Unitarian Congregation of Guelph

FLOWER COMMUNION
2022-06-26 10:30 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
Join us this Sunday as we part temporarily for summer with one of the rites we share with Unitarians worldwide: The Flower Communion, which started in 1923. An integral part of the communion is the sharing and distribution of flowers, so please bring flowers from your garden if you will be at the sanctuary. The communion will be led by our two Lay Chaplains, Rebekah Jamieson and Carey McDonald.

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UNITUNZ REUNION!
2022-06-19 10:30 (America/Toronto) | 122 Harris St / Zoom
“We resist transition not because we can’t accept the change, but because we can’t accept letting go of that piece of ourselves that we have to give up when and because the situation has changed.” (William Bridges).

Join us Sunday for a musical exploration of navigating life changes and transitions. Hosted by the UCG Unitunz musical group, back for the first performance in a very long while!

SPIRITUAL PRACTICES IN A TIME OF CLIMATE CRISIS
2022-06-12 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | 122 Harris St / Zoom
As we face the ongoing challenges of living in a time of climate crisis, let us consider together the spiritual practices that will keep us connected to and caring of our one and only Mother Earth. How do we engage active hope for sustenance?

Rev. Dr. Michelle Walsh, PhD, LICSW is a Unitarian Universalist community minister who is a certified Internal Family Systems therapist/practitioner and trained spiritual director with a private practice known as Sacred Play Explorations. She brings a wide variety of lived experiences with urban, parish, and academic ministry to her preaching, writing, and work with individuals and groups.

THE WELL EARTH COLLABORATIVE
2022-06-05 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | 122 Harris St / Zoom
Central to the Well Earth Collaborative is the idea that we cannot heal ourselves until we have healed the planet and we cannot heal the planet until we heal ourselves.. It is not enough for doctors to look at the biological and psychological aspects of health, but also the social environment that people live in and the spiritual meaning of their lives.

Dr. Riina Bray has been Medical Director of the Environmental Health Clinic at Women’s College Hospital and Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine for over ten years. She was Chair of the Environmental Health Committee of the Ontario College of Family Physicians for ten years.

Dr. DavidFancy is a professor of drama at Brock University. David has an extensive creative practice as a playwright and director.

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CHALICE CAFE: SHARING OUR BELIFS
2022-05-29 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Toronto) | 122 Harris St / Zoom
Unitarian-Universalism conscientiously makes room for a wide variety of religious and spiritual beliefs. Like our many gifts and talents, the variety of our beliefs is worth celebrating, yet we don’t often talk about what we believe in a way that brings the differences to light.
Join us via Zoom or in person at 11am Sunday for an enlightening and fun conversation, facilitated by Hannah Schell.
For the Zoom link, please email admin@guelph-unitarians.com.

NEGOTIATING OUR PLACE AS THE EARTH TRANSFORMS
2022-05-22 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Toronto) | 122 Harris St / Zoom
Human activity has now resulted in crossing four of nine planetary boundaries. These are: 1) excess flows of nitrogen and phosphorus, 2) loss of diversity, 3) excess impact of novel entities and 4) excess variability of access to green water. In addition, the probability of staying below a 1.5C increase in average global temperature is now less than 10%. There are possible pathways for humans to adapt, within the limits of Earth Systems. Negotiating our place will require appropriate understanding and responses to real limits, in real time, in the context of increasing inequalities.

Biography: Ralph C. Martin grew up on his family farm in Wallenstein, ON. After 4-H, his formal education includes a B.A. and an M.Sc. in Biology from Carleton University and a Ph.D. in Plant Science from McGill University. His research and teaching began at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, in 1990, and he realized students teach him too. In 2001, he founded the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada www.dal.ca/faculty/agriculture/oacc/en-home.html to coordinate university research and education pertaining to organic systems, across Canada . In 2011, he was appointed as Professor and the Loblaw Chair in Sustainable Food Production at the Ontario Agricultural College, University of Guelph. In 2019, he retired and published his book, Food Security: From Excess to Enough

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CUC NATIONAL SUNDAY SERVICE
2022-05-15 13:00 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
Enter a sacred communal space in your own time, engage with it however feels right to you, and deepen into the experience for as long as you feel you need to. Using your breath as a way to return to yourself, over and over, you are invited to a National Sunday worship service like no other. Less focus on words, more on communal experience. Less information, more contemplation. Less rigidity, more spaciousness.

It’s been a rough couple of years and we hope you will find some solace here. We’ve accomplished much together in these trying times. Let’s appreciate our inclusion work, express gratitude, and pause as a community.

Come with curiosity, and catch your breath with us.

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FIBERS OF LOVE: CELEBRATING THE LIFE OF KATHLEEN ERSKINE
2022-05-15 11:00 (America/Toronto) | 122 Harris St / Zoom
This Sunday we celebrate the contributions made by Kathleen Erskine, a true gentlewoman, seamstress and friend in our community. Join us as we look back on the stitches she wove into the tapestry of our community and our hearts. If you have a favourite memento of Kathleen, whether it be something that she made or otherwise, please bring it to the service or have it on hand.

Please join us online or in person for this celebration.

GIFTS DIFFERING
2022-05-08 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Toronto) | 122 Harris St / Zoom
As we proclaim in our UU principles, we are part of an interdependent web. But how do we manifest that in our appreciation of our gifts and recognition of the variety of different gifts that we have and share with each other? Under an industrial worldview, we tend to applaud the “number of widgets” someone produces. But what if we considered this through a more agricultural lens, and thought about our gifts as seeds, the sun, the rain, the soul, and various microorganisms – all the components that contribute to growth and blossoming?

Join us for a service about celebrating and appreciating our gifts as a community.
This service will also include a brief ceremony to formally welcome our newest Lay Chaplain, Carey McDonald.

BELTANE
2022-05-01 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | 122 Harris St / Zoom
Beltane is the Celtic name for this traditional fire festival. The fires signaled a cleansing, getting ready for crops and livestock to bring forth abundance. Join us as we prepare for the abundance of the year ahead, ready to commit to what we want to bring forth personally, as a congregation, and as a wider community.

THE TURKEY, THE RABBIT AND IDIOT COMPASSION
2022-04-24 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | 122 Harris St / Zoom
What if we were to get over ourselves? Then what? What would be left? Who would be there?

Join Mel for a series of stories, poetry and reflection, as we explore our minds, inner motivations and hearts.
Please pack your sense of humour.

CONNECT WITH NATURE
2022-04-17 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | Ignatius Jesuit Centre
You are invited to gather at Ignatius Jesuit Centre for an exploration of the Stations of the Cosmos and walk facilitated by Paul Smith and Andrea Scapinello. We hope to link those who are not able to attend in person through the phones or mobile devices using data. Those who are comfortable are encouraged to carpool. There is a bus which goes to the corner of Woodlawn and Hwy 6 but this would involve quite a hike to reach the meeting place.

LESSONS LEARNED ALONG THE WAY
2022-04-10 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | 122 Harris St / Zoom
It is said that the true pilgrimage begins when you get back home. Join Lorna Wyllsun as she shares stories from her journey along the Camino de Santiago through the lens of transformation.

To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim. Mark Nepo

ANOTHER TASTE OF WELLSPRING
2022-04-03 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | 122 Harris St / Zoom
In the January Sunday Service, we introduced you to the fundamentals of Wellspring – a UU curriculum program that meets twice a month to learn about our 6 UU Sources and to practice deep listening and sharing. There was so much enthusiasm that we’re offering another experience for you to come and see what it’s about. The service will have some of the same aspects people enjoyed last time with new pieces added in. We look forward to sharing a taste of this amazing program with you.

Our new mode of operating Sunday Services is to offer this in a hybrid fashion – zoom and in-person at the UCG…. your choice.
Join us either virtually or in-person for this hybrid service.

A PROBLEM. A TEAM. A TRANSFORMATION: ORGANIZING TO SUPPORT SCHOLARS AND STUDENTS IN CONFLICT ZONES
2022-03-27 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | 122 Harris St / Zoom
Karen Balcom explains how a small team formed at McMaster University to support students and faculty of the Women’s and Gender Studies MA program at Kabul University. Anyone connected to the programme was and remains at severe risk in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover. Seven months later, we are connected to campus and political communities across Canada, we are delivering material support to scholars in Afghanistan, and creating an employment-based immigration pathway as a model for other universities. And (as of March 10th, 2022) we have convinced the President, Provost and Deans at McMaster to commit $800,000 for a wide ranging programme in support of students and scholars at risk from any country in crisis. This talk will also include basic information about Afghan refugee support networks forming in Guelph.

Karen Balcom is an Associate Professor of History and Gender & Social Justice at McMaster University, where is also the Academic Director of the Office of Community Engagement. She is a somewhat lapsed member of this congregation, who was grateful to raise her daughters (now 17 and 20, YIKES!) in this community. She will be speaking today about her work with McMaster’s Committee on Scholars and Students in Crisis.

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SPRING EQUINOX
2022-03-20 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | 122 Harris St / Zoom
We are stepping away from the magical dark into growing light. What pivot do you want to make? What possibilities have you discovered in pandemic constraint? Is a new passion emerging? Let’s explore in community, because, like geese, we fly farther when we fly together.

Join us either virtually or in-person for this first hybrid service.

Note that the Sunshine Room after the service will take place via Zoom only.

Click to view the Video of March 20 service ►

BRIDGING CULTURAL DIVIDES FOR COLLECTIVE LIBERATION AND TRANSFORMATION
2022-03-13 10:30 UTC | Zoom
Encounters with different cultural ways of being and belief systems have the potential to stir visceral discomfort and deep reactivity. In the ongoing polarizing challenges of these times – from COVID to the climate crisis amidst profound inequities – how can we as Unitarian Universalists embrace a deeper, more rooted call and spiritual practices for engagement? This sermon builds on a series of sermons with which the guest minister has been traveling for the past few years, alongside her lived experiences and writings.

Rev. Dr. Michelle Walsh, PhD, LICSW is a Unitarian Universalist community minister who is a certified Internal Family Systems therapist/practitioner and trained spiritual director with a private practice known as Sacred Play Explorations. She also has worked as a scholar activist for many years in urban contexts, teaches as a Lecturer at Boston University, and is the author of Violent Trauma, Culture and Power: An Interdisciplinary Exploration in Lived Religion as well as chapters in other volumes.

DREAMING, DEMYSTIFYING, DECOLONIZING, DEVOTING
2022-03-06 10:30 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
Join us for a celebration of International Women’s Day, with a montage of music, pictures, and words of wisdom and inspiration, drawing upon the Canadian UU Women’s Association service from 2021. The service will feature singing by Wendy Luella and a talk by Rev. Kathy Sage (minister emerita from the Kingston UU congregation), with original animated artwork by Ilara Stefaniuk-Gaudet. We will also enjoy a video of the women of UCG.

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Tolerant or Inclusive - Are We Living Our Principles?
2022-02-27 10:30 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
At the start of our services we state that we “strive to be a diverse community of mixed ages, genders, sexual orientation and race’. That is a cornerstone of our faith. But what if diversity isn’t enough? Are we truly living our faith through inclusion?

Join us as we explore the idea and challenges of true inclusivity, and ask the question: What does true inclusivity look like?

LESSONS IN MYTHS
2022-02-20 10:30 - 12:00 UTC | Zoom
There is magic in the wisdom of myths, wisdom that is still resonant today. What if myths were not just for putting children to sleep, but for waking adults up?

Mel Horvath-Lucid, is the former Director of Congregational Life at UCG. She is a current student at Haden Institute, studying Spiritual Direction, and is trained as a Mediator, and through the UUA, as an Interim Ministry Specialist, and as a Healthy Congregations facilitator. Mel brings a passion for exploring the many transitions and changes we experience in life, with a focus on who we wish to be and how we wish to be, during those transitions. As a human, Mel is a wild creative, Mama to five children, and currently works as the Community and Volunteer Engagement Coordinator for Community Justice Initiatives, an organization committed to Restorative Justice.

HEALING HAUNTED HISTORIES
2022-02-13 10:30 - 12:00 UTC | Zoom
(with thanks to Elaine Enns and Ched Myers, Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization, available in the Guelph Library and through the Bookshelf)

How are feeling about being a Canadian with the ongoing discovery of unmarked graves at former Indian Residential Schools? Our guest, John Buttars is feeling terrible about it and will share his personal journey seeking to come to terms with being both a Canadian but also an ordained United Church minister where his denomination had over a dozen of those schools, the last closing in 1969, a year before he was ordained. While in Theological College at Queen’s University, he cannot remember hearing anything about them.

How are you feeling about being a participant in our society with such a history? And does this have any impact on your being part of a Unitarian congregation. The Canadian Unitarian Council recently passed an 8th Principle: “We, the member congregations of the Canadian Unitarian Council, covenant to affirm and promote individual and communal action that accountably dismantles racism and systemic barriers to full inclusion in ourselves and our institutions.”

John Buttars is a long-time resident of Guelph and formerly one of the ministers of Harcourt Memorial United Church in Guelph. He and Barbara have two daughters and three grandchildren. Yes, retired but he continues to be involved in the life of the community.

CELEBRATION AND CONTEMPLATION: THE PATH OF AN 8TH PRINCIPLE
2022-02-06 13:00 - 14:30 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
Unitarians and Universalists have been on the forefront of social change and justice seeking for hundreds of years. In November 2021, congregations of the Canadian Unitarian Council once again stepped forward, this time to commit ourselves to dismantling racism and systemic barriers to full inclusion for all people. Be part of celebrating this commitment to foundational social change as we contemplate the steps we take to move forward in our commitment to justice in ourselves, our denomination, and our larger society. To attend this service, please register at the following link:

Sharing Our Faith National Sunday Service – Canadian Unitarian Council Conseil unitarien du Canada (cuc.ca)

Join us live on Zoom or the CUC’s YouTube channel.

Call-in toll-free: 1-855 703 8985; Meeting ID 847 1005 5117; Passcode: [REDACTED]

AN INFORMAL GATHERING AT OUR USUAL TIME
2022-02-06 10:30 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
Join us for the chalice lighting, sharing joys and sorrows, and some music and a reading in honor of Black history month.

Isabelle Horvath Kirby will share what she has put together as programming for children and youth.

Email Holly at admin@guelph-unitarians.com for the Zoom link.

AWAY SERVICE WITH THE UNITARIAN FELLOWSHIP OF SARNIA AND PORT HURON
2022-01-30 10:30 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
Code White – Sounding the Alarm about Violence Against Healthcare Workers

Through health care workers’ own voices, we learn what it is like to work in a state of almost constant hypervigilance, never knowing for certain when they might be harassed or threatened or assaulted. They are the true “experts” about such violence and its negative physical and psychological. Their ideas for prevention are based on their own personal knowledge and lived experience. The book reveals the institutional and systemic failure to protect health care workers from violence and the failure to adequately support them in its aftermath. Violence against health care workers is symptomatic of sick health care system that is inexorably unravelling. Increasingly, governments are failing to provide much needed funding for health care, leading to frustratingly long patient wait times, understaffing, bed shortages, and appallingly impersonal long-term care. Under such conditions, it is not surprising that violence against rushed and harried staff would flourish.

James Brophy and Margaret Keith both have PhD’s in environmental health from the University of Stirling in Scotland.

As a couple and as research partners, they have studied an extensive range of important occupational and environmental health issues. Both worked at the Sarnia Occupational Health Clinic for Ontario Workers (OHCOW) where they helped to document one of the largest cohorts of asbestos diseased workers in Canadian history – the industrial workers in Sarnia. They also assisted the First Nation’s community of Aamjiwnaang in examining health problems that were hypothesized to be associated with environmental pollution arising from the petrochemical industry. Margaret was a co-author, along with Ada Lockridge, of an article that found a skewed birth ratio among the Aamjiwnaang community that generated international scientific attention. In 2008 they were recipients of the Gold Award in Environmental Health by Canadian Geographic for their work in assisting the Aamjiwnaang community.

They have just had a book published entitled Code White: Sounding the Alarm on Violence against Health Care Workers, which drew heavily on three important research studies they conducted over the past five years. The first two focused on violence against health care staff in the hospital and long-term care settings and the third on health care worker protection during the pandemic.

OUR UU SOURCES - A TASTE OF WELLSPRING
2022-01-23 10:30 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
Since September, a small group has been meeting twice a month to engage the materials of Wellspring, a curriculum focused on the sources of Unitarian-Universalism, self-selected spiritual practices, spiritual mentoring (or companionship), and reflective conversation. This Sunday offers a “taste” of Wellspring, as some of the participants will share their experiences in the program. You will then be invited to participate in a mini-version of the Wellspring meetings, which follow the “Circle of Trust” developed by Parker Palmer. See the Courage and Renewal website if you want to learn more about the Circle of Trust approach. Please note that we will break into small groups for a part of this service.

CHALICE CAFE
2022-01-16 10:30 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
Join us for an hour of conversation as we get to know each other better and celebrate the spiritual and religious diversity within our UCG community. You will be invited to reflect upon and share the story of what led you to Unitarian-Universalism. What, if any, were the religious beliefs and practices of your childhood and young adulthood? How does your upbringing relate to your current worldview? How would you describe yourself now? Are you at home in UUism or still seeking a religious/spiritual home?

TRANSFORMATION: THE LIVING EXPERIENCE OF COMMUNITY-BUILDING: THE STORY OF JUNCTION VILLAGE
2022-01-09 10:30 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
In the past ten years, Mary-Kate and Mike Craig have intentionally established a new community in Guelph, called the Junction Village. Diana Smith will interview these two community pioneers to find out what their intention was in starting this project. The process of setting up a community is filled with uncertainties and risks, and Diana will explore these through Mary-Kate and Mike’s stories and find out the meaning of what they learned in attempting to consciously live a life of transformation. Look for the service link in your inbox on Sunday morning.

Service to be lead by Team Blue: Lorna Wyllsun, Hannah Schell, Ruth Slavin and Michael Gilbertson

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LETTING GO OF THE OLD AND EMBRACING THE NEW
2022-01-02 10:30 - 12:00 (America/Toronto) | Zoom
Please join us to welcome in 2022 with a Zoom version of the Fire Communion or Burning Bowl ritual, a UU tradition. We will take time to reflect on the past year, and to let go of the old in order to embrace the coming year.
