The Morristown Unitarian Universalist Fellowship was founded in Fall 1955 – we’re coming up on 70 years of Fellowship and Service! Help us celebrate this year by your participation in our celebrations. We’re looking for volunteers for the Party Planning Crew and for the History Project.  We’ll be having our history on display throughout the year, and we’ll celebrate with a Congregational Party on January 31, 2026 (rain date February 7th) – so mark your calendars! The 70th Anniversary Party will be a wonderful celebration of our Community.  We hope to make it a celebration to be Remembered.  Can you serve on the Party Planning Crew to help make it a success?  Please contact the Board to volunteer or talk to one of us in person. MUUF was founded in late 1955 during the Unitarian Fellowship Movement.  Our first 31 founders signed the membership book December 18, 1955 and started holding services at the Morristown YMCA.  They later bought the mansion at 21 Normandy Heights Road and settled us there to grow.  The History Project will be digging into our records and giving us history lessons during the year and during our Celebration – so get ready to learn more!  Bob Scott has been delving into our history and posting tidbits on our Friends and Members Facebook group as well as finding info on many of our historical heirlooms throughout the building.  We’ll need folks to help put that info into presentations for the Celebration and other uses.  Can you serve on the History Project?   Please contact a member of the Board to volunteer. We’re getting excited to honor our History, celebrate our Present, and move forward into our Future.  Come, help us celebrate where we’ve been and where we go next!

Looking for a great way to connect with the community and share what your group is all about? We’re now offering the chance for groups to “table” during Social Hour on Sundays! Each Sunday, there will be one designated table reserved for a different group, giving you an opportunity to share information, promote events, or simply connect with interested members. To ensure everyone has a chance and we don’t overwhelm the space, only one group will be scheduled per week. Interested in reserving a spot? Simply fill out the form below. (Nick will confirm with you about the date) We look forward to helping your group thrive through this new opportunity to engage with our community!

What do we do? What is our purpose? Who are we? These questions get asked about the Fellowship a lot, by visitors, strangers in the grocery store, and by our own members. There are many answers to these questions. But one that I keep coming back to is that we are a community . A community that strives to make the world a better place, seek truth, welcome everyone, and so much more. But everything we do and strive for, we do together. This is a key piece to any religious institution.   This past year, I have seen this community grow, not just in the addition of new families, but bonds among our members have been strengthened. I have heard stories of people who joined during Covid (or even before) finally feeling like they were part of our community , that they understood how things worked (something I’m still figuring out), that they knew people’s names. Older folks have gotten to know our younger members. Parents have felt like they have a space where they can raise their children in a way that aligns with their values.  I attribute a lot of this to the wonderful people we have in our community who have embraced changes and new opportunities to build community. I credit staff who work hard together to address the many needs of our diverse community. And I think the addition of the Gateways Center, especially Chu Family Hall is a key part of this.  Before the addition, we could not gather together as one. We would take our coffee hour treats and either contend with the echo of the Terrace Room or find a room with just a few other folks we probably already knew. In Chu Hall, we can be together, seeing each other; seeing the kids playing together on the stage, admiring the seemingly random collections of people sitting together around the tables. Or folks catching up around generous spreads of food.  So let’s keep it up! Seeing the success of sharing a meal together at the Annual Picnic, Seder Service, Ingathering, or any given Sunday, it is clear to me that we can continue to build on that community development.  "The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture." ― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto In that spirit, once a month we are going to forgo our regular after-service programming, and come together over a meal for a Community Sunday, creating a 'ritual of family and community'. On these days we will gather in Chu Hall, share some delicious food and get to know each other, building our community. But as every Thanksgiving Day cook knows, we need some help. Our Green Aprons are going to spearhead the food side of our time together. But if you want to help out in the kitchen, email hospitality@muuf.org . We can always use another set of hands.  Though the main focus of these days is organic and natural conversation, we sometimes need some help or prompts. So we need a few folks to help brainstorm and share different ideas to spark conversation. Table Conversation Cards, Intentional Seating, and People Bingo are some of the ideas we are thinking of. But if you have any ideas to promote community building, please reach out to Nick . The dates for our Community dates this year are: September 14th - Ingathering October 5th November 9th November 30th December 21st January 18th February 15th March 29th April 5th - Easter May 3rd -  June 7th - Annual Meeting June 14th - End of the Year Picnic "In the end, the culture we create comes down to the foods we share." – Anthony Bourdain

Please consider joining us Saturday morning October 18th for the annual fall work day from 9 AM to 1 PM (pizza will be served for lunch around noon). There are tasks appropriate for every level of skill, age and enthusiasm. All of the necessary supplies and tools will be provided.

Are you around on Sunday September 28th? Please help us staff the Fellowship table at the festival this year! People thrive in community. Our table at the Festival is an opportunity to share our UU community with Morristown. Please review the available slots below and click on the button to sign up. Thank you!

Over a year in the making, our website has been rebuilt completely from scratch on a brand-new platform. In creating it, we didn't simply copy everything over from the old site - we worked from the ground up to create a clean, modern site that encompasses the functions we feel a website needs to serve us, and then from there we ported over the content that suited it. New Site Highlights (The Good) The new site brings countless improvements over the old one. Here are just a few: All pages are built from the ground up to look good regardless of the device you're viewing them on (computers, tablets, and phones). Our new Sunday Services page allows you to easily view previous services, including not just the recorded video, but also their offering split and buttons to view their historical Orders of Service. Our News page shows you a feed of all of our news, across every category - with a simple category menu to narrow down the feed if desired. On the old site, you would need to check news feeds on each subject's page. Our Events page allows you to see upcoming one-off events and RSVP or buy tickets to them, directly through our website. While you're there, don't forget to buy your tickets to our Chili Cook-off and Feast ! Site load times are dramatically improved over the old site, and page-to-page transitions should be even snappier. The new platform brings a host of new features we have future plans for but aren't taking advantage of yet. You'll just have to stay tuned! The State Of Things (The Bad) The new site is still a work-in-progress - some pages you might expect to find are not currently present. This does not mean they didn't make the cut , it just means we weren't able to have them fully ready by the time we were planning to go live. There are many pages that aren't currently live that we're working on behind the scenes, especially for welcoming newcomers and covering our congregation's extensive history. You may have noticed that changes to the old site were a bit slow over the past few months, and some pages were stripped down and consolidated. This was all because we were focusing our efforts on the new site behind the scenes, and it didn't make sense to take away development time from the new site to fix something that broke on the old one unless it was critical. Now that the new site is live, you can expect rapid improvements to be made nearly every day. The State Of Things (The Ugly) All of the news articles were imported from the old site, but the process was not perfect. Some information, like post titles and summaries, were distorted in weird (albeit consistent) ways, mainly when special characters were involved. Cover images (the image that displays when the article is viewed on the News page, or shown in the weekly Newsletter) and authors were lost entirely. Post URLs were not directly imported, but since they're based off of the post title, many were re-generated exactly the same. However, because of the aforementioned title issues, and the fact that URLs are based on the title, some of them were malformed and do not match the old site. This means that, without correction, some links you visit (like if you were to click on an article's Read More button in last week's Newsletter) may not take you to the desired page. Some post formatting was not perfectly maintained. The new platform does allow a great degree of freedom in post formatting and structure, but the conversion process from the old site was imperfect. Fixing each of these issues is a completely manual, very laborious process that we'll be undertaking over the next few weeks. The last two weeks of posts are already fixed, so these symptoms should be relatively minor unless you really start digging. Outside of the article issues, a few pages are still a work-in-progress, namely the individual Programs pages and the Music Program page. Expect them to look nicer over time. If you happen to notice any other issues with the site, or have any feedback in general, please let Alex or Nick know by contacting web@muuf.org .

If you attended or watched the “ 30 Years of Partnership ” service on August 6, 2023 you may have noticed that Gabor was wearing an interesting embroidered shirt. This shirt has the symbols of both American UUs and Transylvanian Unitarians, and emphasizes the similarity and our connection. It was embroidered by the ladies of Sinfalva, our Partner Church in Transylvania, Romania. In the past, several people had sent shirts to be embroidered, for a small donation. They have expressed interest in doing this again. Please contact Gabor ( gkiss@muuf.org ) if you are interested in doing this.

We hope that you have glanced at the Partner Church Corner in the MUUF Library and have examined some of the artifacts which we display there. It has been there for a number of years, pretty much unchanged. This year, as part of an overall cleanup and “refresh” of the Library we are refreshing the Partner Church Corner as well. Here is a picture after the refresh. In addition, we are dedicating it in honor of two long-time members who passed away recently, Don Price and Judy Oehler (see the two items below). We have had physical 3-ring binders with paper photos for people to look through. Here are the same photos in PDF form for you to look at whenever you like: Photos of First Trip to Sinfalva, Summer 1994 Photos of Second Trip to Sinfalva, Summer 1998 Here are some other photo collections which had not been displayed in the 3-ring binder but are being made available now. I will add captions to these collections in time. Photos of Third Trip to Transylvania, Summer 2001   Mostly of the Unitarian Headquarters in Kolozsvar, also some photos of the Unitarian Bishop Photos of Fourth Trip to Transylvania, Summer 2004    These are not in order. I took my 13-year-old (at the time) son Andras with me. We stayed in the church guest house, which had since been renovated In 2001 Gabor left some single-use cameras with the folks in Sinfalva. Here are the photos they made (three different cameras): Photos from Sinfalva single-use cameras 2001-2002 Here are some other photos sent by the folks in Sinfalva to us: Photos of wine-making and wall repair – 2005 Photos from Sinfalva – 2005 (More photos will be added …. ) Finally, though, no one it seems can hear the word “Transylvania” without thinking of Dracula. In fact, many are probably surprised that it is a real place, the “land beyond the forest”. Naturally, the Partner Church Committee addressed this enduring association, in a presentation called: Dracula: the Myth and the Man

If you have heard about and wondered about the connection between UU and Hungarian language and culture, here is a 15-minute video which Gabor made about just that. Our Partner Church congregation in Sinfalva, Romania are Hungarian-speaking Romanians. It is presented by the Hungarian Heritage Expo on Thursday 8/28. Use this link  to gain 1-day-only access for free. There will be several other presentations that day, including one about the wonderful  “Vizsla” breed of dog. These presentations are available at 9am, Eastern time (New York, US) on Thursday, August 28th for 24 hours: CULTURAL CONNECTIONS  What do Hungarians eat? What don’t Hungarians eat?  with Katalin Solymosi FILM TALK The “70 for 70” Commemoration Series: Celebrating the Hungarian Spirit and Saluting the 70th Anniversary of the 1956 Revolution  with Klaudia Kovács GENEALOGY Arcanum Newspapers in Action: Search, Filter, Discover with Kincső Biszak MUSIC My Lovely Hungarian Zither with  Laszlo Juhasz, Jenő Németh, and István Nográdi HISTORY  Unitarianism Hungarian Connection  with Gabor Kiss CULTURAL CONNECTIONS  All About the Vizsla  with Zsofia Miczek An All Access Pass will be available for purchase, which give access to all presentations for 6 months. Contact Gabor at gabor@muuf.org with any questions.

Ingathering, our annual service celebrating the start of a new congregational year, is this Sunday, September 14th. We’ll celebrate during our service with our Water Communion ceremony and a Backpack Blessing, and after our service with a potluck and a community art project. So be sure to bring: a little water from your summer travels or from home to pour into our common bowl, your backpack or book bag, and a dish to share! The pot luck will be in Chu Hall and the Courtyard at 11 a.m. after the service. See the potluck event in our newsletter or on our website for more details. Happy Ingathering!

Let’s Do It Again! This year, we made it easier for you to update your favorite Service Auction offerings! Just clink on the button below and follow the instructions! Instructions on re-offering a previous item: Need help/Questions? Contact serviceauction@muuf.org

Join us for several exciting events as we make our final push towards Mortgage Prevention. Stay tuned for a special announcement this Sunday 19 October 11:30 am - 12:30 pm Capital Campaign Focus Group Please join us in the Library for a discussion on the Capital Campaign. More details to follow. ... View Detail 15 November 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm Stearns Matthews Concert Join us on Saturday, November 15th in Chu Hall for a concert featuring Stearns Matthews Concert to benefit the Mortgage Prevention Fund. Keep your eyes out for more details! ... View Detail 28 February All Day Capital Campaign Celebration Art Show and Sale with Nina Nemeth and Barbershop Quartet in support of the Capital Campaign’s Mortgage Prevention Fund ... View Detail No event found!