This fall we had a series of 3 services in partnership with the Syracuse Peace Council, bringing us insights from the Onondaga tribe of Haudenosaunee on “Educating for Peace” (9/28), “Environmental Issues” (10/26), and “Land Rights Action” (11/9). Each service gave us a chance to learn about and take inspiration from this particular tribe’s philosophy, and educate ourselves about some hot issues here in Central New York.

I would be interested in finding out what people learned during these services. Please use the Comments link below to share your “take-away messages” from these services.

People who would like to learn more can explore the NOON website or the Onondaga Nation’s website.

Thanks for reading!  —Julia Schult

At the last Board meeting we talked about the “Congregational Talk Back” part of our service and where it should be placed in the service.  I felt that it disrupted the flow of the service to have it right after the sermon, and I wanted to save it for the fellowship time after the service.  Others felt that the fellowship time might be too noisy and therefore not a good time.  Someone suggested that those who wanted to respond to the sermon could stay in the sanctuary while the others go downstairs for the fellowship hour.  I’d like more opinions on this topic.  What do you think?

Blessings!                                                                                                                                                      Rev. Jan

p.s. Please respond by contacting Jan, or using the Comments feature below – click on “Comments”, then scroll down to add your comment.

First, let me say thank you to those who organized the Susquehanna String Band concert and the Organ Crawl. I hear they were well attended and very fun!

If you have looked at the web page lately you may have seen that there is a new page about the stained glass windows. That page is not looking as good as I hope to make it, so enjoy its information now, and I’ll try to make the pictures prettier soon!

I also posted a new video linked in to the Building page showing a Video Visit to the Belfry. This video was put together for the children’s RE, when we were having a conversation about “sacred spaces” – meaning spaces set aside as UU churches, and also places where you can go to collect your thoughts or gain comfort. Here’s the video, if you haven’t seen it!

Soon I will post more details about the Building, and where we stand on painting, making the building safe, and preserving it for the future.

This church does not stand still this year!!

—Julia S.

As most of  you know, this weekend we’ll have two great performances at our church!

Friday night, October 17, the Susquehanna String Band will be performing at 7:30 pm. I went last year, and thoroughly enjoyed the music. It was lively, and some of the songs were really funny. It was also really cool when Kami got up and played Ol’ Joe Clark with them.

Saturday is the Organ Crawl. Starting at 1 pm there will be performances in five churches on beautiful organs, every hour on the hour. Each performance will be about 15-20 minutes. In our church, at 2pm Dawn Battista will be playing our historic Morey & Barnes organ, which has been recognized by the American Organ Historical Society for its superb sound and nearly original condition. There will be refreshments after the performance at the Unitarian Universalist Church.

Special thanks to the volunteers who will be helping to run these events, manning the doors and dealing with the refreshments!

—Julia S.

November 2nd, a day I am scheduled to preach, is The Day of the Dead.  In recent years UU Churches have been celebrating this day by building an altar in church to honor dead friends and relatives.  People can bring an object or photo and tell its meaning or light a candle and share a story, anecdote, etc. about the person.  Nov. 2 is also the Sunday just before the presidential election and I could do an election sermon.  You can vote for the service you prefer. 

Click on comment at the bottom of this post and tell me what you think.

Blessings!                                                                                                                                                                 Rev. Jan

Religious Education (R.E.) is a term Unitarian Universalist groups use for what other churches often call “Sunday School”. It is where the kids who would get bored with the regular church service go to learn about a variety of religious traditions and how the UU principles fit into their world, nation, community, family, and themselves.

The R.E. committee of our church is looking for someone, perhaps a student or young adult, to teach a UU curriculum on Sunday mornings to the grade school-aged kids. We have several UU curriculum books, and the person we find will take one of the curricula, develop it with the help of one of our members, and teach it during the 20-30 minute R.E. sessions while the regular service goes on upstairs. The curriculum is likely to focus on our liberal religious values, the UU Principles, or varying viewpoints in our society. (Anyone who might be interested is encouraged to email me at jschult at gmail dot com.)

At UU Church of Cortland, the young’uns start out with everyone upstairs during the service. They stay through a hymn or two, the sharing of Joys, Sorrows & Concerns, and a Story for All Ages. Then the community “sings them out” with a modified “Go now in peace…” hymn. When they get downstairs, what happens has been evolving, but generally the youngest kids are cared for, the older kids have a discussion and activity, and sometimes a snack. Some years the oldest kids have split off into another group to plan activities such as the CROP walk. Then when the regular service lets out, everyone convenes in the Social Hall (Basement) for Fellowship Hour, also known as coffee & FOOD.

Here’s what the R.E. committee has come up with for this year. We have hired Nikki, a SUNY Cortland student who is paid to take care of the youngest children, usually those under 4 years old. We plan to hire some of the older girls to assist her (those 13-15 or so). The oldest “teen” group is fairly small, and for this year can probably help assist with the other kids or stay upstairs and follow the regular service; we will be having a special OWL program for them after church. OWL means Our Whole Lives, and is an outstanding program to talk about life decisions having to do with sexuality and relationships. Kate has been through the training and will be offering the program along with another adult, and they will probably meet after church for 1 hour, about 4 weeks in a row for the first session.

Our big unresolved question, then, is what to do with the large group of kids in grades 1-6 (more or less). In past years we have taken turns having adults in the congregation take the group and lead a discussion or meeting. Often they do a “check-in” or round robin of “how are you doin’”; then discuss the topic of the day – which sometimes involves a demo or activity – and then sometimes they play a game involving physical activity. One difficulty is that if they make too much noise, it does ooze upstairs to disturb (or worry) the adults (or parents). Another problem is that R.E. is very important, and gets short shrift when we do it in a patchwork fashion like this – there’s no unifying theme or person from week to week for the kids. Plus, all too often our R.E. committee chairs have ended up going down to provide continuity, fill in for absent teachers, or just help out with an unusually large batch of kids. Unfortunately we have been burning out our volunteers with this system! So this year we would like to find someone who is willing to really make R.E. the center of their spiritual development on Sunday mornings for a few months. Anyone out there ready and willing?

Please comment! I may have some things wrong, or you may have a response to this. Just click the Comments link at the end of this posting. Thanks!

—Julia S.

As some of you know, we are trying to get the belfry painted. Last Wednesday (10/10), the steps on the front of the church were finished with a second coat of paint, thanks to John O., Jim L, Zack, and me. Chris also continued the great gardening work.

I also went up into the belfry with engineer Chuck Feiszli of Resource Associates. He was advising us on whether any work needs to be done before the belfry is painted. Background: a local manager at McNeil Development, Dan McNeil Sr., has offered to help us get the belfry painted. His company has a 60 foot lift, and they came over and tried it out for size, and they say they will need an 80 foot lift. The church Board has authorized the B&G committee to rent an 80 foot lift for a week. Dan also said he would like to get a carpenter or engineer to take a look and see if there’s going to be any problems with painting due to wood rot or any other work that really must get done before they paint. Chuck Feiszli was recommended by Andrea R. as someone who could do that for us.

Chuck’s assessment was that we can go ahead and paint, but there are a few repairs that need to be done as soon as practically possible, and when those are done there is a chance we will have to take some wood off the outside to get at rotten wood inside. Here’s his recommendations, which were not in a formal report but merely given to me (and some to John O.) orally:

• The louvered slats in the belfry can be replaced pretty simply from the inside. We could also take the opportunity to replace the wire mesh over the louvers with a tighter mesh. This should be done before or in conjunction with the painting.
• There are problems due to rotten wood from previous leakage in the larger base of the belfry (middle tier of the structure, above the main roof and below the bell chamber). The Northwest and Southwest corners have horizontal beams that are almost rotted through, and the Southeast corner beam has been shored up but could use further support. The rotting beams should be replaced, but that would be a major project. We can probably find ways to brace things more cheaply as a temporary fix, and that should be done within the next year.

  

 

 

To be clear: it is not going to fall on our heads any time soon, but could eventually if nothing is done within the year.

• There are structural problems of drainage which are intrinsic in the design of the belfry. Chuck says the upper structure (bell chamber) is naturally open to the elements, so there will certainly be snow and some rain that gets in. There may have originally been some drainage holes to allow the water to escape onto the roof, but if so those have been long since covered or plugged. Also, some of the original beams which support the bell chamber have been shored up in the past, and the shoring up should be reinforced in places. Eventually we should have an engineering firm and contractors rebuild the belfry structure, replacing rotten wood and correcting the drainage problem.

So it seems our current course is to:

1.  tell Dan McNeil to go ahead and paint as soon as they can work the painting into their work schedule, with the church renting an 80 foot lift for the week of the work. The B&G committee can work on replacing the louvers, with either the committee painting them, or providing the wood cut to the right size for Dan’s people to paint them, and then the committee installing them.
2. During this year, the Board and B&G should work toward having competent professional contractors shore up the places where the beams are rotting, determining costs and finding a source for money. B&G can also pursue whether some of the much-needed work on the cobblestone walls can be done, and the Board can see if we have money for that.
3. Also during this year, the Board and Grant-writing/Fund-raising committee – or group if there is no such committee – should work on a longer-term plan to apply for grants and take care of both renovation of the belfry and maintenance of the cobblestone walls of the church.  

This is merely my summary of what I learned last Wednesday plus what we’ve discussed before. If you have any comments, please do comment on this blog, or you can email me!

Thank you, Jan, for leading our first service of the fall this past weekend!

Our new minister, Janet Johnson of Ithaca, led the service last Sunday. Rather brave, really, as she had never seen one of our services before. Chris and the Program Committee tried to describe as much as possible a typical ceremony at our church, but of course there’s nothing quite like being there! As it turned out, it was a great “welcome back” ceremony for most of us, and a “welcoming” ceremony for Jan and a couple of guests.

Quite a number of congregants brought water to mingle in the communal bowl and shared stories of their summer. We also had great participation in Joys, Sorrows & Concerns, and in the TalkBack response to the sermon. So we showed a good participatory face to Jan. And Jan gave us some information about herself, and a good sense of her values and beliefs. In particular, it is clear that community is important to her, as it is to us.

Jan and Julie G. have initiated a new way of doing our offering. Each week someone who is a member, or comes regularly, or donates time or money, will talk about why they are involved with this church. They will then invite people to donate to the offering and help to build our church community and building. Julie is also particularly keen to have available a  paint can as well as the usual plates so that people can donate specifically to the upkeep and renovation of the building. Hopefully, we can learn to talk about money and donating as one of the necessary parts of building a successful, growing, and secure church.

Let us make this a year to build our community. I am so glad to be a part of it!

—Julia S.

p.s. Please let me know if you would like to become a blogger for the church. We have the technology.

We have several people to thank for getting the church building ready for fall. Last Sunday, Pam cleaned, Chris gardened – and trimmed the bushes! – and several people worked on the front steps. The steps are sanded, primed, and painted! I think they need one more coat of paint; let’s see if we can do that this next week. I know some people spent 2 days of work on this project. Thanks to Jim L., Jim P., John O., and Alex, as well as Chris and Pam!

Today (Saturday) we had only 3 people for Clean-up Day, but we got lots done. Myself (Julia S.), Jean, and Kate dusted, scrubbed, vacuumed, and got the candles and stones ready for services. I even got the wax out of the carpet, thanks to a quick web search before I headed over to the church. Turns out blowing a hair dryer on wax drippings gets them soft enough to wipe or soak up with a rag.

Funny thing about our building, the more you do, the more you look around and see the work the place needs. The trick is that many hands make light work. There are many people who make our church work – some by doing a service, others by hosting coffee hour; some by coordinating kids activities, others by vacuuming; some by pounding nails, others by pounding gavels (organizing meetings). How have you helped the church? Use the comments below to brag about what you’ve done for all of us!!

—Julia

Hi! This is the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cortland’s second attempt to start a blog. Hopefully this will become a participatory project, with announcements, posts of exciting events, and a place where we can share the thoughts inspired by our church or world events.

Please feel free to Comment, or if you would like to post blog entries yourself, let Julia Schult know.

Joy, Health, Love, and Peace!

—Julia