Our next virtual fellowship will be on Sunday, May 3 with our guest speaker Fritz Aufdencamp. He will share “Getting To Know You” about his experience getting to know a Jewish person on a spiritual level, which resulted in three heresy trials and motivated him to tear down the wall between Christianity and Judaism.

A frequent guest preacher at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boca Raton, Florida, Fritz graduated from Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary in Columbus, Ohio in 1967.  He served congregations in Townsend, Montana; Cobb, Wisconsin; and Butler, Pennsylvania before leaving the Lutheran Church. In addition to his sermons, Fritz also sings in the choir and runs a ukulele group for his fellowship.

Join by computer:

https://zoom.us/j/94801872490

Meeting ID   948-0187-2490

Join by phone:

+1-646-876-9923

94801872490#

Based on recommendations from UUA leaders, the public health community, and discussions with other local church leaders, we will be holding our fellowship this Sunday, March 15. Due to elevated concern about the new coronavirus (COVID 19), we are continuing to monitor the advice of the CDC and local health officials in order to make appropriate adaptations for our meetings to be good neighbors to one another and to our wider community.

 

The CDC recommends following common-sense practices:

• Stay home if you are feeling sick
• Wash your hands frequently for 20 seconds
• Avoid touching your face with unwashed hands
• Disinfect surfaces used regularly
• Use hand sanitizer
• Avoid close contact with someone who is sick

 

Based on those recommendations, we will make the following adjustments to our time together as a congregation:

 

• We will clean high contact surfaces (door handles, tables, hymnals, etc.).
• Ushers will carry the offering plate to each person, rather than passing it.
• We will recommend the use of serving utensils at coffee and conversation.
• We will also explore options for streaming the fellowship so that you can participate from home if you are unable, for whatever reason, to get to meetings.

 

If, after attending fellowship, you come down with a possible infectious disease, let us know and we will inform others. Typical symptoms of coronavirus include fever and a cough that may progress to pneumonia, causing breathing difficulties, including shortness of breath. More information, see the attached flyer from the CDC or go to CDC Information: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

 

If there is a need to implement different practices to better care for our community, we will keep you informed. In the meantime, unless you have a fever, a cough or are sneezing, please come to fellowship!

Sacred Memory and Open Future: Honoring our 30th Anniversary Year of UUFCF

With Lyndon Harris

With about 200,000 members in the US (and approximately 4,000 in NC), Unitarian Universalism is small in comparison to other faith and spiritual communities. What are some of the distinctive traits of our fellowship? And how do these traits interface with other spiritual communities, especially in smaller towns in the South? This presentation will highlight milestones in the history of our fellowship here in the Thermal Belt and explore ideas about our distinctive offering here in Tryon, NC, moving forward.

Lyndon Harris will be sharing “And who is my Neighbor?” The Biblical Ethic of Concern and Care for the Refugee.” The plight of immigrants and refugees has become a central issue in the political wars of the present national context, and an ongoing topic for discussion and action by communities of faith and humanistic good will. What is our ethical obligation to the refugee, the immigrant, those fleeing persecution? Join us December 1st, for an exploration of the biblical ethical code of care for the refugee, and why this commitment of love is an important foundation of civil society.

Speaking of refugees…

Over the past few years, our UU fellowship has been supporting political refugees and immigrants by sending aid to the Mastaki family who fled to our country from Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

(see https://robinaedgar.wordpress.com/). Some of the family members will be visiting for the Thanksgiving weekend, and will be able to join us at fellowship this coming Sunday.

 

Home Trust Bank recently joined the list of sponsors for the CommUnity Coffee House of the Carolina Foothills concert “Deeper Than The Skin: A Musical Presentation on Race in America” with Reggie Harris and Greg Greenway. Also sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Carolina Foothills (UUFCF) and the Thermal Belt Friendship Council, the concert will be held on Wednesday November 13 at the Sunnydale Cabin at 334 S. Trade Street in Tryon at 7pm.

Greg Greenway and Reggie Harris, use the power of music and storytelling to take audiences on a journey that follows their divergent backgrounds. Along the way, audience members are united through music and dialogue with the musicians and each other about their own experiences of race to encourage ongoing conversations across America’s racial divide.

“These sponsors help us with ur goal of building community by making it more affordable for all of the residents of our community, especially students and seniors in the Eastside Community to attend.the generous sponsorship enables us to make it more affordable to attend,” says Robin Edgar, President of the UUFCF board.

For more information about the availability of the subsidized tickets, contact Robin Edgar at 864-457-7557 or email 2robinedgar@gmail.com.

 

November 3, 2019

A Commemoration of Krystalnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass”

By Lyndon Harris

The night of November 9, 1938, witnessed the explosion of terror that inaugurated Hitler’s “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” In response to the assassination of Nazi German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath by a Polish Jewish teenager, Herschel Grynszpan in Paris that same day, Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues were razed and burned to the ground. The Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed has become the archetypal face of evil in the 20^th century.

In spite the depravity of Nazism, we will consider what inspiring things we might learn from the courageous leaders of the resistance, like pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and pediatrician Janusz Korczak, who fought to the end to protect the 200 children in his orphanage.

Come join us as we remember this day, and as we look to the future.

 

November 13, 2019

CommUnity Coffee House of the Carolina Foothills presents

 Reggie Harris and Greg Greenway in an unforgettable concert that explores friendship, race, and community through music, storytelling, and the spoken word.

Wednesday November 13, 2019 at 7 pm

At the Historic Sunnydale Cabin

334 S. Trade Street in Tryon

Tickets $20.00 for general seating

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4295519

 

November 17, 2019

 Becoming Thankful People: How the Spiritual Practice of Gratitude is the Secret to a Well Lived Life

By Lyndon Harris

Looking for a life hack to increase peace and fulfillment, and decrease anxiety, anger and depression? – try gratitude! Each year in the US, we celebrate Thanksgiving as a national holiday, but it doesn’t seem to take root. Why is that? Come join us for a conversation about gratitude, and explore spiritual practices for increasing it in your life!

 

 

For this week’s service at Sunnydale 334 S. Trade Street at 10:30 am on Sunday, October 6, Lyndon Harris will be sharing “The Exuberance of Francis: What a 12th Century Saint Can Teach Us Today.” Please join us as for this reflection and dialogue about the life and work of Saint Francis of Assisi who worked on behalf of the poor and was grounded in a spirituality that honored all living and non-living things.

 

Please also mark your calendars for Wednesday, November 13 at 7pm for the upcoming inaugural CommUnity Coffee House of the Carolina Foothills with Reggie Harris and Greg Greenway and “Deeper Than The Skin” (CommUnity Coffee House page on our web site). After the two very talented, award-winning musicians sing gospel and folk songs about racism and prejudice, they share how their friendship overcame the racial divide, and then the audience gets to share their experiences.

CommUnity Conversations Continue

This Wednesday, September 11, from 2:00 – 4:00 pm at The Tryon Depot at 22 Depot Street, Robin Edgar will be facilitating Conversations about Compassion & Forgiveness.  In response to the feelings hate and retribution after the 9/11 attacks, The Fetzer Institute initiated a national campaign, “Conversations about Love & Forgiveness,” one of which Robin Edgar facilitated in Charlotte, NC. After four years of conversations, The Fetzer Institute recognized that compassion was a key to forgiveness and initiated “Conversations about Compassion.”

All of our CommUnity Converastions are free and open to the public so I hope you can join any or all of the remaining conversations:

• Weds Sept 11from 2:00 – 4:00 pm: Compassion & Forgiveness with Robin Edgar
• Weds Sept 18from 2:00 – 4:00 pm: Forgiveness for Good with Lyndon Harris and Robin Edgar
• Weds Sept 25from 2:00 to 5:00 pm: Better Angels Depolarization Skills workshop with Del Kimbler will teach the discipline of non-polarizing attitudes and words about the political “other”. (Note: this is a three-hour workshop.)

 

Our Next Fellowship on Sunday, September 15, 2019

Lyndon Harris will be sharing about “Four Little Girls.” On September 15, 1963, following the forced desegregation of schools in Alabama, four African American girls were killed in the cruel bombing, by the KKK, of the 16^th Street Baptist Church. 56 years have passed and we’ve come a long way. But we still have a way to go. In this reflection we will consider developments in civil rights, from the early sixties to the rise of Black Lives Matter and the amazing work of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative.

 

Best regards,
Robin Edgar

President of the UUFCF Board