UUCA MAY Monthly UUpdates
May 2021
- Rev Kate's Corner
- Religious Education
- President's Column
- Board Meeting Summary
- Racial Justice Task Force
- Hermitage of the Heart
- AAIC Hunger Walk
- Support Group for Being Human
- Women's Book Group
- Community Garden
- Immigration
- Stewardship of the Earth
- UUWA
- It's Outside Season
- Foundation News
- Banter With Bay
- Donation Station
- Summer Institute
- UU General Assembly
Rev. Kate's Korner
Dear UUCA Community,
What a joy it has been to be your interim minister this year. While I still haven’t met many of you in person I have enjoyed getting to know you during Sunday coffee hour, Support Group for Being Human Gatherings, and all the meetings of committees and teams that happen throughout the week. I find UUCA folks to be warm, generous, creative, and optimistic. You have an exciting vision for the future of the church and how you can transform greater Akron. It is wonderful to see you move toward that vision with confidence and clarity.
For everyone in our church family it has been a difficult year. The impossibility of parenting during the pandemic, trying to stay healthy, missing each other’s company- the stress and loneliness have been more than we could have imagined at this time last year. Still, you have continued to treat each other well and continued to care for our community through your many service programs. Despite the pandemic, meals were prepared, groceries distributed, cards were sent and calls were made. You kept caring. When you felt like just hiding under the bed you kept caring. How strong you all are. How resilient.
Many, perhaps most, of you lost loved ones over the past year. I’m so sorry that we couldn’t grieve beside you. When we are together again we will shed tears, share memories, and plant seeds of new life in the Memorial Garden. We will remember every person lost, and their memory will be a blessing. Soon you will not weep alone.
The board and I hope that soon it will be safe for us to have small gatherings inside and outside at the church. The Fellowship Hall floor is already arranged to have people six feet apart, and the high-tech new filtration system in that room will filter out nearly every germ. Thank you to Dan and the board for making a safe space for us to be together. Hopefully, depending on virus variants and local infection numbers, we will be together again for worship services in the fall- hopefully!
Until then, thank you for caring so well for each other, for so graciously welcoming me, and for being your resilient, hopeful, generous selves.
Warmly,
Rev. Kate
RELIGIOUS EXPLORATION STATION
Hello, UUCA Family!
May is (already) here and we’re looking forward to taking Religious Exploration outside and connecting with you all in-person :). We’ve enjoyed
As the weather warms up and our season of Sunday morning classes draws to a close, we’re looking forward to connecting with families on our church grounds for UU centered connection and fun. Keep an eye out for emails of upcoming events this month and in the weeks and months to come!
As with Sunday RE Classes in years past, RE Online on Sunday mornings must take a break so our incredible teachers can get time to refresh, even as much as we’ve loved seeing all of your beautiful children each Sunday morning. While there will be no online RE Classes this month after May 2nd, we’ll be doing other fun stuff!
So, what’s the UUCA RE got going on in May? Take a look below!
May 9th: is Mother’s Day! We hope our children and youth enjoy extra time with their moms today ;)
May 16th: Intergenerational, Youth bridging and Teacher Appreciation Sunday
May 30th (in-person at 2pm @ the UUCA!): RE Picnic on the Lawn! This is a BYOB (bring your own blanket picnic and outdoor games day for young ones and their family beginning with a little UU story time for preschool and elementary-aged UUs and their grownups:). Email Carolyn Stevens or ME @ dre.uuakron@gmail.com with questions ahead of this event :)
Our beloved David Palomo hosts a PJ Dance Party on the 4th Friday of every month @ 7:00p on Zoom. Little ones can enjoy a fun start and soothing wind down to their Friday evening :). Here’s the link to join David P. on Friday nights:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82879613657?pwd=cWpmbTYzYVpZY0FXOUtQRXl0N3BHZz09
7th - 12th graders are welcome to join COYA’s online Zoom meetings on 4th and 1st Sundays at noon! COYA involvement offers youth a great way to connect with others, get creative, develop leadership skills, AND get together for socially distanced fun. Those interested in learning more, please contact Kelly Urbano (kell100@yahoo.com) and Abby L’Bert (dre.uuakron@gmail.com).
UUCA parents and ALL! Our support-centered meetings (hosted by Elizabeth Reilly and Abby L'Bert) are here to help! We are alternating a parent support and check-in space (2nd and 4th Tuesdays) with an all-church morning meditative support session on 1st and 3rd Tuesdays. Both sessions will be held at 6:30am on Tuesday mornings so please feel free to join us as you are able. As always, please contact Elizabeth Reilly (reilly@uakron.edu) and Abby L’Bert (dre.uuakron@gmail.com) with any questions you may have.
Please make a note of my current, RE-online office hours as well! Feel free to connect with me by email or text at (dre.uuakron@gmail.com) or (330)701-9839 Tuesdays through Fridays between 10a - 3p!
Abby L’Bert
DRE @ the UUCA
(330)701-9839 (text)
President’s Column Hallie Bowie, President of the Board of Trustees (she/her)
Presented at the Spring Congregational Meeting April 25, 2021
As president of the Board of Trustees my work focuses on the activities of the Board. You can read my Report of the Board’s work since my report last December in the May Reporter. But I want to recognize that many aspects of our Church life have been going strong without much if any attention from the Board of Trustees over this past year. This includes the ongoing work of our many volunteers in things such as the Community Garden and Meal, Whole Foods Distribution, children’s religious education, UU Women’s Association, pastoral care associates, queer ministry, Racial Justice Taskforce, Anti-Racism Audit Team, Financial Stewardship Committee, and more. Even the groups the Board has had on our agendas do much work that doesn’t involve us. I am continually amazed by the things our volunteers accomplish. On behalf of the congregation and the wider community, thank you!
As much as our church has accomplished over the past year, I also want to recognize that this has been a very difficult year for all of us. Not being able to come together in person has been hard in ways we still don’t fully understand. While Sunday Zoom services have been better than we could have expected, they are not a replacement for worshipping in the same space. Brian’s music and the virtual choir have been beautiful, but they aren’t the equal of raising our voices together. On top of this loss, we have gone through a tremendous amount of change. Already before Rev. Kate arrived, we were dealing with the early months of the pandemic, moving to Zoom services, re inventing the community meal, having totally new ways of coordinating committee meetings, and upending the religious education program. An interim ministry is intended to be an opportunity to make the most of changes that are bound to happen when a congregation gets a new minister. Those changes are always hard, and we have been dealing with them on top of a disturbance that has reached into every aspect of every one of our lives and lasted for months, with little ability to predict or plan for the future.
Things are improving, but we will be dealing with the effects of the pandemic for many more months in various ways. We need to recognize this and be kind to each other. Know that we need to be even more mindful than usual about communicating with each other. Be patient when people don’t seem to process what you have said. I attended a
session the UUA put on last week about how congregations can navigate the coming months. They suggested we take things “Holy Slowly”. We are all impatient. We want things to be different now. But even going back to more in-person gatherings will be yet another change, and require still more adaptation. Remember we are here to support one another. The UU Church of Akron supports one another beautifully. But it’s going to continue to be harder than usual for a while longer. Please remember to be extra kind to one another.
My December Report detailed Board activity between June and December 2020, so I won’t recap that here. This provides a brief summary of the work we have done since then, organized according to our Strategic Plan focus areas.
• Loving Communities: We created the Neighborhood Pods network in February. Since then, we have defined geographic clusters to help members who live in the same area to better support one another, and identified pod leaders for each group. This is an evolving ministry, and one we hope will really start to develop as warmer weather makes it possible for small groups like this to safely meet in person.
• Intellectual and Spiritual Exploration:
o Alease and Bay did a great deal of work creating a survey to gather information about what members would like for Adult Religious Education and had a very good response. At the Board meeting later this week we will be charging an Adult Religious Education committee, and we hope to begin offering adult RE classes by next fall if not sooner.
o Welcomed Elizabeth Reilly as our new Commissioned Lay Minister, recognizing the hard work she has done to receive this accreditation, and welcoming her continued contributions to our congregational life.
o Later this week, the Board will consider changing Abby’s status from Acting Director of Religious Education to simply Director of Religious Education.
• Social Justice Ministries:
o Created a Donation Station building to be constructed on the church property. This will support our partnerships with Margie’s Closet, providing gender affirming clothing for trans people, as well as Yahab, Freedom/New Journey House, local nursing homes, and anyone else who needs things.
o Expanded our support of the immigrant community by providing a dedicated phone line. This will allow us to expand our work in getting people to legal, medical, and service appointments, as well as better connect people with the support, information and community resources that are available to them.
• Stewardship of the Earth:
o Hosted a viewing of the movie Paris to Pittsburgh. In her outreach for that, Laurel Winters forged connections with other UU Congregations in our region, as well as the Portage Trail group of the Sierra Club.
o Provided informational articles for the Reporter.
• Building and Grounds:
o Installed a Bipolar ion generation system in Hannah Hall and the church offices to provide better indoor air quality and improve safety in those areas of the building. This system was installed by a certified EDGE contractor. The acronym stands for Encouraging Diversity, Growth & Equity and is a program by the state of Ohio designed to encourage better equity in hiring practices.
• Other Board work included:
o Approved the purchase of a new church software system, which will streamline our church communications, pledge collections, and provide a new directory for connecting with each other. Once the basic data has been transferred from the current system, we will get to work on making this updated directory available to the membership.
o Renewed the lease with Fairlawn Village Preschool through May of 2022 and committed to working towards a renewal agreement by December of 2021 for the school year that will start in September of 2022.
• The Board continues to monitor the Covid-19 pandemic and to consider when and in what ways it will be safe for us to gather in person again in larger groups. We will be discussing this later this week. While the number of cases in Summit County remains high, just this past week the numbers have started to come down again. We are hopeful that increasing immunizations will continue this trend and the coming months will look much different than the past year for congregational life.
Our work together at UUCA has helped to make 2020 a little brighter than it would have been without our efforts. I’m looking forward to all we will accomplish together in 2021!
APRIL BOARD MEETING SUMMARY
This month the board met to vote in two new, temporary members: Maya Gaijic as the Loving Community Trustee, who will be promoted to a full Trustee when her elected period begins in June, and Mary Jo Marksz as the temporary Intellectual and Spiritual Development Trustee, who will be voted on by the congregation this December to formally take the role. We also agreed to give paid time off for jury duty to the staff members, and at the minister's discretion, to allow paid time off for other court summons. We updated our COVID-19 policy in light of the air handlers and the availability of the vaccine: now we can meet in groups of up to 50 indoors (unlimited outdoors but socially distanced), and we allow going maskless and eating food and drink outdoors only (masks are required for those 2 and up indoors). We created a task force to investigate our policy towards rentals and leasing space, to ensure that we only rent space to those groups who further our mission in some way. And in long-anticipated news, we voted to improve the wifi in the church so that Rev Kate stops freezing up during sermons! Finally, we agreed to appoint Joy Marsella as the chair of the Adult RE committee so that work planning next year's adult RE offerings can begin. Keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming announcement of a presentation by a coach from the UUA about the search for the new minister, which we agreed to schedule via email. As always, the full minutes will be posted to the google drive when they are compiled, and you are welcome to join us at any board meeting if you would like to see the board in action.
And please feel free to join us for May Board Meeting-
UUCA Board of Trustees Meeting for May
Time: May 26, 2021 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
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Lynching of Black Women and Children
White lynch mobs lynched over 6,500 Black men, women and children between the end of the Civil War and 1950. Black women were not only lynched, but they were also more likely to suffer sexual violence at the hands of white mobs. In 1911, a white mob kidnapped Laura Nelson and her teenage son from the Okemah County Jail after they were accused of shooting a white deputy sheriff. Members of the mob reportedly raped Ms. Nelson before hanging her and her son from a bridge near the Black part of town.
In 1918, Mary Turner was lynched in Georgia after she courageously spoke out against the lynching of her husband Hayes Turner. Eight months pregnant, she was kidnapped, beaten and hanged upside down by a white mob. Her unborn baby was cut from her abdomen and its head was crushed by a member of the mob. The grotesque slaughter of a pregnant Black woman reveals how Black women and mothers were dehumanized with impunity and exemplifies the violence Black people face when they spoke out against lynching.
In the face of this violence, journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett exposed and challenged the specific racial and sexual violence against Black women. Ms. Wells-Barnett highlighted the sexual violence inflicted by white men in her report Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases. She noted that the misguided justification for lynching Black men—as punishment for raping white women—served to distract from the violence Black women experienced at the hands of white men. The victimization of Black woman and children was repeatedly ignored, creating patterns of neglect that can be seen today.
#SAYHERNAME
Ma’Khia Bryant Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, Pamela Turner, Sandra Bland, Korryn Gaines, Tanisha Anderson, Yvette Smith, Miriam Carey, Shelly Frey, Darnisha Harris, Malissa Williams, Alesia Thomas, Shantel Davis, Rekia Boyd, Shereese Francis, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Tarika Wilson, Kathryn Johnston, Kendra James, Tyisha Miller
Hermitage of the Heart
Every first and third Thursday, Hermitage of the Heart creates spiritual community in a contemplative setting. Each service explores a theme connected to the rhythms of nature and spirit, to provide a space and time for renewal, stillness and peace amid the maelstrom, so we are able to emerge ready for life. Together, we seek respite, find ways to refresh our spirits, rest in an oasis of peace.Come join our community, seeking wholeness of body, spirit and mind. We experience light and darkness, silence and song, inspiring words and images, and sustained time for reflection and meditation as sources of hope and courage. Take the time to nurture, ground and center yourself.
The sacred space is open from 6:45-7 PM for entering music, and the service begins at 7 PM. You are welcome to invite others who may seek to experience a time of being held in compassionate community, finding and storing the energy to be at peace within themselves before reentering the world.Join us May 6th and May 20th.
Join Zoom Meeting
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One tap mobile
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12th ANNUAL HUNGER WALK
SUPPORT GROUP FOR BEING HUMAN
Join Zoom Meeting
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Women's Book Group
The WOMEN'S BOOK GROUP will meet on ZOOM at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 5th.
We will be discussing American Dirt By Jeanine Cummins
All women are welcome. For questions contact Jan Schrader
janzst@yahoo.com
UU Church of Akron UUCA is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 937 6110 5385
Passcode: 213291
COMMUNITY GARDEN NEWS
This message is from Karen Hoch, head honcho of the Community Garden group.
"Well, we did it! The weather was a bit dismal but that didn't deter the eighteen of us who helped open our Community Garden Saturday morning. Yes, eighteen! It only took us a couple of hours and I think everyone there felt that wonderful sense of accomplishment and camaraderie that follows a big job well done. I took a picture of the crew (see below). From left to right in the background:
Clair Tessier, Carlo and Andrea Tamplin, Linda Hale, Clint Ensworth, Madi Barbour, Becky Ensworth, Dustyn, Nassim Mir, Carla Cremers, Jenni Papp, Jean Finn, Isabelle and Janna Barbour. In the foreground: Tom Hoch, Sharon McWhorter and Ron Scott.
Kudos to all of you!
Another round of applause goes to Steve Killmeyer, Clint Ensworth, Jim LaRue, and Tom Hoch. This crew spent an afternoon last week building new frames for six of our garden beds. Not an easy job. Way to go, guys!
Now that we have crops planted, we need to take care of them. Please reach out to Karen or message me if you would like to volunteer for a shift helping to weed and water this year, a week at a time. We have 27 weeks to cover. Please consider volunteering to help for a week. We can't do it without you!
Mentors are available to show you how to get started if you have never done this before. One person can usually get a day's watering done in an hour; two people, in half the time (we have two hoses). If it happens to be a rainy week, you may not have to water at all! Weekly duty begins on a Sunday and ends on a Saturday.
Remember, we grow this food in order to feed those in the community who are in need of nutritious, organically-grown food. They are counting on us.
IMMIGRATION NEWS
Stewardship of the Earth
“... what if each American landowner converted half of his or her yard to productive native plant communities? Even moderate success could collectively restore some semblance of ecosystem function to more than 20 million acres of what is now ecological wasteland. ” Dr. Doug Tallamy
The time is upon us to work on our yards and our planet! Having annuals for the full season for pollinators is good – but one of the best things is to provide perennials that bloom throughout all of the seasons, and native ones are best. (Remember, the bugs evolved with OUR native plants, not plants from Asia or Europe!)
The Pollinator Partnership has a lot of good information on planting areas and native plants. You can find their wonderful planting guide by blooming season and, scroll down for more plant descriptions at:
Some main plants listed on the chart by blooming season are:
Spring: Golden Alexander, Ohio spiderwort and wild geranium, followed by wild lupine, bleeding heart (shade).
Some early flowering ground covers: adjuga (bugle weed), and lamium (shady)
Early Summer: Butterfly weed – the various asclepias plants that not only attract butterflies, but they are THE ONLY host plant for Monarch caterpillars to eat. It is amazing to watch the little (or sometimes pudgy!) white, yellow and black caterpillars – chomping away! For more information, go to: https://xerces.org/monarchs or www.MonarchWatch.org
Summer: evening primrose, yellow and purple coneflower (leave the seed heads for the birds in the winter), black eyed Susan, Culver’s root, button bush, bee balm, short coreopsis
Late summer: Liatris, joe pye weed (tall or short), tall coreopsis, ironweed
Fall: Asters – short and tall, Autumn Joy sedum – pollinators gearing up migration or hibernation!
For a lot more information, go to Dr. Tallamy’s www.HomegrownNationalPark.org for articles & videos.
For more information on native plants and the wildlife species they support, go to:
https://www.nwf.org/NativePlantFinder/Plants - and put in your zip code!
Happy Planting! Go Green! Thank you!
UUWA
UUWA SPRING PARTY—May 21 at 10:30
Party! Party! Come Celebrate with us! On Friday, May 21, at 10:30 we will be together IN PERSON to enjoy each other and to shower the Stewardship of the Earth committee with native plants.
Meet in the Memorial Garden at 10:30 to share the shower gift you have brought and tell why you chose it. ( Actual plants, gift certificates or monetary donations are all welcome). Wear a festive garden hat and bring your lawn chair. If you like, a bag lunch, too.
Share in the fun activities that we have planned. Just like the diversity of all of us, we’ll see how the many different plants we bring can each have their own contributions to our earth. Laurel Winters will tell us a bit about the Stewardship of the Earth plans for our church grounds.
See the wish list for shower ideas. In case of rain we will meet in the Fellowship Hall following church guidelines.
IT IS OUTSIDE SEASON!
Are you upgrading your outdoor patio furniture this season?
Is your old set still in good condition?
Why not donate it to the UUCA grounds! A couple outdoor table and chair options will allow groups that want to host a meeting at the church to remain comfortably outside, weather permitting. A large table and 6-8 chairs would be great for committee meetings, smaller sets for small groups or one on one meetings. Keep in mind they will need to be moved for mowing so nothing crazy heavy.
You will need to be able to drop it off at the church. Contact Brittney Brittrae.00@gmail.com to arrange a time for drop off or if you have any questions.
FOUNDATION NEWS
Wilson Challenge Fund – Changes in Eligibility and Requirements
The Marty and Charlie Wilson Challenge Fund is a donor-directed fund created by Charlie Wilson to honor his wife, Marty. Charlie placed this Fund in the Foundation to challenge leadership and members to create new programs in the church. Over the years, projects have included showing movies, arts programs for kids, the community garden, the community meal, immigration, among others. The Wilson Fund has required that the Wilson Funds be matched dollar-for-dollar.
As times change, the Foundation Board approaches family members of donor-directed funds to suggest changes so that the Fund can be more responsive to developing church interests and needs. We recently worked with the Wilson family and have made two significant changes in the requirements for projects:
Firstly, we have added a new project eligibility area. The project areas have been:
a. Initiating new and continuing church programs, classes, or procedures believe to be in the best interests of the Church as determined by the Congregation or the Church Board of Trustees.
b. New (re-replacement) furnishings or pieces of equipment believed important and generally necessary for the operation of the Church.
c. Some specific contribution by the Church to the Greater Akron community (e.g., Habitat for Humanity, help for battered women, or help for homeless people).
d. Activities intended to make the Church a friendlier and more interactive place, such as congregational get-togethers that help members and friends get to know each other better or promote the education of our members on important church matters. Examples include Sunday brunches and coffees, potluck dinners or picnics, family movies, parties, or lectures at the Church, childcare during any of these activities.
There has been keen interest in projects that stretch the eligibility requirements and we have accommodated those requests. In working with the Wilson family, we created a new eligibility area as follows:
e. Activities that support new and continuing ministries – including targeted social justice or priority circumstances that may arise from time to time.
Secondly, we have added flexibility to the source of the 50% matching funds. The original match requirement has been in cash. The additional matches that are now permitted are the following:
1. Donations of supplies and materials at fair market value documented by receipts.
2. Donations of supplies and materials at fair market value documented by retail price verification.
3. Other sources, including professional services, as approved by the Foundation prior to submission of an application for funding.
We encourage all members to think about and propose projects. A revised application form is available from Charlie Nelson at cnelson@neo.rr.com (330-807-7351) or Bill Jordan at jordan@uakron.edu (330-618-7738).
LET’S GET STARTED!!!
BANTER WITH BAY
[Content warning: discussion of suicide]
May is mental health awareness month, so let’s talk about mental health in the queer community. (The following statistics compiled by NAMI). LGB adults are more than twice as likely as heterosexual adults to experience a mental health condition, and transgender individuals are nearly four times as likely as cisgender individuals to experience a mental health condition. LGB youth are more than twice as likely to report experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness than their heterosexual peers. Transgender youth face are twice as likely to experience depressive symptoms, seriously consider suicide, and attempt suicide compared to cisgender lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and questioning youth. 40% of transgender adults have attempted suicide in their lifetime, compared to less than 5% of the general U.S. population.
What do you think when I share these statistics? Many enemies of the transgender community love them. They like to brandish them about like a weapon, assuming that being transgender is a horrible condition to have. Interestingly enough, those that are themselves LGB often understand the reason why LGB folks have higher rates of depression, but misinterpret (often willfully so) the reasons when it comes to transgender folks. I’ll give you a hint: it’s not being transgender that causes the depression, just as it isn’t being gay that causes hopelessnes.
One survey conducted in 2019 by the UCLA Williams Institute looked closely at the reasons behind transgender individuals attempting suicide. They noted that people who had experienced discrimination were twice as likely to attempt suicide. Among people who had experienced 4 or more incidents of discrimination in the past year, 98% of them had suicidal ideation, and 51% attempted suicide. And that of course only counts the survivors! Furthermore, those who reported that their spouses, partners, or children rejected them because they are transgender reported a higher prevalence of lifetime and past-year suicide attempts. Those
who reported rejection by their family of origin, for example, reported twice the prevalence of past-year suicide attempts compared to those who had not experienced such rejection (10.5%compared to 5.1%). And some people make huge sacrifices to escape such rejection; those who had “de-transitioned” at some point, meaning having gone back to living according to their sex assigned at birth, were significantly more likely to report suicide thoughts and attempts, both past-year and lifetime, than those who had never “de-transitioned.” Nearly 12 percent of those who “de-transitioned” attempted suicide in the past year compared to 6.7 percent of those who have not “de-transitioned.”
But that’s not all. There were significantly higher thoughts of suicide among those with poor overall health, including those with a disability. This is common across the LGBT spectrum: according to Mental Health America, lesbians are less likely to get preventive services for cancer than straight women, and gay men are at higher risk of HIV and other STDs, especially among communities of color. While one cannot deny insurance coverage solely for being lgbt, In a survey of LGBTQ+ people, more than half of all respondents reported that they have faced cases of providers denying care, using harsh language, or blaming the patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity as the cause for an illness. Approximately 8 percent of LGBTQ+ individuals and nearly 27 percent of transgender individuals report being denied needed health care outright. This covers both physical and mental health; sadly, many mental health providers just don’t understand LGBTQ issues, and can offer no support to those in these vulnerable positions.
Depression and suicide are often thought of as personal problems, as a “weakness” in someone or a specific brain chemistry issue. Yet that’s not always the case. While many people do have a brain chemistry issue, this can often be caused by trauma, which has been proven to change the brain chemistry of an individual by habituating them to certain responses and decreasing their ability to self-regulate. Furthermore, as you can see by the above statistics, environmental factors play a huge role. If one is not traumatized (and good luck finding an LGBTQIA+ individual in America without some level of trauma!), one might still be at risk for depression or suicide due to environmental factors alone. We’ve all experienced periods where things seemed hopeless, where there seemed to be no way out. Most of us have healthy coping skills and a support network to rely on, but many LGBTQ people do not. 13.1 percent of those who had experienced religious rejection in the past year had attempted suicide in the past year; by contrast, 6.3 percent of respondents who had experienced religious acceptance in the past year attempted suicide. And the numbers only get worse for people who have been subjected to religious “conversion therapy”! An estimated 20,000 LGBTQ minors in states without protections will be subjected to conversion therapy by a licensed healthcare professional; an estimated 81% of people who have had conversion therapy received it from a religious leader, and 31% received it from a health care provider. LGB people who experienced conversion therapy showed 92% greater odds of lifetime suicidal ideation, 75% greater odds of planning to attempt suicide, and 88% greater odds of attempting suicide. Conversion therapy is legal in Ohio; SB 50 is an attempt to change that, which you can support by contacting Equality Ohio.
The biggest thing we can do, however, is work to build a society where people are accepted no matter their sexual orientation, their gender identity, or their romantic orientation. We need to stop conversion therapy; we need to educate mental and physical health providers, and get people who refuse to treat all their patients out of the practice. We need to talk to our friends and neighbors who are less tolerant and ask them pointed questions about why they disapprove, why they are okay with the deaths of these members of the community that are so vulnerable. We can make a show of acceptance in the community, building space for people to gather and receive support. To this end, I’ve partnered with Spectrum Community Center in Akron; when it is safe to do so, we will be allowing them space in our building to meet and provide support to community members who desperately need it. Watch for a service this June for Pride Month in which we will be announcing more benefits of this partnership!
Be well, be safe, and be happy. And remember: there’s no shame in asking for help if you need it. Feel free to contact me or Becky Dempster as the head of the Integrated Health ministry if you can’t find the support you need.
DONATION STATION
The Donation Station is being built! Look for a cute little shed being built on the grounds at the back of the parking lot. This building will be used to house and distribute the clothing and household donations that come through UUCA. We have wonderful partnerships with several organizations that all work together to put donations in the hands of people who need them.
Gratitude and thanks to John and James Schooling, who are generously donating the materials and labor to build the shed. We do need a couple of things…. If you have recently replaced windows we could take the old ones off your hands for the shed. If you have a table you no longer need, I am sure it can be put to use for sorting items. Contact Elicia Prior at 330-371-1699.
Registration is now OPEN for CER Summer Institute ONLINE
Food for the Soul: July 11-16, 2021 https://uua.wufoo.com/forms/mkqvxig0fpdltc/
Learn more about the CERSI 2021 Menu here: https://www.cersiuu.org/...
Ask Carolyn for details!
2021 GENERAL ASSEMBLY June 23-27
Registration for virtual GA 2021 is $200 per person. Financial support for registration as well as a payment plan are available. General Assembly registrants receive access to the 2021 Online Participation Portal, including live, simulive, and on-demand video content, the virtual exhibit hall, chat features, support, and a (new!) GA mobile app.
Register here! https://www.uua.org/ga/registration
If you wish to be a delegate please contact Rev. Kate
About Us
Email: uuakronoffice@gmail.com
Website: www.uuakron.org
Location: 3300 Morewood Road, Fairlawn, OH, USA
Phone: 330-836-2206
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UUAkron