The University Mission Committee and UKirk are excited to announce that the new website www.ukirkuva.org has gone live! The themes of Welcome, Wonder, Work and Worship guide viewers through the site and highlight the inclusive and inviting spirit of both UKirk and WPC. Please enjoy clicking through the links and learning all about UKirk’s programs, staff and student leaders. It is through these efforts that Westminster’s mission to serve our UVA student neighbors is being realized. Special thanks to the design team of Ashley Dunn-Jalenak, Dorothy Piatt, Heather Henry and Nancy Paulson.
Resources for the Charlottesville Community & Ways to Help During the COVID-19 Crisis
UVA Medical Center Blood Drive
Virginia hospitals are experiencing a severe blood shortage across the state. UVA Health encourages members of the community who are healthy & eligible to contact the American Red Cross to make an appointment to donate at one of their fixed locations.
Charlottesville City Schools Free Lunch Program
Charlottesville City Schools is offering free lunch to students during the coronavirus pandemic. The Charlottesville Area Community Foundation is creating a school-based fund to support their food delivery efforts.
General Ways to Give & Receive Support
Support Cville is the most comprehensive website listing ways for people to give and receive support. Here are a couple specific links through Support Cville:
- Contribute to local nonprofits, restaurants and UVA students.
- Receive money, supplies and services.
Donate to COVID-19 Support Funds
- Charlottesville Area Community Foundation
- United Way COVID-19 Crisis Relief Fund
- Alliance for Interfaith Ministries
Blue Ridge Area Food Bank
The food bank needs healthy volunteers to help with local relief efforts. See their statement on COVID-19 and their Volunteer page. To find volunteer opportunities, click here.
Free Internet Access
COMCAST Xfinity is now offering free hotspots to anyone who needs them for free until approximately May 13, including non-Xfinity Internet subscribers. For a map of Xfinity WiFi hotspots, visit www.xfinity.com/wifi. Once at a hotspot, select the “xfinitywifi” network name in the list of available hotspots and then launch a browser. AT&T and Charter Communications are also providing free public Wi-Fi, now until approximately May 13.
Bring Family, Friends, and your Appetite!!!
Come to the Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper on February 25 at 6 p.m. in fellowship hall. Bring your family, bring your friends, bring your appetite! Feast on the food — pancakes, sausage, and fruit — and on the fellowship!
Hunger Offering
Every other month, Westminster and the Presbytery of the James invite you to give five cents for each meal you enjoy to relieve hunger locally and globally. A small amount from each of us creates big change. In 2018 congregations in this Presbytery contributed $68,153 to the Hunger Ministry. On Sunday, March 31, an offering will be received during worship with the proceeds going to our support food relief for our neighbors locally and those across the world.
The majority of funds distributed provide emergency food relief to people in need. These include emergency food centers; school backpack programs, and county food pantries. Other funds support efforts to eliminate the causes of hunger, such as agricultural training so that recipients can become self-sufficient.
A small portion of donations support advocacy groups. Bread for the World, a faith-based network, campaigns nationally for policy change. Locally, Virginia Hunger Solutions works to improve food security through state programs and improved policy.
These are some of the programs you support through the Hunger Offering:
- Advocacy efforts to improve access to free breakfast and lunch programs for Virginia schools
- Community grain banks for food security in Cameroon
- Seeds for farmers in Haiti following hurricanes
- Snacks to support education for child laborers in Guatemala
How Do We Test For The Gender of the Heart?
“The only dependable test for gender is the truth of a person’s life, the lives we live each day. Surely the best judge of a person’s gender is not a degrading, questionable, examination. The best judge of a person’s gender is what lies within his or her heart. How do we test for the gender of the heart. . . ?” Quote by Jennifer Finney Boylan in Becoming Nicole
This morning, before heading off to Westminster Pres., I finished reading Becoming Nicole by Amy Ellis Nutt. A few months ago, this book was recommended to me as an educational resource to understand the growing interest and issues related to transgender people. Becoming Nicole provides a clinical, sociological and psychological perspective on what it means to be a transgender man or woman growing up in America. And yet, Nutt’s book is so much more than these words imply.
In essence, this is a book about family. It’s about the people who are touched and transformed by a son or daughter’s personal struggle to come to terms with his/her/their identity.
It’s a book about a father who, in the beginning, resisted and reacted poorly to his son’s realization that he could no longer continue to live in the body from his birth. It’s a story about how, despite his own personal struggles, this same father never stopped loving his child. Indeed, Nicole’s father now travels across the country speaking out on Nicole’s behalf. He has become his daughter’s strongest advocate and admirer. He is, and always will be, Nicole’s dad.
It’s about a mother who fought for her child’s right to be herself in the public schools. Over the years, while others thought she was somehow mistaken or used poor parenting judgment, Nicole’s mother was convinced that, from an early age, Nicole was unique and deserving of dignity and respect. To me, her commitment to her daughter demonstrates, once again, that a mother’s unconditional love is stronger than another person’s lack of understanding.
It’s also a story about Nicole’s twin brother, Jonas. It’s about a brother’s steadfast love and support through good times and bad. “I never had a brother,” Jonas once said to Nicole, “You were always a sister to me.”
This book is as informative as it is simply beautiful. In some chapters, the reader will find him/her/themself immersed in pronouns, medical realities, and transgender politics. But in other chapters, a tear will come to the reader’s eye.
As Nicole once said, “Stories move the walls that need to be moved.” I wholeheartedly agree. If this issue has become a “wall” in your family or you want to know more about families facing this particular situation, put Becoming Nicole on your summer reading list. My prayer for all of us is that such earthy and personal stories will “move the walls that need to be moved” whether they exist in a cultural context or in our hearts.
Blessings, Ken
FYI, Westminster Presbyterian Church will be hosting a pastoral care conference for pastors, chaplains, and spiritual caregivers, October 21-23. The conference will focus on how churches and pastors care for transgender persons and their families.
https://innovation.sfts.edu/transgender-care/