Announcements

Online All-Ages Worship (6 February 2022)

Please join us on Sunday (6 February 2022) at 11:00 AM for “Revelation in Relationship” by Rev. Barbara Jarrell.

Our service will be livestreamed on Facebook Live here.

For this Sunday only, we will not have an online coffee hour because many of us will be going to the Highland Center for the LA-AID Fundraiser.

Due to how transmissible the Omicron COVID variant is along with breakthrough COVID infection happening even for vaccinated / boosted persons, we will be worshipping online for the first half of February  2022.

We will re-evaluate the COVID risks before making any decisions about resuming in-person worship.

Our February 2022 give-away-the-plate recipient is the Whitney Plantation.

While we are remaining physically distant, we want to know how you are doing, what you need, and what you are interested in.  You can let us know using these online surveys.

And you can contribute to All Souls using this online resource.

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Whitney Plantation — February 2022 Give-Away-The-Plate Recipient

Our give-away-the-plate recipient for February 2022 is the Whitney Plantation.

Every month, we dedicate all of our non-pledge income to an organization doing the work that best embodies our Unitarian Universalist principles and values.

We usually choose a local organization but we are changing that for this Black History Month in order to honor The Whitney Plantation.

The Whitney is the only museum in Louisiana that focuses exclusively on the lives of enslaved people — a far cry from the usual plantation tours that often literally “whitewash” history.

The Whitney tells the story of the history of slavery on a South Louisiana sugar cane plantation. The Whitney is located in Wallace, Louisiana (an hour’s drive between Baton Rouge and New Orleans).

Two ways to donate:

Online — Go to our donation site using this link.  If you are paying your pledge, select “2022 Pledges” and enter that amount for your pledge contribution.  Then select “Collection Plate” to give the amount you would like to give to the Whitney Plantation.  All online collection plate contributions for the month of February 2022 will go to the Whitney Plantation.

Offline — Please send your give away the plate contribution checks to All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church, 9449 Ellerbe Road, Shreveport LA  71106.  Please put “Whitney Plantation” on the memo line of the check if  you want to have 100% of this check go to the Whitney Plantation.  If you want less than 100% of the check to go to the Whitney Plantation, please put the amount you want going to the Whitney Plantation on the memo line.

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Louisiana Advocates for Immigrants in Detention Fundraiser (6 February 2022)

You are invited to a fundraiser for Louisiana Advocates for Immigrants in Detention on 6 February 2022 from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM at the Highland Center (520 Olive Street, Shreveport LA  71104).

Join us for an afternoon of food music, and art as we celebrate one year of advocacy and aid.

If you can’t come to the event, please donate to LA-AID using Venmo @LOuisianaAID or online via PayPal.

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Online Adult Religious Education — 6 February 2022

Please join us on Sunday (6 February 2022) at 9:00 AM for our adult religious education class via Zoom.

This Sunday’s topic is “Redistricting in Louisiana”:

The Special Redistricting Session of the Louisiana Legislature opened this past Tuesday (1 February 2022) and must be completed by 20 February 2020.

This Sunday, we will have a brief overview of the redistricting process as well as updates from the session including the progress — or the lack so far — on creating a second minority-majority congressional district in Louisiana.

We will also take a few minutes to look at prospective legislation in the upcoming regular session and talk about where we go next with adult religious education — join us.

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Children and Youth Religious Education Updates

We will continue to watch the local COVID numbers.  We feel encouraged by the dropping Omicron COVID case rates.

We are not resuming regular classes for children and youth at this time because our classrooms are too small to be safe for unvaccinated children, and because we want some time to be together and nurture each other before we start recruiting people to do stuff.

We will have “busy bags” for kids sitting in the pews with their parents and our services will be welcoming to all ages when we return to in-person worship.

We have already heard from some who wants to get back to teaching and we are so grateful for your interest in this.

If others of you are out there, email Susan Caldwell.

We will probably schedule a teacher training in February or March 2022 and plan to start back with classes sometime after that.

Thanks to all for your patience and flexibility.

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Meditation with Larry Androes (5 February 2022)

Please join us on Saturday (5 February 2022) at 10:30 AM for our weekly meditation group with Larry Androes.

This is a sitting Buddhist meditation including a brief introduction to mindfulness meditation, 20 minutes of sitting, and followed by a weekly teaching.

The group is free and open to all.

For more information, contact Larry via email or phone using (318) 272-0014.

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Online All-Ages Worship (30 January 2022)

Lotus flower water lily in pond.

Please join us on Sunday (30 January 2022) at 11:00 AM for “Railing Against the Mud” by Rev. Barbara Jarrell.

Our service will be livestreamed on Facebook Live here.

Our virtual coffee hour after worship is back. Sol in Minneapolis will be hosting the virtual coffee hour using the Jitsi open-source videoconferencing platform.  You can participate using your web browser or Jitsi apps for Android and iOS.  Click here for the coffee hour link and use “allsoulstea” as the login password for the coffee hour.

Due to how transmissible the Omicron COVID variant is along with breakthrough COVID infection happening even for vaccinated / boosted persons, we will be worshipping online for the month of January 2022.

We will not be open for in-person worship service during the month of January 2022 and at least until mid-February 2022.

As we enter February 2022, we will re-evaluate the COVID risks before making any decisions about resuming in-person worship.

We also have a special congregational business meeting on this Sunday at 3:00 PM — more details here.

Our January 2022 give-away-the-plate recipient is Volunteers for Youth Justice.

While we are remaining physically distant, we want to know how you are doing, what you need, and what you are interested in.  You can let us know using these online surveys.

And you can contribute to All Souls using this online resource.

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Online Adult Religious Education — 30 January 2022

Please join us on Sunday (30 January 2022) at 9:00 AM for our adult religious education class via Zoom.

We are discussing episodes of the podcast Learning How to See with Rev. Brian McLaren, Father Richard Rohr, and Rev. Jacqui Lewis.

They are discussing the 13 kinds of bias that Rev. Barbara mentioned recently in a sermon.

The group felt that this series would keep us in the realm of our anti-racism work while also being topically relevant to our pillar on Jewish and Christian heritage as these three Christian leaders discuss our tendency toward these biases from a faith-based perspective.

Although we may play short excerpts during class, we are encouraging people to listen on their own between sessions.

For 30 January 2022 — Season 2, Bonus Episode — “Begin Again from the Beginning”

You can find all episodes of the podcast here.

If you have a smart speaker or other smart device from Google or Amazon, you can ask it to “play the podcast Learning How to See, Season 2, Bonus Episode.”

Be sure to use those specific words — if you just say the name of the podcast, you might get a different episode from Season 2 instead.

If you are using an Apple device with Siri, you can ask Siri to “search for podcast Learning How to See” to find this episode and all other episodes released so far in Learning How to See.

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Children and Youth Religious Education Updates

We will continue to watch the local COVID numbers.  We feel encouraged by the dropping Omicron COVID case rates.

We are not resuming regular classes for children and youth at this time because our classrooms are too small to be safe for unvaccinated children, and because we want some time to be together and nurture each other before we start recruiting people to do stuff.

We will have “busy bags” for kids sitting in the pews with their parents and our services will be welcoming to all ages when we return to in-person worship.

We have already heard from some who wants to get back to teaching and we are so grateful for your interest in this.

If others of you are out there, email Susan Caldwell.

We will probably schedule a teacher training in February 2022 and plan to start back with classes sometime after that.

Thanks to all for your patience and flexibility.

Share