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Mission Peak UU – Fremont, CA
The Home of Liberal Religion in the Tri-Cities and Beyond!
April 24, 2019
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Help! Fire! We Need Your Help With Fire!
Did I get your attention? Good. We’ve got a BBQ planned after the Charter Sunday service on May 5, but we currently have no way to BBQ.
Do you have a portable grill that you would be willing to bring to Cole Hall? Propane or Charcoal – it doesn’t matter. We will need several. If you do, please let Jen King know ASAP so she can coordinate the transportation of the grills and the actual grilling. Thanks!
Don’t Forget! May 5 – Charter Sunday – Potluck BBQ
Please join us after the service on Charter Sunday – May 5 as we
continue to celebrate MPUUC’s 25th Anniversary. The Fellowship
Committee will be providing the Grillables (meat & non-meat), Buns,
Condiments, and Beverages. The rest will be potluck. If your last name
begins with: A through D – Please bring a Salad, E through J – Please
bring a Side Dish, K through M – Please bring Fruit, N through T –
Please bring Dessert, and U through Z – Please bring Chips.
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This week has been Earth Week and we have celebrated much and called ourselves to action to care for this earth that we live on and have so selfishly harmed. How can we use our creativity to right the wrongs we have collectively perpetrated? Join us to not only call ourselves to action, but to honor and celebrate this earth we live upon.
Leading the service will be Rev. Jo Green and assisting will be Worship Associate Rev. Barbara F. Meyers. Jo Ann Schriner will provide our music.
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This Sunday
Share Your Love of Earth
Through Share the Plate
On April 28 we will celebrate Earth Day at Mission Peak and give our offering to an organization that helps others to learn about and appreciate the natural world. Terri Biondi from the East Bay Parks Foundation will tell us about their work and especially their “Send a Kid to Camp” scholarship program which our donations will support. This donation helps us live out our mission and act on our principles!Please give cash or make checks out to Mission Peak UU and put “E.B. Parks Foundation” in the memo line.
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Bombings in Sri Lanka
The Tri-City Interfaith Council issued a statement today on the bombings in Sri Lanka. You can read it here:
https://buff.ly/2vl2AqC
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We Are One Rally
Dear friends,
Do join us on an Earth changing Journey!
Thursday, April 25
5:00 to 6:00 p.m.
Paseo Padre & Walnut, Fremont
More than 150 countries accounting for 90% of global emissions have already made national climate commitments to slash their carbon pollution going into the talks in Paris. A safer and more prosperous future is within our grasp.
By boosting energy-efficiency measures and moving to low-carbon energy sources, the private sector can realize cost savings up to $190 billion in 2020. That’s good news because businesses can help save the planet while driving up their own profits.
Peaceful, compassionate, non-partisan signs are welcome.
Sponsors: Compassionate Fremont, UCHRC & Tri-City Interfaith Council
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Earth Day Event
“People who ride their bikes to LEAF Earth Day event will get 2 Free raffle tickets. If riding your bike enter the first gate on the left side. The yellow cylindrical bike stands are there plus bikes can also be placed along the fence
The LEAF Team is very happy to be hosting LEAF Earth Day 2019. Our mission is to promote and teach regenerative agriculture and environmental sustainability. We will be selling plants grown in our nursery, honey from our bees, and crafts from recycled products. There will be live music all day and even more good food. There will be two Maker Events for Kids.” Click
here for more information.
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The Tri-City Interfaith Council invites the public to attend their annual Holocaust Remembrance Service on Sunday, May 5, at 7:30 p.m. The service is held at Temple Beth Torah, 42000 Paseo Padre Parkway, Fremont.
This year Jim McGarry will be the featured speaker. He has been a Holocaust educator since 1992 when he heard his first survivor speak. He has trained at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. He has traveled to Germany, Poland, and Israel several times with students and survivors. In 2007 he founded the Helen and Joe Farkas Center for the Study of the Holocaust in Catholic Schools at Mercy High School in San Francisco. McGarry’s talk is titled “The Holocaust as a Call to Conscience.”
The service will include a couple songs from an Interfaith Choir that is being put together specifically for this event. The choir will rehearse at the Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation’s site, 2950 Washington Blvd., Fremont. You can download a flyer to help recruit singers
here.
The service is free and open to everyone from all religious backgrounds, and no religious background. A free will offering will be received for The Healing WELL. More information about their work is available at
www.healingwellsf.org.
The Tri-City Interfaith Council, sponsor of this service, is the largest interfaith organization in southern Alameda County. Their mission is to promote an inclusive society in which people of all faiths and traditions respect and appreciate one another.
Download a flyer to print and post in your faith community, your favorite coffee shop, or some other location by clicking
here.
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Ask a UU – Sunday, April 28, 11:30-12:30 p.m.
This Sunday you are invited to what I hope will be just our first “Ask a UU” session. So what is “Ask a UU?” Just time after services where a congregation member answers questions in an informal setting about their spiritual tradition, personal beliefs, or their life and goals as a UU.
You can think of this idea as an extension of my “G Word” homily from January. My hope is that these sessions will get our adult congregation talking about their spiritual lives and encourage a little more of the second half of our Third Principle – not just “acceptance of one another,” but “encouragement to spiritual growth.” And besides the content being asked and answered; it’s also an opportunity to practice discussing our religious views in a supportive environment rather than with unfamiliar people or when someone is trying to use their faith as a bludgeon.
In keeping with the maxim, “Don’t ask others to do what you would not, ” since I suggested the idea I figured I had to volunteer to be first. That’s why this session is “Meet a (Buddhist) UU.” This isn’t a class, and I’m not trying to talk you all into a week-long silent retreat. Besides those with questions about Buddhism in general or my personal beliefs, spiritual or otherwise, I hope some of you will attend to see how this format works and give some feedback so we can refine it – this is an experiment after all.
But even more importantly, I hope some of you will consider volunteering to be “asked” in the future. Your answers (mine too!) don’t have to be complete or profound. “I don’t know” is a perfectly fine response; after all, “UU is where all your answers are questioned.” I look forward to hearing about some of the other spiritual paths sprinkled among our congregation. But more fervently I hope that the distribution of the beliefs that volunteer to be “asked” about in these sessions will mirror the primary population of our congregation: Unitarian and Universalist Christian, Humanist, Agnostic, Rationalist, etc; or just to address what called you to come to Mission Peak. The idea isn’t just to explore the breadth, but also the depth of our faith tradition.
If you’re normally there on Sunday, I hope you can make the time to stay. And if you receive the Week on the Peak but don’t regularly attend services, perhaps this is another reason to visit and experience our living UU tradition.
Thanks for reading,
Eric Dittmar
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You aren’t going to want to miss this! What it takes to do social justice
right!
Susan Bartlett Foote author of The Crusade for Forgotten Souls – Reforming Minnesota’s Mental Institutions 1946-1954, University of Minnesota Press, 2018, will be speaking at Mission Peak
on Saturday, May 11, 2019 from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm. You are warmly invited to attend. The talk will be videotaped for those of you who can’t make it in person.
Susan tells the story of how Unitarians in Minnesota helped to reform snake-pit conditions in state mental institutions, organizing many effective activities working with the Governor, other agencies of the government, the press and other religious institutions in principled activism. This is how it is done when it is done right! She also will tell about how many reforms were later overturned by tightfisted conservative politicians and bureaucrats. But, as she explains, there are many important lessons that emerged and which apply to us today, the chief one of which is the necessity of being eternally vigilant.
Susan dedicates the book to her former father-in-law Rev. Arthur Foote the minister at Unity Unitarian in St. Paul, Minnesota who spearheaded the effort, and whose notes led her to research and write this book when she found them in a closet of her home. You can read a UU World article about the book at
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https://www.uuworld.org/articles/history-book-reviews-spring-2019
Contact me if you have any questions.
Rev.
Barbara F. Meyers
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| Celebrating Mission Peak’s 25th Anniversary – Save These Dates!! |
2019 marks 25 years of MPUUC’s existence as a congregation and we think that’s a milestone worth celebrating. We will have many different celebrations throughout the year. Please reserve the following dates on your calendar now. You won’t want to miss them!
May 5 – Charter Sunday
– Come celebrate the Charter that started it all with a special service and a Potluck BBQ afterwards.
June 28-30 – MPUUC’s annual Campout!
This year we’ll be back at Puma Point at Anthony Chabot Regional Park so that we are close enough for those of you who are not so excited about camping to join us during the day on Saturday, June 29. We will have many fun activities planned and will end the day with a potluck BBQ and campfire.
September 8 – 25th Anniversary Picnic Celebration
– After the annual Water Ceremony at Cole Hall we will gather at one of the reserved picnic areas at Lake Elizabeth for a Picnic/BBQ celebration. We will have games for the kids, a jam session & sing-a-long, and other fun activities. Come join us and enjoy hanging out with friends & family and celebrating MPUUC.
[More details regarding these events will follow closer to the dates. If you have questions or suggestions for additional events or you want to help with an event, please contact Jen King].
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Online Scam Impersonating Ministers’ Accounts
A warning that there is a new email phishing scam being employed against faith communities, misleading congregants into sending money. People set up fake accounts that imitate the minister’s account, and send messages to email addresses they collect from the church website or published newsletters.
This is a pretty helpful description of how the scam has developed and how to avoid it
. Be exceedingly cautious if you receive a message from a leader in your congregation asking for rushed money.
***Please know that Rev Jo Green would never ask you personally for any funding. If you receive one, please notify her immediately.
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Please see email received from a concerned Fremont neighbor. A pdf is available by clicking
here. In the pdf is information on how to contact Eliot to take action
Hi, my name is Eliot–I am your neighbor in Fremont. I am not a Unitarian, or especially religious, but I am very concerned about climate change.
I am reaching out to you because the City of Fremont is currently considering what to do about reducing carbon in the coming years. My goal is to ask them to make binding commitments, to make city ordinances, that will reduce our carbon to avoid increased harm to the planet and problems for people everywhere.
I am gathering signatures of people who agree, to send to the council to encourage them to take action.
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Turning Love Into Justice:
The Tri-City Interfaith Council (tcicouncil.weebly.com) is a grass-roots organization bringing together people of diverse religious beliefs from Fremont, Newark, and Union City (California). Rev. Jo Green, Rev. Barbara Meyers and Paul K. Davis are members. Join in!
Call your Elected Officials!
Calls can make a difference! Contact your representatives to alert them to your views!
Congressperson Eric Swalwell 510-247-1388 or go to
house.gov
Senator Kamala Harris
(202) 224 – 3553
Senator Diane Feinstein (202) 224-3841
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Mission Peak UU | 2950 Washington Blvd Fremont CA | 510.252.1477 | missionpeakuu.org
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