One of the requests made at a focus group last year was that NoVES have membership meetings more than once a year.  On November 14 we will hold our first semi-annual meeting.  Come to discuss the state of the society, Jone Johnson Lewis’s upcoming sabbatical and additional ideas from the focus groups.

Come celebrate Stone Salad, a festival for all our members, friends and visitors where we hear a story, share a potluck meal, donate canned goods, and indulge in good, old-fashioned friendship. (For those of you who know the children's story -- we make Stone Salad because we can't make Stone Soup without a kitchen or stove.)  Members, friends and visitors are welcome.  We hope to see you.

Enjoy this day with your families and friends.  We will see you next week.

Jone Johnson Lewis, NoVES Leader, speaks on "transitions" -- those times in our lives and in the culture when something new begins and something old ends. We often feel discomfort, even if the change is something we sought. How do we navigate transitions successfully?

Paulette Goodman will speak about her experience as a young Jewish child in Paris during the Nazi occupation. and her subsequent passion for Social Justice. Mrs. Goodman has served for four years as president of National PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and has received various public and community service awards from organizations including The Bar Association for Human Rights of Greater New York.

Memories of holidays past continue to inform our lives.  Society members Amy Anderson, Howie Kallem, Marv Friedlander and Betty-Chia Karro will share stories of past holidays and how these stories continue to shape our lives.

Winter Festival is a beloved NoVES tradition where we celebrate cherished memories and contemplate our profound wishes for the World.  This year our themes will be Light and Darkness, Health, Joy and Family.

If you have a song, dance, poem or other short presentation that represents these themes, you are invited to share it with the group. Send your name and presentation idea to Amy Anderson at ALAnderson@aya.yale.edu or 703.876.9054.

Hugh Taft-Morales, Leader of the Baltimore Ethical Society and Co-Leader of the Ethical Society Without Walls, will give a platform address on "Evangelizing for Evolution".  Although Ethical Culture places deed before creed, there are few claims about reality more universally accepted within humanism than the theory of evolution.  Yet creationism is alive and well in the United States.  In preparing to celebrate Darwin Day next month, how can evolution satisfy human spiritual yearnings for experiences such as awe, humility, and a connection to something greater than ourselves? Can humanists ethically evangelize for evolution?

(we are starting early to accommodate Green Hedges' schedule)

So, a school can refuse to allow religious-themed music during holiday performances but can't prohibit students from distributing Christian-themed pens shaped like candy canes.  The wall between church and state has become more like a picket fence, with a lot of pickets missing but with other sections electrified.  NoVES member Howie Kallem will try and make sense of it all.

Iris Woodard will speak on "Learning to Listen." Listening is something we all take for granted and think we do well.  It is only when our conversation goes off track that we discover we might not have as much skill as we thought. This talk, inspired by the seminar and book of the same title authored by Brian Grossman, a PhD Psychologist, will present different listening styles and how to work with them in everyday relationships. Iris Woodard works for Kaiser Permanente in the Workforce Development Department where she helps employees develop new skills needed in the changing environment of health care.

 Dr. Michael S. Franch is Dean of the National Leaders Council of the American Ethical Union and Affiliate Minister at First Unitarian Church, Baltimore.  He writes, “Our homage to the men and women who died in military service is appropriate but incomplete.  We glorify the sacrifice but don’t ask ‘why.’  One doesn’t have to be a pacifist to acknowledge that we have fought deceptively- promoted, ill-conceived, and ineptly-conducted wars.  Religion, even humanistic religion, calls its adherents to reflect, repent, and change their ways.”

If empathy is the foundation for ethical behavior, and emotional literacy is the basis for empathy, then how do we develop emotional literacy and the emergence of empathy in children? Lynn Konnerth, NoVES’s Director of Religious Education, will explore how we as parents, teachers, and caring adults can foster development in these areas. This will also provide thought for fostering greater empathy in ourselves. Mindfulness to how some of us may have been parented, and our habitual or automatic responses to situations, will be explored. 

Inspired by the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath and other recent books on human behavior, Kris Maccubbin explores how we tick. Why do we do the crazy things we do?  How can we learn to accept it and use that understanding to elicit the best from ourselves and others?  And finally, how can we use this understanding to do a better job to motivate people around the issues we value?

Every year, some 8,000 children arrive in the US without parents or legal guardians and are detained by the US immigration authorities. Many of these children have fled to escape from violence, abuse, or neglect and have been victims of human trafficking and persecution. Some of these children are detained in two facilities in Northern Virginia. Ms. Ham Pong, who heads the Capital Area Immigration Rights Coalition's project to provide assistance to such children, will describe how our government deals with these children and the work her organization does to help them.

Fritz Williams, Leader Emeritus of the Baltimore Ethical Society, believes in meeting life's challenges by juggling opposing strategies.  He believes in reckoning with life's ultimate meaninglessness even as we fall in love with the miracle of being alive.  He believes in working passionately to make our lives count, but also never losing sight of how insignificant they really are.  He believes in caring deeply and in being beyond caring.  It is by encompassing these opposites, by being totally involved and vulnerable, but simultaneously transcendent and detached, that our lives are graced by vitality and contentment.