Calendar
Programs are at 10 a.m. in our meeting room, unless otherwise noted.
(ZOOM CONNECTIONS WILL BE PROVIDED)
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July 5 – No Service. Happy 4th of July!
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July 12 – Service with Dennis Peters. "At Peace Within". One of the issues we have discussed often, but perhaps without a good resolution, is that inner sense of calm, of peace. More and more the world around us seems to conspire against it in our lives. How do you maintain peace when the world is crashing down around us? Let’s explore that, see if we can come to some answers for our lives!
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July 15 – Program committee meeting, 9 am at Golden Leaf Café – all are welcome
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July 19 – A mini-concert with The Osterman family. This family plays and sings together. They have an interesting background in that they have left a fundamentalist church.
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July 26 – Service with Dennis Peters. "Summer Growing Season: Fields, Gardens, Flowers". As I write this the corn crops up here in Prairie Farm Township are going gangbusters. Some fields are already well above knee-high. And the flowers (even my poor excuses for flowerbeds) are leaping up and daring the deer to snack on them. Many of you also have vegetable gardens with the same frenetic levels of growth. It is the season, in a (so far) year of plenty. Let’s take a look at the world in one of its marvelous moments, and think about its effects in our lives.
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No board meeting in July
Coming Up​
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August 2 – Pool Party at Lynn Shaw’s house – 2 pm. Always a good time. Bring a snack/beverage to share.
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August 30 – Ice Cream Social at Annette Taylor’s house – 6 pm.
Good Reads
"Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior" is a 2005 book by Temple Grandin
"Breath, Mind and Consciousness" by Harish Jahari
This book teaches conscious observation and control of breathing patterns to maximize energy and vitality.
Seven Principles
- The inherent worth and dignity of every person​
- Justice, equity, and compassion in human
relations​
- Acceptance of one another and
encouragement of spiritual growth in our
congregations​
- A free and responsible search for truth and
meaning​
- The right of conscience and the use of the
democratic process within our congregations
and in society at large​
- The goal of world community with peace,
liberty, and justice for all​
- Respect for the interdependent web of all
existence of which we area part
We Believe...
Unitarian Universalists do not follow a creed, or statement of beliefs expected of all members. Rather, we are encouraged to undertake our own search for what is meaningful and spiritual. That search may seek out other belief systems to understand them and perhaps follow parts that are of value to the searcher. Among any given Unitarian Universalist congregation, members may include humanists, atheists, Christians, Buddhists, agnostics, pagans, or a range of other beliefs. We consider all valid, and welcome them in our congregations.
The Chalice News
July 2026
Sharing Sunday
Supports Local Veterans
The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Menomonie continued our Sharing Sunday program in June through a gift to the Dunn County Veterans Services Office. Through a presentation on June 21 by Greg Quinn, Dunn County Veterans Services Officer, we learned of a variety of unmet needs for area veterans which our shared support could help alleviate. While all veterans are entitled to a wide range of services and benefits, according to Greg Quinn, which include access to healthcare, tuition benefits at University of Wisconsin System schools, property tax benefits for disabled veterans, and a number more, there are always unmet needs for individual vets which our funds can help meet.
Did you know?
The Dunn County Veterans Office has a healthcare equipment loaning library? Contact them to borrow walkers, canes, wheelchairs and other equipment free of charge.
From Greg Quinn, Dunn Co Vets Office (Greg spoke to us on June 21)
Voting Rights Under Assault
By David K. Williams
Looking to the past allows us to extract valuable wisdom, identify behavioral patterns, and heal from previous challenges. As Congress, prodded by the President, debates further restrictions on voting through the so-called SAVE Act, a talk by Martin Luther King Jr to our Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly in 1966 offers insight. Reference to Dr. King’s talk came from a posting by the Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, current Vice President for Communications and Development at the UUA. Rev. Ladd posted her message to congregations and donors on May 30:
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On the 18th of May in 1966, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rose before a gathering of Unitarian Universalists to deliver the Ware Lecture at General Assembly in Hollywood, Florida. Sixty years ago, in the midst of the transformative and convulsive power and of the Civil Rights Movement and just one year after the deaths of Jimmie Lee Jackson, Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo, he concluded his comments with a meditation on the importance of hope in times of great difficulty and despair.
Reiterating his famous paraphrase of the 19th century Unitarian minister Rev. Theodore Parker, King said, “If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery couldn’t stop us, the opposition that we now face will surely fail. We’re going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. And we can sing We Shall Overcome, because somehow we know the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
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As incursions to voting rights threaten this nation once again, intricate systems of supremacy and anti-blackness lure our nation ever closer to the brink and further away from the collective values we hold dear—of shared dignity, democratic norms and the communal practices that lead toward liberation.
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Now more than ever, we need individual Unitarian Universalists and Unitarian Universalism to express a clear religious voice that puts love at the center and galvanizes Americans to act for a more pluralistic, just and equitable society.
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If you’d like to read Dr. King’s historic 1966 Ware Lecture, as relevant today as it ever was, you can find it online. Or find it excerpted in this In Good Faith blog post.
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You may also choose to check out coverage online from the UUA, UU World, and Side With Love as UU leaders including Rev. Dr. Sofia Betancourt traveled to Selma and Montgomery earlier this month to bear witness to the gutting of the Civil Rights Act and the legacy of all those who fought for fair and free access to the ballot.
“We are all in the same boat here; paddling, patching, bailing.”
— From Dennis Peters’ sermon on June 28