The Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church has a rummage sale Friday and Saturday.
It will include easy-to-browse tables of items set up in the Social Hall and classrooms, yard and garden items displayed on the patio, and live and silent auctions and the Step Above Boutique, a press release said.
May Wharton, founder of the Uplands Retirement Village in Pleasant Hill, Tenn., will be one of the subjects of a Monday talk at an American Association of University Women meeting at the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church.
Dr. Wharton, who came to Pleasant Hill in 1917, was called “Doctor Woman.”
Monday’s talk by W. Calvin Dickinson, a retired history professor at Tennessee Tech, starts at 11:30 a.m. Dickinson will also talk about Dr. Dora Lee Wilder, the first woman to receive a medical license in Tennessee, early in the 19th century.
The Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church has a free community meal on Friday, and nurses from the Free Medical Clinic of Oak Ridge have volunteered to give flu shots to those in need, a press release said.
Free coats and blankets will also be available on a first-come, first-serve basis due to a limited supply.
Members of the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church voted 131-2 to try to buy this 4.6-acre site in front of the Joe L. Evins Federal Building for a new church. (Photo courtesy of Jake B. Morrill)
They’ve agreed to sell their current church to make way for a new shopping center, and on Sunday, members of the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church voted overwhelmingly to try to move to the east end of town.
The congregation voted 131-2 to buy a 4.6-acre site in front of the Joe L. Evins Federal Building, home of the U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge Office. The plot is beside Summit Medical on Laboratory Road.
But they haven’t closed on the deal yet, the church’s minister, Rev. Jake B. Morrill, said Monday morning. In a press release Monday afternoon, members of the Church’s Relocation Steering Committee said the due diligence process is not complete, and a closing date hasn’t been set.
Assuming the deal is completed, the next step would be to design a building. The church said it is working with an architect “to begin a congregation-wide process to design a new church using a sustainable, green design for the new facility and preservation of as much of the existing park-like setting of the parcel as possible.”
Church members expect to be in their new home by Thanksgiving 2014.
A local organization and church have organized a Jan. 11 forum on homelessness, and the public is invited to attend.
The forum will start at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 11 at the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church. It’s been organized by the Trinity Out-Reach Center of Hope (TORCH) and the church.
A press release said the forum will bring together experts from social service agencies, faith-based groups, and the wider community for a frank discussion about homelessness that will include the definition, faces of homelessness, an exploration of potential solutions, and ways that people can be involved in the Jan. 24 “Point In Time Count” (PITC).
Sister and brother Lilly and Logan Swain help serve food at the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church’s Stone Soup Ministry meal in November. (Submitted photo)
The Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church has a free community meal on Friday, and everyone is invited, a press release said.
It’s a Stone Soup Ministry free community meal. They are held the last Friday of each month in the church’s Social Hall. Food for the meal is provided by the ORUUC congregation and financial support from Oak Ridge community members.
The Stone Soup Ministry name is derived from the Stone Soup Fable, a medieval tale in which a hungry stranger came upon a small village.
Paula Flowers
Attorney and business executive Paula Flowers will discuss the effects of the new federal health care law during a Tuesday meeting in Oak Ridge.
Flowers will also discuss the U.S. Department of Energy’s recent announcement of an award to support a new project to design, license, and help commercialize small nuclear reactors in the United States. The award was given to Babcock & Wilcox in partnership with the Tennessee Valley Authority and Bechtel.
Ceramic artist Linda Sullivan, an Oak Ridge resident and member of the Foothills Craft Guild, is one of the artists who will be featured at the ORUUC Craft Fair on Sunday. (Submitted photo)
The Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church will have a Holiday Craft Fair on Sunday.
It’s scheduled from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the ORUUC Social Hall, a press release said.
“A longtime community favorite, the ORUUC Holiday Craft Fair has become a source of inspiration and a place of diversity and discovery in selecting those ‘only one of its kind’ gifts for those special people on one’s holiday gift list,” the release said.
The Craft Fair will feature the work of some of the region’s finest artists who work with glass, ceramic, wood, quilts, and other hand-sewn items, the release said. Photographs will be available for purchase.
A board member of a local nonprofit organization that helps schools will give a Tuesday presentation on a program that uses grants to fund classroom projects in Oak Ridge.
The presentation by Cathy Toth of the Oak Ridge Public Schools Education Foundation starts at noon Tuesday in the Social Hall of the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church.
“We are well aware of the ORPSEF efforts in the renovation of Oak Ridge High School,” Toth said in a press release. “Most of us are not aware that ORPSEF has quietly been making a difference with a grants program that has funded dozens of classroom projects in every school in Oak Ridge. The grants provide resources beyond what can be provided by tax dollars to help make the critical difference between adequate and outstanding academic experiences and performance.”
The Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church will host an annual Ecumenical Thanksgiving Service on Sunday.
“Clergy and congregations from four area churches will participate in the service to share the simple, yet universal message of ‘giving thanks’ and to lift up the call anew to care for each other and our neighbors,” a press release said.
It said each church has prepared a special musical offering for the service. Participating churches include Spurgeon Chapel AME Zion Church, Grace Covenant Church, Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church, and First United Methodist Church.
Everyone who can should bring a non-perishable food item to give to area food banks.
A dessert social will be held after the service in the church Social Hall. The church is at 1500 Oak Ridge Turnpike, and the service starts at 6 p.m.
For more information, call the ORUUC office at (865) 483-6761.
Marti Keller
During a Sunday sermon, an Atlanta minister will discuss the experiences of Unitarian Universalists who identify as Jewish and the “rich possibilities that they offer in terms of cultural and religious diversity,” a press release said.
The sermon by Rev. Marti Keller, titled “Outside the Cathedral Walls,” starts at 10 a.m. Sunday at the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church.
“This topic was the subject of my honors thesis for my master of divinity degree at Emory University, and an area of interest for me as a parish and community minister over the past almost 15 years, serving UU congregations and interfaith agencies in the South,” Keller said.
The press release said Keller is a minister on staff at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, focusing on social justice, denominational work, small group ministry, and adult education. She is the former president of UUs for Jewish Awareness, is a member of the planning committee for the second national gathering of Jewish UUs and their allies scheduled for Winter 2014, and co-editor of the upcoming “Let Us be Counted: Jewish Voices in Unitarian Universalism”, a collection of essays and reflections to be published by Skinner House Press in 2014.
More information on Keller can be found online at www.revmartikeller.com.
For more information on Keller’s visit, call the ORUUC office at (865) 483- 6761. To learn more about the ORUUC visit online at www.oruuc.org.
ORUUC is located at 1500 Oak Ridge Turnpike (traffic light #11) in Oak Ridge.
The release said ORUUC is a member congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, a denomination that welcomes people of diverse spiritual understanding to gather in community to “stand on the side of love.” Among the ancestors of Unitarian Universalism are this nation’s Puritan founders, whose efforts to affirm freedom of religion included “The Cambridge Platform,” written in 1648, which laid out the democratic principles of congregational self-governance that ORUUC still follows today, in 2012.
David Reidy
The head of the University of Tennessee Philosophy Department will discuss what moral principles, if any, ought to guide U.S. foreign policy during a Tuesday presentation to the League of Women Voters of Oak Ridge.
The presentation by philosophy professor David Reidy is titled Toward a Just Foreign Policy,” and it starts at noon Tuesday in the Social Hall of the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church.
Reidy’s presentation will also discuss the relevance of human rights to U.S. foreign policy, a press release said.
The presentation is part of the biweekly Lunch with the League, and it is open to the public. There is no cost to attend, and reservations are not needed.
Box lunches will be available starting at 11:30 a.m. on a first-come, first-served basis for $7. Those who attend can also bring their own lunches. Coffee and tea will be provided.
Reidy received his doctorate from the University of Kansas and a law degree from Indiana University. He is a distinguished humanities professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tennessee.
The Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church is at 1500 Oak Ridge Turnpike.
