The FIA Bulletin is Available Online

In March 2003 the first issue of the Faith in Action Bulletin was published.It summarized the history of Faith in Action in our church and featured essayson the Bush Doctrine, Civil Liberties, our Welcoming Congregation process, andthe Hunger Task Force. That issue was mailed to all church members, but subsequentissues have been published electronically. The ninth issue of this publicationis now available at http://old.uusm.org/faithinaction/fiawinter06.pdf.It can also be found at the Faith in Action table in Forbes Hall.

The current issue features an essay by our minister emeritus, the Rev. ErniePipes, entitled "When deception prevails." Additional essays include "Does torturework?" by Max Epstein, "What if the U.S. considered Osama Bin Laden's trucebid?" by Arvid Knudsen, and "Why I'm proud of my VA service," by Charles Haskell.The issue closes with the text of the UUA Study/Action Issue for 2005-07 entitled"Moral values for a pluralistic society."

I want to thank Liz Fuller for her crucial role in developing the electronicdocuments and website information for our Faith in Action program. Liz is asuperb editor. She has been enormously helpful in refining every issue of theFaith in Action Bulletin over the last three years. She has also been responsiblefor the electronic publication of the bulletin. Furthermore, as our church'swebmaster, Liz has recently completed a comprehensive revision of Faith in Actioninformation on our church's website. She has done a wonderful job of makingFaith in Action information more widely available. I am grateful for her dedicationand skill in helping our Faith in Action program.

- Charles Haskell Chair, Faith in Action Commission

We Packed Six Tons of Food in Two Hours

Here are some of the church members and friends who sorted 12,200 pounds of food in cans, jars and packages andpacked it in boxes during our church's semi-annual two-hour Food Sort at the Westside Food Bank in Santa Monicaon January 24. Bruce Rankin, Food Bank director (back row, third from left), said, "I want you to know how much wevalue that kind of help from volunteers.Your work completed a job that would have taken one of our employeesmore than one solid week of drudge work to accomplish, assuming we even had someone available. Thanks again toeveryone who participated - a great deed and great fun, too."