Calendar of events
Here you will find all of our congregation’s Sunday Services, Board and Committee meetings and other events. Use the calendar controls to see events for past or future dates. For a quick look at recent Sunday Services, click here!
“This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness and who knows the path of peace…”
These words start a list of instructions given by the Buddha 2500 years ago to a group of agitated, frightened forest-dwelling disciples. What can we take from these teachings as we grapple with personal and societal confusion, anger, and greed? June will share the instructions and lead a short guided loving kindness meditation.
June Fukushima has been dedicated to a spiritual and healing path integrating mind, body and spirit for close to 30 years. She is a lifelong student of Buddhist mindfulness and meditation practices. June is trained in Somatic Experiencing®, a body-based approach to resolving trauma and is a Registered Counselling Therapist in Saanich, BC. June`s website
In honour of April Fool’s Day, I will tell stories of fools – the holy ones and the wise ones. Why be a fool? Why tell their stories? In part, it’s about freedom – try pinning down a fool, and you’ll find you’re grasping at air.
Jane Enkin is a storyteller, writer, singer and songwriter. She has told to all ages in schools, libraries, festivals, synagogues and seniors’ programs. Jane lives in Winnipeg and has enjoyed her many visits to Victoria’s Capital Unitarian Community.
After a few years of healing the sick, Jesus Christ gave an extended speech to his followers about how to live in accordance with Jewish law. The speech includes the Beatitudes including “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and the Lord’s Prayer. Some people call it “a gospel within the Gospel,” and it is part of the historical sources of Unitarian-Universalism. Is there anything in the Sermon on the Mount that could apply to our lives in 2018?
Look around your community and notice who and what our monuments, parks and streets are named after. Mount Douglas was re-named Pkols, its original indigenous name, in 2013 yet provincial maps still list its settler name. How do names tell the story of a place, what do we lose and what do we gain by re-naming our world?
A square represents the earth and all things measurable and finite and a circle represents the heavens/spirit and all things unmeasurable and infinite. Ancient architecture embody in their design mechanisms to “square the circle” to join heaven and earth.
Hope, healing, and freedom can come through the process of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a multi-layered, internal process. Learn about 5 steps which can enable you to be freed from the grip of old hurts or resentments.
Anne is a member of the First Unitarian Fellowship of Nanaimo and serves as one of their Lay Chaplains. As a community developer and therapist, Anne has over 45 years experience facilitating ways for people to transform their inner pain so they can lead more fulfilling lives. Her Chemainus private practice focuses on personal, relationship,and family healing, as well as therapist training and supervision. annemorrison.ca
How can we ethically respond to the world’s crises when it seems that the problems facing us today – nuclear war, climate change, global refugee crises – have never been bigger? What would it mean to seek social justice by beginning literally where we stand, and to whom might we look for those lessons? To place Indigenous law at the centre of our struggles for social justice is not only an ethical and a moral imperative, it is also in our collective self-interest.
Deborah will share the story of how her mother survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust, and made a new life in America.
Come join us as we celebrate spring with this unique Unitarian tradition! We’ll each bring a flower to place in the communal vase (if you cannot find a flower, one will be provided to you). We’ll explore some of the metaphors of spring, and how they can enrich our lives. Come celebrate the renewal of life! Celebrate the return of light and warmth! Celebrate flowers! What’s not to like? Join us!
Karen will address the topic of belonging, which has countless perspectives. She hopes to stimulate thoughts about belonging to a community, whether it is religious or spiritual, or neither of those. She will link it to personal experience with being part of a faith-based institution, in her case, Unitarianism, and expand through examples to the greater whole in Canada, the Canadian Unitarian Council.
Hear first hand accounts of implementing adaptive shelter relief solutions in response to natural disasters around the world.
Per Dahlstrom has been an advocate for ShelterBox shelter relief efforts and an active Shelterbox Response Team member since 2009. As a dual Canadian-Danish citizen interested in world affairs and global community service, Per has studied and worked in Scandivania, South Africa and South Korea. While not on deployment he struggles to keep up with his busy wife and 3 active (and hungry) sons in various pursuits in and around the Cowichan Valley.
Learn the stories of Mexican nationals deported or self deported back to Mexico from the USA. Concerned citizens and visitors in San Miguel de Allende have been inspired to organize help. Unitarian Universalists started the group “Caminamos Juntos” (we walk together) to help these deportees.
Leigh Waters is an Victoria artist and arts administrator who sought out the desert climate of Mexico for health reasons. She has visited 2 areas of Mexico and has an interest in local organizations who do social justice work in those communities. Leigh is always open to meeting Mexicans and getting to know their life stories.