The lovely ladies of the UU Sisterhood had a challenging year but survived and thrived in spite of the COVID-19 trials. Our Sisterhood is a loving community of friendship within the church.
We kicked off our first two monthly potlucks, while still having in person meetings with an engaging talk in January about methods and attitudes for “Decluttering” from three of our sisters, complete with helpful resources. February was one of our perennial favorites, “Literary Night”, our sharing recommendations for good books. We probably never realized how important and useful these two topics would become to us in the upcoming months.
By March we were in pandemic lockdown, questioning the need to cancel our Annual Retreat in Maine and watching the news and dealing with the first throws of isolation.
However, the resiliency of the Sisters helped us to adapt. And by early Spring we were organized!
Sisters volunteered to make and distribute face masks and nurse’s caps, created a “Sister Share” site through the church web page for exchange of needed goods, volunteered with food bank distributions, helped the Visiting Nurses Association with creating PPE packages, and coordinated socially distant small group walking dates and locations and backyard garden meet-ups.
And the Sisterhood went online. Three times a week Zoom meetings were scheduled for check-ins and mutual support. Many Sisters related that these meetings were a lifeline to push back loneliness and isolation and they developed deeper relationships’ of caring and friendship. Book Club met on-line and MaJongg went virtual.
We continued our tradition of Monthly Potlucks with Zoom, albeit, without the community meal, but fun nevertheless. We discussed the Black Lives Matter movement and expectant changes for the future. We held our ”Downton Abbey Tea”, (without the need to polish the church’s silver tea service). One of the suggestions from the Tea event resulted in our fabulous dowloadable “Dessert Cookbook” with amazing recipes contributed by many Sisters and even a section from the UUGuys .
As we learned to navigate the features of Zoom, several times we vicariously Zoom traveled to far away places with Sister traveler guides, including time in Eastport ME with interviews with some of the residents. We talked about Mystery Writers and other of our favorite series authors. On a lighter note we had a “Games Night: The Questions” trivia contest and a “Jokes Night”. New this year was our night of ‘Five Minute Lectures”- on a variety of topics some educational, some humorous, and some touching.
So many of our traditions went on hold: Our Retreat, Dominoes, Bridge, Nursing Home Caroling, etc. But one tradition that still went on strong was our “Winter Solstice Celebration”. This beautiful and moving Zoom adaptation of worship/poetry ended our year with remembrances and hope for the coming year,
A grateful thanks to all the wonderful volunteer coordinators, and enthusiastic participants, who made all these events possible.
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