Blog-Posts

Seeking Accountability from Banks for the Housing Foreclosure Crisis in Prince William County

2012-05-10T15:40:12Z

Members from more than 40 religious institutions across Northern Virginia are asking some of the country’s largest banks to commit to helping rebuild neighborhoods that have been devastated by housing foreclosures.
Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement (VOICE) drew a crowd of about 900 congregants, political leaders and representatives of two major financial institutions — Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase — to Freedom High School in Woodbridge on Sunday to discuss the issue.

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/03/141976365/as-foreclosures-surge-help-is-often-hard-to-find

From the stage at Freedom High SchoolMany members from UUCR were there to witness.

UUCR Marches for Mortgage Justice

2012-03-29T13:09:50Z

On March 6th, UUCR supported a VOICE (Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement) action in Washington, DC, aimed at raising awareness of the fact that General Electric’s WMC Mortgage subsidiary originated hundreds of suspicious high-cost loans supported by inflated incomes and falsified documents. These loans have contributed to a flood of mortgage foreclosures in Prince William County and to a great deal of personal hardship among residents. Reverend Erin and Morris and Boo Kaplowitz rode Metro into the city from Reston, joining VOICE leadership and members who met at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church to prepare for the five-block march to General Electric’s offices. The object of the action was to raise awareness of GE’s involvement, and to deliver an emphatic “You’re Fired” message to GE CEO Jeff Immelt for his refusal to help homeowners who received subprime loans from the company's now defunct WMC Mortgage Corp. Our three VOICE representatives marched with about 75 other participants to GE’s office building on Pennsylvania Avenue, singing and holding signs saying “Jeff Immelt, You’re Fired.” The march ended at the lobby of the office building, where a series of local religious leaders and concerned homeowners lead an impassioned discussion of WMC Mortgage’s role in creating the mortgage foreclosure mess in Prince William County. It was an exciting and satisfying experience for all involved! (News coverage of the march here and at The Washington Post.)

UUCR supports VOICE in a number of ways, and is active in the ongoing effort to obtain funding for a dental clinic to serve low-income residents of Western Fairfax County. See the March, 2012 issue of the UUCR newsletter for more information on the VOICE dental action. The UUCR Board and Reverend Erin are strong supporters of VOICE, and consider it an important social action outreach for our church. All UUCR members and friends are encouraged to get involved!

Morris Kaplowitz

UUCR Addition Wins Architecture Award

2012-03-14T17:08:13Z

We've all been enjoying both the use and appearance of our addition, which received final County approval a year ago (time flies). Following its submission by Architect Larry Cook, our addition received an award for superior appearance, given by the Community Appearance Alliance of Northern Virginia (CAA). CAA had this to say: “In recognizing your winning entry the Community Appearance Alliance cited the following characteristics about the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston: It enhances the community appearance by creating a building addition that adds to an aesthetically pleasing community resource, by incorporating a site design that responds to the native landscape and by utilizing recycled building materials.” Along with Larry Cook, Building Expansion Committee Co-Chair Keturah Collins and Facilities Chair Bob Howard.

February 5th Forum

2012-03-07T12:11:45Z

On February 5th, a congregational forum was held to share our reflections on our church during the tenure of the Reverends Sydney Wilde and Dennis Daniels. The Rev. Mark Hoelter, adjunct staff from our local UU Joseph Priestley District office, facilitated the listening session. It was attended by approximately 45 people with both new and longtime members. We gathered to share our experience with the church and its ministry during this time period. Some of the people were not happy during this time period while others were. The intent of the forum was not to fix or solve these challenges, but rather to further communication and listening and then allow for next steps to emerge organically. What might those next steps be? What, if anything, needs to be addressed to support our church in moving forward? One person asked if people felt we have had mechanisms in place to deal with people’s frustrations and concerns. What are your thoughts? The Board and Rev. Erin would like to hear from you. We are interested in your ideas. Please communicate your thoughts in person, or by email to Rev. Gingrich or our Congregational President, Paul Cohen.

Annual Meeting

2012-02-29T23:19:17Z

The annual meeting of UUCR was held Sunday, February 26, 2012 per the UUCR Constitution, a quorum of the membership being present. The Nominating Committee recommended an a slate of candidates for the church year 2012-13, which begins on July 1. The Committee's nominees for members of the Board were unanimously approved by the membership as was the nomination-from-the-floor of Annie Simpson. The Board for 2012-13 will consist of the following members.

President - Tom Day
Vice President - Keturah Collins
Secretary - Paul Cohen
Treasurer - Paul Baumgartner
Members - Caroline Ewart, Judy Helmich, Maggie Mack, Jeff Schatz, Annie Simpson

Terry Mitchell, and Tracey Sopp will join Bob Anthony and Judy Fincher as Members of the Nominating Committee. The Nominating Committee will continue to look for a fifth member as well as an at-large member for the Leadership Council and propose them to the membership at the May fiscal meeting.

We are a volunteer organization. I want to thank the Nominating Committee for their hard work in presenting developing their slate to present to the membership, those who helped organize the Annual Meeting, and our wonderful youth for preparing lunch so that we could begin the meeting promptly at one o'clock. I also want to thank member Annie Simpson for volunteering to join the Board. Following the meeting one member volunteered to be proposed as the fifth member of the Nominating Committee. There still remains a wonderful opportunity for a member to serve as an At-Large member of the Leadership Council. As a final reminder, the Stewardship Campaign begins in March and our annual fiscal meeting to approve next year's budget will be held in May.

Sincerely,

Paul Cohen, President

Success at VOICE Action Sunday 1/29

2012-02-02T16:40:55Z

Twenty-six people from UUCR attended the VOICE (Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement) Dental Action on Sunday afternoon, January 29th. Thanks to each of you who participated! I am so proud of our congregation. Our very own Steve Ewart took to the stage at the high point of the action to ask State Senator Janet Howell and Sharon Bulova, Chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, to report back on their progress and make commitments to continue to work with VOICE to locate the remaining funding we need to match the $100,000 donation VOICE was given to fund a dentist at a clinic in Sterling for the next two years. Morris Kaplowitz and his wife, Boo, showed up early to help get people into seats and signed in, and Steve Whitfield represented our church at the roll call.

However, our support for this action began prior to Sunday. Steve Ewart, Myles Flint and Morris Kaplowitz attended the many meetings that brought this action to fruition. They met with Senator Howell to invite her to join in our efforts to secure funding, Steve and Morris attended a handful of leadership meetings with members from other houses of faith to plan the action, and Steve attended VOICE planning meetings last spring to discuss the need for dental care.

For those of us gathered, we got a glimpse into what is possible in OUR community when we build relationships beyond our church walls and join with people in other religious and civic institutions. We weren't in Woodbridge or Arlington, we were right here with people in our community. We committed to our local politicians that we would turn out 200 people for this action and instead 356 people showed up focused and concerned about the inability of many to afford dental care in Fairfax County. Over 200 of these people were some of our Spanish speaking neighbors who attend St. John Neumann.

We heard from a local woman who went to the emergency room for dental care. Without this emergency care, she shared that she would have died from the infection. We heard from Rev. Becca Messman, Associate Pastor at Trinity Presbyterian in Herndon, about a local man who pulled out four of his own molars when he could no longer stand the pain and he was not able to afford the dentist's bill. We all agreed Fairfax County can do better than this!

Thanks to all those at UUCR who helped make this happen. I am proud of the ways we showed up and showed our neighbors that we care about social justice in Reston and are willing to take action!

Yours in faith,

Rev. Erin

VOICE Success

2012-01-29T17:00:00Z

Friends, V.O.I.C.E. had a great success today in Western Fairfax. Over 350 people from St. John Neumann, UU Reston, Trinity Presbyterian, and N. VA Hebrew COngregation, along with St. Thomas a Becket and a scattering of representation from V.O.I.C.E. congregations in Fairfax & Arlington (UUCF, UUCA, Fairfax Presbyterian & St. Mary of Sorrows were sighted!) announced that V.O.I.C.E. has put some new power on the map in Western Fairfax County.

Leaders at St. John Neumann have led the effort since May to raise $200,000 to put a full-time dentist in the N. VA Dental CLinic in Sterling using private funds. They have worked with VOICE Dental Team leader Joe Pettit, and came into today's action with a $100,000 anonymous challenge grant, and $40,000 already pledged to match it.

GOOD LESSON: Organized People, PLUS Organized Money delivered!!!

Today Sen. Janet Howell and Chairman Sharon Bulova brought in another $10,000 from INOVA and pledged their support to the effort. Congratulations to this broad-based group of mostly new leaders. St. John Neumann alone turned out over 200 people, many of them Spanish speaking and the entire action was bi-lingual with a talented team of translators from within the congregations. More to come but for now thanks to leaders from these congregations; they are leading the way in achieving the V.O.I.C.E. 2011 goals of MORE LOCAL ACTION to deliver on our V.O.I.C.E. agenda.

Kathleen O'Toole, Senior Organizer, V.O.I.C.E.

Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement, an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) www.voice-iaf.org

Process Theology

2012-01-05T16:29:38Z

In January, Rev. Gingrich will provide a sermon series about the meaning and role of process theology within Unitarian Universalism to engage such questions as:

Why do bad things happen to good people?
What can we make or unmake of the notion – everything happens for a reason?
How might we reconcile the presence of evil in the world with the presence of a divine force
How does free will fit into all of this?

Process theology emerged through the work of a physicist and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead, who sought to connect scientific quantum theories with religious meaning making. He worked to figure out the metaphysics behind religions faith claims, which many religions do not attempt to reconcile.

As we embark on a new year of discovery here at UU Reston we ask that you join us for the journey!

UU Congregations in the DC Area Feed the Occupy Movement

2011-11-14T22:29:57Z

Click here for a blog post by Justin Martin, our Director of Religious Education!

Connect-With Auction Update!

2011-11-04T02:30:18Z

UUCR Members and Friends:

We hope you are planning to attend the Connect-With Auction this Saturday evening, beginning at 5:30 p.m. A preliminary version of the Auction Catalog may be found here. Please take a look at it and start to think about which items you will want to bid for. A final version of the Auction Catalog will be provided at the door on Saturday.

Donors: If you see anything wrong with your listing, or if your item is missing (everything submitted by 10/29 should be included), please let Bill Thomas know at billthomas4@verizon.net