Author: Heather Vickery

Webinar Series on Sanctuary & Solidarity

January 5, 2017 | Heather Vickery | Immigration, Sanctuary and Solidarity

Wondering what your options might be for effective congregational action in this heightened time of hostility and violence and possible deportations? UUSC, UUCSJ, UURISE and the UUA are partnering to offer a series of online workshops to help equip congregations, State Action Networks, and community activists to address the heightened fear, hostility, and possible increased deportation that has […]

Losing Our Chains

December 24, 2016 | Heather Vickery | GROW, GROWRJTC, Racial Justice, Young Adult

Losing Our Chains has been reposted with permission from Blue Boat. You can find the original posting here. Aisha Ansano is a candidate for Unitarian Universalist ministry, and serves as a ministerial intern at First Church in Boston, MA. Aisha is passionate about food as ministry, singing, and ways of building community. Aisha participated in this summer’s Thrive Young Adult leadership school for Unitarian Universalistyoung adults of […]

Let’s Get Ready: Resources for Finding Our Way Forward

December 16, 2016 | Heather Vickery | Economic Justice, Environmental Justice, First Nations, Immigration, Pastoral, Racial Justice, Sanctuary and Solidarity

by Chris Casuccio and Angela Kelly We’re a month in and a month out. It’s been a little over a month since the election, and we have a little more than a month to go before the inauguration. As we attempt to find our bearings and head towards the first 100 days of the new […]

A Story From The Borderlands

December 9, 2016 | Heather Vickery | Congregational Trip, Immigration

Shelly Koo is the Associate for Online Content at UUSC (one of UUCSJ’s parent organizations). Her post was originally published on UUSC’s blog. Update November 30: David has been released and is now reunited with his family in the U.S. Last month, I had the opportunity to go on a Borderlinks trip with the UU College […]

A Message of Gratitude for Thanksgiving

November 24, 2016 | Heather Vickery | Pastoral

Lately I’ve been thinking about the different ways we enter into gratitude. Sometimes we come to it as a deliberate practice, as when we get ready for sleep by reviewing the day just ending, with an eye to all that it held for which we’re thankful. Other times we enter gratitude out of surprise: someone […]

Call to Standing Rock: Dec. 4th Interfaith Day of Prayer

November 22, 2016 | Heather Vickery | Environmental Justice, First Nations

As the courageous Water Protectors at Standing Rock face escalated acts of violent repression, we at UUCSJ continue to be deeply moved by the power of the #NoDAPL movement. We are especially grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with Rev. Karen Van Fossan of the UU Fellowship of Bismarck-Mandan and other UU leaders who have […]

Responding To The Challenge The World Has Laid At Our Feet

September 21, 2016 | Heather Vickery | Congregational Trip, Immigration

Rev. Carolyn Patierno talks about how her eyes were opened by CSJ’s Border Witness Program and how this helped motivate her congregation’s decision to buy a house for refugee families. For more on this audacious decision see the linked Boston Globe article. For a brief moment in the fall of 2014 I had the eye-opening experience that […]

Volunteering In A Family Detention Center

August 4, 2016 | Heather Vickery | Immigration, RAICES, Volunteering

Chris Casuccio is UUCSJ’s Senior Associate for Immersion Learning Programs. For a week in July, I had the privilege of leading a group of five dedicated volunteers to San Antonio, TX to serve as Spanish translators and legal volunteers with UUSC partner RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services). This is the […]

UUCSJ at 2016 General Assembly

May 27, 2016 | Heather Vickery | General Assembly

General Assembly (GA) is a special opportunity for Unitarian Universalists to worship, witness, learn, connect, and join together in advancing human rights. The theme for GA 2016 is Heartland: Where Faiths Connect and will focus on interfaith work and answering the question “How are we crossing faith borders as we bring more love and justice into […]

The Earth is Alive

May 20, 2016 | Heather Vickery | Environmental Justice, First Nations

Barbara Walden, a member of First Unitarian Church in Portland Oregon, was part of the College of Social Justice’s April Solidarity with Original Nations and Peoples delegation to the Lummi Nation in Bellingham Washington. “It seems to me that anyone who cares to really think about the planet today has to hold both of these things […]