Children and Youth

RELIGIOUS EXPLORATION 2024-2025

Connection.  Joy.  Action.  Justice.  Community.  Join us!

The main CVUUS worship service is from 10 to 11.  During normal times, this is how it works. Kids stay for the first 15-20 minutes of the service to typically hear the welcome, a reading, sing a hymn with the congregation, and hear the “Time for All Ages” (a story or something designed with kids in mind).  The kids are invited to sit up front for the last part (but they don’t have to and some as the more cautious just stay in their seats).  After that, we sing an exit song and they leave to go right next door, for Religious Exploration (RE), which is the name for our programs for kids. At around 11, the kids have snack together, and then come back to join the adults at Social Hour at 11:15.

Activities are different every Sunday.

SOUL MATTERS THEMES- new!

This year, our whole congregation will be using the Soul Matters themes: in our RE program, Worship, and our Small Group Ministries. Soul Matters is a monthly series of resources for Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregations. The themes focus on a spiritual value that our UU faith calls all of us to embody in our lives such as Invitation, Deep Listening and Repair.

JETPIG is back!

Their backpack will contain lots of things about our new UU values.

2024-2025 RE Programs

PLUS OUR ALL-AGES SUNDAYS & EVENTS

  • Midd Pride March on Oct 12
  • Annual Ornament making & selling
  • No-Rehearsal Christmas Eve Pageant
  • Worship bowl ringing, chalice lighting
  • RE Fundays
  • Winter Solstice Celebration
  • Cooking for Mexican Consulate & others
  • and a lot more!

Sign up your children for RE here.

Farewell from RE Director Poppy Rees

I have something to share and it is really hard to say, but I am stepping down from my job as Director of Religious Exploration. My last day will be Sunday, January 5.

I know this is very soon and is not how I would have wanted it. I wish it were June. But I have been offered a full-time position at Vermont Adult Learning in Middlebury where I’m going to be working with teens and adults to help them complete high school diplomas. It’s a population that I worked with at the Community College of Vermont way back before this job. I did advising and teaching and really loved it, so I’m kind of returning to that. And the job starts in early January. I pushed it back a week but that’s all I could do.

This has been a brutal decision. I have cried a lot and will cry more, I’m sure. This is my 12th year working here. I was not a UU when I started but this job made me a UU. You made me a UU and you helped me make me a Director of Religious Exploration, as well. This job that started as just a job became a life for me. It became my faith. My kids Callie and Milo grew up here, in the RE program. It caused a huge deepening of my justice work. I had and have a wonderful time with our amazing kids. It got to work with many thoughtful, interesting, committed people in the RE program and many other places in CVUUS. I got to do the Times for All Ages which were sometimes very serious and sometimes ridiculous (and which sometimes went on for 15 minutes, involved props and might have included some ad libbing). And I got to sing! And I will really really miss it.

I am deeply grateful, especially to everyone who has been part of RE, now and over the years. And I’m grateful to all of you for letting me have a job where I got to show up as my full weird self and be embraced.

I’m hoping there will be a fun kind of party thing after Worship and RE on January 5, my last day.

After that, there will be a few months when I won’t be able to be here. This isn’t always a rule for UU Directors of RE when they leave – but I have been here for so long that Rev. Christina and Tricia and I (and maybe the Board?) thought that it would be good for there to be a time when I’m away, so that as people are picking up this work in a more formal way, they have some space in which to do it. I’ll be back, at some point – we’ll share details about this once they are decided.

But before I go, in typical Poppy fashion, I’m going to ask folks to help out with the Pageant! Next Sunday, after worship, we are setting up the Pageant stuff and still need people to help with that. We might still need Ushers and Greeters? Please tell me ASAP if you can help with anything.

So, my friends, thanks again for letting me be your Director of Religious Exploration.

Love, Poppy

Director of Religious Exploration Poppy Rees re@cvuus.org

What’s Next

CVUUS will recruit a temp RE coordinator staff person to continue the oversite of our 24-25 program from Jan to June 2025 and launch a search for a new RE director this spring with someone in place by this summer. Stay posted for a job description to come.