Journey Groups
Your Unitarian Universalist journey is one that has the potential to slowly transform your life. Journey groups are small groups that hold theme-based monthly meetings in which congregants can explore their deepest values and inner voices. Facilitators provide formative spaces where individuals can nurture their spiritual journeys collectively and without judgment. Together, we can grow in depth and spiritual maturity. We do this by exploring together the significant issues—such as faith, death, forgiveness, hope, justice, love, and brokenness—on which religions, at their best, have always guided people to greater insight.
Journey Groups meet once a month for 10 months (September through June). You’ll find them tremendously valuable, and you won’t want to miss a single one. However, even if you miss most of your group meetings, you’ll still find it valuable to attend occasionally. Signing up does not commit you to attend. We just need to know which group you’ll go to when you do have a chance.
Science & Spirituality
The Science & Spirituality Group provides a place for wide-ranging discussion of thought-provoking books and articles concerning the intersection of science and spirituality. We explore the connection between our broadening scientific understanding and a deepening sense of awe and wonder about the universe around and within us.
Meetings are generally held at CUUC on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month. We offer hybrid meetings, meeting in person as well as well as via Zoom. Contact Norm Handelman, Al Rocchi, or Barbara Mair for more information.
Caring and Sharing
The Caring and Sharing Circle offers care and support to the CUUC community in a variety of ways, including:
- Offering rides to doctor’s appointments, services, etc.;
- Assisting with memorial services;
- Visiting congregants in the hospital;
- Sending get well cards, sympathy cards, and flowers;
- Delivering holiday gift baskets to elderly and homebound congregants; and
- Assisting families during emergencies (e.g., fire, illness, loss).
Please contact Julie Gans for more information.
PlaceKeeping Practice Team
Our PlaceKeeping practitioners have tended the forest understory on our grounds for more than three decades. Their efforts have had a profound effect on who lives on the grounds among us. Our congregation inhabits an unusually large and wild hillside and wetlands for White Plains. Two springs originate at the top of our hillside and flow down to join a spring that begins on our property.
Central to this practice is an established rhythm of PlaceKeeping Days. The first Saturday of every month is PlaceKeeping Saturday. Folks come throughout the day to stroll the path network that our PlaceKeepers have created, which keeps the community safe from ticks and poison ivy. Other PeaceKeepers devote time to tending those paths, to cultivating the understory, to tending our springs and wetlands, or gathering by the Spirit Fire.
All members and friends of the CUUC community are welcome to join the PlaceKeeping Practice. Join us on a first Saturday, adopt a stretch of our path network, undertake a Citizen Science project, or help the RE program produce PlaceKeeping curriculum. As the pandemic kept us apart in the fall of 2021, we were approached by the RE Council and asked to build RE programs that could be enjoyed outside. We gathered with about 25 youths by the River Birch Spring and invited each of them to join one of three teams: WaterKeepers, EarthKeepers (who also keep our plants), and AnimalKeepers. Their enthusiasm was deeply moving and PlaceKeeping has become a regular element in RE.
For many of us, this woodland and wetland is awe-inspiring and a refuge. It is a sanctuary where many life forms once common in our region can still thrive. We have resident pleated woodpeckers and millions of other fungi, insects, and critters who depend on our biomass for food and shelter. We consciously make them safe and welcome.
Our PlaceKeeping Practice arises from our sixth UU source: spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.
We invite all to bring family and friends for a stroll, have a picnic, and become a PlaceKeeper, a WaterKeeper, an EarthKeeper, or an AnimalKeeper. Contact Bice Wilson for more information.
Auction
The CUUC annual “themed” auction, generally held in November, is the largest fundraising effort outside of the annual Canvass. Recent themes include State Fair, Woodstock at 50, Under the Sea and an evening in Spain. Cocktails and dinner are included in the ticket price and there are opportunities to bid on items of various values. Guests may bid $5 for handmade note paper or $1,000 for a stay at a vacation home. One of the most popular offerings at the auction is the Bid and Bump Board at which bids are taken for a seat at one of the many marvelous meals or events that congregants have offered to host at their homes or in local areas.
It’s a fun evening of fundraising and community building. If you are interested in working on this important event, please contact Janet Bear or Anne Majsak for more information.
