We will be finishing our masks and getting ready for the Halloween service. We will be painting, please dress appropriately.
Thea Shapiro, Director of Religious Education
Thea Shapiro is the Director of Religious Education.
I oversee the children’s religious education program and have been a religious educator for the past seven years.
Our program is based on the one room school house approach. Children of all ages work together. We focus on being in community and learning about what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist.
Our youth participate in Our Whole Lives (OWL ) and Coming of Age (COA).
I volunteer at a middle school camp, Different Drummer at Ferry Beach and I volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club in Lawrence MA. I am a grade 7-9 Owl facilitator, a level two certified Radiant Child Yoga instructor. I teach at the Essex Art Center in Lawrence MA . And I am studying to be an Interfaith Chaplin at Chaplaincy Institute of Maine.
I am also an artist. I live in Andover with my husband, daughter, dog and cat. And I have a son who is off at college in New York City.
Brett Hinkel, Music Director
Music Director Brett Hinkel is a Computer Engineering graduate of Penn State University. He is the Director of the Sharon Community Chorus in Sharon, MA, and is very active as a Music Director for local community theater musical productions. Brett works part-time at Logan Airport as a Load Planner for UPS. He resides in South Boston with his wife, Mindy.
Rev. Lara Hoke
The Rev. Lara Hoke is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and Cornell University. Prior to becoming a minister, Lara was the Program Director for Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light. Before that, she worked with youth groups in the central Massachusetts area – and before that she served for four years in the US Navy. In addition to parish ministry, Lara has worked as a healthcare chaplain.
Lara is a life-long Unitarian Universalist and writes a blog called To whUUm it may concern. She enjoys reading and playing guitar and trumpet (very amateurishly). She is particularly interested in issues of peace-making; environmental justice; anti-racism; and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality.
She recently earned a certificate from the “Peacebuilding Peacelearning Intensive” of the National Peace Academy. Lara is a Board Member of the UU Mass Action Network and a former Board Director for the UU Ministry for Earth. Lara lives in Worcester, MA, with her wife Emily Ferrara.
You can read more about Lara in a recent Andover Townsman article.
Sunday Service, November 14, 10:30 a.m. “Let Peace Begin with Me, Positively” Being at peace is much more than simply being “not at war”. This past summer, Rev. Lara Hoke attended the National Peace Academy and was very inspired to learn about and experience the positive peace movement. The positive peace movement acknowledges that everything is interconnected, and that it is important to work on creating peace in the personal, social, political and ecological spheres. On November 14, Lara will share some of the insights she gained about creating peace in the personal sphere, including a few exercises for working toward inner peace. Join us at 10:30 a.m.!
Enjoy an evening with friends and wonderful music – Saturday, November 12 at 7pm. The featured band is “Day For Night” with Patty Brayden on vocals and John Finbury on keyboard.
Light refreshments will be available. Suggested donation $10.00 – proceeds to benefit UUCiA.
The regular season of Major League Baseball has ended. Sadly (at least for me), the Red Sox are not in the post season this year. Ah, well. So, I’ve done the only thing I can do: I have turned my attention to football.
The football season reminds me a little of the “congregational year”, which for our congregation (and many Unitarian Universalist congregations) runs from the Sunday after Labor Day through the Sunday before the UU General Assembly begins (in late June). Why? I think it’s because each week we prepare for one “big game” (Sunday morning). And the Order of Worship each week seems just a little like a football “game plan”. But the biggest similarity, perhaps, is that in spite of any planning that might be done, for better or for worse, “on any given Sunday, anything can happen” (to borrow the motif from Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday). (more…)
