News

CUUWA Virtual Winter Social

Social for CUUWA Members and Friends

We’d like to invite you to a Winter Social on Zoom!

We can’t share tea and cookies in the same room, so let’s exchange power stories.

Join us on December 12, 2020, for a series of virtual conversations about where we have felt powerful, where we gather strength and power, where we see woman or mother or queer or goddess or sacred mystery and power.

Come and meet CUUWA past and current National Council members, participants in our low-stress feminist book club and our Cakes for the Queen of Heaven course, feminists across Canada who identify as U*Us, and others who would like to learn more about the CUUWA and chat.

Message Jo-Anne for the Zoom link.

Topic: CUUWA Winter Social

Date: Dec 12, 2020

Time: 16:00 Atlantic, 15:00 Eastern, 14:00 Central, 13:00 Mountain, 12:00 Pacific time

Format: 60-90 minutes, in breakout rooms

CUUWA Fall/Winter Programs

Cakes for the Queen of Heaven

Our “Queen team” of four co-facilitators have been working hard to prepare for the online Cakes for the Queen of Heaven program, to be offered on Zoom. Registration has been moved up to October 23, 2020. Please see complete details here.

Canadian UU Feminist Book Club

October and November meetings

On October 18 (please note: the date has been changed because of Thanksgiving weekend) and November 8, 2020, we will be discussing Robyn Maynard’s Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present, as we wind up our learning program on the lives of Indigenous and racialized women and Queers. Reverend Kathy Sage will be facilitating these sessions and has shared information about our time together on October 18.

Cakes for the Queen of Heaven

The CUUWA will be offering a free online program of Cakes for the Queen of Heaven, starting on Saturday, November 7 at 12 pm Pacific, 3 pm Eastern time, and meeting every three to four weeks for eleven sessions.

“Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” is a woman honoring adult RE curriculum by Rev. Shirley Ranck. It examines pre-Judeo Christian cultures that may have worshiped the female as divine. The concepts of equality and reverence for the female in a religious setting are eye-opening to many participants.

More than Goddess 101, this workshop series examines important elements of today’s women’s lives; personal, interpersonal and societal. It examines how our culture has been influenced by Judeo Christian values. The primary question raised is: How would your life have been different if, when growing up, the divine had been imaged as female? Participants are encouraged to share their own experiences and beliefs, creating trust and strong bonds of friendship.

If you are interested in joining us and able to make a covenantal commitment to our group, please email me at eldergomes@yahoo.com with “Cakes” in the subject line and any questions you have. I will send participants the Zoom link and other details before the end of October, so please register by October 23.

Canadian UU Feminist Book (and other media) Club

October and November meetings

On October 18 (please note: the date has been changed because of Thanksgiving weekend) and November 8, 2020, we will be discussing Robyn Maynard’s Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present, as we wind up our learning program on the lives of Indigenous and racialized women and Queers. Reverend Kathy Sage will be facilitating these sessions and has shared the following information about our time together on October 18.

Format: 30 minutes together, followed by 15 minutes in small groups, and 15 minutes together to close.

Questions we will be discussing: 1) Did this book add to your understanding of systemic/institutional racism? 2) Can you share any insights about ‘white privilege’? 3) can you share any insights about ‘white fragility’?

Additional resources (of particular interest to those who have not had time to read or finish the book):

* Robyn Maynard’s Policing Black Lives traces history of black life in Canada

Confronting Canada’s ugly record of anti-Blackness

‘We have nothing to lose but our chains’: Desmond Cole’s conversation with four Black Canadians

Why being ‘nice’ is bad for Canada

François Legault sticks to position that systemic racism doesn’t exist in Quebec

The Feminist Book Club is a low-stress, low-maintenance, open, intentionally queer-positive and intersectional, feminist-in-its-broadest-definition book-and-other-media and chat club. We explore books, films, and talks by feminists and about feminism and, perhaps even more importantly, share our experiences as feminists. You are free to join us whenever you can, whether or not you have read the book selection, whether you want to share or listen. We meet for an hour each month, usually on the second Sunday of the month, at 8 pm Atlantic, 7 pm Eastern, 6 pm Central, 5 pm Mountain, and 4 pm Pacific time. Contact us for the Zoom link: eldergomes@yahoo.com.

Previous meetings:

On September 13, 2020, at the Canadian UU Feminist Book Club, we’ll be talking more about our theme of Sacred Space. If you’d like to join us, look for poetry, music, artwork (preferably by women or queers, preferably by Canadian artists to share it with us. (If you’re not sure how to screen share, send me the link by September 12.) We’d love it if you shared work you have created either during the pandemic or about local, interior, or sacred places.   

Sacred Shelter

Update: Please let us know by October 1 if you are working on a piece for the summer phase and/or would like to respond to another person’s work during the fall phase. Send all questions, comments, and submissions to cuuwa.submissions@gmail.com.

The CUUWA calls for submissions for a creative project on home, nature, local communities and sacred space, under the working title of Sacred Shelter. We have extended the summer phase (original submissions of art or writing) to the end of the season, September 21.

We invite Canadian UU Women and Queers to send one, two, or all of the following. We would especially appreciate work by transwomen, non-binary feminists, and BIPOC women and girls.

Participants will submit writing or art during the summer phase, and then respond to work submitted by others in the fall phase.

Send:
*A photo or a photo of an artwork of interior, nature, or street scenes in your home or neighbourhood, and/or
*A short poem (up to 15 lines), or a prose poem or flash fiction (up to 500 words) on the theme of pandemic walks or sacred shelter, and/or
*An indication of your interest in responding to another artist’s or writer’s work with your own piece during the fall phase (whether or not you are submitting your writing or art in the summer phase). We will contact all people interested in responding to someone else’s work in the fall phase shortly after October 1; response pieces will be received until December 21, 2020.

Please include your name, pronoun, congregation or UU affiliation (if any), and a 50-word bio when you submit your work or indicate your interest in participating. Email your work as an attachment at cuuwa.submissions@gmail.com.

The CUUWA International Women’s Day Worship and Study package for March 2021 will be on the theme of Sacred Space, and integrate the Soul Matters theme of Commitment and the CLF / Faith Rocket theme of Covenant, as well as the poetry, stories, and artwork created in this project.

May 2020 Events

  1. Happy Mother’s Day! Kathy Sage found this video of Julia Ward Howe’s “Mother’s Day Proclamation” featuring many women’s voices. Watch it here:

TUS Mothers Day Proclamation

2. Canadian U*U Feminist Book Club, May 10 on Zoom

Given that libraries are closed and it isn’t always easy to find free e-books or borrow them from libraries, we have decided to watch a film online and discuss it at our Zoom gathering:

Status Quo? The Unfinished Business of Feminism in Canada

You may also enjoy the feminist videos shown in the past on this site: https://www.facebook.com/FFFMontreal/live/?tn=-UK-R

Join us at our low-stress, low-maintenance, open, intentionally queer-positive and intersectional, feminist-in-its-broadest definition book (and movie! and poetry!) and chat club. We explore books by feminists and about feminism and, perhaps even more importantly, share our experiences as feminists. You are free to join us whenever you can, whether or not you have read the book selection, whether you want to share or listen. We meet for an hour each month.

Topic: Canadian U*U Feminist Book Club
Time: May 10, 2020 20:00 Atlantic, 19:00 (7pm) Eastern, 16:00 Pacific, etc.
Every month on the Second Sunday. Please contact us for the link.
May 10, 2020 08:00 PM
Jun 14, 2020 08:00 PM

CUUWA “Cuppa and Conversation” and AGM 2020

During the years that a CUC Conference is held, the CUUWA meets for a Tea and our AGM during the Conference weekend (the long weekend in May). All are welcome. (In other years we meet in May or June online.)

This year the in-person CUC Conference in Halifax has been cancelled. We expect that there will be an in-person Conference there in 2021, and we will, as usual, plan our CUUWA gathering at an off-site location.

Meanwhile, we will be holding a virtual “Cuppa and Conversation” gathering and 2020 AGM. on the afternoon of June 27, on Zoom. Members and friends of the CUUWA will be envisioning a better world after the pandemic in a Cross-Canada Conversation.