Welcome to Unitarian Universalist Society East
Sunday Services at 9:00 and 11:00
Director's Corner
Emmy's Update
For Sunday November 23rd
Greetings CYM Families & Friends!
Say hello to the heads of children & youth programming at our sister UU congregations, pictured above Shahan Islam of Unitarian Society of Hartford and Hannah Garmise of the Universalist Church of West Hartford. It has been my absolute pleasure getting to know these two over the past year, and we are excited to bring some joint programming to our families this winter and spring (and beyond)! Hannah’s in-laws attend UUSE and she met her now husband in youth group at USH - a true UU love story! Both Shahan and Hannah have entered their positions in the last two years, and our trio brings a well-rounded blessing of gifts. Check out my “Seasonal Happenings” section of this Friday Update for a peak at upcoming opportunities thanks to the event-king Shahan! And be on the look-out for a spring OWL facilitator training and pagan offerings with my fellow practicing pagan, Hannah!
But for now, here’s what’s happening in CYM this Sunday, November 23, 2025:
CHILDREN’S CHAPEL WILL BE HELD at 10:00 AM THIS SUNDAY. Bring a coat!
Nursery: Childcare will be available in our nursery at 11 AM for children age 3 and under.
Sunday Service: “Gratitude for UUSE” - UUSE members express their gratitude for UUSE and the many ways in which our beloved community makes our lives richer.
Coordinators: Sandy Karosi and Paula Baker
Time For All Ages: Children and youth in grades 2-12 will attend the beginning of the Sunday service in the Sanctuary on the Main Level. The first two rows on the right are reserved for children and youth to sit together, and families are welcome to join them. After the “Time For All Ages” segment of Sunday service, children and youth will be dismissed to the Garden Level to attend further programming.
Spirit Play: “Keepunumuk: Weeâchumun's Thanksgiving Story” - A retelling of the first Thanksgiving from a Wampanoag perspective, emphasizing the role of Indigenous people in helping the Pilgrims survive and the importance of their interdependent relationship with the land. The story is told through the eyes of the Wampanoag, who view Thanksgiving not as a celebration, but as a time of mourning.
Young UUs: “Nurturing Gratitude” - Our Young UUs will first work with the Rev Josh to learn a new song to perform at the Holiday Music Service. Then, they will decorate and fill gratitude jars to adorn our UUSE Friendsgiving table next week. Please dress your child in layers as we will spend class time outdoors.
Jr Youth Group: “Asking the Earth” - Junior Youth will consider the spiritual practice of asking the Earth for permission to collect from it. And consider how the Earth might answer back. We will discuss the present day colonizer approach of taking. And make some nature art with a gratitude challenge round: answers must exclude person-made “things.” Please send youth in footwear and clothes appropriate for walking around outside.
High School Youth Group: meets this Sunday in the couch room! After attending Time For All Ages, high school youth will meet to discuss upcoming events and host a visit from Rev. Josh.
Affirmation: does not meet this Sunday, but please respond to the two doodle polls and question about Dec 21st in your email!
*Note of Acknowledgement and Apology: I would like to offer a sincere and heartfelt apology to anyone who may have been impacted by words on a Garden Level bulletin board over the past two weeks, which may have been experienced as invalidating or harmful for genderqueer, gender non-conforming, non-binary, and trans people and identities. All of our UU siblings are cherished at UUSE. Please feel welcome to discuss this further with me.
How You Can Help:
A message from new UUSE parents Dan Covino & Megan Corning:
“Hi friends! Our daughter, Lou-Ethel, was born a few weeks ago, and we’re beginning to put together a plan for child care starting in the early summer of 2026. We’re reaching out to ask two questions:
1. Do you have any recommendations for child care centers, nanny shares, or other child care providers? We live in Windsor, so would be particularly interested in resources in surrounding communities.
2. If you are currently using a nanny share with space for another child, or if you are not yet using a nanny share but would be interested in going in on one together, please reach out to us!” (Reach out to Emmy for Dan and Megan’s contact info.)
MACC (Manchester Area Council of Churches) Food Pantry Donations: UUSE member and MACC chef Ctaci has shared the pantry manager’s urgent list of needs. Please bring any donations to the pantry, or to UUSE, and we will get them delivered. Donations can be dropped off at MACC 460 Main Street Monday-Friday 7:30-3:30 later on Thursday (5pm) (2pm Fridays) or UUSE Garden Level Kitchen (please label purpose.) Monetary donations are always welcomed as well! Items Needed: Instant Potatoes, Chili, Canned, Vegetables, Mayonnaise, Cake or Brownie Mix, Rice and Rice Mixes (rice a roni, knorr), Baked Beans, CORN, Stuffing, Sugar, Flour, Pasta Sauce, Ramen, Chicken Noodle Soup, and Cooking Oil.
See you Sunday!
Seasonal Happenings:
Fri, Nov 21: UUSE Artisan Holiday Fair 6-8:30pm, $5 opening night entry
Sat, Nov 22: UUSE Artisan Holiday Fair 9am-3pm
Sun, Nov 23: Multi-Faith Service with a theme of Community Connections at Beth Sholom B’Nai Israel @ 5pm, located 400 Middle Turnpike East, Manchester, CT. UUSE singers and others will be in attendance, please bring a non-perishable food item to donate to the local pantry.
Thurs, Nov 27: 1PM Friendsgiving at UUSE
Sun, Dec 14: Holiday Music Service @ 9&11am
Sun, Dec 21: CYM Winter Holiday Party @ 12pm (outdoors!)
Wed, Dec 24: Christmas Eve Service @ 5pm
Sat, Jan 3: 6PM Talent Show for children and youth in collaboration with the monthly Coffee House. Bring dinner for the family and enjoy the many talents of our community! Children and youth are invited to perform a song, poem, skit, magic tricks, trivia, or any other talent!
Sat, Jan 24 - Sun, Jan 25: Overnight Con for 7th-12th graders! Located at USH (Unitarian Society of Hartford) with UUSE support. Arrive at 6pm on Saturday and stay for games, movies, video games, foosball, and zoom with other youth! Rise and shine Sunday morning to participate in USH’s long standing tradition of “Soup Sunday!”
Sat, Jan 31: UUSE Annual Cook-off and Live Auction Event - fun for the whole family!
Sat, Feb 21: 8AM Mount Southington Ski Trip in partnership with USH (Unitarian Society of Hartford) Open to skiers of all ages!
Sun, Feb 22: 3pm Kirtan at UUSE
Sat, Mar 28: Nightlight Mission in partnership with USH (Unitarian Society of Hartford): Families with children/youth meet @ 2PM to sort clothes & prepare soup, coffee and sandwiches; @8PM distribute clothing and food to the unhoused.
With Gratitude,
Emmy Galbraith
Director of Children & Youth Ministry
dcym@uuse.org
Office: (860)646-5151
Cell: (860)576-7889
CYM Committee Members:
Sudha, co-chair
Michelle Spadaccini, co-chair
Desiree Holian-Borgnis
Paula Baker
Kaitlyn Guilmette
Committee email: uusecym@uuse.org
Angela Attardo, CYM Program Assistant
CYMAsst@uuse.org
Molly Vigeant, Nursery Coordinator
Director of Children and Youth Ministry's Monthly Column for December
In the Flow: Reflections on Attending the LREDA (Liberal Religious Educators Association) Fall Conference
Keynote presenter Elder Sharon Jinkerson-Brass refers to herself as a “’60s scooper”. This refers to a time in Canadian history when the government removed Indigenous children from their land, families, and communities and forced them into adoptions in white-parented homes. This took place en masse in the 1960s across Canada. Similar events happened in the United States. Elder Sharon was one of those children in Canada, removed from her home and family at a young age. Elder Sharon is a gifted storyteller, and I will not attempt to do the job for her. Her stories are her own, and more about her life can be found here.
One of the people documenting and collaborating with Indigenous communities in Canada today is Elder Sharon’s friend, Amber Dawn Bellemare. Amber Dawn is a white woman and the Truth, Healing, and Reconciliation Programming Coordinator of the Canadian Unitarian Council. For the last 10 years, Amber Dawn has learned how we as Unitarians can work towards healing and reconciliation with Indigenous people of North America, living through our denomination’s values, guided by the wisdom of those who have been harmed and oppressed by the colonization of North America and the forced spread of Christianity and suppression of indigenous, earth-centered spiritual and cultural practices. You can find out more about Amber Dawn’s work here.
I left this conference feeling better equipped and educated to work with the children and youth at UUSE, and any that come into my care if even for a moment, in working towards a right relationship with the land and the first people to live on this land. I also left with a new friend in Amber Dawn, and a model and resources to spread this work of truth, healing, and reconciliation, where colonization and Christianity violently uprooted a harmonious ecosystem.
We participated in an exercise designed for UU congregations, about the timeline and spread of colonization in North America, and its impact on the Indigenous people already living there. Some religious educators present had done this exercise with their home congregations. Others, like me, were profoundly moved by the new exercise, experiencing moments of self-loathing followed by resolve when history revealed Unitarians to be financial backers of the wide destruction, claims to land and resources, human lives lost, and generations tortured. I learned that the current reconciliation work is not only in line with our present-day denominational values and principles, but that we have a duty and obligation to do what we can to remedy deep wounds from the past, inflicted by our Unitarian ancestors.
It has been a year of diving deep into elemental learning and knowing for me, as both a spiritual being and a religious professional. In the height and tail of summer, it was fire. Air made itself known as we slipped through the time of the ancestors. And this experience was all about water. In the literal sense, LREDA Fall-Con organizers advised attendees to “think Seattle” when packing for Vancouver. And the weather lived up to its reputation. As an Indigenous woman, Elder Sharon spoke frequently of water, both its spiritual and practical importance to her people, of which there is no real separate distinction. She talked about her gift of storytelling, which would bring the whole room to tears of joy through a telling of grief and loss, explaining that her gift was from her people. Indigenous people, when joined with their land and families, live “in the flow,” she explained. The prescribed and lonesome egocentric way of the colonizer (my words, hers are gentler) does not allow for the flow. The flow is happening, and you can move into it like water, or it can come onto you like a wave. The rain forest, the waterfalls, hot springs, the mist - the breath of the ancestors, are all the twinkling features of Vancouver and British Columbia.
Water is heavy and slow, and powerful. And life-giving. Elder Sharon held a symbolic umbilical doll ritual with us all. Copper, the Earth’s blood, represented the blood of the first connection to the mother. At the close of our 4 days together, she and an Indigenous sister blessed us all with a water ritual upon our hands. The picture accompanying my column this week is of her listening to a religious educator’s child. Elder Sharon listens to everyone this way, with this level of attention, love, patience, and joy. Children are centered and revered in her culture in a way that is different from the best efforts to include children in an adult-centered world. I learned so much from her. I learned so much from everyone. Taking classes, reading books, and writing papers for my religious educator credentialing has its value. And this community space, where I am most deeply educated, is sacred. I am so grateful that I was able to take the journey to Vancouver, to Elder Sharon, to Amber Dawn, and to share resources and networking with a hundred other UU religious educators from across North America. This is where the seeds sit, where the nurturer is nurtured. It is my honor to usher the ripple I carry back to Manchester, Connecticut, where we will continue to learn and grow together.
Emmy Galbraith (she/her/hers)
Director of Children and Youth Ministry