an appetizing meal.
The Process of Change work on four different levels: personal, interpersonal, institutional/systemic, and cultural. The idea is that we first operate on a personal level, and we then take this into our relationship with others. Our relationships with others influences the systems we create to work within. These systems influence our culture. On each level, we are asked to “Recognize, Understand, and Appreciate Differences.” This is what brings about change from a monocultural to a plural society.
The rest of the workshop worked on applications of this model. It has intrigued me so much, that I am looking at bringing Visions, Inc. to do a workshop at Andover Newton, as well as with the Continental UU Young Adult Network. I would like to use this model as a source for my own ministry. There is much change needed in the world, and I feel that this is one way of doing the work.
Blessed Be.
Darrick Jackson
Covenant Groups / Spiritual Growth Groups
On March 13, Mark will be preaching on Sharing the Journey, a look at how the stories of our lives can be filled with religious meaning. How do we find opportunities to share those stories with others? Social hour after church is usually not a good way to have deep conversations that help us identify and refine our religious values and beliefs. Would you like to feel more affirmed in your beliefs, share your stories, and support one other in your search for meaning in life? What if we had a group or groups where this was possible meeting once a month? We had this for a couple of years with the Covenant Group, which stopped meeting last spring. It was a great group, but only a few people took advantage of this opportunity to get to know one another. Would you like to take part in a new Covenant or Spiritual Growth Group. Our group always had a focused topic such as God, fear, guilt and shame, anger, hope, reconciliation, etc. After church on the 13th there will be a brief meeting with Mark to learn more about these spiritual growth groups. If you cannot be there, but would like to join such a group, please let Mark know. This is a wonderful way to build a stronger, deeper, religious community.
Canvass Dinners
Don’t forget to sign up for a canvass dinner, Time is short!!!. Call the church office or John Portz today to let us know your preference of the eight dinners offered. Forms will be available on Sunday, March 6, but by then they will have already begun. Don’t miss out! Please refer to your canvass mailing to plan which dinner you will attend.
Annual Dinner
The Annual Dinner is coming on Saturday April 2, 2005. As with last year, the dinner this year will be a celebration of the end of our canvass period. We will begin at 6:00 p.m. downstairs. How about some cuisine celebrating our 375 years as a congregation? Maybe New England fare such as Fish chowder, corn bread, or baked beans? Does anyone want to take on an organizing task of making a planned potluck with some of the above mentioned items? OR Shall it be a regular potluck? Dinner will be followed by our usual extravaganza talent show. If you would like to sing, dance, play, or tell jokes, please let Diane Shepard know. We need your talent in the show!! This is always a great event.
March Aging Group
The next meeting of the Aging Group will be March 6 at 9:30am.
Jeanne Stolbach, Senior Housing /Health Care Consultant will be leading a discussion on “Planning While Aging.” Jeanne has worked as a consultant in Newton for many years. Her background is in accounting and she assists independent retirees and families. She can also address issues for those approaching Medicare status and how we can prepare best for the future. This is a meeting for all ages!!
Social Action / Giving Box
The Social Action Committee needs your support for the annual benefit concert on March 26. See the flyer elsewhere in the newsletter. If you can bake or help out the night of the concert, please sign up during social hour in the next few weeks. Tickets are also on sale during social hour. Look for the Social Action table, and listen for the sounds of Jacqueline Schwab.
The Giving Box for March and April will be the Alliance for the Homeless. We will publish a list of items in the next week. A special thanks for all your contributions of books in January and February for the Teen LEEP program.
Women and Work
Women and Work meetings are usually held on the 4th Tuesday of each month from 6:30 - 8:30 PM in the Conference room. All women (working or not) are welcome. For more details email Kathy Warren at kwarren@juno.com , or speak to her in church.
March meeting - Open discussion on March 22 at 6:30 p.m. Topic : To be Determined. Listen for announcements at church.
April meeting - Tuesday, April 26, 6:30 - 8:30 PM. Carole Katz will lead a discussion on Supervision and Leadership. We'll explore good and bad supervisors we have known, and suggest steps for improving our supervision and leadership skills. Carole Katz is the VP of Marketing at the Watertown Savings Bank.
UU Vacation Travel
Do you dream of inexpensive vacation travel to interesting destinations where you can stay in the homes of friendly people who share your ideals and are happy to provide directions and advice for their area?
The UU bed and breakfast directory UU’re Home (formerly Homecomings) can help you fulfill your dream. For 25 years, we’ve provided a network of hosts in the United States (and a few abroad) who enjoy meeting new friends and who are happy to open their home to like-minded people.
The directory is published every year in April. For a copy of the 2005 directory, please send a check for $18 to UU’re Home, 43 Vermont Court, Asheville, NC 28806. UU’re Home has just launched a new web site at www.UUreHome.com
Alaskan UU Adventure
Five Alaska UU fellowships invite other UUs from “outside” for our UU
eco-spiritual/intercultural programs in July, 2005. See the REAL Alaska!
Stay in UU homes in Anchorage, Seward, Fairbanks, Juneau and Sitka
and enjoy discussions and dinners with Alaska UUs. See whales, sea
otters, sea lions, seals, bears, moose, caribou, wolves, Dall sheep, puffins,
eagles and other birds in the wild from the Arctic Ocean to the Inside
Passage in the south. Visit Denali’s Mt. McKinley and Kenai’s fjords and
glaciers. See totem poles, native arts, dancing, story-telling. Rev. Dick &
Mary Weston-Jones, leaders. Visit website www.wuurld.org, e-mail
dick@wuurld.org, or phone toll-free 1-888, 998-8753 for a brochure.
Reservations due April 1.
Adult Education Opportunities This Month - Come Join Us
March 6 at 9:30 a.m. Aging Group on “Planning While Aging”
March 6 at 4:00 p.m. ”Introduction to Paganism” with Darrick Jackson
March 13 after church Brief Introductory session on “ Sharing of Religious Journeys” or “Covenant” Groups
March 13 at 4:00 p.m. ”Introduction to Paganism” with Darrick Jackson
March 15 7:00 p.m Book Group to discuss Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels
March 22 6:30 p.m. Women and Work
March 6 at 9:30 a.m. Aging Group on “Planning While Aging”
March 6 at 4:00 p.m. ”Introduction to Paganism” with Darrick Jackson
March 13 after church Brief Introductory session on “ Sharing of Religious Journeys” or “Covenant” Groups
March 13 at 4:00 p.m. ”Introduction to Paganism” with Darrick Jackson
March 15 7:00 p.m Book Group to discuss Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels
March 22 6:30 p.m. Women and Work
We somehow started a discussion about Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) with my children one evening at dinner. By implication Fat Tuesday is a day when we go wild with food and drink. I was explaining that Fat Tuesday is followed by Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. UUs have not traditionally put much stock into Lent, but Andrea and I proceeded to tell the boys that there were 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. This was the same number of days as the Bible says Jesus spent in the wilderness preparing himself for his ministry. That number 40 has a habit of coming up in the scriptures!
The idea is that we usually give something up for Lent in order to spiritually purify ourselves or make ourselves more healthy. To me this sounds like winter fat. There are all those things we have been eating prior to Fat Tuesday and the lack of exercise all winter. This happened to me as I jumped on the scale one morning and screamed that it was time to give up ice cream. I had reached my upper limit of weight, and there was only one direction to go. Both the traditional religious calendar and my scale were asking, What can you give up to become a healthier person?
We are giving things up all the time in order to achieve certain desired results. A few years back I gave up smoking and eventually found that I had more breath to climb the hills near my home, and I smelled better and might keep my teeth longer, to say nothing about living longer in general. My brother was told to give up smoking forever if he intended to live at all. We give up things - it may be foods because of health risks, spending habits because we are plunging into debt, possessions because our things begin to define us more than our relationships. Lent is a time of reflection. What will make me a better person? What will free me to be more loving, more giving?
One problem is that asking what you are going to give up sounds so negative. Easter comes early this year, and March also happens to be our canvass month. One way of approaching a budget is to ask what are we going to cut, or give up in order to balance things rather than exploring what new initiatives we can stretch to afford. When it comes to pledging which approach do we take? Do we ask ourselves what I am going to give up of my hard earned money? This sounds like you really don’t want to do it, but you will if you have to. Spiritual growth is hard to come by if it feels like you are dragged there kicking and screaming. Here I am back on the scale again saying ok I’ll give up ice cream if I have to, but I don’t really want to.
This is missing the point, isn’t it? I am a healthier happier me when I take the time to enjoy walking, and more tired and sluggish when I sit at home. Maybe it is a matter of words. I don’t mind giving up being a couch potato. I suppose it is a matter of how I become the best me. I like myself better when I weigh less. Getting there is not what I give up, but what I want or what I do for a healthier me. What we give to the church makes our free faith grow in proportion to what we give. When we spend all our time saying we never have enough, then we look at things from a deficit and what we really give up is our ability to dream of new possibilities. If we’re worried about what is being taken away all the time, or what we are losing, then we expect to start carving up the budget rather than expanding it. I would like to think about what we can dream about creating by giving to build a healthier church. With Easter the tradition speaks of a resurrected flesh. What will bring us or the church to life? Not a grudging giving up, but a joyous celebration of extending and preserving all the great gifts of love we have received.
Mark
Sermon Topics
Sunday, March 6, 2005, 11:00 A.M.
The Natural Life - Mark W. Harris
In the world of multi-tasking and electronic gadgetry and full schedules, we all have a little bit of trouble focusing on anything. What would help us pay attention?
Music: FPW Choir is singing.
Greeters: Bob and Missy Shay
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Sunday, March 13, 2005, 11:00 A.M.
March 13 - “Sharing the Journey” - Mark W. Harris
The stories of our lives are filled with great religious meaning. How do we discover what that is? One way is sharing those stories in the context of a small group. This sermon is an introduction to a new program of small spiritual growth groups (What we used to call our covenant group)
Greeters: Anna Glover and Ruth Greene
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Sunday, March 20, 2005, 11:00 A.M.
“Rites of Spring Darrick Jackson
This service will celebrate Ostara, the pagan holiday that honors the beginning of Spring. What can we, as Unitarian Universalists, learn from the traditions of Ostara.
Music: Guest Musicians: Beatrice Affron, violin and Debbie Thompson, cello.
Children’s Choir is singing
Greeters: John Gorman and Jean Merkl
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Sunday, March 27, 2005, 11:00A.M.
March 27 ”The Resurrected Flesh” Mark W. Harris
Our Easter service will have a special story and special music, and a sermon on the significance of the body and faith development People seemed obsessed with the use of personality tests. I am in a small minority of UUs who is “Sensing” in the Myers-Briggs test. How do my senses fit into my faith?
Music: The Boston Shawn and Sackbut Ensemble will play music of the Renaissance.(see article under Musical Musings)
Greeters: Charmian Proskauer and Stephen Gustin
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Coffee Donation
Thanks to the unknown person who left coffee, paper supplies, and other useful goods in the FPW kitchen recently. These are much appreciated and will be put to good use.
Please let us know who made this generous donation!
Bios for FPW newcomers Fall 2004.
We are pleased to have welcomed the following people to our membership rolls this past fall. They were welcomed in December. Another ceremony will be scheduled for spring. Please speak to Rev. Mark Harris if you wish to become a member of First Parish.
Nicholas and Michelina (Chela) Tawa live in Brighton, have two sons, and previously attended the First Unitarian Church of Newton. One son and family live in Washington, D.C. and the other son and family live in Medfield. Nick is Professor Emeritus at U.Mass/Boston, where he taught music history and musicology. His area of specialty is American music and how it relates to American society and culture. He has written a number of books on this subject--the latest will appear in February 2005. Chela worked as Director of Community Relations at the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare. Before that she spent many years at United Community Services (a United Way agency) as Senior Planner in Public Policy advocating and lobbying on behalf of health and welfare issues before the Massachusetts Legislature.
Kevin Otto has lived in Watertown for over ten years and visiting FPW for three years‹finally committing! Kevin works as a product development consultant, running his own professional services practice. He worked with Roger Kamm as a professor at MIT for eight years before leaving to work on his own.
Katja Hóltta has just moved to Watertown and started attending FPW with Kevin Otto. Katja is from Helsinki, Finland and has been studying for her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at MIT. She and Kevin were married in Finland in January.
Jan Stonehouse Klein is a native of Massachusetts. She has been a nurse for thirty years, specializing in psychiatric nursing. She had a great education in holistic medicine while living in California for ten years. She is an animal advocate and interested in wildlife rehabilitation. She is now living in Belmont and does home care and guided imagery.
Among Us
Our thoughts of sympathy go to Brigitte Bender and her family on the death of her mother, Katherine Bender. Her mother died on February 14 at the age of 93 in her hometown in Germany after a long illness. There will be a Memorial Service at First Parish in the future.
A warm welcome to the following First Parish friends who have signed the membership book: Kim Peters (and son Jack), and Michelle Klosterman and Ed Drozd, who will be married here in June.
Book Group
FPW Book Group -will meet again on Tuesday, March 15th at 7pm. This month’s book is Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels. Pagels first became known years ago when she published The Gnostic Gospels. Mark Harris will be the facilitator. If you like to learn about alternative versions of Christianity, as in the fictionalized Da Vinci Code, come experience the real life Gospel of Thomas. The April book will be the The Kite Runner, and the date is April 19.
The Amateur Historian
This year marks the 375th anniversary of the founding of Watertown and our
very own First Parish. At this writing, nobody knows for sure how the Town
will celebrate. Rest assured, there will be something for everybody. It’s
time, too, for the Amateur Historian to get back to work. For starters, I
have rewritten my piece, ”Life Along the Charles”, part of a summer lay
service during which Carol Berney and I collaborated.
We like to think of the Charles River as this delightful natural resource that
graces our urban setting. But in many ways, the river is quite unnatural
with dams and fish ladders that don’t work properly. Right from the
beginning, in the 1600’s, the Europeans exploited the Charles River and
changed its natural course. We can see evidence of their engineering
tinkering today.
Our first stop in history takes us to the founding of Watertown in 1630. The
first homes and the first meetinghouse stood on land that now belongs to
Mount Auburn Hospital. The original land grant incorporated parts of
Cambridge, including the area around Fresh Pond, Weston, the first town to
break free in 1713, Waltham, incorporated 1738, most of Belmont, and sections
of Concord, Lincoln, and Wayland. I call all of these towns “Greater
Watertown”.
Before the Charles River Dam, located by the Science Museum, closed out the
sea in 1908, the river’s estuary began at Watertown. The natives took
advantage of the tides to catch fish in their weirs. The Europeans copied
Indian ways with a vengeance. All that fishing going on in Watertown caused a
lot of grumbling from people living upstream, who wanted their share of the
catch. The protection of inland fisheries, not just along the Charles, but
other rivers, like the Merrimack, forced the Massachusetts Legislature to
take action. In 1709, the General Court enacted the first law to protect the
river fisheries. It was a losing battle, as we shall soon find out.
Roger Thompson writes in Divided We Stand: Watertown, Massachusetts,
1630-1680: “In 1634 Thomas Mayhew requested the loan of Governor Winthrop’s
ox team to haul lumber for the building of the town’s first water mill, which
also required a dam and water race.” Up until that time, all grain,
including the unfamiliar corn introduced by the natives, had to be ground by
hand. Windmills were impractical in this valley because they failed to catch
the west winds. Mayhew built the mill right about where Sasaki’s is today.
You can see markers for the mill on the river walk.
Mayhew’s mill was the first of many to impede the flow of the Charles River.
>From an article written in the Boston Globe (April 9, 1995) by Sam Bass
Warner: “It was the millmen of the 18th and 19th centuries who transformed
the Charles from a gravelly New England stream into a series of lakes.
Twenty dams and lakes survive today, most owned by the Metropolitan District
Commission. [Now the Dept. of Conservation & Recreation.] These dams were
encouraged by a ferocious law passed by the Legislature in 1795. An Act
for the Support and Regulation of Mills’ allowed anyone who owned two sides
of a stream to erect a dam and to flood his neighbor’s land without
permission. The aggrieved neighbor was to wait upon a grand jury and receive
from them an award of an annual fee. In consequence, both the fish who used
to swim upstream and the farmers who used to hay the meadows were damned
out.” The act codified common law practice. According to Professor Attila
Klein of Brandeis, the law favored industry over agriculture and natural
resources. “The turning of the tide,” is the way my colleague Laura Reiner
put it. Not long after the 1795 Act, Francis Cabot Lowell with his master
mechanic, Paul Moody, incorporated the Boston Manufacturing Company in
Waltham. In 1813 they built the first integrated textile mill in the world
and started a revolution, the Industrial Revolution. We are still
recovering.
Turning back to the 17th Century, I want to relate to the next turning point
along the Charles River: the founding of Harvard College by the General Court
of Massachusetts in 1636. Tax dollars from the six towns of Boston,
Cambridge, Charlestown, Dorchester, Roxbury and Watertown went into Harvard’s
coffers. Here’s a tidbit from a footnote in Thompson’s book, Divided We
Stand: “In 1650 and 1651 a bushel of apples and a lamb were sent to the
college by Watertown to help finance the education of Samuel Phillips, the
son of the deceased pastor.”
The same year Harvard College was established in 1636, the General Court
granted some “venturesome” residents of Watertown permission to establish a
new town upstream: Dedham. These hardy souls engineered two diversions of
the Charles River that are still extant: Mother Brook in 1639 and the Long
Ditch in 1649. Ron MacAdow writes in his book on the Charles River: ”The
new town needed a mill to saw logs into boards and to grind grain, but an
attempt to found a mill on the Charles River came to nothing. The town
decided that East Brook, a tributary of the Neponset River, would offer
excellent mill sites if it could be provided with more water. In 1639,
Dedhamites dug a ditch through Purchase Meadow, diverting Charles River water
to the head of East Brook, which became known as Mother Brook. From that day
to this, the Charles has fed the Neponset. Local farmers applauded the
diversion on the theory that it helped drain water from the hayfields of the
river meadows.” Later on, the need for more hay inspired the idea for the
Long Ditch, also dug by hand, in 1654. Today, this passage, one half mile
long, connecting the Dedham Loop, is much beloved by canoeists. And with
that, I leave my history.
Katherine Button
The Amateur Historian
Calendar
3/2 Parish Council , 7:30 pm
3/5 Canvass Dinner at church 5:30pm
3/6 Aging Group at 9:30am
3/6 Introduction to Paganism 4:00 pm
3/7, 3/14,3/21,3/28 Choir meets at 6:30pm
3/9 Parish Committee meets at 7:30pm
3/10 Worship Committee at 7;30 pm
3/13 Growth committee at 9:30 a.m.
3/13 Info Session on Covenant Groups at 12:15 p.m.
3/13 Introduction to Paganism 4:00 pm
3/13 Canvass Dinner at church 5:30pm
3/15 FPW Book Group meets at 7pm
3/22 Women and Work meets at 6:30pm
3/22 Social Action Committee at 7:45 pm
3/23 Fellowship Committee at 7:30 pm
3/26 Benefit Concert 8:00pm
3/27 Easter Sunday
3/28 Building and Grounds at 7:30 pm
3/29 Finance Committee at 7:30 pm
EASTER AND SPRING FLOWERS
If you would like to order flowers to decorate the sanctuary for Easter, and then to take home, please fill out this form and mail it to the church or place in the newsletter box on the church office door by Sunday, March 13 at the latest! Please make checks payable to First Parish. All plants come in 6" pots. The lilies are a single stem with 4-6 blooms. Cost: $7 for lilies, $6 for the others.
Name _______________________ Phone_______________
Number of plants: _______ Tulips
Color preference?
____ Jonquils ______ Hyacinths _____ Lilies
Total enclosed: _____________________________________
In memory of: ______________________________________
In honor of: ________________________________________
A gift of :__________________________________________
Mark Your Calendars: Coming Events
April 2 - Annual Dinner
April 6 - Hobby Night
April 10 - Men’s Breakfast - event to organize a men’s group
May 1 - Newcomer Breakfast
May 7 - All church Rummage Sale
June 12 - 375th Lecture with Roger Thompson
June 18 - Church outing at Cedarhill in Duxbury
R.E.flections by a chaliceD.R.E.amer
by Roberta Altamari
Canvas season is here and for the first time, I don't feel too shy to talk about it. I am beginning to understand the pledging process better and the question of how much money I am going to give to the church no longer leaves me feeling awkward. I think this is because my pledging philosophy has evolved so much during the last few years.
When I first came to First Parish, I likened my pledge to a donation to charity. Just like any other non-profit organization, the church needs money to survive. It can't exist without generous donations from people. So my family pledged the most money we could afford to give to our favorite charity.
A few years later when my older daughter was really benefiting from the great children's programs at First Parish, I started to rethink my pledging philosophy. Maybe our pledge to First Parish isn't just a charitable donation. After all, I don't usually personally gain anything from a charitable donation. I send the money simply knowing the organization is doing good work for the community, but not expecting anything in return.
At First Parish, we get a lot in return for our pledge dollars. Access to a wide variety of top quality programs. With the rapidly rising cost of children's classes and activities, it was impressive to realize just how much our daughters were getting out of our First Parish membership. So when I took that into account, my family pledged the most money we could afford to give to our favorite children's program.
This pledging mind set is often referred to as "pay for service". Some churches get stuck in this mind set and start charging people fees to participate in many of their programs, such as religious education. Or a church or temple will insist on a minimum donation to use their services. And most times, people pay it. That's why some UUs sometimes wonder if we should switch to similar systems.
It wasn't until this year that I fully understood why we shouldn't use a "pay for service" system. We lose too much of our faith in the "pay for service" system. Church isn't a place that just serves us with programs. And more of us benefit from each program than participate in it. How many times have I enjoyed listening to the beautiful music of our choir even though I'm not singing in it? And how many times have I been sincerely impressed by the work of our Social Action Committee even when I'm not helping them? And how many times have I been inspired simply watching our children put their UU faith into action as I realize that our world will one day be a better place because of them?
Church is our faith community. The best gifts we get from belonging to First Parish are beyond accessing monetary value. How do you put a price on the affirmation we get from gathering together with like-minded families? Or the celebratory and healing energy we share during life's joys and sorrows? Or the inspiration we feel when we witness loving compassion expressed in worthwhile community service or social action projects?
If I'm thinking of church as much more than just a charitable organization that provides my family with valuable services, how can I possibly know how much to pledge? American culture today offers me no guidance. I've grown up in a society that highlights individuality and getting the most for your dollar. Sure, I've been taught that you try to be nice and help others in need, but unfortunately the bigger lesson was that you work hard to keep most of it for yourself.
Just when I thought this new concept of pledging was too abstract and foreign for me to comprehend, the First Parish community helped me make sense of it all. In the same way that we each uniquely contribute the skills and energy we have to share, we also give our money. For the First Parish community to be healthy and prosper, we need generous donations of time and money from each of our members and friends. Some give more and some give less, but somehow these individual donations magically come together to create the life of our community.
What I like best about our pledge system is that it is based on respect and not guilt or pressure. The Finance Committee of the church honestly informs us the amount of money we need to run our programs for the coming year. Then members and friends are inspired by the plans for the coming year and pledge as generously as possible for their situation. Very few people actually see the individual pledges, so the only pressure comes from one's self to give the amount that he or she feels is right. Understanding this, my family will pledge the most money we can afford to give to be an active part of an amazing community that encompasses so much that is meaningful to us.
I find it ironic that this is the first year I am speaking so publicly about pledging. Since the R.E. committee is asking for a significant budget increase and a big part of that is to fund more paid hours for me, I should be shyer. But with UUA guidelines of fair compensation, attendance charts highlighting consistent increases, and detailed examples of my workweeks that all support this request, I am excited to talk about it. These additional funds also include us starting youth group and a children's choir for older kids. And allow us to maintain the same creative and engaging spark that fuels all of our religious education programs. Our requests for additional funding are an enthusiastic sign of our growth.
We have lots of reasons to give more than ever this year. To support and empower this community we so highly value. To continue on this path of sponsoring top quality, enriching programs and events. And to celebrate our connections to this wonderful church family. Please pledge generously.
Announcements:
The R.E. Committee is hosting Social Hour for the month of March and is inviting all families to assist. The kids seem to love helping with this!! Check these dates to see which Sunday your child's group with be doing the table set up and please bring some food to contribute.
March 6: UU Explorers (7 to 10 year olds)
March 13: Rainbow Seekers (4 to 7 year olds)
March 20: Principle Activators (10 to 13 year olds)
March 27: Treasure Hunters/ Friendship Finders/ Chalice Babies (4 and under)
Your Spare Change is needed!
Please bring in your spare change during the month of March for the Chalice Children to use in their Spring community service projects. Collection jars will be at Social Hour all month! Half of all collected money will be used to purchase supplies to do a community service or social action project voted on at their Children's Annual Meeting on March 6. The other half of all collected money will be donated to a non-profit charity selected by the children at their Annual Meeting.
Help our youth help our world!
See Emma Day and some of her friends at Social Hour mid March as she sells homemade jewelry and crafts to benefit the victims of the recent Tsunami. Please support their great efforts!
Be a First Parish "Sunny Bunny Pal"!
Spring is hopping here soon and we'd like to help spread the warmth of the season. Each participating Bunny will send at least 2 cards, drawings, or notes to their secret pal during the month of March. On Easter Sunday, all of the secrets will be revealed and each Bunny will give their pal a very small gift that symbolizes Spring. RSVP to Roberta by Sunday, March 6 if you would like to be a "Sunny Bunny Pal". Folks of ALL ages are encouraged to be Pals (as we will try to make matches across the generations to help everyone make new friends.)
Musical Musings
We have a real treat in store for us! Marilyn Boenau, a new member
of FPW, is a musician and member of the Boston Shawm and Sackbut
Ensemble. They have agreed to play for the Easter service. Marilyn is
a free lance musician who plays historical bassoons and directs Amherst
Early Music, Inc., a non-profit organization that presents early music
weekend workshops and a summer festival. Marilyn comes from a Unitarian
family, and joined FPW in the spring of 2004.
The following is information about the group from Marilyn's
publicity.
The Boston Shawn and Sackbut Ensemble was created in 1981. The
Ensemble ploys court and popular music from the vocal and instrumental
repertories of the 15th through 17th centuries---the music one might
have heard in any of the great capitals or thriving villages of
Europe. Throughout the Western world, all during the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, musicians were employed by cities, town, courts and
cathedrals to enliven public events.
The Ensemble uses several different instrumental combinations to
create a special authenticity of sound for each style and repertoire
presented. The shawms are ancestors of the oboe family and the dominant
wind instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries. The Sackbut is the
Renaissance trombone and the predecessor of the slide trombone. The
cornetto, an instrument combining elements of brass and woodwind
technique, produces a uniquely expressive and vocal sound. We also may
hear dulzians which are the forerunners of today's bassoon family. The
Ensemble also plays a beautiful matched set of Renaissance recorders
which produce a sound very much like a small organ.
The Boston Shawm and Sackbut Ensemble has been a favorite of
Boston audiences for many years, and have given concerts all over the
United States and Europe.On Easter Sunday, we at FPW will get to hear
one of the finest and best-known early music ensembles!
Patty
Introduction To Paganism
Our Intern Minister, Darrick Jackson, will be leading a class on paganism on March 6 and 13, 4-6 pm. This class will explore the history of paganism, different pagan traditions, holidays/celebrations, and relationship to other religions. All are welcome to attend one or both sessions. Class participants will be invited (not required) to participate in worship on March 20. Please contact Darrick if you are interested in attending the class.
A Midshipman’s Musings
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend an anti-oppression training at the UUA. This training was presented by an organization called VISIONS, Inc. It made me think about oppression in a different way, using a model that was very different from what I had been exposed to before. The more I think about think about this training, the more I see how it can apply to any transformation in our lives.
I really liked the guidelines for the session. It really created a safe space for us to explore this sensitive topic. The first guideline was “Try on”. This basically asks us to try an idea before dismissing it. Next is “Ok to Disagree”, which is followed by “Not Ok to blame, shame or attack (others or self)”. These two together are important, because it upholds that we all have different opinions, and yet cautions us against using those opinions against another. Guideline number three also affirms that this is not to be a hurtful process. The fourth guideline asks us to “Use a self-focus and take 100% responsibility for your own learning.” This is very important. This guideline asks us to check-in with ourselves first before responding. This is so that we understand why we have the response we have. We may change our response once we realize where it is coming from. It also encourages us to use “I” statements. It feels much safer to say, “we believe” instead of, “I believe.” But saying “we” runs the risk of speaking for others in the group, who have not given you the authority to speak for them. Guideline number five is “practice both/and thinking”. We live in a dualistic society. Everything is either one thing or another. Both/and thinking defies this type of thinking by saying that there is room for difference. Finally, the last guideline asks us to” honor confidentiality”. All six of these guidelines work together to create an environment that is conducive to exploring new and difficult ideas.
Central to the workshop was understanding Visions, Inc.’s model called Multicultural Process of Change. This model starts with a current societal view based of monoculturalism, and aims to create a view based on pluralism. Monoculturalism is familiar to some of us as the idea of the “Melting Pot”. It says that there are no differences and that we are all the same. However, our “sameness” is defined by qualities of the dominant group. In contrast, pluralism acknowledges all of the differences and similarities and utilizes them. We can think of it as a “Salad Bowl.” In a salad, each ingredient is distinct but the combination works together to make an appetizing meal.
The Process of Change work on four different levels: personal, interpersonal, institutional/systemic, and cultural. The idea is that we first operate on a personal level, and we then take this into our relationship with others. Our relationships with others influences the systems we create to work within. These systems influence our culture. On each level, we are asked to “Recognize, Understand, and Appreciate Differences.” This is what brings about change from a monocultural to a plural society.
The rest of the workshop worked on applications of this model. It has intrigued me so much, that I am looking at bringing Visions, Inc. to do a workshop at Andover Newton, as well as with the Continental UU Young Adult Network. I would like to use this model as a source for my own ministry. There is much change needed in the world, and I feel that this is one way of doing the work.
Blessed Be.
Darrick Jackson
Covenant Groups / Spiritual Growth Groups
On March 13, Mark will be preaching on Sharing the Journey, a look at how the stories of our lives can be filled with religious meaning. How do we find opportunities to share those stories with others? Social hour after church is usually not a good way to have deep conversations that help us identify and refine our religious values and beliefs. Would you like to feel more affirmed in your beliefs, share your stories, and support one other in your search for meaning in life? What if we had a group or groups where this was possible meeting once a month? We had this for a couple of years with the Covenant Group, which stopped meeting last spring. It was a great group, but only a few people took advantage of this opportunity to get to know one another. Would you like to take part in a new Covenant or Spiritual Growth Group. Our group always had a focused topic such as God, fear, guilt and shame, anger, hope, reconciliation, etc. After church on the 13th there will be a brief meeting with Mark to learn more about these spiritual growth groups. If you cannot be there, but would like to join such a group, please let Mark know. This is a wonderful way to build a stronger, deeper, religious community.
Canvass Dinners
Don’t forget to sign up for a canvass dinner, Time is short!!!. Call the church office or John Portz today to let us know your preference of the eight dinners offered. Forms will be available on Sunday, March 6, but by then they will have already begun. Don’t miss out! Please refer to your canvass mailing to plan which dinner you will attend.
Annual Dinner
The Annual Dinner is coming on Saturday April 2, 2005. As with last year, the dinner this year will be a celebration of the end of our canvass period. We will begin at 6:00 p.m. downstairs. How about some cuisine celebrating our 375 years as a congregation? Maybe New England fare such as Fish chowder, corn bread, or baked beans? Does anyone want to take on an organizing task of making a planned potluck with some of the above mentioned items? OR Shall it be a regular potluck? Dinner will be followed by our usual extravaganza talent show. If you would like to sing, dance, play, or tell jokes, please let Diane Shepard know. We need your talent in the show!! This is always a great event.
March Aging Group
The next meeting of the Aging Group will be March 6 at 9:30am.
Jeanne Stolbach, Senior Housing /Health Care Consultant will be leading a discussion on “Planning While Aging.” Jeanne has worked as a consultant in Newton for many years. Her background is in accounting and she assists independent retirees and families. She can also address issues for those approaching Medicare status and how we can prepare best for the future. This is a meeting for all ages!!
Social Action / Giving Box
The Social Action Committee needs your support for the annual benefit concert on March 26. See the flyer elsewhere in the newsletter. If you can bake or help out the night of the concert, please sign up during social hour in the next few weeks. Tickets are also on sale during social hour. Look for the Social Action table, and listen for the sounds of Jacqueline Schwab.
The Giving Box for March and April will be the Alliance for the Homeless. We will publish a list of items in the next week. A special thanks for all your contributions of books in January and February for the Teen LEEP program.
Women and Work
Women and Work meetings are usually held on the 4th Tuesday of each month from 6:30 - 8:30 PM in the Conference room. All women (working or not) are welcome. For more details email Kathy Warren at kwarren@juno.com , or speak to her in church.
March meeting - Open discussion on March 22 at 6:30 p.m. Topic : To be Determined. Listen for announcements at church.
April meeting - Tuesday, April 26, 6:30 - 8:30 PM. Carole Katz will lead a discussion on Supervision and Leadership. We'll explore good and bad supervisors we have known, and suggest steps for improving our supervision and leadership skills. Carole Katz is the VP of Marketing at the Watertown Savings Bank.
UU Vacation Travel
Do you dream of inexpensive vacation travel to interesting destinations where you can stay in the homes of friendly people who share your ideals and are happy to provide directions and advice for their area?
The UU bed and breakfast directory UU’re Home (formerly Homecomings) can help you fulfill your dream. For 25 years, we’ve provided a network of hosts in the United States (and a few abroad) who enjoy meeting new friends and who are happy to open their home to like-minded people.
The directory is published every year in April. For a copy of the 2005 directory, please send a check for $18 to UU’re Home, 43 Vermont Court, Asheville, NC 28806. UU’re Home has just launched a new web site at www.UUreHome.com
Alaskan UU Adventure
Five Alaska UU fellowships invite other UUs from “outside” for our UU
eco-spiritual/intercultural programs in July, 2005. See the REAL Alaska!
Stay in UU homes in Anchorage, Seward, Fairbanks, Juneau and Sitka
and enjoy discussions and dinners with Alaska UUs. See whales, sea
otters, sea lions, seals, bears, moose, caribou, wolves, Dall sheep, puffins,
eagles and other birds in the wild from the Arctic Ocean to the Inside
Passage in the south. Visit Denali’s Mt. McKinley and Kenai’s fjords and
glaciers. See totem poles, native arts, dancing, story-telling. Rev. Dick &
Mary Weston-Jones, leaders. Visit website www.wuurld.org, e-mail
dick@wuurld.org, or phone toll-free 1-888, 998-8753 for a brochure.
Reservations due April 1.
Captain’s Log
We somehow started a discussion about Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) with my children one evening at dinner. By implication Fat Tuesday is a day when we go wild with food and drink. I was explaining that Fat Tuesday is followed by Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. UUs have not traditionally put much stock into Lent, but Andrea and I proceeded to tell the boys that there were 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. This was the same number of days as the Bible says Jesus spent in the wilderness preparing himself for his ministry. That number 40 has a habit of coming up in the scriptures!
The idea is that we usually give something up for Lent in order to spiritually purify ourselves or make ourselves more healthy. To me this sounds like winter fat. There are all those things we have been eating prior to Fat Tuesday and the lack of exercise all winter. This happened to me as I jumped on the scale one morning and screamed that it was time to give up ice cream. I had reached my upper limit of weight, and there was only one direction to go. Both the traditional religious calendar and my scale were asking, What can you give up to become a healthier person?
We are giving things up all the time in order to achieve certain desired results. A few years back I gave up smoking and eventually found that I had more breath to climb the hills near my home, and I smelled better and might keep my teeth longer, to say nothing about living longer in general. My brother was told to give up smoking forever if he intended to live at all. We give up things - it may be foods because of health risks, spending habits because we are plunging into debt, possessions because our things begin to define us more than our relationships. Lent is a time of reflection. What will make me a better person? What will free me to be more loving, more giving?
One problem is that asking what you are going to give up sounds so negative. Easter comes early this year, and March also happens to be our canvass month. One way of approaching a budget is to ask what are we going to cut, or give up in order to balance things rather than exploring what new initiatives we can stretch to afford. When it comes to pledging which approach do we take? Do we ask ourselves what I am going to give up of my hard earned money? This sounds like you really don’t want to do it, but you will if you have to. Spiritual growth is hard to come by if it feels like you are dragged there kicking and screaming. Here I am back on the scale again saying ok I’ll give up ice cream if I have to, but I don’t really want to.
This is missing the point, isn’t it? I am a healthier happier me when I take the time to enjoy walking, and more tired and sluggish when I sit at home. Maybe it is a matter of words. I don’t mind giving up being a couch potato. I suppose it is a matter of how I become the best me. I like myself better when I weigh less. Getting there is not what I give up, but what I want or what I do for a healthier me. What we give to the church makes our free faith grow in proportion to what we give. When we spend all our time saying we never have enough, then we look at things from a deficit and what we really give up is our ability to dream of new possibilities. If we’re worried about what is being taken away all the time, or what we are losing, then we expect to start carving up the budget rather than expanding it. I would like to think about what we can dream about creating by giving to build a healthier church. With Easter the tradition speaks of a resurrected flesh. What will bring us or the church to life? Not a grudging giving up, but a joyous celebration of extending and preserving all the great gifts of love we have received.
Mark
Sermon Topics
Sunday, March 6, 2005, 11:00 A.M.
The Natural Life - Mark W. Harris
In the world of multi-tasking and electronic gadgetry and full schedules, we all have a little bit of trouble focusing on anything. What would help us pay attention?
Music: FPW Choir is singing.
Greeters: Bob and Missy Shay
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Sunday, March 13, 2005, 11:00 A.M.
March 13 - “Sharing the Journey” - Mark W. Harris
The stories of our lives are filled with great religious meaning. How do we discover what that is? One way is sharing those stories in the context of a small group. This sermon is an introduction to a new program of small spiritual growth groups (What we used to call our covenant group)
Greeters: Anna Glover and Ruth Greene
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Sunday, March 20, 2005, 11:00 A.M.
“Rites of Spring Darrick Jackson
This service will celebrate Ostara, the pagan holiday that honors the beginning of Spring. What can we, as Unitarian Universalists, learn from the traditions of Ostara.
Music: Guest Musicians: Beatrice Affron, violin and Debbie Thompson, cello.
Children’s Choir is singing
Greeters: John Gorman and Jean Merkl
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Sunday, March 27, 2005, 11:00A.M.
March 27 ”The Resurrected Flesh” Mark W. Harris
Our Easter service will have a special story and special music, and a sermon on the significance of the body and faith development People seemed obsessed with the use of personality tests. I am in a small minority of UUs who is “Sensing” in the Myers-Briggs test. How do my senses fit into my faith?
Music: The Boston Shawn and Sackbut Ensemble will play music of the Renaissance.(see article under Musical Musings)
Greeters: Charmian Proskauer and Stephen Gustin
Social Hour: Religious Education Committee
Coffee Donation
Thanks to the unknown person who left coffee, paper supplies, and other useful goods in the FPW kitchen recently. These are much appreciated and will be put to good use.
Please let us know who made this generous donation!
Bios for FPW newcomers Fall 2004.
We are pleased to have welcomed the following people to our membership rolls this past fall. They were welcomed in December. Another ceremony will be scheduled for spring. Please speak to Rev. Mark Harris if you wish to become a member of First Parish.
Nicholas and Michelina (Chela) Tawa live in Brighton, have two sons, and previously attended the First Unitarian Church of Newton. One son and family live in Washington, D.C. and the other son and family live in Medfield. Nick is Professor Emeritus at U.Mass/Boston, where he taught music history and musicology. His area of specialty is American music and how it relates to American society and culture. He has written a number of books on this subject--the latest will appear in February 2005. Chela worked as Director of Community Relations at the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare. Before that she spent many years at United Community Services (a United Way agency) as Senior Planner in Public Policy advocating and lobbying on behalf of health and welfare issues before the Massachusetts Legislature.
Kevin Otto has lived in Watertown for over ten years and visiting FPW for three years‹finally committing! Kevin works as a product development consultant, running his own professional services practice. He worked with Roger Kamm as a professor at MIT for eight years before leaving to work on his own.
Katja Hóltta has just moved to Watertown and started attending FPW with Kevin Otto. Katja is from Helsinki, Finland and has been studying for her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at MIT. She and Kevin were married in Finland in January.
Jan Stonehouse Klein is a native of Massachusetts. She has been a nurse for thirty years, specializing in psychiatric nursing. She had a great education in holistic medicine while living in California for ten years. She is an animal advocate and interested in wildlife rehabilitation. She is now living in Belmont and does home care and guided imagery.
Among Us
Our thoughts of sympathy go to Brigitte Bender and her family on the death of her mother, Katherine Bender. Her mother died on February 14 at the age of 93 in her hometown in Germany after a long illness. There will be a Memorial Service at First Parish in the future.
A warm welcome to the following First Parish friends who have signed the membership book:
Kim Peters (and son Jack), and Michelle Klosterman and Ed Drozd, who will be married here in
June.
Book Group
FPW Book Group -will meet again on Tuesday, March 15th at 7pm. This month’s book is Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels. Pagels first became known years ago when she published The Gnostic Gospels. Mark Harris will be the facilitator. If you like to learn about alternative versions of Christianity, as in the fictionalized Da Vinci Code, come experience the real life Gospel of Thomas. The April book will be the The Kite Runner, and the date is April 19.
The Amateur Historian
This year marks the 375th anniversary of the founding of Watertown and our
very own First Parish. At this writing, nobody knows for sure how the Town
will celebrate. Rest assured, there will be something for everybody. It’s
time, too, for the Amateur Historian to get back to work. For starters, I
have rewritten my piece, ”Life Along the Charles”, part of a summer lay
service during which Carol Berney and I collaborated.
We like to think of the Charles River as this delightful natural resource that
graces our urban setting. But in many ways, the river is quite unnatural
with dams and fish ladders that don’t work properly. Right from the
beginning, in the 1600’s, the Europeans exploited the Charles River and
changed its natural course. We can see evidence of their engineering
tinkering today.
Our first stop in history takes us to the founding of Watertown in 1630. The
first homes and the first meetinghouse stood on land that now belongs to
Mount Auburn Hospital. The original land grant incorporated parts of
Cambridge, including the area around Fresh Pond, Weston, the first town to
break free in 1713, Waltham, incorporated 1738, most of Belmont, and sections
of Concord, Lincoln, and Wayland. I call all of these towns “Greater
Watertown”.
Before the Charles River Dam, located by the Science Museum, closed out the
sea in 1908, the river’s estuary began at Watertown. The natives took
advantage of the tides to catch fish in their weirs. The Europeans copied
Indian ways with a vengeance. All that fishing going on in Watertown caused a
lot of grumbling from people living upstream, who wanted their share of the
catch. The protection of inland fisheries, not just along the Charles, but
other rivers, like the Merrimack, forced the Massachusetts Legislature to
take action. In 1709, the General Court enacted the first law to protect the
river fisheries. It was a losing battle, as we shall soon find out.
Roger Thompson writes in Divided We Stand: Watertown, Massachusetts,
1630-1680: “In 1634 Thomas Mayhew requested the loan of Governor Winthrop’s
ox team to haul lumber for the building of the town’s first water mill, which
also required a dam and water race.” Up until that time, all grain,
including the unfamiliar corn introduced by the natives, had to be ground by
hand. Windmills were impractical in this valley because they failed to catch
the west winds. Mayhew built the mill right about where Sasaki’s is today.
You can see markers for the mill on the river walk.
Mayhew’s mill was the first of many to impede the flow of the Charles River.
>From an article written in the Boston Globe (April 9, 1995) by Sam Bass
Warner: “It was the millmen of the 18th and 19th centuries who transformed
the Charles from a gravelly New England stream into a series of lakes.
Twenty dams and lakes survive today, most owned by the Metropolitan District
Commission. [Now the Dept. of Conservation & Recreation.] These dams were
encouraged by a ferocious law passed by the Legislature in 1795. An Act
for the Support and Regulation of Mills’ allowed anyone who owned two sides
of a stream to erect a dam and to flood his neighbor’s land without
permission. The aggrieved neighbor was to wait upon a grand jury and receive
from them an award of an annual fee. In consequence, both the fish who used
to swim upstream and the farmers who used to hay the meadows were damned
out.” The act codified common law practice. According to Professor Attila
Klein of Brandeis, the law favored industry over agriculture and natural
resources. “The turning of the tide,” is the way my colleague Laura Reiner
put it. Not long after the 1795 Act, Francis Cabot Lowell with his master
mechanic, Paul Moody, incorporated the Boston Manufacturing Company in
Waltham. In 1813 they built the first integrated textile mill in the world
and started a revolution, the Industrial Revolution. We are still
recovering.
Turning back to the 17th Century, I want to relate to the next turning point
along the Charles River: the founding of Harvard College by the General Court
of Massachusetts in 1636. Tax dollars from the six towns of Boston,
Cambridge, Charlestown, Dorchester, Roxbury and Watertown went into Harvard’s
coffers. Here’s a tidbit from a footnote in Thompson’s book, Divided We
Stand: “In 1650 and 1651 a bushel of apples and a lamb were sent to the
college by Watertown to help finance the education of Samuel Phillips, the
son of the deceased pastor.”
The same year Harvard College was established in 1636, the General Court
granted some “venturesome” residents of Watertown permission to establish a
new town upstream: Dedham. These hardy souls engineered two diversions of
the Charles River that are still extant: Mother Brook in 1639 and the Long
Ditch in 1649. Ron MacAdow writes in his book on the Charles River: ”The
new town needed a mill to saw logs into boards and to grind grain, but an
attempt to found a mill on the Charles River came to nothing. The town
decided that East Brook, a tributary of the Neponset River, would offer
excellent mill sites if it could be provided with more water. In 1639,
Dedhamites dug a ditch through Purchase Meadow, diverting Charles River water
to the head of East Brook, which became known as Mother Brook. From that day
to this, the Charles has fed the Neponset. Local farmers applauded the
diversion on the theory that it helped drain water from the hayfields of the
river meadows.” Later on, the need for more hay inspired the idea for the
Long Ditch, also dug by hand, in 1654. Today, this passage, one half mile
long, connecting the Dedham Loop, is much beloved by canoeists. And with
that, I leave my history.
Katherine Button
The Amateur Historian
Calendar
3/2 Parish Council , 7:30 pm
3/5 Canvass Dinner at church 5:30pm
3/6 Aging Group at 9:30am
3/6 Introduction to Paganism 4:00 pm
3/7, 3/14,3/21,3/28 Choir meets at 6:30pm
3/9 Parish Committee meets at 7:30pm
3/10 Worship Committee at 7;30 pm
3/13 Growth committee at 9:30 a.m.
3/13 Info Session on Covenant Groups at 12:15 p.m.
3/13 Introduction to Paganism 4:00 pm
3/13 Canvass Dinner at church 5:30pm
3/15 FPW Book Group meets at 7pm
3/22 Women and Work meets at 6:30pm
3/22 Social Action Committee at 7:45 pm
3/23 Fellowship Committee at 7:30 pm
3/26 Benefit Concert 8:00pm
3/27 Easter Sunday
3/28 Building and Grounds at 7:30 pm
3/29 Finance Committee at 7:30 pm
EASTER AND SPRING FLOWERS
If you would like to order flowers to decorate the sanctuary for Easter, and then to take home, please fill out this form and mail it to the church or place in the newsletter box on the church office door by Sunday, March 13 at the latest! Please make checks payable to First Parish. All plants come in 6" pots. The lilies are a single stem with 4-6 blooms. Cost: $7 for lilies, $6 for the others.
Name _______________________ Phone_______________
Number of plants: _______ Tulips Color preference?
____ Jonquils ______ Hyacinths _____ Lilies
Total enclosed: _____________________________________
In memory of: ______________________________________
In honor of: ________________________________________
A gift of :__________________________________________
Mark Your Calendars: Coming Events
April 2 - Annual Dinner
April 6 - Hobby Night
April 10 - Men’s Breakfast - event to organize a men’s group
May 1 - Newcomer Breakfast
May 7 - All church Rummage Sale
June 12 - 375th Lecture with Roger Thompson
June 18 - Church outing at Cedarhill in Duxbury
R.E.flections by a chaliceD.R.E.amer
by Roberta Altamari
Canvas season is here and for the first time, I don't feel too shy to talk about it. I am beginning to understand the pledging process better and the question of how much money I am going to give to the church no longer leaves me feeling awkward. I think this is because my pledging philosophy has evolved so much during the last few years.
When I first came to First Parish, I likened my pledge to a donation to charity. Just like any other non-profit organization, the church needs money to survive. It can't exist without generous donations from people. So my family pledged the most money we could afford to give to our favorite charity.
A few years later when my older daughter was really benefiting from the great children's programs at First Parish, I started to rethink my pledging philosophy. Maybe our pledge to First Parish isn't just a charitable donation. After all, I don't usually personally gain anything from a charitable donation. I send the money simply knowing the organization is doing good work for the community, but not expecting anything in return.
At First Parish, we get a lot in return for our pledge dollars. Access to a wide variety of top quality programs. With the rapidly rising cost of children's classes and activities, it was impressive to realize just how much our daughters were getting out of our First Parish membership. So when I took that into account, my family pledged the most money we could afford to give to our favorite children's program.
This pledging mind set is often referred to as "pay for service". Some churches get stuck in this mind set and start charging people fees to participate in many of their programs, such as religious education. Or a church or temple will insist on a minimum donation to use their services. And most times, people pay it. That's why some UUs sometimes wonder if we should switch to similar systems.
It wasn't until this year that I fully understood why we shouldn't use a "pay for service" system. We lose too much of our faith in the "pay for service" system. Church isn't a place that just serves us with programs. And more of us benefit from each program than participate in it. How many times have I enjoyed listening to the beautiful music of our choir even though I'm not singing in it? And how many times have I been sincerely impressed by the work of our Social Action Committee even when I'm not helping them? And how many times have I been inspired simply watching our children put their UU faith into action as I realize that our world will one day be a better place because of them?
Church is our faith community. The best gifts we get from belonging to First Parish are beyond accessing monetary value. How do you put a price on the affirmation we get from gathering together with like-minded families? Or the celebratory and healing energy we share during life's joys and sorrows? Or the inspiration we feel when we witness loving compassion expressed in worthwhile community service or social action projects?
If I'm thinking of church as much more than just a charitable organization that provides my family with valuable services, how can I possibly know how much to pledge? American culture today offers me no guidance. I've grown up in a society that highlights individuality and getting the most for your dollar. Sure, I've been taught that you try to be nice and help others in need, but unfortunately the bigger lesson was that you work hard to keep most of it for yourself.
Just when I thought this new concept of pledging was too abstract and foreign for me to comprehend, the First Parish community helped me make sense of it all. In the same way that we each uniquely contribute the skills and energy we have to share, we also give our money. For the First Parish community to be healthy and prosper, we need generous donations of time and money from each of our members and friends. Some give more and some give less, but somehow these individual donations magically come together to create the life of our community.
What I like best about our pledge system is that it is based on respect and not guilt or pressure. The Finance Committee of the church honestly informs us the amount of money we need to run our programs for the coming year. Then members and friends are inspired by the plans for the coming year and pledge as generously as possible for their situation. Very few people actually see the individual pledges, so the only pressure comes from one's self to give the amount that he or she feels is right. Understanding this, my family will pledge the most money we can afford to give to be an active part of an amazing community that encompasses so much that is meaningful to us.
I find it ironic that this is the first year I am speaking so publicly about pledging. Since the R.E. committee is asking for a significant budget increase and a big part of that is to fund more paid hours for me, I should be shyer. But with UUA guidelines of fair compensation, attendance charts highlighting consistent increases, and detailed examples of my workweeks that all support this request, I am excited to talk about it. These additional funds also include us starting youth group and a children's choir for older kids. And allow us to maintain the same creative and engaging spark that fuels all of our religious education programs. Our requests for additional funding are an enthusiastic sign of our growth.
We have lots of reasons to give more than ever this year. To support and empower this community we so highly value. To continue on this path of sponsoring top quality, enriching programs and events. And to celebrate our connections to this wonderful church family. Please pledge generously.
Announcements:
The R.E. Committee is hosting Social Hour for the month of March and is inviting all families to assist. The kids seem to love helping with this!! Check these dates to see which Sunday your child's group with be doing the table set up and please bring some food to contribute.
March 6: UU Explorers (7 to 10 year olds)
March 13: Rainbow Seekers (4 to 7 year olds)
March 20: Principle Activators (10 to 13 year olds)
March 27: Treasure Hunters/ Friendship Finders/ Chalice Babies (4 and under)
Your Spare Change is needed!
Please bring in your spare change during the month of March for the Chalice Children to use in their Spring community service projects. Collection jars will be at Social Hour all month! Half of all collected money will be used to purchase supplies to do a community service or social action project voted on at their Children's Annual Meeting on March 6. The other half of all collected money will be donated to a non-profit charity selected by the children at their Annual Meeting.
Help our youth help our world!
See Emma Day and some of her friends at Social Hour mid March as she sells homemade jewelry and crafts to benefit the victims of the recent Tsunami. Please support their great efforts!
Be a First Parish "Sunny Bunny Pal"!
Spring is hopping here soon and we'd like to help spread the warmth of the season. Each participating Bunny will send at least 2 cards, drawings, or notes to their secret pal during the month of March. On Easter Sunday, all of the secrets will be revealed and each Bunny will give their pal a very small gift that symbolizes Spring. RSVP to Roberta by Sunday, March 6 if you would like to be a "Sunny Bunny Pal". Folks of ALL ages are encouraged to be Pals (as we will try to make matches across the generations to help everyone make new friends.)
Musical Musings
We have a real treat in store for us! Marilyn Boenau, a new member
of FPW, is a musician and member of the Boston Shawm and Sackbut
Ensemble. They have agreed to play for the Easter service. Marilyn is
a free lance musician who plays historical bassoons and directs Amherst
Early Music, Inc., a non-profit organization that presents early music
weekend workshops and a summer festival. Marilyn comes from a Unitarian
family, and joined FPW in the spring of 2004.
The following is information about the group from Marilyn's
publicity.
The Boston Shawn and Sackbut Ensemble was created in 1981. The
Ensemble ploys court and popular music from the vocal and instrumental
repertories of the 15th through 17th centuries---the music one might
have heard in any of the great capitals or thriving villages of
Europe. Throughout the Western world, all during the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, musicians were employed by cities, town, courts and
cathedrals to enliven public events.
The Ensemble uses several different instrumental combinations to
create a special authenticity of sound for each style and repertoire
presented. The shawms are ancestors of the oboe family and the dominant
wind instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries. The Sackbut is the
Renaissance trombone and the predecessor of the slide trombone. The
cornetto, an instrument combining elements of brass and woodwind
technique, produces a uniquely expressive and vocal sound. We also may
hear dulzians which are the forerunners of today's bassoon family. The
Ensemble also plays a beautiful matched set of Renaissance recorders
which produce a sound very much like a small organ.
The Boston Shawm and Sackbut Ensemble has been a favorite of
Boston audiences for many years, and have given concerts all over the
United States and Europe.On Easter Sunday, we at FPW will get to hear
one of the finest and best-known early music ensembles!
Patty
Introduction To Paganism
Our Intern Minister, Darrick Jackson, will be leading a class on paganism on March 6 and 13, 4-6 pm. This class will explore the history of paganism, different pagan traditions, holidays/celebrations, and relationship to other religions. All are welcome to attend one or both sessions. Class participants will be invited (not required) to participate in worship on March 20. Please contact Darrick if you are interested in attending the class.
A Midshipman’s Musings
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend an anti-oppression training at the UUA. This training was presented by an organization called VISIONS, Inc. It made me think about oppression in a different way, using a model that was very different from what I had been exposed to before. The more I think about think about this training, the more I see how it can apply to any transformation in our lives.
I really liked the guidelines for the session. It really created a safe space for us to explore this sensitive topic. The first guideline was “Try on”. This basically asks us to try an idea before dismissing it. Next is “Ok to Disagree”, which is followed by “Not Ok to blame, shame or attack (others or self)”. These two together are important, because it upholds that we all have different opinions, and yet cautions us against using those opinions against another. Guideline number three also affirms that this is not to be a hurtful process. The fourth guideline asks us to “Use a self-focus and take 100% responsibility for your own learning.” This is very important. This guideline asks us to check-in with ourselves first before responding. This is so that we understand why we have the response we have. We may change our response once we realize where it is coming from. It also encourages us to use “I” statements. It feels much safer to say, “we believe” instead of, “I believe.” But saying “we” runs the risk of speaking for others in the group, who have not given you the authority to speak for them. Guideline number five is “practice both/and thinking”. We live in a dualistic society. Everything is either one thing or another. Both/and thinking defies this type of thinking by saying that there is room for difference. Finally, the last guideline asks us to” honor confidentiality”. All six of these guidelines work together to create an environment that is conducive to exploring new and difficult ideas.
Central to the workshop was understanding Visions, Inc.’s model called Multicultural Process of Change. This model starts with a current societal view based of monoculturalism, and aims to create a view based on pluralism. Monoculturalism is familiar to some of us as the idea of the “Melting Pot”. It says that there are no differences and that we are all the same. However, our “sameness” is defined by qualities of the dominant group. In contrast, pluralism acknowledges all of the differences and similarities and utilizes them. We can think of it as a “Salad Bowl.” In a salad, each ingredient is distinct but the combination works together to make an appetizing meal.
The Process of Change work on four different levels: personal, interpersonal, institutional/systemic, and cultural. The idea is that we first operate on a personal level, and we then take this into our relationship with others. Our relationships with others influences the systems we create to work within. These systems influence our culture. On each level, we are asked to “Recognize, Understand, and Appreciate Differences.” This is what brings about change from a monocultural to a plural society.
The rest of the workshop worked on applications of this model. It has intrigued me so much, that I am looking at bringing Visions, Inc. to do a workshop at Andover Newton, as well as with the Continental UU Young Adult Network. I would like to use this model as a source for my own ministry. There is much change needed in the world, and I feel that this is one way of doing the work.
Blessed Be.
Darrick Jackson
Covenant Groups / Spiritual Growth Groups
On March 13, Mark will be preaching on Sharing the Journey, a look at how the stories of our lives can be filled with religious meaning. How do we find opportunities to share those stories with others? Social hour after church is usually not a good way to have deep conversations that help us identify and refine our religious values and beliefs. Would you like to feel more affirmed in your beliefs, share your stories, and support one other in your search for meaning in life? What if we had a group or groups where this was possible meeting once a month? We had this for a couple of years with the Covenant Group, which stopped meeting last spring. It was a great group, but only a few people took advantage of this opportunity to get to know one another. Would you like to take part in a new Covenant or Spiritual Growth Group. Our group always had a focused topic such as God, fear, guilt and shame, anger, hope, reconciliation, etc. After church on the 13th there will be a brief meeting with Mark to learn more about these spiritual growth groups. If you cannot be there, but would like to join such a group, please let Mark know. This is a wonderful way to build a stronger, deeper, religious community.
Canvass Dinners
Don’t forget to sign up for a canvass dinner, Time is short!!!. Call the church office or John Portz today to let us know your preference of the eight dinners offered. Forms will be available on Sunday, March 6, but by then they will have already begun. Don’t miss out! Please refer to your canvass mailing to plan which dinner you will attend.
Annual Dinner
The Annual Dinner is coming on Saturday April 2, 2005. As with last year, the dinner this year will be a celebration of the end of our canvass period. We will begin at 6:00 p.m. downstairs. How about some cuisine celebrating our 375 years as a congregation? Maybe New England fare such as Fish chowder, corn bread, or baked beans? Does anyone want to take on an organizing task of making a planned potluck with some of the above mentioned items? OR Shall it be a regular potluck? Dinner will be followed by our usual extravaganza talent show. If you would like to sing, dance, play, or tell jokes, please let Diane Shepard know. We need your talent in the show!! This is always a great event.
March Aging Group
The next meeting of the Aging Group will be March 6 at 9:30am.
Jeanne Stolbach, Senior Housing /Health Care Consultant will be leading a discussion on “Planning While Aging.” Jeanne has worked as a consultant in Newton for many years. Her background is in accounting and she assists independent retirees and families. She can also address issues for those approaching Medicare status and how we can prepare best for the future. This is a meeting for all ages!!
Social Action / Giving Box
The Social Action Committee needs your support for the annual benefit concert on March 26. See the flyer elsewhere in the newsletter. If you can bake or help out the night of the concert, please sign up during social hour in the next few weeks. Tickets are also on sale during social hour. Look for the Social Action table, and listen for the sounds of Jacqueline Schwab.
The Giving Box for March and April will be the Alliance for the Homeless. We will publish a list of items in the next week. A special thanks for all your contributions of books in January and February for the Teen LEEP program.
Women and Work
Women and Work meetings are usually held on the 4th Tuesday of each month from 6:30 - 8:30 PM in the Conference room. All women (working or not) are welcome. For more details email Kathy Warren at kwarren@juno.com , or speak to her in church.
March meeting - Open discussion on March 22 at 6:30 p.m. Topic : To be Determined. Listen for announcements at church.
April meeting - Tuesday, April 26, 6:30 - 8:30 PM. Carole Katz will lead a discussion on Supervision and Leadership. We'll explore good and bad supervisors we have known, and suggest steps for improving our supervision and leadership skills. Carole Katz is the VP of Marketing at the Watertown Savings Bank.
UU Vacation Travel
Do you dream of inexpensive vacation travel to interesting destinations where you can stay in the homes of friendly people who share your ideals and are happy to provide directions and advice for their area?
The UU bed and breakfast directory UU’re Home (formerly Homecomings) can help you fulfill your dream. For 25 years, we’ve provided a network of hosts in the United States (and a few abroad) who enjoy meeting new friends and who are happy to open their home to like-minded people.
The directory is published every year in April. For a copy of the 2005 directory, please send a check for $18 to UU’re Home, 43 Vermont Court, Asheville, NC 28806. UU’re Home has just launched a new web site at www.UUreHome.com
Alaskan UU Adventure
Five Alaska UU fellowships invite other UUs from “outside” for our UU
eco-spiritual/intercultural programs in July, 2005. See the REAL Alaska!
Stay in UU homes in Anchorage, Seward, Fairbanks, Juneau and Sitka
and enjoy discussions and dinners with Alaska UUs. See whales, sea
otters, sea lions, seals, bears, moose, caribou, wolves, Dall sheep, puffins,
eagles and other birds in the wild from the Arctic Ocean to the Inside
Passage in the south. Visit Denali’s Mt. McKinley and Kenai’s fjords and
glaciers. See totem poles, native arts, dancing, story-telling. Rev. Dick &
Mary Weston-Jones, leaders. Visit website www.wuurld.org, e-mail
dick@wuurld.org, or phone toll-free 1-888, 998-8753 for a brochure.
Reservations due April 1.
Adult Education Opportunities This Month - Come Join Us
March 6 at 9:30 a.m. Aging Group on “Planning While Aging”
March 6 at 4:00 p.m. ”Introduction to Paganism” with Darrick Jackson
March 13 after church Brief Introductory session on “ Sharing of Religious Journeys” or “Covenant” Groups
March 13 at 4:00 p.m. ”Introduction to Paganism” with Darrick Jackson
March 15 7:00 p.m Book Group to discuss Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels
March 22 6:30 p.m. Women and Work
March 6 at 9:30 a.m. Aging Group on “Planning While Aging”
March 6 at 4:00 p.m. ”Introduction to Paganism” with Darrick Jackson
March 13 after church Brief Introductory session on “ Sharing of Religious Journeys” or “Covenant” Groups
March 13 at 4:00 p.m. ”Introduction to Paganism” with Darrick Jackson
March 15 7:00 p.m Book Group to discuss Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels
March 22 6:30 p.m. Women and Work