RE Voices, November 2025

November 2025

And just like that, it is November already.  November is a month for gratitude and for honoring our ancestors.  The month contains the biggest “feast” day of the American calendar--Thanksgiving.  Our typical imagery and mythology around Thanksgiving has photo-perfect black-clad Pilgrims and Native Americans in buckskins sitting peacefully around long tables together, enjoying the fruits of the Pilgrims’ harvest and the Natives’ hunting.  This is the story we learn in elementary school and for many of us, this is where the learning ends.  I’d like to encourage us to go deeper into the story and learn more.  Our Pilgrim ancestors were grateful for the help they received from the Native people--assistance that helped them survive that first desperate year.  But for how long did that gratitude last?  How did the Pilgrims treat their saviors once they were established and no longer ‘needed’ saving?  This is part of the Thanksgiving story as well, and I’m afraid it is not one where the Pilgrims are always the “good guys”.  If you would like to learn more, see me for some resources.

Our theme for the month of November is honor and our nature/art theme is our New England stone walls.  I am not lucky enough to have a proper stone wall on my property, although the side boundaries between my house and the ones on either side are marked with what were probably once stone walls before nature (and the developer’s bulldozers) tumbled them into long piles of disconnectedness.  We’ll be having a number of Time For All Ages stories that explore the concepts of stone walls, setting boundaries, and honoring them.  I’m even going to try to adapt the Robert Frost poem “Mending Wall” as a T4AA.

Thanks to everyone’s generosity, Arwen and I delivered about 100 pounds of non-perishable food to the Grafton Food Bank Tuesday evening.  I’d love to be able to collect this much food again in November, when our donations will be going to the Upton Community Center Food Pantry.  You don’t need to wait for our Thanksgiving Spirited Service to donate--the wagon is at the front of the sanctuary every week!  I also need a volunteer to deliver the food to Upton.  There is a sheet on the Social Justice ministry bulletin board where you can sign up and indicate which food pantry you are willing to deliver food to.

This Sunday at UUSGU

Join us in welcoming four new members this week during service.  We’re going to have an All Ages Activity instead of a Time for All Ages Story this week, and then after that the children will process out as usual to go to RE class.  This week is a Spirit Play week and Miss Bette will be our storyteller.  Parents, please pick up your children at the Spirit Play classroom.

The Youth Group will be meeting from noon to 3 p.m. for food, fellowship, and a planning session for their contribution to our Grafton Celebrates the Holidays extravaganza on December 7th.  Head down to the Youth room after Fellowship Hour.

Volunteer Training and CORI Session

We’ve had a number of people ask recently about volunteering in the RE program, including the youth group and child care!  This is excellent news, but it means that we need to hold one of our periodic training sessions covering our Congregational Child Safety policy and classroom procedures on Sunday, November 16th at 11:30 in the Parlor. 

We’ll also be asking that all volunteers who work with children fill out CORI forms during the training if they have not been CORIed with UUSGU or if their CORI was done before October 2022.  I know it seems like a pain to have to get CORIed in multiple places, but just as we would never share your CORI information with the school system, they don’t share theirs with us, either.  To be CORIed you need to bring a valid drivers’ license or other photo identification that includes a unique ID number and signature, like a passport or military ID.

Please RSVP for this training by emailing me at re@uusgu.org and I will send you a link to the policy so that you can read it ahead of time and bring any questions you might have about the policy to the training.  If you cannot attend the training on November 16th, contact me at the same email to set up an appointment to be CORIed during office hours, and I can also answer any policy questions at that time.

Office Hours Next Week

The first week of November also means LREDA FallCon!  FallCon is a conference for religious educators from UU and other progressive and liberal churches to meet to exchange ideas and learn from each other.  I will be in the office from 9:30 a.m. until after our regular staff meeting on Tuesday, November 4th, and then will be heading up to New Hampshire for the conference.  I’ll next be in the office on Tuesday, November 11th. There will be a newsletter next week, as I can work on that during break times, and I will be checking my email once a day.