Help Identify our 2022 GA Delegates!

General Assembly (GA) is the annual meeting of our Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). Participants worship, witness, learn, connect, and make policy for the Association through democratic process. It will be June 22 – 26 and it will be both online and in-person in Portland, Oregon. Anyone may attend! Delegates vote on our behalf, but everyone is encouraged to attend GA! Information about financial aid can be found here. Our GA Delegate Policy, which was new and improved last year, charges the Nominating Committee with presenting the congregation with a slate of Delegates to vote on. This replaces the informal policy

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Board Update for November 2021

Hello friends. You read the subject correctly – although it is now early December, I (Kristina) am writing to provide a November update from the WSUU Board of Trustees. This is often a busy time of year even in normal circumstances; so much has been happening that this month we thought the most sensible thing to communicate would be a summary of the various things we’ve been working on the past few months. Because I am a librarian and I can’t pass up a chance to share resources, I will take this opportunity to remind everyone (or let you know if you didn’t

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Meet the Committee on Ministry

Dearest Westside members and friends, We, the Committee on Ministry, are pleased to introduce ourselves. We are Simon Knaphus, Roseanne Lorenzana, John Fawcett-Long, Naomi Bradfute, Peggy Abby, and Rev. Christopher. We were chosen by Rev. Christopher with input from last year’s Board of Trustees, and have been affirmed by the Board of Trustees this year. Although we have been meeting since May 2021, we took awhile to find our rhythm with each other and to build our container. In fact, we are still polishing our mission statement and will share it soon. In general, a Committee on Ministry (CoM) is

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A Qigong and Meditation Morning

Saturday, January 8, 9:15 – 12:45. In person at the Westside Unitarian Universalist Congregation Social Hall.Start off the new year with practices that can add vitality and calmness to your life!  The morning is suitable for beginner and experienced meditators. For beginners, we will cover the basics of sitting meditation with an opportunity to practice and ask questions. For more experienced meditators, incorporating movement into your meditation practice can deepen and integrate your practice into your life. Meditation instruction will be given by Jill Boone, a Buddhist Lay Minister who leads the West Seattle Buddhist Sangha. Qigong is an ancient Chinese system

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Aging to Saging Scheduling Survey

Members of the Aging to Saging group at Westside are invited to complete the form below to help determine the best times for meeting for the remainder of the church year, and also to provide some feedback on how/if folks are interested in participating in in-person gatherings in addition to online ones. The current plan is to offer one in-person meeting and one online one each month on a consistent schedule. Thank you for sharing your availability and we look forward to sharing the results of the survey with the group soon.

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Board Update for October 2021

Dear WSUU Friends, The board continues to be busy with several different projects and we are pleased to provide an update. We met this past Thursday and talked about many things, include revisiting COVID policies and discussing the future of RE programs in light of staff changes. As you probably read in last week’s Westside Week, we agreed to plan for in-person worship at WSUU beginning on December 5.  We are deeply grateful for the work of the COVID Task Force (Liz Berggren, Jill Jackson, Amanda Maier, and Chris Hollinger), who have spent many hours reviewing safety guidelines and public

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Moving in Spirit Extended Through November!

The first cycle of Moving in Spirit was a great success, with a growing cohort of movement meditators each week as we visited Kubota Gardens, Lincoln Park and Schmitz Park! It was so lovely to see so many Westside folks gathering to walk on their own, and then to do a little deeper sharing with another person during the second half of our time. It’s such an important time to be making and maintaining connections with friends and members new and old, and I’m so grateful to the new folks who made this a point of connection with the community,

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September Update from Board of Trustees

Dear Westside Community, We are writing to update you regarding one aspect of our board work.  The board is responsible for supervision of our minister, Reverend Christopher. As we self-organize to cover the different board roles and responsibilities, we have designated two board members to be the leads for this function: Laura Pierce and Marco Deppe. We recognize that it may not be obvious how concerns related to staff should be handled, and that without formal channels for feedback, concerns can fester or lead to gossip rather than resolution. The managerial structure of our congregation is that Rev. Christopher is

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General Assembly 2021 Highlights

What is the UUA? https://www.uua.org/about The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is the big umbrella organization for UUs in the U.S. Its membership includes 1,000+ congregations committed to our UU principles; however, each congregation is autonomous—its individual congregational leaders set their own priorities and choose their own ministers and staff. Congregations select delegates who then vote for the leaders of the UUA. The UUA supports congregations by training ministers, publishing books and the UU World magazine, providing religious education curricula, offering shared services, coordinating social justice activities, and more. What is GA? https://www.uua.org/ga. GA is the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalists, where we do the business of the UUA, explore our faith, and lean into

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