Our programs for young adults strive to provide opportunities for members and friends to deepen their connection with other members, engage in lifelong learning and enrichment, explore Unitarian Universalism, and build relationships within our religious community. With wellness discussions and events, we encourage each other on our individual spiritual journey and search for truth and meaning.
Hello Young Adult! This year, we are on a journey towards healing and growing supported by our principles and sources. The touchstones in each session are meant to be a guide as you deepen your understanding of the way you currently practice wellness and think about the different ways you can care for your own well-being. The sessions range from forty-five minutes to an hour to encourage you to develop the habit of taking time each day to reconnect with yourself, think introspectively, assess how you are feeling, and decide what your needs are to live your day to the fullest. Engage with each session at your own pace, doing one or two touchstones per day as you desire.
If you would like to discuss your journey, see the weekly Shining Chalice / Family Update for my virtual office hours.
Caitlyn Seale, Family Life Coordinator, FLC@uucm.ca
THEME FOR 2022-2023: Healing and Growing
UCM’s educational focus this year is on healing and growing, each month we will focus on a different aspect of wellness in the family service, in conversation after the service, and in spiritual exploration activities. Monthly resources for all ages will be posted to our website. For those interested we will meet for an hour to discuss the monthly topic for the year’s education focus on wellness either after the monthly service or another selected time.
The turmoil created by the Covid pandemic has unsettled all of us. Rising inflation, stagnating wages, intolerance for different identities, damage from weather extremes, increasing authoritarian and fascist elements in global politics are cause for concern. As the flight attendant says, in times of crisis “put on your own oxygen mask first”; we can’t help others unless we tend to our own well being too.
This year we want to create some space for us to heal and ground ourselves in self care and our common values. We cope better when we know deep down that we are capable and competent, that we are cared for, that we have people to turn to and safe places to be. Saskatchewan Elder Jim Dumont says “Wellness from an Indigenous perspective is a whole and healthy person expressed through a sense of balance of spirit, emotion, mind and body. Central to wellness is belief in one’s connection to language, land, beings of creation, and ancestry, supported by a caring family and environment.” We are well when we have healthy connections.
In the seasons to come we will be examining nine aspects of wellness, one each month. Each of us has our own experience and understanding of wellness. As we embark on this healing and growing year, remember that healing can be uncomfortable, like being itchy when skin is healing, to painful, like recovering after a car accident. There is necessary pain to get back to health. We are here to look after each other in the discomfort of healing so that we can also grow in resilience and well being. Healing and growing together will help us better respond to the personal and political challenges of today.
I encourage you each month to engage with each wellness package at your own pace to develop the habit of taking time each day to reconnect with yourself, think introspectively, assess how you are feeling, and decide what your needs are to live your day to the fullest.
Use these questions each month as a starting point:
September: Intellectual Wellness
October: Social Wellness
November: Environmental Wellness
December: Loving Hearts
January: Financial Wellness
February: Organizational Wellness
March: Spiritual Wellness
April: Physical Wellness
May: Mental Wellness
Unitarian Congregation in Mississauga
84 South Service Road
Mississauga, ON
905-278-5622
info@uucm.ca
