IMAGINE….
On Saturday February 23, the Program Committee sponsored IMAGINE – a half day workshop to envision what our future fundraising and fellowship opportunities could look like. Energy was high and ideas overflowed as we covered the walls with events that worked in the past and brainstormed how we might move forward. A full report will be available soon for anyone who is interested. In the meantime, here are some highlights:
We focused on four categories of opportunity:
Fellowship: We all agreed on the importance of continued opportunities to learn, play and break bread together. We especially love the breaking bread part, with favorite events including Easter Sunrise Breakfast, bonfires and fireside chats, potluck dinners, healthy eating group, and meditation. New ideas included bike rides, game nights, sing-a-longs, a free event for the community, educational opportunities, a pet costume parade, wine & cheese evening, book/supper clubs. We agreed that these events should be reserved for fellowship and not have a fundraising focus.
We agreed that focusing on two large fundraisers a year would help us reach our goals faster. These events would be open to the public and promoted widely in the larger community. Our largest fundraising event is the popular Speaker Series, which continues to draw attendees from far and wide, and brings in between $9,000 and $10,000. Anita Coupe will continue to manage the Speaker series, even as she steps down from her post as Program Committee Chair, so it will be critical to have a new Chair to guide other activities. Ideas are abundant, and many offered to “champion” projects that piqued their interest. An important point was that it’s not necessary to be “on the committee” to champion a project. All this does take leadership and organization, so if you are intrigued by where this may lead, throw your hat in the ring and get involved!
Here’s a quick summary of the ideas that we IMAGINED together:
Large Fundraising Events: Some of the ideas for additional large events included a clambake/concert, a fashion show/marketplace/trunk show, a musical at the City Theater, a formal dinner with a silent auction, Artisan Store – farmer’s market consignment a Folk Show , a collective yard sale, an educational series, sponsored travel . We agreed that it’s worthwhile to consider combining events/activities in order to maximize labor and income generation, for example an event where concert tickets are sold, then food or other items are available for purchase or at auction. We also discussed the importance of defining “How big is a BIG fundraiser?”
Smaller Fundraisers would be more targeted for the Union Church and Biddeford Pool community and could include favorites like Mardi Gras and other themed dinners and special speakers. New ideas included a poetry workshop, Outdoor movie night, Art-to-Go, a visiting exhibit from the Portland Museum of Art, artist’s studio tours, wine tasting and private label wine, chili or chowder cook-Off, plant/produce/harvest sale, pool, ping-pong, horseshoes, croquet and/or bocce tournaments or leagues.
Passive/Ongoing Fundraising emerged as another opportunity to create sustainable income streams with minimal effort after set-up. Planned giving, estate planning, direct deposit and other financial instruments were discussed. Online auctions or an E-bay account, dedicated Clynk recycling account, selling bricks or pews with names, grocery store gift cards, gratitude boxes or donation baskets were other possibilities we wanted to explore.
A Short-term Follow up Committee volunteered to lead next steps and help us create some criteria for how to move ahead. If you are interested in any part of this exciting effort, please contact me or the Program Committee. .... Stacy Cooper, Moderator
Pastor’s Note: Stacy did an incredible job facilitating the Imagine event, keeping all 20 + folks in attendance on track, while inspiring our creative input. A huge THANK YOU to Stacy for her expert leadership, energy and time preparing for and facilitating the event, and also for compiling all the input, with the able assistance of Beth Baskin.
What’s up with our magical musicians?
Rob Duquette has a duquette CD coming out!! It's called "This Time"
He will be doing a release party Sunday, March 24th at the McArthur Library in Biddeford at 3pm, (Andrea Wollstadt is doing an opening set and will join the band) and Friday March 29th at Dogfish Cafe in Portland ( a really cool place!!) at 8pm. Congrats to Rob who is making moves on the greater Portland music scene!
Ada Goff & Paul Comeau and band, Wicker Pigs will be playing at the Winter Market in Saco on the 2nd and 3rd Saturdays of every month from 9:30 to noon. Catch their music! It will have you dancin’ and groovin’!
Jen Comeau and band will be at the Winter Market in Saco on the 4th Saturday of the month, also 9:30 to noon. Jen’s music is guaranteed to lift your spirits and warm the cockles of yer heart!
Michelle Currie will be at the Kennebunkport Inn on the 2nd and 4th Friday nights from 7:30 to 11:30 in the piano bar. She really rocks the place and works the room. It’s a magical treat!
All of these gifted musicians will bless us with their music on a regular basis at Union Church!
CHOIR: We are deeply grateful to the Reverends Shantia and Jonathan Wright Gray, who with Michelle as accompanist are doing a wonderful job with the Union Church Choir! They will bring us the joy of Easter in song on both Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Additional voices are welcome! Speak to Shantia or Jonathan or Michelle and you are in!
We are deeply grateful to Nancy Bernier for her expertise recording our musical events and even some of our Sunday services. She has captured our songs and spirit in photographs, collages, video and audio. Many thanks, Nancy! If you’d like to see some of her images and/or videos, let her know.
Creative musings of our talented members......
Waiting for the Beginning
There is a belief that
human life begins at conception.
Who is to say this is not true?
Once we have been pushed
screaming into this glaring, blaring
place we call the world,
then begins our true journey toward
birth and life.
When does our life begin—
Who knows? What if we never get there at all
and our wondrous conception was wasted?
LIFE is so much more, beyond
our conceiving,
and we only come into it
kicking and screaming,
if at all. Jonathan Wright-Gray
FEBRUARY SNOWSTORM
.......Deborah Burke
We had one of those snowstorms
That falls heavy like
a lover on the beloved,
thick and wet and steady.
Sticking gobs of kisses
On the stubs of the beach roses
That held those smacks for hours
Like sweet kisses
The hemlocks looked
Like virgin brides all
Decked out in lace and sequins
Almost transparent in their goodness
Even the sturdy white cedar
Opened its big arms
Holding and holding without complaint
The fullness of the falling
Behind the house, the bare-branched
Maple shone in the next-day sun
Looking for all the world
Like a beauty queen who’d
Just won a contest. You came to
Stand beside me as I gazed on the
Love fest going on outside.
I took your hand. Feb 25, 2013
IMMORTALITY
... Marilyn Berman
Deep in my bones a silent conviction:
I’m immortal. No contradiction.
Routine mammo this morning. Doc gazes at me
And pauses; I wonder, What did he see?
“We need more tests.” I fail those too.
With surgery and radiation my breast is born anew.
Energy restored, a sigh of relief.
Immortal again---but the pardon is brief.
No sign of recurrence, pleasant hours and days.
Then a fearful warning: my eyes will not liaise.
Every day’s a little worse, and I am asking why.
A specialist assures me, the cause is not the eye.
This dedicated doctor requests a special test.
It shows a tumor in my head, there is no time to rest.
To destroy this stealthy enemy, Surgeon wields his knife.
He is a mighty soldier in this battle for my life.
“I think I got it all,” he says, “but it might recur.”
The fantasy of endless time disperses in a blur.
Weeks and months slide by as eye functions mend.
One face in the mirror. I dare to hope for tumor’s end.
Once again I visit (now I know it’s as a guest)
The land of immortality for a transitory rest.
Though invisible on fancy tests, miniscule tumor specks remain.
Unknown to all assessors, it’s still lurking in my brain.
It will not come back, I yet resolve, as if reality yields to decision.
Certainty comes with sad acceptance when I wake again with double-vision.
Two more times, knife to tumor.
Things go wrong; it’s not a rumor.
Then forty days of proton beams,
New radiation: never in my dreams.
Prognosis good, I live again
But now I know there is an end.
The Collector
by John Forssen
Like most young boys, I became a collector almost from the time I could walk, filling my pockets with curiosities that sparkled in the summer sun or simply struck my fancy because they were, at least to my inexperienced eye, unusual and, therefore, valuable: a quartz shard, the brittle carapace of a beetle, a bottle cap pressed and misshapen into hot pavement by passing traffic and, on one special occasion, the discarded sleeve of a snake --a veritable trophy for an eight-year-old. Even today, as I walk with Paulette, mainly through mall parking lots, I find myself stooping from time to time to examine bits of litter which recall the treasures I had once gathered and put away with such enthusiasm. The heart of a true collector, you see, remains steadfast despite passing years.
Needless to say, however, protected as I am in this seventh decade by a sharper eye, one that has the capacity to perceive pestilence in things scattered about underfoot, I have learned that one no longer touches these once precious castoffs. Aware that there are eyes upon me, I rise from my stoop and walk on by.
So I am no longer the collector that I once was, but the emergence of this memory is enough to prompt a chain of others, the first of which was the day that I learned there can be consequences to the acquisitive curiosity of a young boy.
We were at our summer camp. My mother was doing laundry, which she took from a tub (our one electrical appliance hauled in and out of the kitchen on wash day) and rinsed in the lake. I was sitting on the step by our back door when she came out, a pair of jeans that had not yet found their way into the tub held gingerly at arm’s length in her fingers. As she sat down beside me, I could not ignore the odor that accompanied her. Even to an eight-year-old, it was breathtaking. Her dismay was obvious, but she was not unpleasant. She handed the jeans to me and asked me to empty the pockets. I retrieved a variety of items --treasures all-- but the centerpiece of this effort was a not so small toad which I had come across earlier in the week: a pet, I had thought at the time, planning to make a cage for it later that day.
But, of course, much to the toad’s misfortune, I had forgotten. My mother’s rebuke, as always, was gentle, but I left that moment a reformed collector, promising that no more creatures, live or otherwise, would find their way into the pockets of my jeans. It was a heady moment, my first experience with redemption.
But redemption can be tricky. There is much about it that is not so much spoken as intuited.
Thus, while true to my promise to keep my pockets clean, I missed her larger meaning about the sanctity of all living things; and I happily joined my playmates to burn ants with a magnifying glass, take after squirrels with my slingshot and, with my first gun --a bolt-action Remington .22-- set about killing songbirds in the forest behind our house. It wasn’t meanness. We were simply boys, hunters-in-the making, following a tradition which shaped the culture of our rural corner of New Hampshire. One day, with larger guns, we would rise to the challenge of game birds and deer, perhaps even a bear or moose. Like the men in whose shadows we lived, we would have blood on our hands. It was a badge of honor.
As it turned out, I was a great disappointment to the hunter who lived somewhere deep in my heart. On my first outing with the men in our tiny village, a teenager by then, I watched the gutting of a handsome young buck, the smell of its innards forming a sour taste in the back of my throat, and I became violently ill much to the amusement of the experienced hunters in whose company I traveled that day. Of course, I was forgiven that early offense; one or two of the men even acknowledged that they had had similar experiences --but my killing days were over. Of that I was sure, though I have never faulted those who continue to hunt..
Then came the war.
Once again, killing emerged as a virtue or, at the very least, a necessity, the transition from hunter to warrior being a matter of small degrees. It goes without saying that we were not asked to judge what we were doing, and I don’t believe many of us did. Trying to decide the right or wrong of a thing under fire can be a costly exercise: mission is everything, the world and the universe, everything that is or ever was or will be. There are times when men must die.
On more than one occasion, however, I found myself saying a tiny prayer as we headed into the jungle: “Please,” I would whisper softly enough that no one would hear, “put nothing in our path today that needs to be killed.”
I might have expressed that sentiment years earlier, but then I was only a boy and in my boy’s world nothing was forever.
