How to Survive the Holidays: 6 Communication Tips With Oren Jay Sofer 

1. Set intentions-One of the most transformative ingredients in a conversation is intention, the inclination or motivation that impels us to speak or act. When we come from healthy intentions like patience, kindness, or curiosity, we’re more likely to respond in a helpful way rather than react impulsively. Take some time reflect on your intentions before you get together with family or friends. How do you want to engage? How strongly are you committed to those values? Can you feel the strength of that in your body? 
2. Stay grounded – Being mindful is a prerequisite for effective conversations. Without awareness, we’re just running on automatic! One way to stay mindful during conversation, and especially in challenging moments, is to feel the weight of your body. Sense your feet on the floor, the warmth in your hands, or the contact with the chair. Feeling the heaviness of our body and its contact with the floor can help us to stay grounded when things get heated.
3. Practice key phrases – How many times have you thought of the perfect thing to say hours (or days) after an argument or tense moment? Instead of freezing or falling back on old habits when something challenging arises, practice a few key phrases ahead of time. Based on past experience, consider where you might get stuck and then write down some phrases you can use if something similar happens. For example: To buy more time: “Let me take a moment to think about that…” To decline to comment: “That’s important, and I’d prefer to talk about it some other time. How about we…?” To pause a conversation: “This feel pretty intense. Let’s take a break on this topic for a little while.” To change the subject: “I’d love to focus on enjoying one another’s company tonight. Let’s talk about…”
4. Listen for what matters – Another key way to ease tensions and turn a conversation around is to get curious. Instead of focusing on the things you disagree with, try to get interested. NVC (and many forms of psychology and social science) teaches that at the core all humans share the same basic, fundamental needs. We all want to be happy, to be understood, to have meaning. Conflict happens at the level of our strategies—our ideas about how to meet our needs. When we identify what really matters, our commonalities outweigh our differences and we find shared humanity. Practice listening for this deeper layer of human meaning and experience. Underneath the views and opinions, what’s important to this person? Genuinely listening for another’s values can go a long way to bridging the gap.
5. Set limits with care  – Keeping the peace has value, and it’s important to know your limits. Sometimes, speaking up is what’s most authentic or needed. We can call out ideas we believe to be dangerous, harsh speech or harmful actions without degrading anyone. Instead of blaming, diagnosing or labeling someone, speak from your heart about what matters to you. “I feel so upset by what you’re saying. Those kinds of generalizations can lead to terrible violence, and I want everyone to be seen for who they rather than be defined by their … (nationality, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, ability…).” By stating with your own feelings and needs, you can minimize conflict when it arises.
6. Keep your aims modest – Last, let go of the outcome. There can be great value in critical conversation, but consider if this family gathering is the right time and place for a meaningful exchange! What’s more, trying to change the other person’s mind rarely supports real dialogue. Instead, focus on how you’re having the conversation. Are you embodying your values regardless of the other person’s behavior? While you’re unlikely to solve the world’s pressing issues over dinner, you might deepen your relationship with a relative if you can find a way to really listen and share ideas. When it comes down to it, our ability to engage with care and respect is often more effective than finding the right words. 

Sunday, December 8, 5:30 PM

Skyline invites you and your family and friends to join in our annual holiday celebration!

• Enjoy a delicious meal (contact Bee for what to bring!)
• Sing traditional Christmas carols and hymns
• Special musical performances and guest Master of Ceremonies
• And more!

Please RSVP to Bee no later than Dec 4 to select what you’ll bring to share with our community.  Contact Bee Franks-Walker via the office at 510-531-8212, office@skylineucc.org.  Coordinated by the Fun Team – Bee, Paula, & Walter

Sundays, Dec 1, 8, 15, 11:30 AM to 12:15 PM, after service and fellowship, in the sanctuary

Each year, the day before Thanksgiving and on Thanksgiving Day, folks from all over the Oakland community gather to serve the homeless, elderly, and those in need at Lake Merritt U.M. Church in downtown Oakland.

We at Skyline have been asked, once again, to help provide pies! We are the pie experts! 

• All pies are welcome – (we want a variety). They can be homemade, purchased frozen and cooked, purchased ready to serve, etc. (We can’t use frozen, uncooked pies as all the ovens are in use for preparing the rest of the dinner.)
• The U.M. Church is hoping for 60 pies from Skyline (which we usually provide).
• Paula will pick up pies on Wednesday,  the 27th, by 10:00 AM and take them to Lake Merritt. (note change from last year that she’s picking them up a day earlier)
• Folks can leave them in the Friendship Room after church  (office hours are 9-3 T-F – contact Nancy M at 510-531-8212) or meet me at the church that morning.
• If you don’t have time to bake, I will buy pies for you (make checks to Skyline UCC, mark pies in the memo field) 
• There will be a sign-up sheet which I will have each Sunday beginning November  10th. Thank you so much for agreeing to aid this project!

Most food for this feast is donated: turkeys (no frozen ones the week of Thanksgiving), potatoes, beans, rolls, salad, and pies – some is purchased from the Alameda County Food Bank, the rest is either by donation of items or money. Last year they purchased $1300 worth of turkeys and served close to 800 meals, including take-home, and anticipate the need will be greater this year.

Volunteers are also welcomed – check with them or me about an age limit for children. They need to know ahead of time so they can monitor the flow and use of volunteers.  Anyone wishing to help cook the turkeys- that is done beginning at 7:30 a.m. On Wednesday, Nov. 27th, at the church.

Any questions, contact Paula by calling the office at 510-531-8212

Skyline Community Church welcomes you to our first presentation in a series provided by our neighboring experts in the Bay Area as a free education service to improve the health and well-being of everyone. 

Speaker, Susan JunFish, MPH is retired from Cal/EPA, Founder of Parents for a Safer Environment, and an environmental health scientist & public health educator trained at UC Berkeley.  She will address the 10 toxic categories of environmental exposures, referred to as “oxidative stressors.”   Many everyday and unexpected hidden sources of toxic exposures have simple solutions.  Reduce your and your loved ones’ risk to cancer, autoimmune diseases, reproductive/developmental diseases, learning disability, and even conditions like sleep disorder and anxiety.

To view the flier, click here.

To register and let us know a little about your interests, click here.

Sunday, Nov 17, 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM at Skyline sanctuary.

In recent years, journalists and advocates have tried to capture the scope of the Bay Area’s homelessness crisis — a problem that often feels unfathomable in its depth and complexity. This Sunday, we are pleased to have with us Terrance Thompson, Director of Transitional Housing at the Matilda Cleveland Clinic of the East Oakland Community Project (EOCP), along with several staff members and clients.  They will share a bit more about: 

• what they do
• who is homeless in Alameda County
• how we can help
• some success stories

Join us for worship and a discussion after the service with Terrance, the staff and clients, to learn more about our neighbors living just fifteen minutes from here.

Special thanks to Nancy Taylor for her many years of  support and advocacy for EOCP.  Mark your calendars for Tuesday, Dec 17, when, with Santa, we will bring gifts, sing carols, and share a meal with these young families.  

I’d also like to share with you, below, a story about the Genesis of a new model of providing urgently needed affordable housing in the Bay Area, that Skyline and I are instrumental in initiating.  This article is written by  the  Rev. Dr. Patrick G. Duggan, Executive Director of the United Church of Christ Church Building & Loan Fund. Since 1995, Rev. Dr. Duggan has also served as senior pastor of the Congregational Church of South Hempstead in South Hempstead, New York.

 Blessings, Pastor Laurie 

This past August, the UCC Church Building & Loan Fund (CB&LF) did something that, to our knowledge, had never been done in the Fund’s 166-year history. The respective boards of the Church Building & Loan Fund and the UCC Cornerstone Fund voted to approve joint financing of a $3.6 million loan to Genesis Worship Center, a nondenominational church located in Oakland, California.

So, what is new about a loan approval at CB&LF after financing over 4000 church projects?

Was it the size of the loan or that it was a participation loan between the two United Church of Christ church loan funds?  No, neither of these were new nor unusual. Perhaps it was the fact that the loan was made to a church that is not a part of the United Church of Christ? No, CB&LF has always included, as a part of its mission, offering its products and services to all Christian churches regardless of denominational affiliation or lack thereof.

What was precedent-setting for the loan to Genesis Worship Center is that it was the first CB&LF loan to be used to transform an existing church fellowship hall into an affordable housing project. When construction is completed in the next 18-24 months, a building that had been used for Sunday fellowship hour, church meetings, wedding receptions, and birthday parties will be transformed into twelve brand new affordable apartments for low- and moderate-income families from the Bay Area.

It is not lost on this author that CB&LF’s first loan for a major repurposing project on church property, an affordable housing development, is for a church named “Genesis”. In addition to the name, however, there are several elements to this project that signaled to us that the Holy Spirit was affirming CB&LF’s renewed strategic vision to transform communities by helping the Church live into God’s economy.

Firstly, over 28,000 people are homeless in the Bay Area of California, the third-largest homeless population in the country. The region has the second-largest percentage of homeless people in the U.S. without temporary shelter: 67%.  San Francisco recently reported 1,794 people living in cars, a 45% increase since 2017. Drive around any of the 101 cities in the nine Bay Area counties, and you will see families living in cars, in tent cities, on medians, dead-end streets, at railyards, under bridges and overpasses, in parks, and on downtown streets. Over 10% of the Bay Area homeless hold jobs, and some are college students.  A recent study reported that in the state of California, 19% of the state’s 2.1 million college students, over 400,000 people, have experienced homelessness in the past year. Some 60% of these students are housing insecure; half have experienced hunger.

The statistics affirm the biblical imperative for God’s people to act on behalf of the homeless and housing insecure. Bay Area congregations on their own and through organizations like the Interfaith Council of Alameda County (ICAC) have answered the call, working with local officials to offer immediate and short-term aid while developing long term solutions. It was partly through the efforts of ICAC Executive Committee member Pastor Laurie Manning of Skyline United Church of Christ that CB&LF was invited to present to the ICAC this past April to talk about the financing, consulting and transformational services CB&LF could bring to bear to meet this dire need.

Another sign of God’s hand was that CB&LF was sought out as a source of financing by New Way Homes, the developer for Genesis. New Way’s founder, a retired tech entrepreneur, formed the enterprise because he was moved by the urgency of the Bay Area housing crisis. New Way specializes in affordable housing development on urban church properties in the Bay Area. This talented boutique development firm understood that CB&LF offers low cost, flexible financing exclusively to churches and church organizations. They appreciated CB&LF’s mission and strategic vision to deploy its wealth toward ending poverty in America. They were amazed by CB&LF’s experience in helping churches to align the use of their real estate assets with ministry goals and community needs.

Thirdly, the timeframe from initial contact with Genesis to loan approval for the project was by comparison, extremely short.   Typically, churches are very slow to act on major building projects. For example, CB&LF will train or otherwise assist over 700 church leaders this year. Of that number, less than 5% of those leaders will influence their respective congregations to initiate a building project within the first 12 months after contact. Most congregations take two to three years to move from a decision to the start of a building project.

Genesis Pastor George Matthews, a gifted church leader who holds both MDiv and MBA degrees, was apparently among the 5% mentioned above. We visited Pastor Matthews and walked the Genesis Worship Center site in April 2019.  He worked with New Way Homes to submit a very strong loan application a few weeks later, and after review and underwriting by the Cornerstone Fund, the Genesis Worship Center loan application was approved by the CB&LF Board of Directors on July 26, 2019.

This past Saturday, Nov 1, these many partners, as well as Oakland Mayor Libby Schaff and District 4 Alameda County Board of Supervisor Nate Miley joined us for the groundbreaking ceremony. 

As Mayor Schaff puts it, “this church, this congregation, this partnership, this leadership, working with the countyYou are going to set a new model, support the leadership of the Interfaith council of Alameda County, we inspire each other – our values are aligned, inspiring the faith community to do more about our homelessness crisis. Government cannot do it alone. we don’t have all of the resources we want to meet the needs that we see, that we have been called as public servants to do, to reduce human suffering, to create human society that is more fair, clearly we have more work to do in both categories, but we clearly cannot do it alone, & your partnership, your leadership, your delivery of these incredible results, 12 homes, where people will go to bed at night, with a sense of safety, where they will build a sense of community, you are creating a model for future programs. I encourage us to be creative, to be in partnership, in creating home for all people in our city. Thank you for being such an important part of building the Oakland Community”

Genesis… New Way… If this was a tale and not a true account of a new thing at CB&LF, you could not come up with better names!

   

Our very own member, Rev Jerri Handy, will be traveling in Tijuana Mexico next week as part of her work with UCC Global Ministries with Albergue Las Memorias. This is an HIV/AIDS Hospice Center currently serving 95+ residents. This particular center is unique in its mission to house, clothe, feed, and transport to medical appointments as needed for each resident. All of this is offered without cost to residents, all of whom are HIV positive. And it is more than this, as residents find hope and meaning in life as they live in an atmosphere of care and respect.

Jerri describes her work at this hospice center:   My whole life has been preparing me for serving at Las Memorias. I have a Marriage and Family Therapy degree from Christian Theological Seminary and an MDiv from Pacific School of Religion. These two degrees, together with my life experiences, have prepared me to work with individuals and families who are facing life decisions. Addictions work, family systems in a community setting and working with spiritual guidance all come together in this community.

She will return with stories from her travels, and share these as part of her sermon on Sunday, Oct 27.  Her sermon for Reformation Sunday  is entitled “Let it Go”, and will focus on our personal and collective courage to change what we can for the greater good.

Also, mark your calendars for Nov 3^rd, as we will plan to celebrate the soulful and joyful music ministry of Benjamin Mertz, on his last Sunday with us.

I will be away this week at our UCC national offices for board meetings with the UCC Church Building and Loan Fund, and with our UCC climate justice ministry team.

Sunday, October 20, 2-6 pm

First Congregational Church of Oakland

2501 Harrison St., Oakland

Part of our ongoing series of workshops designed to reduce our reliance on an increasingly militarized police force, this offering from Community Ready Corps (CRC) will cover basic principles and practices to help us keep ourselves and our communities safe.

What would you do if you found yourself in the middle of a violent situation? How can you safely get yourself and others out of that situation?

We will be asking for a voluntary donation to support the vital work of Community Ready Corps. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

CRC is a liberation organization that combats white supremacy and actively builds & supports self determination in disenfranchised communities. Their work focuses on nine areas:

Politics
Economics
Family
Health
Education
Art
Media
Traditions & Ways
Self Defense

This is a two-year project (2019-2020), more than a year in the making, is being co-sponsored by Skyline UCC with other groups.

Some things to know about this project:

WHAT IT IS NOT:

1. Anti-police.
2. Participation in this project does NOT constitute a commitment to not call the police.

WHAT IT IS:

1. A realization/acceptance that when black lives are involved, calling the police can be fatal.
2. An exploration of alternatives that can be more effective than the police, such as groups that are trained in non-violent communications, de-escalation techniques, crisis intervention (in areas such as mental health, drug & alcohol abuse), self defense, conflict resolution, medical training, community disaster preparedness, etc.
3. Internal work on the effects of White Supremacy on police violence, examining safety & security, interracial dynamics in the community, what internal fears make people rely on the police?  (Each community would tailor content of inner work to its own needs.)
4. Ways to get to know our neighbors and to help us to know and trust each other via material resources, availability for prayer and conversation, etc.

In Summary: this is an invitation to participate in a program that can build toward the creation of a true Beloved Community that chooses to not collude with empire (in this case, the “prison-industrial complex”) in the name of safety, and that is willing to take the risk(s) necessary to explore an alternative first-responder network that provides interventions, when necessary, for the safety of all individuals and groups that are participating.   This is also a next step in examining our own internal mechanisms of White Supremacy/racism/white fragility.  ALL are invited to join in this opportunity for growth, and in this righteous (and scary!) adventure.

The UCC’s 32nd General Synod meeting in Milwaukee has approved three resolutions to help combat the climate crisis, including one in support of the “Green New Deal”. 

The Green New Deal resolution, approved by a vast majority,  makes the UCC the first Christian body in the country to endorse the far-reaching climate plan.  The Green New Deal, introduced in Congress earlier this year by Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), attempts to transform the US economy in order to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions; it proposes investing in infrastructure and industry to encourage use of renewables, creating millions of high-wage jobs in the process.

Skyline church, early on, urged on by our Green team and by Pastor Laurie, endorsed the GND. Then Pastor Laurie presented the emergency resolution  at the June Northern California Nevada  Conference of the United Church of Christ, and presented a workshop. The resolution http://ncnc.dreamhosters.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Green-New-Deal-Resolution-2.pdf, was unanimously endorsed in advance of the synod.  

In addition, the UCC  had also approved,  urging all people of faith to reduce their use of plastic foam—specifically, styrofoam.  Styrofoam does not decompose in landfills and is a known pollutant and suspected carcinogen.

A third resolution—in favor of the US congressional bill HR 763, which sets a price on carbon, was approved by the UCC.

Much of the progress of the UCC in environmental justice, is brought forth through this grassroots, representative group.