Seeking blogs by UU Christians and Christian leaning UUs

I am finding my religious beliefs moving in the detection of Christianity but, I don’t think I can yet call myself a Christian. I am also fining that my connection to Unitarian Universalism (UU) my life long religious community is only getting stronger. My love of teaching UU Sunday school and gathering with my fellow UU young adults for fun and religious nourishment it, only seams to be growing. And If you checked the music on my computer you would find it is made up of tons of modern country music and yup Christian rock music as well. You would even notes if you looked at the music a bit more closely that the Christian rock tends to be newer additions then the country. Also if you were to take a look at my web history that I tend to visit mostly UU blogs and web sites and more resistantly, I have been one the hunt for ones with both a UU and a Christian theme to theme. I was thinking it would help me and probably others who are moving in this religious direction if, their could be a list off blogs by UU’s who are either Christian or Christian leaning folks. Such a list would help us to 1. realize even though we are a small minority’s minority we, are not alone and 2. give us people to discus Christianity from a UU prospective as well as its place in our lives and our UU lives with. I could create a page here on this blog of mine for them to be listed on. All I need to start this page is for you to send me some. I await your submissions.

Announcing the end of the Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Gazette

I will be shutting dawn the independent online newspaper that I tried to get of the ground called the Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Gazette (UUYAG) in clouding all it’s presences online by Sunday March, 7th. That is in one week from tomorrow. Well that is unless someone wants to take it over or I suddenly get fore or five people to commit to write for it as regular contributors before then. UUYAG was intended to be a new independent online newspaper written for and by Unitarian Universalist young adults. It was going to dish up a mix of intelligent journalism, artful story telling, intriguing opinion and weighty commentary. And I had hoped it all would have whimsical humour spun throughout. Also I had hoped it would deal with such subjects as the political and cultural underpinnings and goings on within the varying North American UU young adult communities. It was going to be published online twice to quarterly each year. But sadly it never got off of the ground do to a lack of willing contributors. So come March, 7th it will be no more.

Update:
It is now Sunday March, 7th, so I have removed UUYAG from the internet. That is if someone didn’t download part or all of it and put it’s content back on the internet in some other location. I’m not paranoid it’s just you never now what folks may do in this modern electronic age of easily capturable content. Really I am not paranoid, besides it never really got of the ground so there really was no content for someone to capture in the first place. RIP UUYAG March, 7 2010.

Announcing the beginnings of Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Gazette

This is the announcement I posted on the Unitarian Universalist (UU) youth and young adult web site, FUUSE and a few other places, including on all the UU young adult Faceboox groups I am a member of. And it’s in regards to the new independent online newspaper written for and by Unitarian Universalist young adults in North America to which I am launching. Hopefully some time this spring if all goes well.

The Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Gazette will be a new independent online newspaper written for and by Unitarian Universalist young adults (UUYA). It will dish up a mix of intelligent journalism, artful story telling, intriguing opinion and weighty commentary. Hopefully all with great sprinklings of ridicules and whimsical humour spun throughout. It will with any luck deal with such subjects as the political and cultural underpinnings and goings one within the varying North American UUYA communities. And it will be published online twice to quarterly each year at http://uuyag.wordpress.com/. But before any of this can happen, editors, writers and journalist need to be sought. So this is where you come in. Have you ever thought, wouldn’t it be nice if I could tell the wider UUYA community about what goes on young adult wise locally ware I am. Or maybe you just want to know more about what the UUA or the CUC’s planes are wen it comes to support for UUYA community and have always wanted to track it dawn but haven’t do to a lake of an appropriate venue to share your findings in. Or maybe you have a relay funny UUYA themed fiction story or poem you just what to share with a wider UUYA audience. Well the Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Gazette is just the place to do it in. So come onboard and be an editor, writer or journalist for this crate new UUYA online newspaper, by sending a message describing your area of interest to nived_90@yahoo.ca with UUYAG in the subject line. And to stay up to date with this new endeavour plus to get an e-mail notification of the release of the first edition just go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/uuyag-announce/ and join the official Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Gazette e-mail announcement list.

“Consultation on Ministry To and With Youth Summary Report”, my thoughts…

What follows I also originally posted to one of the threads in the same Faceboox group as, not my last post but the two before it.

This is what I concluded from reading the “Consultation on Ministry To and With Youth Summary Report”, the UUA is trying to move the focus of youth programming from an “adult facilitated but youth led and organized program” to an “adult administrated ministry for youth”. It should be noted that I am getting the impression that the UUA’s goal is to do more things for youth. Instead of what has been the practise amongst Canadian and US UU communities for years, which was manly to help youth billed and maintain healthy communities of their own which would serve their needs. I don’t like this change but maybe it is just because the old way of doing things really served my needs rather vary well for the most part.

Also I fund these passages from the report rather interesting.

Some groups, such as the UUA Board, asserted that lack of ministerial involvement with youth in their congregation, which is sometimes explained by the philosophy of youth empowerment, is actually abandonment. The Board was also concerned that many adults and congregations lack a deep understanding of how to nurture, protect, and empower youth in healthy ways. Ministry & Professional Leadership staff at the UUA noted a lack of pastoral care and attention to youth’s pain. Similarly, others mentioned the need for UUs to be more sensitive and to listen to the lived experiences and emotional and spiritual suffering of marginalized people, including youth.

Some youth seek pastoral care in community with one another; for example, 72 percent of survey respondents of high school age indicated that their youth group helps them explore options and offers suggestions on how to deal with life situations. Congregations discussed the strong bonds formed among youth and the way they form a peer ministry.

And…

Unitarian Universalist youth are like all Unitarian Universalists – they embrace a wide variety of spiritualities and worship styles. Participants at the Central Midwest District gathering reminded us that “youth are members of a community and communities work with the different needs of its members.” Other groups pointed out to us that UU youth communities do not always welcome this diversity; for example, youth at the Metro New York District and Joseph Priestley District gatherings talked about the strong reactions they receive when they talk about God or Christian beliefs. YRUU leaders envisioned a community where youth feel comfortable naming their higher power. Many groups (youth and adults) identified a gap between lifelong, raised-Unitarian Universalists and those who have found Unitarian Universalism. These groups also discussed the perception in congregations that becoming UU is an adult process, rather than something we should raise our children to be.

Then this…

Some youth communities (particularly at the district and continental level) experience tension with the Continental Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Network (C*UUYAN) or young adult community. According to C*UUYAN leaders, this is due in part to inappropriate boundaries of some young adults, generalizations based on age, and no intentional welcoming relationship between the two. The UUA Board called youths’ departure from youth programs a “bridge to nowhere” and called for more welcoming of youth into young adult and camps ministry.

P.S.
So if you are a Unitarian Universalist (UU) and care about UU youth and or the future of UUism in North America I do urge you to go and read the “Consultation on Ministry To and With Youth Summary Report”. And then do give me your thoughts on what you think of it as well as your thoughts on my impressions of it.

Some Unitarian Universalist young adult questions and concerns

I feel there is a saver lack of institutional memory wen it comes to Unitarian Universalist young adult (UUYA) community, weather that’s on the local level, regional/district level or even on the continental level. Let me elaborate for a moment. What I men is we have little if not any knowledge as to why the various UUYA communities and their activities have come to be as they are including what has driven, hindered and heart them throw out their lives, whether that has been long or short. We also have no knowledge of why the founders of these communities set them up the way they did if we even know who their founders were in the first place. As well we have no memory of what has possibly come before in the wide world of UUYA community but may not be here today.

Also I think lots of us would agree that it is often unclear as to why the current batch of UUYAs attend the UUYA activates and events that they do and what they think their proposes are. Let me use Opus as an example. Opus had been the annul continental (i.e. US and Canada) gathering for UUYAs held at varying camps throughout the US and Canada once a year in late summer until it was put on holed at least for this year (2008). Ok Opus for some is a young adult spiritual retreat (i.e. a place for communal rejuvenation of the soul). And for others it’s a young adult spiritual conference (i.e. a place to do the hard work, which will allow us UUYAs to go out into the wider world and attempted to demonstrate who to live in more accepting was for ourselves, and those we interact with). And still for others it’s a place to help grow UUYA community. See by this example you can see that people’s vow of a single UUYA event can vary so greatly. And why should this madder to us as UUYAs well, maybe if we want coherent focuses for our events, then we need to have a collective understanding of the purposes of these events. Also if we wont to attract young adults with a common focus to our events then we need to know what the common theme and or mandate of these events are.

And another point how do UUYA groups and they’re varying communities fit into the wider cacophony of UU community and groups, let alone who do raised UU and newbie UU YAs fit in to UUYA communities themselves. Also what do the varying UUYAs bring to UUYA Community and is it appropriate or even desirable for alumnus of YRUU (Young religious Unitarian Universalists) the UU youth program run on a continental, regional/district and local level to bring things from their over to the UUYA world.

And what I have raised here are all pretty deep questions and concerns. So what to do about it all? Well we as UUYAs can’t just go back in time and gather the missing knowledge about our varying communities and their events and use it to help us go forward. No but we can get-together and attempt to not lose the institutional knowledge that we have gathered from our time in these varying crazily connected communities and use this. Also about finding out why we are involved in the varying UUYA groups events to which we are, well starting a discourse on this is a good start. And by doing these thing maybe we will start to have better focused and more vibrant UUYA communities and events not to mention possibly having some new ones to fill the missing gapes in this our patchwork of communities and events.

Thinking about what my next move should be

I said to my brother that his plane to bike from Ottawa to BC’s west cost this summer with our best friend Joel Fox was another of his foolish planes. And I even tolled him that the resin it was foolish is that it is just another of those endeavours of his that won’t get completed. Ok I did tell him that he would set out but he would only get to maybe as fare as Regina Saskatchewan. All right I may have said this in another one of my moments of playing the clown. I guess I was playing the clown for the same reason students at school play the clown, to get noticed and to lesion their feelings of inadequacy and to be exspted by their peers. In this case the only one I could have possibly wanted to get some attention from was my brother because he was the only one in the room. And was I feeling inadequate well maybe I felt that I just didn’t measure up to my brother. I guess I was just feeling tired of being past up for opportunities to do more then just mottle throw life will around me my brother was always being handed crater opportunities then me. Well that is what it always seems to me, even though it may not seem that way to him. All right maybe it wasn’t the best thing for me to have said seeing as he had helped us get to Albany NY, which was the place I was wen I said this to him. Well it did get him to pay attention to me, even though not in the way I really wanted deep dawn inside of me, but rather in away that only made me realise that I only feel excepted wen I am being funny. You see I have always wanted to be seen as more then the funny mane, well I am not helping myself in that regarded. Ok the reason we were in Albany was because we were there to visit the Albany Free School and the Harriet Tubman Free School to which I may tell you all about in another post. So like I said I tolled my brother that his plane to bike from Ottawa to BC’s west cost this summer with our best friend Joel Fox was another of his foolish planes.

Well this exchange got me thinking about what my next move should be. And that exchange was way before Christmas, yes on the 11th of December to be exact and before that my brother gave me a taro cared reading. It was in my room in Ottawa before the Albany trip I think if I can remember right. And the question I asked the cards to help answer was should I leave Ottawa by the New Year. And by the New Year I meant by the beginning of the new program year, which is usually by the beginning of September. So what did the cards tell me? Well they indicated really strongly that I should leave Ottawa by the New Year. So will I leave Ottawa by the New Year?

Well I along with my brother spent Christmas in the Halifax Dartmouth aria of Nova Scotia at my mom’s place. And will I was their I was still thinking about the taro reading. So wen my brother afford to give me another taro cared reading I jumped at the chance. And after thinking long and hared as to what question to ask the cared, I eventually settled on which direction should I go in, i.e. which way should I leave Ottawa towards, north, south, east or west? So the cards tolled me that the east and south were not good directions to go in but they did indicate that if I left heeding west that relationships of all kinds were likely and if I went north that concrete endeavours were possible.  And wen I mean concrete endeavours I am referring to things that involve formal agreements. So I like the idea of having crater relationships, so I think I may be heading west, but to ware and haw fare west. As far as the west cost? Well only time will tell. And wen exactly will I leave, well not before the middle of May, I think.