Prairie Fire
October 22, 2010
In
this issue:
-Calendar
-Programs
-RE news
-Society News
-Rev. Jane's Notes
The
full-featured Prairie
Fire
is published on the 22nd
of every month.The Prairie
Fire Bulletin
is a calendar-only newsletter that
is published on the
6th of every month. Both are published
by Prairie Unitarian Universalist Society. View past issues at
www.uuprairie.org
Contact Us:
President
Barbara Park, 608-273-8775
barpark@gmail.com
Consulting
Minister
Rev. Jane Esbensen
minister@uuprairie.org
608-770-5486
Director of
Religious Education
Rebecca Malke-Eliganti
youthcoordinator@uuprairie.org
695-3435
Editor/
Congregational Administrator
Kate Liu
admin@uuprairie.org
271-8218
Prairie Web Sites:
Society Home Page
www.uuprairie.org
News Group
http://groups.yahoo.
com/group/prairie
news/
Views
http://groups.yahoo.
com/group/prairie
views/
Social Action
http://socialaction.
madisonwi.us
Humanist Union
http://humanist.
madisonwi.us
Input Deadlines:
Calendar
items and program descriptions are due on the 1st and 15th of each
month. Feature articles for the full Prairie
Fire
are due on the 15th of each month. Please send to Kate Liu at
admin@uuprairie.org
or call 271-8218.
Calendar
Sunday,
October 24, 2010
8:45 Choir rehearsal
10:00 Service: “Tai Chi as a Form of Spirituality,”
presented by Randy Converse.
10:00 Service Sunday for Religious Education classes.
11:45 Service Auction! Lunch and childcare will be available.
Tuesday,
October 26, 2010
1:30 Prairie Elders meet at Oakwood. Topic is “Preparing
written and audio memoirs.”
7:00 Adult Ed, part 2, “Designing a Rain Garden,”
with Judy Skog
Sunday,
October 31, 2010
8:45 Choir Rehearsal
10:00 Service: “A Mexican Celebration of the Day of the
Dead,” presented by Dorothy Krause.
Monday,
November 1, 2010
7:00 Finance Committee meets upstairs at Prairie; Religious Education
Committee meets downstairs.
Thursday, November 4, 2010 7:00 Prairie Board meeting.
Saturday,
November 6, 2010
9:00 WOW (Prairie's women's group) will meet at Prairie for breakfast
potluck and conversation.
10-12 Adult Ed, “What it Means to be a UU” with
Rev. Jane Esbensen.
Sunday,
November 7, 2010
8:45 Choir Rehearsal. New singers always welcome.
10:00 Service- “Respect for the Web of All Existence: How
Wicca Affirms and Promotes Our 7th Principle,” presented by
Rev. Selena Fox.
11:45 Humanist Union - Potluck lunch 11:45 am, 12:30 pm presentation.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010 7:00 Caring Committee meets.
Sunday,
November 14, 2010
8:45 Choir rehearsal
10:00 Service - "Words, Words, Words," presented by Rev. Jane Esbensen.
11:45
Fall Parish Meeting and Potluck
Upcoming Programs
Sunday,
October 24, 2010, 10:00 am: “Tai Chi as a Form of
Sprituality,”
presented by Randy Converse . Randy
has been studying Tai Chi for four years. He will be sharing how Tai
Chi conforms to his definition of spirituality along with Tai Chi's
roots, health benefits, and connections to UUism. There will be
audience participation along with intellectual engagement! Randy
Converse is married to Kathy Converse, and they have 2 adult children,
Mei-lien and Tara.
Sunday, October 31, 2010, 10:00 am: "A Mexican Celebration of the Day of the Dead” presented by Dorothy Krause. This year, as part of our ongoing focus of immigration, the Day of the Dead service on October 31st will include members of the local Mexican community. We will have an altar to which everyone will be invited to add mementos of loved ones they have lost. In addition we will have a potluck where we will honor our loved ones by providing a dish that they favored.
Sunday, November 7, 2010, 10:00am: “Respect for the Web of All Existence: How Wicca Affirms and Promotes Our 7th Principle,” presented by Selena Fox. This is the first in the lay series: How the world's religions use their beliefs and practices to care for our environment. Wicca is a nature-based religion that celebrates the cycles of nature with believers who seek to live in harmony with Mother Earth. Internationally known Wiccan priestess, Selena Fox, will tell us how followers of the Craft respect and care for our ecosphere. Selena is founder and co-executive director of Circle Sanctuary in Barneveld, WI, a 200 acre nature preserve.
Sunday, November 14, 2010, 10:00 am – "Words, Words, Words," presented by Rev. Jane Esbensen. One of the things that can be said without dispute about UUs is that we talk a lot! One of the other things that can be said about UUs is that we are very particular about the words that we use, especially in our Sunday morning services. This Sunday will be a service about the power of words, and how they can open hearts and minds, or turn us away from the greater causes that lie before us.
Religious
Education News
Last Saturday was our annual Fall Frolic event. Six families got together and celebrated Fall at Schuster's Playtime Farm in Deerfield. There was a huge play area for the kids to play in and a petting zoo for the little ones. We all took a hayride to the pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins. Jessie Garst made sure Indy and Kiran Eliganti had fun by helping them play on all slides and the huge wooden cars. At our bonfire Lynn Pawelski cooked up some hot dogs (one made it into the fire, the other on the ground) while James and Paul Hughes braved the tractor ride through the haunted forest. It was a great time! Many thanks to Karen Deaton for arranging the event.
This coming Sunday is Service Sunday. Service Sunday's are a time for our youth to give back to the community. We'll be raking leaves for two
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elderly people in our neighborhood. Our littlest UU's will be raking the leaves in the front yard of Prairie. If you would like to lend a helping hand please let me know.
Middle and high school students have been spending the month learning about Wicca. Last week we had a speaker from Circle Sanctuary give a talk to the students and several adults. According to their web site www.circlesanctuary.org, Circle is "a non-profit organization dedicated to networking, research, spiritual healing, community celebrations, and education,” in Barneveld. We are lucky to have such a valuable resource so close to home. The speaker talked about the Craft, how he practices it and the many misconceptions of his faith.
After class I asked middle school student James Hughes what he thought of the speaker and he shrugged and said, "It's just another religion that someone practices and believes in". To me, that was the perfect response. He didn't think the speaker was weird or that the religion is evil, it was just simply another way of thinking and believing. I wish everyone could look at the world's religions in that way. To see their beauty and use and simply say, "this is just another way of believing".
Coming up is a field trip to Circle Sanctuary to attend the annual Samhain or Halloween event on Sunday, October 31st. We'll spend the day walking around the 200 acre nature site, attending workshops, merchant booths and viewing their new green cemetery.
If you are interested in joining the students on any of their field trips or listen to a speaker you are most welcome! After Wicca students will learn about Christianity and make a trip to Holy Wisdom Monastery in Middleton (Benedictine Women of Madison). Next semester they will learn about Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism.
As always, see you on Sunday!
Rebecca Malke
Director of Religious Education
Sunday,
November 21 - River
of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s
Darkest Journey by Candice
Millard. This one is about Roosevelt’s
journey to the Amazon after his defeat for a third term. Said to be a
“gripping account,” it also gives
“marvelous amount
of detail ... on the wildlife that Roosevelt and his fellow explorers
encountered on their journey.” The author was a writer for
National Geographic.
In
September, the front of our sanctuary space was rearranged, placing
the piano on the right and the speaker on the left. Then, in early
October, Rev. Jane and Rebecca were visiting the Holy Wisdom 
Monastery garage sale and found us some spectacular new chairs. The
chairs are solid oak with a blue seat cushion. The benches which used
to reside at the back of the room are now up front on the sides, and
a new rug and pillows were purchased for our children to enjoy during
story time. The overall effect is very warm and welcoming. If you
haven't been to Prairie in a while, come in soon and see our
beautiful space!
That
being said, I wanted to say to you all how truly fortunate I feel to
have landed in your midst. To have been invited to be a part of your
lives for awhile. To be granted the freedom to have an opinion, to
share my thoughts and ideas (to move furniture around!), and to feel
even more welcomed as each new day passes. Your tenderness and your
open hearts, your feisty spirits, your wonderful courage and your
various histories, as UUs and as members of Prairie, inspire me more
and more to help spread the Good News about this small
congregation’s
existence here in Madison, and to the hinterlands that surround us,
so that others who might not know of this congregation can find us.
There is something rich and rewarding happening here, but
it’s
like that light that’s under that famous bushel we sing so
boisterously about, asking and telling ourselves to ”let it
shine, let it shine, let it shine” -------- but we
don’t
really do that. And those are moments missed, that would not only
gladden our hearts by the inclusion of new people in our midst, but
would be of great joy to those who find us.
He was born and raised in
Madison and very
much likes it here.