Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Duluth 
Adult Enrichment Programs
Once again we are grateful to the many talented, intelligent, caring and interesting UUs who offer study groups, forums, or courses for our enjoyment and our spiritual, intellectual or emotional growth. Following are spring offerings, which are divided into the two above categories. Everyone is welcome--member, friend or acquaintance! All at UUCD on College Street unless otherwise indicated. Please sign up on the enclosed sign up sheet by filling it out and mailing it to UUCD, 145 W. Winona, Duluth 55803 or by calling or emailing our administrator Kathy Stinnett at 724-0308, (uucduluth@gmail.com). If you are interested in providing a course, please contact a member of the adult enrichment committee: Carol Michealson (cmicheal@d.umn.edu), Tara Richter (tararichte@gmail.com), Sue Dailey (sdaileydul@hotmail.com, Jim Lund (jlund@lakenet.com), Hal Bertilson (hbertilson@uwsuper.edu), and Carol Turner (cgeot1@gmail.com).
Adult Religious Education and Worship
Circle Worship
Come together for a quiet moment in your busy week. Circle Worship is a time of reflective readings, a cappella singing, meditation, personal reflection and sharing. Circle worship will be offered twice a month at the College Street building. Suzanne Wasilczuk will facilitate.
- Wednesday, March 12th, 5:30-6:15pm – Welcoming. When do you feel welcomed? How do you welcome another?
- Wednesday, March 26th, 5:30-6:15pm – Peace. When do you feel at peace with yourself and the world? What helps you to move toward peace?
During the coming months we will explore/embrace various topics through music, poetry and sharing – enrichment for heart and soul. Other dates to save: Wednesdays, April 16 & 30, and May 21. Come anchor your week in a centering space. For more information call Suzanne.
Adult Enrichment Courses and Workshops
Spirit Valley Young Mothers: The Past and the Future with Tammi Johnson, Director of the Spirit Valley Young Mothers Program, Noon-1:00 p.m., March 2 in the Social Hall
Two years ago our UU congregation studied the causes of poverty and chose to help two programs in the Duluth area that help homeless and low-income people: CHUM and the Spirit Valley Young Mothers program administered by the YWCA. The Young Mothers program specifically assists pregnant women or women with young children who are on their own and often homeless by providing housing and support. Tammi Johnson and one of the young mothers will tell personal stories of young women whose lives have been turned around by this worthy program. Tammi will also explain how the Young Mothers program began, its recent expansion, UUCD’s involvement, and ways we can increase our involvement.
Caring Community Workshop with Suzanne Wasilczuk, facilitator.
Have you ever wanted to help someone through a rough time but not known what to say or do? Been too anxious to say or do anything?
Then come to the Caring Community workshop, “When You Care Enough to Say the Very Best” on Saturday, March 15th, 10 a.m. until noon at the College Street building in the Religious Education Great Room. We’ll talk about, and practice, self awareness techniques, active listening, and how to formulate and ask spirit-filled questions. Call Suzanne at for more information. Light refreshments will be provided.
A Sense of Place, which is an eight-week course by the Northwest Earth Institute, will be led by Barb Akre of the Green Sanctuary Committee. Cost of books and materials is $20 payable at the first session. There may still be time to participate. Please phone Barb Akre if interested.
We are just beginning to inhabit a building - but also land, which will be a home for our UU community for many generations. What are our hopes and goals for this land? What is the history, natural, and human - of this land? How will this land serve us? and how will we serve the land? We can ask the same questions about our City, and about our Bioregion. Discovering a Sense of Place is a Northwest Earth Institute course which encourages us to become familiar with and live in harmony with our land -as the only practical and effective way to become familiar and live in harmony with the Earth. A discussion guide includes seven lessons of four or five readings each, ranging from Aldo Leopold and Wallace Stegner to Gary Snyder and Barry Lopez. We will supplement these by revisiting a Duluth Energy Resource Center book published in 1986, Resettling Duluth, which explores the human and natural history of Duluth and our immediate bioregion. Part of the design of NWEI courses is that each participant brings his/her own experiences (and if desired, resources) to the discussion. Call Barbara Akre (728-4397) if you have questions.
Discussions will be held on Wednesday evenings, beginning March 5th. The first two sessions will be in the social hall; the remainder will be in the library. Topics include:
- March 5, Session 1: A Sense of Place: “Of all the memberships we identify ourselves by (racial, ethnic, sexual, national, class, age, religious, occupational), the one that is most forgotten, and that has the greatest potential for healing, is place.” -Gary Snyder
- March 12, Session 2: Responsibility to Place: “The right local questions and answers will be the right global ones.” -Wendell Berry
- March 19, Session 3: Knowing Your Bioregion: “A bioregion is a place defined by its life forms, its topography, and its biota, rather than by human dictates; a region governed by nature, not legislature.”
- March 26, Session 4: Living in Place: “It is not enough to just ‘love nature’ or want to ‘be in harmony with Gaia. Our relation to the natural world takes place in a place, and it must be grounded in information and experience.”-Gary Snyder
- April 2, Session 5: Mapping Your Place: “We map, each of us, mentally and physically, every day of our lives. We map to keep ourselves oriented, and to keep ourselves sane.” -Jan DeBlieu
- April 9 (SKIP or POLL0 Session 6: Building a Local Community: “Taking part in the common life means dwelling in a web of relationships, the many threads tugging at you while also holding you upright.” - Scott Russell Sanders
- April 16, Session 7: Empowerment: “Act with the authority of your 16 billion years!” - Joanna Macy
- April 16, Session 8: Optional Celebration: “What a privilege to be actors in shaping the history of a place so full of promise.”
Book and Literature Discussions
Class Matters: Cross-class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists by Betsy Leondar-Wright, New Society Publishers. Led by Sue Dailey of UUCD’s Social Justice Committee leading the six-part discussion.
This light book blends reading, charts, photos, and cartoons with lots of practical situations. It promises to generate great discussion about the very real issues involved in addressing the interplay of class, race, gender, and sexual orientation in the struggle for social justice, in our UU community and beyond. Movements for social justice could be larger and more powerful if they were broader, including more class diversity. But as middle class activists, we can find ourselves frustrated, sensing mistrust or limited cooperation for no apparent reason.
Class Matters uses interviews with 40 diverse activists and thinkers, along with many real-life stories to help readers learn from their own experience, build bridges and collaborate more effectively in a mixed-class effort. It discusses frankly the politics of class, what gets in the way of cross-class alliances, and how effective alliances can be built.
It will be hard to find this book in bookstores locally. You can order it online from Powell's or Amazon.com for under $25. The author is Betsy Leondar-Wright, by New Society Publishers. Sue will have a number of copies on hand for purchase at the first meeting.
Thursdays in the Board Room at 7:00 p.m. (Note these are not consecutive weeks.)
- March 6. What is class? Our own class background (pp 1-7) Books will be available for purchase at this session.
- March 27. Class and other identities (Race and class, feminism, GLBT, working class men and women. Pp 26-63)
- April 3. Cross-class alliances (pp 10-25)
- April 17. Places we meet and where we get support (pp 64-87)
- April 24. Obstacles to cross-class alliances (pp 88-130)
- May 1. Building cross-class alliances (pp 131-159)
Feminist Psychology of Men
Hal Bertilson of the UUCD Social Justice Committee will lead this four-part discussion on Wednesdays beginning April 9 and continuing alternate Wednesdays, April 23rd, May 7 and May 21 at 7:00 p.m. in the Board Room.
The book used is by Christopher T. Kilmartin (2007). The Masculine Self. (3rd Edition). Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing. There should be used copies of this book available. It has been out for at least a year. For even cheaper choices the 2nd Edition covers much of the same material and is organized similarly. It would just not be as current.
In a time when we are aware that mainline psychology has in the past focused on men with inadequate coverage of women, people of color, and sexual identity, it might be asked what purpose is provided by a psychology of men. What a psychology of men course provides is a gender-aware perspective. "Men are powerfully affected by the experiences of growing up male, having people respond to them as males, expecting and having others expect certain behaviors based on "masculine gender roles," and having feelings about their masculinities" (Kilmartin, p. 2). Some of the issues for some, but not all men, include:
- -Most males are encouraged from an early age to suppress their feelings
- -Many men have problems establishing and maintaining intimacy
- -Men have more psychological difficulty than women in adjusting to divorce and separation
- -Men commit most acts of violence
- -The average lifespan of a man is significantly shorter than a woman's
- -Many men seem to have strong feelings of being disappointed with their fathers
- -The general quality of men's relationships with others is often impoverished
- -Definitions of masculinity are changing.
Download Adult Enrichment Spring 2008 registration form (as pdf)