Aiken Unitarian Universalist Church

05/31/2026

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UPDATE - members of this community have commented below stating children did NOT interact with the fawn but this was an adult’s behavior. We are still keeping this story up as it’s important to share information about wildlife in general. Please refrain from making comments about the parents. ♥️🐾

Today, a fawn is being transported to a licensed wildlife rehabilitator by the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department after being repeatedly handled by neighborhood children.

The fawn was reportedly seen being carried around yesterday and then again today.

We know kids are curious. Wildlife is fascinating. But this is exactly why it's so important to teach children to respect wildlife and observe from a distance.

We get it — you can't leash your kids the way we ask people to leash their dogs. Kidding kidding… But you can teach them that wild animals are not toys, pets, or something to pick up and carry around.

Because of repeated human interaction, this fawn can no longer be reunited with its mother at this time. Instead, it will occupy a rehabilitation space that shouldn't have been needed in the first place—a space that could have gone to an injured, orphaned, or truly distressed animal.

Spring and summer are baby wildlife season across Georgia. Please remind your children:

🦌 Look, don't touch.📸 Take pictures, not animals.👀 Observe wildlife from a distance.☎️ If you think an animal needs help, contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitator before intervening.

The best way to help wildlife is often to leave it alone.

P.S. The leg is not broken. The baby is just laying a little wonky.

05/17/2026

05/15/2026

Beware someone is emailing church emails and asking for digital copies of the directory. Do not share out directory online. Please. They are pretending to be me.

05/14/2026

Writer Jason Porter speaks to a deeply humanist understanding of ethics: that our responsibility to one another is rooted not in fear of punishment or hope of reward, but in the reality that this life—and this world—are what we have.

If justice, compassion, and care are going to exist, we have to create them together here and now.

It’s a grounded reflection on what it means to practice morality not for recognition or salvation, but because other people matter.

Read the full piece at the link in the comments below.

05/14/2026

We are all weavers.

We are all weavers —
each of us bent over our own quiet loom,
threading the needle through the eye of ourselves,
beginning always at the centre,
that first warm knot
where we were tied to the world.

From there, it radiates.

Slow and sure,

in the same way a tree
does not ask permission to grow —

it just grows,

ring by patient ring,
recording everything it survived.

Some years run wide and generous,
drunk on rain,
lush with the particular green
of being loved well.

Others press thin as a held breath —
drought years, grey years,
years where the thread pulled tight
and we wondered if it might break.

It did not break.

It became instead a part of the pattern,
woven into the whole,
the way a scar becomes a story
once enough time has passed.

Look closely at the fabric of a life
and you will find them all there —

The fleeting ones,
bright as a season,
gone before you learned their name,
yet somehow still luminous
somewhere in the weave.

The ones who passed through briefly
but left a colour nothing else could replicate.

And then — the others.
Those whose threads you can no longer
separate from your own,
whose fibres have grown so intertwined
with the very warp of you
that you no longer know
where they end
and where you begin.

You carry all of it.
Your fingerprints pressed into every inch,
wholly and unmistakably yours.
No two tapestries alike.
No two people
held the same thread
and pulled it the same way.

And yet,
as the weaving grows outward,
as we move further from that first knot,
that original warmth at the centre —
something in us turns.

A quiet hunger
for the beginning of the thing.

We find ourselves reaching back
through the layers,
tracing the oldest threads,
the ones that taught our hands
how to hold.

Seeking those who were woven into us
before we had words for it —
who are not just part of the pattern,
but the pattern itself.

We follow those threads home
through everything we have become,
through every ring,
every drought, every blossoming —

Back through the whole long,
gorgeous and grief-threaded story of us.

Looking for answers,
looking for comfort,

looking

for home.

Image dialogue:
"We are each a tapestry woven from everyone who has ever touched our lives, especially those we've loved," said Bear. "And no matter how far and wide and varied our particular tapestry may grow, some threads will only ever lead one way: Home."

©️Tara Shannon, 2026

05/12/2026

Democracy is more than a system of government. It is a shared promise that every person matters, every voice carries value, and our lives are bound together in collective responsibility.

But democracy does not sustain itself. It requires participation, courage, protection, and care for one another—especially in moments when fear, disinformation, voter suppression, and attacks on democratic institutions are growing in strength.

As Unitarian Universalists, we are called to help build communities grounded in dignity, safety, and collective care. UU the Vote’s weekly Democracy Defense and Community Safety Training series offers practical tools for protecting elections, responding to threats, and strengthening our communities together.

We invite you to learn more and register at UU The Vote - link in the comments below.