• Sept. 5 – The Wellspring of Our Faith will be a typical Zoom service with Carolyn Bjerke, Roseanna Bellino-Strickland, and me about the upcoming Wellspring program that invites all to deepen their practice in and connection with our UU tradition.
• Then on Sept. 12 we will be Following the Flow, at an All Generations, Outdoor, Live-Streamed and In-Person Water Communion Service! It will begin at 10 am in the back parking lot and on Zoom. Bring or have water from a place that is meaningful to you. This service will need a Team of People to make happen. Follow this link to see how you can help out.
• On Sept. 19 we’ll be Embracing Possibility head on.
• On Sept. 26 we’ll hear from our UUA congregational liaison Melissa James on the possibilities before us as we deepen our relationship with our new Director of Religious Education, Fidelity Ballmer. 

Good People,
 As I said on Sunday, it feels like we’ve been running a marathon and the finish line keeps getting moved. I’m starting to realize that metaphors of races and lights at the end of tunnels do not apply. 
 
Is this a matter of managing expectations – not so much as in lowering them, but as in not having any?
Will the Dance with Uncertainty become the way of the world?
 
Everyone, breathe now.
 
Also on Sunday, what was intended as an update on where the conversation stands regarding the church and reopening, sounded like a done deal. This is still an on-going conversation at many levels of church leadership.. 
 
We had definitely hoped to open the doors wide on Sept. 12 for worship in a well-ventilated sanctuary to all comers, along with lights, cameras, and action in a streamed service for folks who still prefer staying home. The Board, Reopening Team, Staff, Worship Team, Minister, RE Team and more have been conversing all summer and are adjusting plans in light of the Delta variant and vaccines unavailable for kids under 12. 
 
Here’s where the conversation now stands: 
Worship through Sept. 12.

• Sept. 12 – THE BEST NEWS FIRST … The Worship team and I agreed that it feels best to together in-person outside for our Water Communion service. This is planned as an All Generations service, though we our families are feeling cautious. 
  • Note: We will need a whole crew of folks to make happen. Be on the lookout for ways to help out.
• Aug. 22 – Sankofa: A Walk into the Light of Love, a cluster collaboration hosted Santa Paula with Reggie Harris, an amazing UU musician – https://reggieharrismusic.com. Note: this service starts at 10:30 am.
• Aug. 29 – Liberation and Universal Truths with Paula Cole Jones, who is on UUA staff, founder of ADORE – A Dialog on Race and Ethnicity, and a co-author of the 8^th Principle. Link to her writing here: https://www.uuworld.org/authors/paulacolejones
  • Note: Jones is actually a Big Deal among UUs. We are thrilled to have her with us. 
• Sept. 5 – The Wellspring of Our Faith with Carolyn Bjerke, me and more!

 
Beyond Sept. 12

• A tech crew convened by Kitty Merrill has been busy all summer installing a new system for streaming services. This will be up and running by September. 
• The plan is for the Worship Team to begin leading worship from the sanctuary as soon as we can.
• At some point soon – perhaps as early as Sept. 19 – we will start having small(er) distanced groups of masked people attending worship in person. 
• What the configurations of people indoors will be and how many are still part of the conversation. 
• Fidelity and our RE teachers are planning meaningful outdoor RE experiences for children and youth come September. Look for more about UU Gardening, Children’s Chapels & Youth Group meetings. 
• MORE GOOD NEWS: The fall will bring us more and more opportunities to gather in person – outdoors and in – and we will still need to look out for those who are vulnerable among us. 

 
Keep breathing, All.
Sometimes I think that is the only suggestion I have for getting through. 
Breathe slowly and deeply into your solar plexus and belly. 
Exhale slowly and fully. 
Repeat.
 
With love,
Rev. Dana

Dear Ones,    

I am excited to share some news with you.

From the time I began as the Music Director at UUCV, it has been my passion and love to find places that music and ministry intersect. Through worship, working with Rev. Dana, collaboration with musicians and working with the choir, I have had the opportunity to explore how music deepens our faith, worship. and community.

In particular, I have been blessed to learn about what it means to be a UU Music Director through the 3 years of study in the Music Leader Crendentialing Program. With the congregation’s support, I was able to complete this program and then integrate my learning into our music program. During Covid, I was able to take two sessions of Beloved Conversations which helped my understanding of racial justice and deepened my commitment to keeping it in the forefront of my work. Finally, and very significantly, I was able to participate in and facilitate a UU Wellspring course of spiritual deepening for our congregation with Rev. Dana. Practicing deep listening, learning about UU Sources, and being in covenant with this group has changed the way I will approach all of my work.

This growth and study has given me direction, understanding, confidence and has led me to explore my calling as a UU more deeply. I have been considering seminary for a few years and I have been inspired by the ministry of Rev. Dana and Rev. Carolyn. I may not have gone forward with the idea if it hadn’t been for this year of study and isolation during Covid. Rev. Dana has listened, encouraged and helped guide me. With her support, I was accepted into 3 theological schools and chose United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities where I will start in the Fall in online courses. My goal is Chaplaincy, not Parish Ministry.

I am excited about how this learning will support and deepen my work at the church. I am particularly interested how music enriches our faith, intersects with Chaplaincy and how I can support musicians in their journey and calling.

As I head down this path, I look forward to sharing my commitment to spiritual growth, racial and social justice in new and richer ways with UUCV and especially within our music program.
With love,
Carolyn

Good People,  
 
Covid Time continues to disrupt church year rhythms. 
This church year is gliding toward summer, winding down more slowly. It the BC times (as in Before Covid), I would already be done and gone away to Ministry Days and General Assembly, and then off for a few weeks of vacation and/or study leave, returning sometime in August.
 
Instead, this week, I’ve been at virtual meetings with colleagues Monday to Wednesday. And on Thursday, I am having routine cataract surgery. So, I’ll mostly be resting much of the weekend and popping into some virtual GA programming.
 
On Sunday, June 27, we’ll be worshiping with thousands of other UUs at the virtual GA service. 
I’ll be back in the pulpit on July 4 with a service I’ve been contemplating for years – Free, Brave, Glowing Hearts: the Power of National Anthems. I’m very excited about it. I hope you can join in. 
 
Then I will bug out from July 5 to August 5. 
 
Beginning on Sunday July 11, we get to go on a virtual Summer Road Trip, another series of collaborative with our cluster congregations. This will give each congregation’s minister, the tech team, worship leaders, (and for us, our MAGICians, too) a well-earned break. Our Sunday Road Trip service is Aug. 8, when we will share our own Tanner Linden with the entire cluster. His service is called More Than Our Mistakes on what he learned from his work with the prison ministry at the Church of the Larger Fellowship.
 
On those same Sundays the DREs from our Cluster Congregations will be leading Children’s Chapels at 9 am, July 11 through August 8. The theme will be Play, which seems just right for this summer. 
 
Also in July and August, Kitty Merrill, Brian Fortune, Joe Osborne, and maybe YOU will be installing and practicing on new tech equipment so that we can have hybrid services – also known as multiplatform worship – both in person and on line. 
If this is an area that has ever been an interest, or have a hankering to grow in new directions. This is a great and needful place to help out.
 
Then, we’ll enter further into the PC world (as in Post Covid) as we begin multiplatform worship with Water Communion on Sept. 12.
 
The rhythm of church always slows down in June, July, and into August. I think it will be even more so this summer as people take long-delayed vacations, many of which will be to visit family and friends not seen for nearly two years, 
 
The UUCV staff will be taking time off over the summer at various times as well. 
 
A few of things to be on the lookout for, even in the midst of a slow summer:
❊  Jimmy Vasquez and Fidelity Ballmer are starting a conversation on the proposed 8^th Principle, kicking off on July 29 at 6 pm. (See UUCV This Week for details.)
❊  Marcy Burns’ Memorial Service on August 7 at 11 am outside on church grounds. 
❊  Fidelity an RE Folks are planning in-person gatherings with our children, youth, and families. 
❊  Jimmy and I are working on an outdoor ritual in late-August/early September, hopefully with our Pagan Folk, as a blessing of the building.
❊  At least one more All Church reorganizing, pruning, sprucing up session on a Saturday.
❊  Perhaps even an open-air concert or two in our parking lot. 
❊  Be sure to mark your calendars for Saturday, September 25th, Dr. Melissa James – our UUA Pacific Western congregational liaison – will join us to host a DRE Start-Up workshop. It will be a wonderful opportunity to consider where our RE program has been & where it is going. Melissa will also be our guest preacher on September 26th.
 
So, until we meet again, virtually and in-person, please take sweet care of yourselves. 
Continue to travel carefully.
Remember to collect some water from a place that has meaning to you.
 
And be well.
With love,
Rev. Dana

Good People,  
 
An Oversight…  It happened just as I predicted…
I forgot to thank one of our teams at the Annual Meeting, who are among those who did marvelous work to keep the church active and thriving throughout Covid Time. I asked that people let me know if I had forgotten anyone, and the folks of our newly-named Programs and Activities Team (PACT) graciously let me know that they felt left out…
 
I am so grateful for their letting me know both directly and ever-so-kindly. I apologize to them and to you all for missing an opportunity to thank them and highlight their work over these past months.
 
So to make up to them, I thought I would use this space to let everyone know what they have been up to.
 
PACT (formerly the former Adult Programs Team) has worked assiduously to be sure that the activities and groups that sustain our community through the weekdays had the support they needed. They turned on the same dime we all did and immediately reached out to our small groups about meeting online. With their help, most of our groups found their way onto Zoom and kept on meeting. This included Covenant Groups, men’s and women’s groups, the Humanists, Movie Night, and more. The Weekly Watercolor group morphed into an Artists Chat. Book groups kept humming along as did Open Mic Night. A few groups just didn’t want to transfer over to Zoom, and PACT has stayed in touch with them, too. They help shepherd a couple of new groups into being: a group for caregivers of people Navigating Memory Decline and LGBTQ support group. Oh, and the Hiker’s Group kept on hiking.
 
Because our programs and activities are important ways for newer people to get connected, PACT worked with Membership Coordinator Jimmy Vasquez to get information about ALL our programs onto our website. You’ll find them on this page  on our website. On a parallel track, our Administrator Jen Luce revamped our calendar with information linked to all these groups.
 
It’s been impressive work by the members of PACT, with their nifty new acronym, who are: Kathleen Wheeler, Xenia Young, Todd Collart, Jo Ann Stark, and Keith Koch. When next you see them, please thank them.
 
An Opportunity
We will be using our church building more and more over the summer, anticipating being together in person for worship on Sunday, Sept. 12 for Water Communion. In anticipation of greater use, the whole building has been deep cleaned. Yet over the course of these last few months there are several spots in the church that have become very cluttered – especially the garage and a couple of our storage closets.
 
All are hereby invited to the Great Straightening Up and Reorganization of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ventura. This will be held in tandem with the Buildings & Ground month work day this Saturday, June 19 from 9 am to Noon.
 
Some of our spaces have become so cluttered as to be downright hazardous. It will be so lovely to reinhabit our space, let’s do what we can to offer our building – inside and out – the TLC it needs to be ready for our members and friends of all ages.
 
With gratitude and anticipation,
Rev. Dana

Good People,
 
As this church-year-like-no-other winds toward summer, there are a few things not to be missed.
 
The first is our Flower Communion and Bridging Service this Sunday, June 13.
This will be a two-part Flower Communion on both Saturday and Sunday. 
 
❊ On Saturday the 12th, we will recreate our traditional ceremony between 11am and 2pm at church. We’ll be set up outside around back with vases for you to bring a flower. This can be a flower from your garden, a wildflower found on a hike, or your favorite flower from the grocery store. You will leave your flower in a vase and then take another brought be someone else – gifts of beauty and life circling through our community.  
We’re inviting people to come in staggered time slots, alphabetically starting with the end of the alphabet. (Those whose last names come after U or V or W do enjoy turning the tables on the all the A, B, C, and D folks!)
            W-Z: 11 – 11:30 am
            SV: 11:30 – Noon
            N-R: Noon – 12:30 pm
            J-M: 12:30 – 1 pm 
            E-I: 1 – 1:30 pm 
            A-H: 1:30 – 2 pm 
Please come during these times if you can, and if that doesn’t work in your day, please do come when you can.
 
❊ There will also be a simple and pretty flower craft project for kids of all ages, and folks can hang out while crafting,  
 
❊ On Sunday, the 13th, all are invited to have their flowers – living or crafted – with them during the service on.
 
❊ In the service, we will also be recognizing the ‘Bridging’ transition for Abigail Austin who is finishing her senior year of high school and entering adulthood. There is still time to record a surprise VidHug for Abby. 

Here’s how to do it:

1. Record a short message of well wishes, love, and congratulations for Abby on this important day on your phone or computer using the camera feature. Portrait or landscape mode will both work great.
2. Follow the link to Abby’s VidHug. Click on “Upload Video” and find the correct video on your device.
3. Wait for the video to finish uploading. Make sure there is a green “Yes!” next to “Has my video been received?”
4. If you’re having any trouble, you can also email your video to Fidelity (Fidelity@UUVentura.org) or text it to her (805-620-2770).

Don’t forget, this VidHug is a surprise!
 
❊ After the service comes our Annual Meeting in the same Zoom room at 11:30am. This is a chance to exercise the democratic process in our congregation, voting on the budget and 4 new board trustees. Please consider voting by absentee HERE.  
 
That will make for a full weekend, one which unofficially marks the beginning of our church summer season. I’m guessing that folks will be taking long-delayed trips this summer. On those trips, whether near or far, don’t forget to collect some water for our Water Communion in September.
 
Our plan is still to throw our doors wide once again on Sunday, September 12th, which is the tradition date for our Water Communion.  
 
I have always loved the Unitarian Universalist tradition of re-imagining communion with our own rituals and symbolism. Flower Communion was created by Rev. Norbert Capek in the 1920s.  Our tradition of a Water Communion arose out of a gathering UU Women in 1980. Both even have their own Wikipedia page: Flower Communion and Water Communion. They bookend our liturgical year, reminding us that we are connected in magic, mystery, and wonder to each other and the earth. 
 
Hope to see you for both rituals.
Rev. Dana