Page 2 of new brochure

Page 1 of new brochure

ok -here are the images of the brochure!

It's on Yáll!  we are having the Sat/Sun retreat at NSUU.
As soon as I can, I will post the brochure here.  I can't remember the tricks I did to do that ... grrrrr

but it's on!

key points - if you paid already and need a refund, we will do that - or, you can donate the difference in cost to GNOUU.  Limited camping space, limited indoor floor space for sleeping bags and air mattresses, some NSUUs have space in their homes, Fontainbleu has some available campsites, and there are many hotels in the area.  We really hope you can make it - and we are sorry that it didn't work out as we had planned, but we think Plan B is still pretty darned good!

love to all,
leslie

To Retreat or Not to Retreat ... that is the question

Hello friends!
Our little Hurricane Isaac did some damage at Fontainbleau State park - the park is closed while they work on cleanup and repairs.  I spoke with the park people about our dates for the retreat and asked when they might be reopening.  Their reply was a tentative "Oct 14" - which could be perfect for us since we would be there the next weekend Oct 19.  But we won't know for a few weeks.  I'll check in and keep you posted.

In the meantime, Deanna and the other ministers waggled their heads together and proposed a Plan B of having the Saturday retreat events at the NSUU community center.  Which is a great idea, and may take just a little extra planning - and nothing is written in stone as yet .... I'll keep you posted on that too.

There are lots of campsites around northshore so some of you may want to take some tents and camp out over there somewhere - Bogue Chitto has some public campsites on the river which are nice.

So we will still try and plan to have a retreat into nature with our fellow UUs!

stay tuned ...

and in the meantime - keep an eye out for a BONE MAKING PROJECT!  Part of the 1,000,000 bones project with an aart installation at St Anna's in the Treme!  bones, baby, bones!

A Retreat Haiku for today:

Register quite soon
Days pass by more quickly than
We can imagine

http://gnouu.org/images/uu-fall-retreat-brochure.pdf

retreat brochure coming soon - sneak peek!

We are super close to finalizing the flyer
It is coming soon - I swear!!!

Shana Walton has helped in taking it from a blah boring Word doc into a colorful and fanciful brochure

here is a sneak peek in it's construction stage ....

Musings on segregation …. In the dorms at the retreat

Egads – who knew there were so many particlulars to consider when organizing a retreat!  My fellow conscious livers joined me for another session of retreat scheduling, and we found ourselves tasked with determining if and how to provide any segregated sleeping space in the dorms during the retreat. 

Previously, it was segregated by men and women (which I personally don’t like), and sometimes by snorers and non-snorers (which I happen to like a lot!)  But other things came up –like our differing sexual orientations, or do the kids want to stay together or should they be with their parents.  If we segregate by men and women, then how do families stay together?  If we segregate by men and women, where do our transsexuals and transvestites go?  Do we need to create a women only corner to make sure that any women who need a safe place of boundaries are comfortable?  And what about people who need c-pac machines to sleep with that might be noisy?  Do we need a noisy corner, a women-only corner, a kids only corner, a late nighters corner, etc.

What to do, what to do.

So, we are sending Shana to the GNOUU meeting on Monday to pose this question to the ministers and the other members of GNOUU to see what guidance they may have for us.

What are your thoughts?  What do you need to sleep well during a retreat?

Meg Jurisich sent this to me to share - Mindful Eating!

1098

To attain well-being, we need to take care not only of our bodies but also of our minds. Mindfulness practice is central to seeing the interdependence of mind and body. --Lilian Cheung, Thich Nhat Hanh

Better Eating through Mindfulness

--by Jill Suttie, Greater Good, Jul 28, 2012

Obesity has become a public health issue. New research suggests moment-to-moment awareness does a better job of helping people control their weight than any diet.
Deborah Hill used to think she was skinny. Her 5 foot 9 inch frame could take on a lot of weight without making her look out of shape. But last year she was shocked to discover that she weighed over 210 pounds, which classified her as medically obese.

“It was just crazy,” says Hill. “I’d never had a problem with weight.”

Hill is one of a growing number of Americans—over 35 percent, according to the Center for Disease Control—who are considered obese, having a body mass index of 30 or greater. Obesity increases health risks like heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, to name a few, and the health care costs to treat obesity-related illness are skyrocketing, with CDC estimates in 2008 reaching $147 billion dollars.

Danny Hellman

But now there is a new prescription for combating obesity, one that goes beyond ubiquitous diet and exercise regimens: mindfulness, the moment-to-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, and surroundings.

Researchers are learning that teaching obese individuals mindful eating skills—like paying closer attention to their bodies’ hunger cues and learning to savor their food—can help them change unhealthy eating patterns and lose weight. And, unlike other forms of treatment, mindfulness may get at the underlying causes of overeating—like craving, stress, and emotional eating—which make it so hard to defeat.

Mindfulness has definitely helped Hill. In the last year, she has lost 40 pounds and developed a much healthier relationship to food and eating.

“Mindfulness has been huge for me,” she says.

Why mindfulness?

Jean Kristeller, a professor emeritus of psychology at Indiana State University, is a pioneer in the field. She first became interested in applying mindfulness to eating issues when working as a clinician with overweight college students who were compulsively eating large quantities of food—or “binging.” She thought her students had an underlying dysfunctional relationship to food that was being ignored in the clinical community in favor of dieting, which “didn’t mesh” for her.

But when she encountered Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, she says, “more than a light bulb” went off for her. She wondered if it could be possible to teach people with eating disorders to become refocused on their internal hunger and signs that they were full—and develop a more accepting approach to food and eating.

“He was taking a tradition of cultivating awareness and an accepting way of our experiences—both inner and outer—and encouraging people to bring themselves into better balance,” says Kristeller. “This fit with my theoretical model of reconnecting people with their inner experiences.”

With the help of a doctoral student, she created a program called Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training—or MB-EAT, based on Kabat-Zinn’s MBSR—that teaches people how to taste their food, recognize their levels of hunger and fullness, and be more accepting of their food preferences. One exercise involves eating a few raisins slowly, paying close attention to their flavor sensations and how they change with time.

“When most people do the raisin exercise, they are stunned by it,” says Kristeller. “They see that if they eat a few raisins mindfully they can enjoy them as much or more than if they eat a whole box.”

Of course, even Kristeller admits that it’s easier to get people to regulate their intake with health foods, like raisins, than “problem foods,” like chocolate brownies. So, the program doesn’t stop with raisins—it teaches people that, once they learn to pay attention, brownies can be best experienced and savored in a smaller number of bites.

Many obese people, says Kristeller, have developed a particular pattern: They try to control their eating through avoidance or limit-setting, thinking “willpower” is what they need. Then, when their plans go awry—as they inevitably do—they tell themselves that they’ve “blown it” and give up.

From a mindfulness perspective, she says, there is never a point of no return: One can choose to eat mindfully at anytime, even after “blowing it.” In addition, since the program teaches people not to avoid foods but to savor them, people don’t feel as deprived. Kristeller tries to take the guilt out of enjoying food and to help people honor their food preferences.

“We try to help people cultivate their inner gourmet,” she says.

Jean Kristeller, Ph.D: “Mindfulness Based Eating” from Omega Institute on Vimeo.

What the research says

Kristeller tested her MB-EAT program in a pilot study with a group of 18 binge eaters. The women participated in seven sessions of a group treatment program, which included assessments prior to and following treatment.

At the end of treatment, binges dropped from slightly over four to about 1.5 per week, with only four participants still meeting criteria for Binge Eating Disorder when the researchers followed up with questions after treatment. In addition, the women demonstrated a better relationship to food and eating, and their depression and anxiety decreased.

In a second study, conducted with Ruth Quillian-Wolever of Duke University, Kristeller tested the MB-EAT program on a group of obese binge eaters, comparing the group at one month and four months post-treatment to two control groups, one of which went through another educational program.

Although both the educational and MB-EAT groups reduced their binging behavior, those in the MB-EAT group showed signs of greater overall self-regulation and balance around eating, and sustained improvement in binge eating. Plus, the degree to which the women incorporated mindfulness practices into their lives predicted much of this improvement and the degree of weight loss they experienced.

“This study showed that success wasn’t just about group work and getting support,“ says Kristeller, “but that their success at losing weight was directly related to the degree to which they used mindfulness techniques.”

Currently there is no data that shows what is happening in the brain when people practice mindful eating. But Kristeller points to the large body of research on MBSR showing that people who use mindfulness increase the size and function of their pre-frontal cortex, the area of the brain connected to decision making and long-range planning. She hypothesizes that mindful eating strengthens this same area of the brain, making it easier for people to cognitively process their desire to eat, rather than feeling victim to the emotional center that often drives eating.

“We are interrupting the reactivity cycle,” says Kristeller.

Stress in eating and obesity

Elissa Epel, the founder and director of the Center for Obesity Assessment, Study, and Treatment at the University of California, San Francisco, has been researching the role of stress in overeating. One of the biggest, most reliable paths to obesity, she says, is high stress, because it changes our appetite, stimulates overeating, and makes us more insulin-resistant, a factor that elevates blood sugar and can put as at risk for Type 2 diabetes.

“Stress affects the same signals as famine does. It turns on the brain pathways that make us crave dense calories—we’ll choose high fat, high sweet foods, or high salt,” says Epel. “When we have a ‘stress brain,’ food is even more rewarding.”

Elissa Epel, founder and director of the UCSF Center for Obesity Assessment, Study, and Treatment.

Epel notes that surveys show 50-60 percent of women eat for emotional reasons rather than because of hunger. The stress of difficult emotions dampens the reward response in the brain and causes craving, which is what drives overeating—as well as drug use—in some people. According to Epel, the hunger and reward drives are the strongest drives in the human body and very difficult to change.

“When the obese brain tricks you into thinking that you’re starving, it’s hard to fight that,” she says.

Her lab has studied the impact of mindfulness training on people’s stress metabolism. Normally, fat distribution in women is concentrated in the hips; but women who release high levels of cortisol, the stress-related hormone, tend to store fat in the deep belly tissue—fat that is very difficult to take off. Epel and post-doctoral fellow Jennifer Daubenmier decided to test a program similar to Kristeller’s MB-EAT program but with added stress reduction exercises on obese women to see how it would impact the women’s cortisol levels and fat distribution.

Results showed that the more mindfulness the women practiced, the greater their anxiety, chronic stress, and deep belly fat decreased. In addition, the women in the mindfulness program maintained their body weight while the women in the control group increased their weight over the same period of time.

“This is what we call a proof of concept study,” says Epel. “We didn’t ask people to change how many calories they ate; we just wanted to know if decreasing stress would have an impact by changing fat distribution, and it did.”

In a more recent study, of which Deborah Hill is a participant, Epel and colleagues are looking at how mindfulness techniques affect weight loss. The program aims to reduce stress, increase awareness of external and internal cues for eating (like being in a party situation or feeling bored), and foster more self-acceptance around food, while teaching people about nutrition. While data from the study is still being evaluated, Epel expresses surprise by the promising results so far.

“Mindfulness has turned out to be much more powerful than I thought, in its ability to affect weight,” she says.

Not a panacea

Still, the research on mindful eating is relatively young, and it is not without its critics. One concern is that the mindfulness approach is too weak to be effective, given the overwhelming problems with our current food environment, such as the prevalence and cheapness of unhealthy, high calorie foods, and the marketing that pushes convenience foods on an overly stressed population.

Michele Mietus-Snyder, co-director of the Obesity Institute at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., has been studying childhood obesity in highly stressed communities, where obesity levels tend to be highest.

Michele Mietus-Snyder, co-director of the Obesity Institute at Children’s National Medical Center.

As part of a study funded by the American Heart Association, Mietus-Snyder taught mindfulness, as well as nutrition and healthy eating, to a group of inner-city kids and their parents in Northern California to see what impact it would have on the kids’ levels of stress, cortisol, and c-reactive protein, a risk factor in heart disease.

She quickly learned how “naïve” she was to think that these tools could make a significant impact. Because of the chaotic environment in which the study families lived, it was hard for them to participate consistently, even though the parents and kids both seemed receptive to the program.

“The tool of mindfulness, as valuable as it is, could just not take root in these kids’ lives,” says Mietus-Snyder. “The entropy of life took over.”

Results from her study found that neither the mindfulness group nor a control group—who received exercise in place of the mindfulness class—changed their metabolic profile by much, though both groups did have overall reductions in anxiety and in the kids’ body mass index scores. She hypothesizes that just bringing the parents and kids together once a week to learn about healthy eating may have been at least partly responsible for the positive results in both groups.

But what was most discouraging to Mietus-Snyder was the paucity of nutrition she found in the kids’ diets, which caused their metabolic systems to become inefficient and dysfunctional. She wonders if this, more than anything, impacted the effectiveness of the mindfulness intervention.

“We’re just climbing uphill with these kids,” she says.

Mietus-Snyder believes the most important thing society can do to eliminate obesity is to improve the food environment for these kids. The government should intercede and more closely regulate food production and distribution, especially in schools, she says.

Epel shares that concern, but still sees the need for a two-pronged approach.

“We need to change food policies, not just focus on how people change their response to it,” she agrees. “But we need to work from both sides of this issue.”

No more food fights

Before Deborah Hill entered Epel’s mindfulness treatment program, her doctor had warned her that her cholesterol and triglyceride levels were high, a risk factor for diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. She’d tried diets and programs like Weight Watchers, but felt that they weren’t helping her with the emotional side of her eating.

“I’m an emotional eater,” says Hill. “I eat because I’m bored, stressed, or just because.”

Through the mindful eating program, she has learned how to slow down, evaluate how she’s feeling, and make better choices.

“Now if I want a piece of cake, I really taste it,” she says. “After four to five bites, I re-evaluate and ask myself: Do I really want it?”

Although doing the daily mindfulness meditation has been hard for her, she finds other ways to de-stress, and has become more “adventurous” around eating, sometimes choosing arugula salad over fried chicken and mashed potatoes, for example. But, she doesn’t deny herself anything, she claims, even eating a burger when she wants to, as long as she stays aware of making the choice and not because “it’s there.”

“I’m not on a diet; I’m on a lifestyle change,” says Hill. “I eat what I want. I don’t fight food anymore.”

---

This article is printed here with permission from the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC). Based at UC Berkeley, the GGSC studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society. Ways to get involved with GGSC, and more from author Jill Suttie.

A reminder to SAVE THE DATES: October 19th-21st, 2012!

musings from Justice GA in Phoenix AZ

Hello friends!

I just came back from the UUA Justice GA in Phoenix AZ, and I wanted to share some thoughts with you.  Feel free to skip the fluffy stuff and head down towards the bottom for the yellow highlights ...

First of all, let me tell you that it was HOT!  Temps were ranging between 103-107 in the afternoon and evening – unbelievable! 

It was different tho because we didn’t get sweaty, so walking from the oven to the air conditioning didn’t leave us with wet clothes turning cold on our skin.

I went to GA this year to see our beloved Deanna walk across the stage during the Service of the Living Tradition as she was “officially welcomed into preliminary fellowship by the UUA”.  We also saw Charlie Dietrich and Nathan Ryan strutting across the stage.  It was so wonderful to be there to support her and applaud her as she crossed the stage and took another step on her journey to becoming a “finally fellowshipped minister of the UUA”.  Her partner Phil was beside her, and Jyaphia, Rev Melanie & Big Man, Quo Vadis, Joe Sullivan (!!) and my friend Chet and I were there from the south, and her incredible group of mentors from her internship in San Mateo were there too:  Rev Vail, Shawn (Choir Director) and Kathy (DRE) were there to sing and clap along with us.  There were other friendly faces there too – I saw Rev Jim and Shirley floating in the crowd and a host of other familiar faces.

It was a great service, with a few songs that left us yearning for more (and a few dirge-y ones that I was over and done with!).  The minister Karen Tse delivered a great sermon very tied to the theme of Justice – she has done extraordinary work in Cambodia in trying to work with the prisons to provide legal counsel to prisoners and to try to get the kids who were jailed for minor crimes OUT.  Here is a moment from her sermon that particularly touched me (bold is mine):

[This was brought home to me in a recent experience with my son. A few months ago I had the idea for him to come to Cambodia with me. So I said, “Noah, do you want to come with me to Cambodia in a few weeks and help mommy protect the prisoners who don’t have anyone to stand up for them?” He responded, “Yeah, but what I can do?” I wasn’t sure, but told him to come anyway and then we’ll see how. He accompanied me to prisons, courts and orphanages. During our first meeting with the Minister of Justice, it wasn’t long before my son began engaging lightly with him and his two secretaries. Quite quickly into the conversation, they agreed that we should work together to get all the youth out of prison. By the end of the meeting, they agreed, for the first time in the 18 years that I have worked in Cambodia, to sign a MOU with an NGO to work together to provide for comprehensive legal aid throughout the country. In my heart, while I could not put my finger on it, I knew that this outcome had something to do with my son. What I was keenly aware of was that, while he had not actually done anything specific, his presence mattered. In this sense, I know that all of our presence matters, as we bring prophetic witness to the situation.]

I attended three workshops while I was there – I attended two anti-racism workshops and one on Getting Unstuck for Congregations. 

I really liked the anti-racism classes – that’s the first time I’ve been in class specific to the topic.  There were 4 sessions of the class, and I attended #3 and #4 – so I missed the beginning where they wrote the covenant, but it was plastered on the wall and reiterated at each session.  I wish I had copied the one sentence that hit me most, but it was something like “honor the intent, and work to resolve the (unintended) impact”. 

There were some interesting dynamics of the group – the session started with one attendee stating that he didn’t like that the session was geared towards white people.  The session brochure stated:  This workshop is geared towards white people; all are welcome to attend.”  The facilitator explained a lot of history around that – basically in doing anti-racism work, mostly-white organizations repeatedly go to orgs of people of color and ask how they can help, and they were asked to “do their own work” – meaning that white people need to do our own work together so that we can be at a better place to help with the multi-racial work.  At no time was it stated that we should only do our own work, but that we should do it in concert with our multi-racial work.  Another participant was suggesting that if we weren’t working together with people of color, we wouldn’t be hearing their stories and we wouldn’t be charged and motivated to work towards justice.  That was met by a writer who stood up and talked about how she writes and reads stories of racial injustice and that there are plenty of stories already written that we can use to motivate us (she ended her comment with a yell of “Yeah Books!”!)

The facilitators were great – the two main ones (Clare Bayard and Alia Trindle) were from Catalyst Project out of San Fran and they were excellent facilitators keeping us on track and encouraging participation – they reminded us that we will sometimes make mistakes in doing this work, and that we have to be unafraid of failing momentarily, and keeping our focus on doing the work and moving towards justice.

At the end of the session they gave everyone 2 index cards and one envelope.  We were to write 3-4 measurable and accountable actions that we would do within the next three months.  We wrote them on both cards - we took one card with us, and the other we put in the envelope and addressed it to ourselves and gave it to the facilitators – they are going to mail them to us in 2 months to remind us of our commitments.

Here are mine and I WOULD LOVE IT IF ANY OF YOU WANT TO JOIN ME FOR ANY OF THESE ACTIONS!

1)      Sign up to attend the next anti-racism training class at PISAB http://www.pisab.org/ – and see attached flyer!

a.       The next 3-day workshop is Mon Aug 13 (6-9pm), Tues Aug 14 (9am-5pm) and Wed Aug 15 (9-1pm) – that means taking vacation days (or sick days) to do it – I’ll probably take a sick day and put it down towards “HEALING”

b.      Play hooky with me!!!!

1.       If you want to go, let’s go together !!!!  I think these kind of workshops might require some time for reflection and discussion in the days and weeks afterwards …

2.        If you have been before, come with me again!  Returning attendees get a discount ($150)

3.        The next weekend workshop happens to conflict with our Fall retreat in October – the next opportunity would be next year, so I’ll be doing the August one.

4.        The cost is $250, but if we have 3 or more, it is only $200 a piece – if money is a hindrance, I might be able to help …

2)      Read the book by Melissa Alexander “The New Jim Crow – Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” – I ordered it for my Kindle app, and I can loan it to you when I am done if you want to read it on a device

a.       I think a book group on this would be great – there is a lot of movement around incarceration injustice and I would love some community to talk about this – let me know if there is interest in this and I’ll put something together!

3)      Incorporate anti-racism work in the Conscious Living Covenant Group

a.       We are currently on our second round of working the Eightfold Path (http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/eightfoldpath.html) and I think wrapping that path around anti-racist work and anti-incarceration work could really move that group forward

b.      Talk with the group about how to do some anti-racism work at our Fall UU Retreat (Oct 19/20/21 at Fontainbleu State Park)

4)      Finally accept Deanna’s repeated invitations to attend the European Dissent group meetings

a.       Frankly, I don’t think I ever understood that she was saying “dissent” instead of “descent” … so my interest wasn’t as great as it should have been.  I think that Emily Danielson has something to do with the group, so I am going to try and find out more.

I didn’t make it to the candlelight vigil at the detention center, but Deanna did, and I hope maybe she will share her experience with you as it sounds like it was quite impactful.

That’s all, that’s my report

I hope you are all doing well, and I hope to see you at the UU Fall Retreat in October!

Leslie Runnels

leslierunnels@yahoo.com

Blueberry pancakes....YUM!

Blueberry pancakes at our October retreat?!?!? 
It will all be possible because some bodies picked the blueberries this weekend...
And YOU, dear one, are invited to join in the fun. 

On Saturday, June 16th, it is blueberry picking time! 
Friends and Family welcome at Blue Harvest Farms in Covington:

http://www.blueharvestfarms.com/

 

A caravan will be leaving the southshore at 9:15 AM.   Contact Leslie - leslierunnels at yahoo dot com (replace at with @, dot with . and leave no spaces :) for more information.

Happy harvesting!

As we think about who we are as Greater New Orleans Area UUs, a few discerning questions may help take us deeper together:

• What is the purpose of religion? What is the purpose of Unitarian Universalism? What is the purpose of our congregation(s)?
• What is the saving message of our faith? Of our specific religious community? How do we reveal and extend that message in everything we do?
• What is our story that we tell ourselves?  Is it true?  Who are we called to be as a religious community? What do we want our story to be that they will be telling a generation from now?  What do we need to let go to get there? What do we need to learn to get there?
• At the end of the day/ week how will they have known we were Unitarian Universalists?

Perhaps we will share some of our insights with each other around the campfire or the picnic tables or on a nature walk or sitting by the pond....

(From the Growing Unitarian Universalism blog: http://growinguu.blogs.uua.org/ )
 

A moment of reflection on this Friday:

 

“I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one.  The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list.  The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves -- we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together.  We are each other's destiny."
-- Mary Oliver, Winter Hours

our covenant

Our Covenant to Provide a UU Retreat:

-          Accountability for the responsibility you accept

o   Empower yourself

o   Understand interconnections and timing

-          When in doubt, over communicate

o   Ex:  Call Angie

-          Enjoy the happiness and bring the energy and positivity and respect

o   Yeah Us!!!

-          It’s our privilege to be providing this for our larger community of faith

-          We ourselves are in right relationship

-          Our retreat will be open & inclusive

I can tell you that the idea of providing this retreat to our local UUs is so exciting!  I am so looking forward to seeing faces from all three churches, and from our partner organizations GNOUU and CELSJR.

For those of you who don't know the fancy acronyms, GNOUU is the Greater New Orleans Unitarian Universalists - a group founded after the storm to help us re-unite and re-build our congregations, church and faith.  CELSJR is the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice Renewal - also founded after the storm and does great work towards furthering our combined goals.

Building this retreat is a heart-full effort by the Conscious Living Covenant group - we are humbled and privileged to provide this for our faith community.  It's going to be hard work, but we have a great standing of right relationship among ourselves, and we will call on that as we organize the retreat.

Hoping to see many of you at the retreat, and hoping to include you in our workshops - we are looking forward to what you can share with our community!

peace, love, and retreats,
Leslie