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Dear Families,

More light and warmer weather permeate our days. The first litter of babies has arrived at my daughter’s wildlife rehab, and the symphony of bird songs grows in my backyard. The world is growing, becoming.

And so too, are we.

Many, who I last saw as babies, came through our fire communion as walking, talking small people. Teens are driving up, some behind the wheels of their own cars. And other parents, like myself, are starting to embrace grey hair as a trophy of our journey.

Embracing my grey hair feels a little trite in the larger context of all the ways in which we are becoming, but I think there is something important about it. As children we are encouraged to be eager about our becoming… “Oh, you are having a birthday! You are becoming a big kid. Isn’t that exciting!” “You are going to go to school. You are going to have so much fun learning new things!” “You are off to college, how cool that you are being an adult.”

But it has been my observation that giving ourselves permission to celebrate our ongoing “becoming” is a harder journey. There have been a few exceptions for me and maybe some of you - becoming a couple, a spouse, a parent, finding a vocation or meaningful work, being a homeowner… But, in general, my becoming sometimes gets overwhelmed by the “I am” - the things I define myself as rather than see those piece of my identify as a continued work in progress. I realised the other day that I often just think of myself as “a parent” rather than the fact that I am still becoming a parent, still growing and evolving… which is the more accurate reality. Yet, there is still that little voice that says “you’ve been doing this for a long time. Should you have figured it out or gotten there by now?”

I offer that small voice to the flames as we leave winter behind, as we burn away the stuff that holds us back so that new growth can continue, not just the shoots of spring flowers poking their heads up but also the new branches stretch out from the trunks of seasoned trees.

May we welcome the joy of change and growth in ourselves with the eagerness and joy of a child anticipating a birthday. May we find that our desert wanderings, our trivals and hardships offer us, invite us, to constantly engage within ourselves to think about the choices that make us not just who we are, but who we will be.

I am, as always grateful to share this journey of becoming with you.

With Love and Gratitude,

Darcie

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Reflect and play with the stories we carry and those we still need to tell!

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Celebrate new growth and how we help each other grow. Click LINK to explore!

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Dear Families,

This month our theme is commitment. While LOVE is the power and the goal, commitment is the drive. Being commitment to a set of ideas, to walking the path, call it religion, faith, values, or belief is the propelling force needed to bring about the world we want to see. Looking back at words we have lifted up in services past I found that this responsive reading (#654) resinated with the importance of religion as a commitment to spiritual growth and enlightenment.

Reading #654

Deep in ourselves resides the religious impulse.

Out of the passions of our clay it rises.

We have religion when we stop deluding ourselves that we are self-sufficient, self-sustaining or self-derived.

We have religion when we hold some hope beyond the present,

some self-respect beyond our failures.

We have religion when our hearts are capable of leaping up at beauty,

when our nerves are edged by some dream in our heart.

We have religion when we have an abiding gratitude for all

that we have received.

We have religion when we look upon people with all their

failings and still find in them good;

when we look beyond people to the grandeur in nature and to the purpose in our own heart.

We have religion when we have done all that we can,

and then in confidence entrust ourselves to the life that is

larger than ourselves.

I hope you will continue to use the resources and activities available on the springfield.org website for Lent and experiment with your own spiritual or religious practice. May your exploration and growth lead you to lessen the that which holds you back or weighs you down, and to lift up and dedicate yourselves the essential truths and goodness that you find in your core when your heart is less encumbered. It is from that place of hope and light that we can be our best selves, do our best parenting and nurturing of one another, and together, live and grow faithfully in the life that is larger than ourselves.

With Love and Gratitude,

Darcie

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March - Commit to being curious about COMMITMENT!

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March - Commit to being curious about COMMITMENT!

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Click the LINK to explore.

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Dear Families

What better thing to do in a season of cold and snow than to lift up LOVE. One of the most meaningful sources of love in my life is this community. It has shown me and my family love, but even more powerfully it has asked me, with gentle prompting to think deeper and act more boldly, to make “loving” part of my practice and character. I hope there are many for whom it has done the same.

There are many philosophies and theologies with love at their core, including the idea of the “Beloved Community,” a term coined by philosopher Josiah Royce and popularized by Martin Luther King Jr. The Beloved Community is envisioned as a society based on justice, equity, and love of others, including one’s “enemies.” But that dream starts, like all rivers and oceans, rolling down from the springs and streams of love for self, for family, friends, neighbors, and communities like ours - especially communities like ours that not only hold our hearts but open them!

How can you open your heart a little wider this month and share that work with your family and children? Maybe start with picking three things, one each from the circles within, among, and beyond.

What is something you can do for yourself to feel loved?

What is something you can do for someone among our community?

What is something that you can do to extend love beyond our walls?

Over the month UUSGS will have many opportunities open to all of these categories from meditation and ritual, to creating, singing, and sharing. With love, I invite you to explore and engage in SHARING the LOVE…because together we can grow it bright and strong until justice, equality and love for all life light the whole world!

With love and gratitude,

Darcie

Dir. of Family Ministry

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February - SHARE THE LOVE with these offerings...

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February - SHARE THE LOVE with these offerings...

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Click the LINK to explore...

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Dear Families,

As we embark on a New Year with new possibilities I find myself looking for the reassurance of facts and predictability. There has been so much new, so much unknowing, that the idea of “using my imagination” feels a little exhausting and overwhelming. But in getting ready to bring to you more online activities and connections for this coming month I came across this piece in our Soulmatter’s subscription.

Imagination isn’t just a force that drives us forward toward a more perfect future, it also pulls the sacred into our impoverished present. Imagination is what transforms trees from potential firewood into wise friends. Imagination is what moves us from lording over the natural word to seeing ourselves as part of it. It gives the world a soul. And not just the natural world, but the ordinary world too. Through the lens of imagination, we perceive the common as precious, even miraculous. The laughter of our children becomes the sound of angels. Sunshine on our face becomes a greater treasure than gold. Our “everyday” lives are understood as amazing adventures and inexplicably lucky gifts.

Imagination is so accurately pointed out as not just an envisioning of dreams or the inspiration that drives us towards a new reality, to new creation - but the key of the transformation, the lens of perception, that allows us to find the holy, the gifts, in our lives - hard and tough as they may be. Imagination is what transforms zoom and facebook streaming into gathering and worship, what transforms a vaccine into injectable hope, a card into care and connection, the inconveniences of masks and protocols into acts of love. It is also how we can see and mourn the losses of so many in columns of numbers and statistics, that experiences beyond our own can speak deeply to our hearts and with these larger lenses we can more effectively set our hands to work TOGETHER.

Imagination is an essential element that needs to be fostered in all, especially children. Our ministry to families calls on us again and again to provide spaces, experiences, and encouragement for this important growth. I am looking forward in the new year - and in the new times that we will soon, I pray, emerged into - to putting our imaginations together to continue to help our community’s children learn to grow and see in old and new holy and transformative ways. May we, too, be transformed by such work.

May imagination allow you to see the little treasures in your daily midst, the connections to those things which fill you with gratitude and holy comfort. May each day bring you the gift of new possibility as we circle the sun together once more…

A happy and healthy New Year, friends.

With love and gratitude,

Darcie

December Greetings:
Dear Families,

One of my favorite carols of the season is “In the Bleak Midwinter”. I love the imagery of the hard darkness contrasted with the light of love and celebration. I am especially enmored of the last verse -

What can I give Him,

Poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd

I would bring a lamb,

If I were a wise man

I would do my part,

Yet what I can I give Him,

Give my heart.

It reminds me that Christmas and this season of light in the darkness doesn’t require the trappings and wealth of things but the opening and taking in of the spirit, of mystery and promise, of giving love. This month, as sickness and all it’s consquences, bring us to cold, hard places I do see hope in the stillness, a chance to open both our eyes to the small yet powerful beauty surrounding us, to the magic and mystery, to find and share our hearts. And in that sharing we become something more than any one of us can know alone. My all time favorite piece of music to share at Christmas isn’t one that we have the ability to share in service this year because of copyright and streaming laws. But I’ll share the lyrics here with you as my Christmas wish for us all...

It's in everyone of us

To be wise

Find your heart

Open up both your eyes,

We can all know everything

Without ever knowing why,

It's in everyone of us

By and by

May you find your heart full this season and may your open eyes hold the light of hope and love and of a future to come where we can be together in old and new ways.

Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays, and to all a good night.

With Love and Gratitude,

Darcie

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Click the LINK to visit!

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CLICK THE LINK for ways you can help create the holiday experience for DECEMBER!

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Dear Families,

Nevermore so than this year has Fall felt like a time of needed healing for me. I have a friend who moved to Florida years ago. When I asked him if he missed the New England seasons he said that seeing fall colors was really just watching a period of death. A bit morbid but I guess that he is technically right. The beautiful landscapes I have been soaking in are of the leaves dying off, the tree pulling the stored energy deep into itself as it lets go of those extensions into the world.

In this new covid-19 peak and growing cold weather I’m faced with the same choices - what to let go, what to draw in deep. The warm day-excursions, and balmy date-nights in open air dining are coming to a close. The casual summer distanced hangouts with family are turning to the really grief that a safe inside gathering for the holidays is unlikely.

The animals from my daughter’s wildlife rehabilitation work have left home to harvest the last of the forest's bounty before settling in dark recesses for their long winter naps. We grieve their absence along with the continued physical absence of friends, of distanced family, of those who have passed and for a world that won’t ever be the same.

As we breathe deeply, letting go, laying to rest, and making peace with our losses, what is it that we draw deep within - that we may move into the darkness, trusting that we will keep alive the inner light until we can emerge into the radiant brightness and warmth again.

For me, I am finding healing through taking deep into myself elements of my faith. I am storing up hope that even in the darkness seeds of change are growing. I am squirreling away all the experiences from this year that have shown me that human kindness and innovation still abound and will not only see us through but open new doors. I am hoarding moments of beauty, wrapping myself tightly in the holy that blankets us in mystery and holds us in the divine without knowing the answers. I am stocking the family pantry with small jars of joy and laughter - that we may, like Leo Lionni’s Frederick the mouse, release color and song to feed our spirits when we are empty. I am taking shelter in the sacred warmth of belief that LOVE will prevail.

I’m making healing space for myself practically as well as spiritually. I will be taking off some time this month so I can give myself some space to slow down and give some more time to the holding and enjoying of my family. I’m making myself good food, reaping the gift of a farm share with abundant joy for fall veggies. I’m taking long baths, burrowing in bed, and re-watching West Wing. What are  YOU doing for YOURSELF and for your family’s healing   right now? How are you helping filling a pantry of faith for yourself and your children?

As you collect and draw deep the healing you and your family need I am hoping the bounty of the Family Ministry online programs can be counted in your harvest. And, that you know, too, the sheltering and lasting embrace of this community, in which you are a truly blessed gift.

With Love and Gratitude,

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Click the image for November program offerings!

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How do I contact Family Ministry with question or for help?

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How do I contact Family Ministry with question or for help?

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You can reach me, Director of Family Ministry at darcie@uuspringfield or by calling 413-76-2324 ex 102 . You can also find me on facebook (Darcie Farber) and I can often be found in the "UUSGS Family Forum"  group space there as well. My zoom drop-in hour is Wednesday 4:30 - 5:30. Just click this link to stop in:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87363577794?pwd=UmRndjFXaVdtRk9jTWZ1dVNmS2FVUT09!

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FIRE RITUAL AND DONATION DRIVE: March 19 & 21
Spring is a season of new beginnings, a time of letting go and making room for new growth.

Here at UUSGS, we often celebrate ‘letting go’ with the help of an ancient & elemental symbol: fire.  In the past, when gathering together in our sanctuary, we have come forward and made offerings to a common flame. CLICK the link to learn more and SIGN-UP!

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Spring is a season of new beginnings, a time of letting go and making room for new growth.

Here at UUSGS, we often celebrate 'letting go' with the help of an ancient & elemental symbol: fire. In the past, when gathering together in our sanctuary, we have come forward and made offerings to a common flame. This year, we're moving this ritual outside, similar to our other drive-thru communion-style services (like Water Communion, Flower Communion...).

In addition to the ritual, we're collecting donations for four of our community partners. More information about what to give - and to whom we are giving - can be found by clicking HERE (PDF).

IMPORTANT: All participants will be expected to be masked and distanced. We are also asking participants to please reserve a time slot in advance. The entire exchange/ritual should take no more than ~5 minutes. Drop-ins will be accommodated, but reservations help us to ensure that everyone stays safe and has a great experience.

CLICK HERE to reserve your time slot. Questions about reservations can be sent to Darcie Farber.
Here what to expect when you arrive:

Drive in to the North entrance to the parking lot (245 Porter Lake Dr. in Springfield).

You will be greeted and checked in. You will be given a piece of flash paper and a pen. You will then be invited to write on your flash paper some expression of something you would like to let go, something from which you would like to be freed. Looking ahead to a season of new growth ahead, what do you need to be free from in order to move forward? (For families and folks attending as groups, we ask that do do this in dialog with those with whom you are attending.)

When you pull forward, you can drop off any donations you have brought with you.

When it is your turn, you will be greeted again by Rev. Jason and the worship staff. You will then be invited to offer your paper to our common flame. (If you prefer, we are happy to do this for you. Just say the word!)

Each car will also receive a goodie bag with some seasonal fun inside.

That's it!
**We will be taking video of this drive-thru event to package and share as a part of our online service on Easter morning. If you would rather not be included in this way, please let us know when you arrive.

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Fire It Up! - Ritual & Donation Drive - UUSpringfield.org

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Spring is a season of new beginnings, a time of letting go and making room for new growth. Here at UUSGS, we often celebrate 'letting go' with the help of an ancient & elemental symbol: fire. In the past, when gathering together in our sanctuary, we have come forward and made offerings to a common flame.

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Hello and Welcome! The first step I'd recommend is to share some information with us so we can help get you connected and in the communication loop. There are 2 forms we ask from our families. You can find the links to these forms in the registration column to your right on the screen. I look forward to receiving your information and getting you started on your UUSGS Family Ministry adventure.  ~Darcie

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Your Child/ Children (Note: Each child must have a separate child info form filled out YEARLY)

What Would be Helpful to Know About Your Family?

What do you know about us and our family policies?

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Your Child/ Children (Note: Each child must have a separate child info form filled out YEARLY) What Would be Helpful to Know About Your Family? What do you know about us and our family policies?

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UUSGS Member and Family Ministry teacher Phyllis Carleen shares stories and songs for young children!

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Click Here for October Offerings, Activities, and theme resources...

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October Greetings!

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Guiding children and youth in healthy learning about sexuality and relationships...

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Read about the importance of making space for spiritual development in family practices and more...

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Remember to Register Your Family! Click the picture for all the nuts and bolts!

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Remember to Register Your Family! Click the picture for all the nuts and bolts!

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Please REGISTER your family’s information for 2021-2022 so we can better serve you and make sure you get all the communications and tools available to you!

Family Ministry Enrollment: (You only need to complete once per household. If you submitted this last year/ a previous year you don’t need to do it again unless your information has changed.)

https://uuspringfield.breezechms.com/form/aae9fe

Child Information Form: (Please COMPLETE YEARLY for EACH child)

https://uuspringfield.breezechms.com/form/731efb77

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Interactive games and conversation starters to think about and share our weird pandemic lives! Click Link to go to program's main page.