Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New York

September 1, 10 AM: A worship service held at the Kateri Nursing Home, led By Robert Martin.

The Hospitality Committee is currently looking for volunteers to host Coffee Hour.

Would you like to volunteer at Fourth U, to help worthy causes, to meet new people and chat with the congregation? By hosting a Sunday Coffee Hour, you can do all three. It involves bringing milk and light refreshments, setting up before the service, and staying afterwards to clear away the coffee mugs.  The instructions can be found at http://www.4thu.org/hospitality.
This is a great way to volunteer if you only have a small amount of time to give. The money we raise at Coffee Hour is given to charity.

If you would like to see which dates still require volunteers, there is a list on the Hospitality page on this website.

We also need help with organizing our Fair Trade coffee project. We sell ground coffee and whole beans, fair trade chocolate bars and cocoa after church once or twice a month, as a fundraiser for Fourth U. We’re part of the UUSC Coffee Project.

For further details, please contact Lois Coleman (lcoleman@barnard.edu / 212-663-2743) or Spencer Salzberg (smsalzberg@hotmail.com / 718-884-8957).

August 26: “If You Meet the Buddha…” - led by Rev. Jill Bowden

If you see the Buddha on the road, the old story says, kill it. Not a message those of us with Judeo-Christian roots are comfortable hearing if we equate the Buddha with a God-like holiness that is apart and above the corporeal life in which we live our lives. I do not presume to know what Siddhartha Gautauma was thinking when he sat under his Bodhi tree telling his disciples his vision of the holy, but I have been taught that it had nothing to do with transcendence, the separation of all that is holy from all that is immanent, all that is of this earth, and everything to do with one’s very personal advancement toward one’s own God-ness. In Prince Gautauma’s vision, all that is holy is contained within each individual, each creature, each mortal being on a path toward becoming a realized and enlightened life form in touch with all levels of existence, each one a potential Bodhisattva, a potential Buddha.

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Rev. Jill Bowden will give a Worship Associate Training on Sunday, August 26 at 10:00 AM at Fourth U. For more information, contact Jill at 845-641-4694 or jbowden16@verizon.net.

We are now live with a newly designed, professional website for our rental facility, Landmark on the Park. You can visit it at www.landmarkonthepark.org. Many, many thanks to Vincent Lopez, George Kuhn’s partner, who volunteered to design and build the site for us. Additional thanks go to Alex Glass, our Communications Committee chair for doing all the legwork involved with getting the site set up.

Increasing our short-term rentals in the the Landmark on the Park facility are a crucial component of meeting our budget in the 2007/2008 fiscal year. If you have any leads on companies or people who may be interested in renting the facility for an event, please forward them the link to the website, and give them Darius Lang’s contact information (darius@4thU.org).

If you have feedback about the website, ideas for other ways to do fundraising, or are interested in helping to market 4th U or Landmark on the Park, please contact Liz Wolfe at lwolfe@wintecgroup.com or 646-334-9427.

The performers of WORD-BEAT, Tom Teasley and Charles Williams, are looking for a place to stay Friday and Saturday night, Sept. 21 and 22.

Word-Beat combines the artistry of singer / actor Charles Williams and global-jazz percussionist Tom Teasley in programs featuring the inspirational texts of such authors as Langston Hughes and Nelson Mandela as well as African folk songs. All are accompanied by inventive percussive rhythms and melodies. The duo has performed their critically acclaimed melding of music and voice at prestigious venues and before academic audiences in the U.S. and Europe. Williams and Teasley achieve a true marriage of ancient melody and future sounds, of Africa, the West and beyond. They have recently added a program featuring the 12th century mystic poet Rumi accompanied by Tom’s original music and inspired by Middle Eastern cultures. Timeless world rhythms evoked by Teasley’s masterful blend of ethnic percussion and cutting-edge electronics underscore traditional verse delivered in spirited performance art mode by Williams. The two artists, each successful in their own right, are both are dedicated educators presenting concerts and clinics throughout the world.

Please contact sara.shumway@gmail.com if you might be able to host these musicians.

See www.word-beat.com for more info about Tom and Charles.