Pastoral Care, Healthy Relations & Recovery Support at SUUSI

We pack a lot in to our SUUSI week which can lead to extra individual stress and inter personal conflict. The Nurture team offers multiple spaces and support practices to meet the needs of SUUSI participants throughout our week together.  

To learn more about our worship and other spiritual services, please visit the Spiritual Life page.

Recovery Room & Meetings

The Recovery Room is open throughout SUUSI as a safe space for those in recovery programs. There will also be meetings. The first meeting time and room location will be posted in the NUUS, and then the Recovery Room Coordinator,  Karen (Kay) Judd, will post a schedule at the room and in the NUUS for the rest of the week, based on what the first group's wishes for meeting times are.  

Pastoral Care - Ministers of the Day

Should a need arise for pastoral care during SUUSI, you can call the SUUSI helpline (540-534-1575) to connect with a Minister of the Day (MOD).  

Conflict Resolution (Healthy Relations Team)

Should a conflict arise with another person at SUUSI that you would like help in resolving, contact the Healthy Relations Team (HeaRT) through the SUUSI helpline (540-534-1575).

SUUSI 2025 Nurture Events 

Event # Event Type Date & Time Age Range
Sunday 20th July 2025

Ingathering Banner & Drum Parade


Bring your noisemakers, your banners, and your awesome selves to our Banner Parade to Ingathering! Please note that folks should take their banners with them after Ingathering (they will not be hung). Please Note: we are taking a different route than in previous years in order to ensure that we arrive at the ACCESSIBLE entrance to Preston Hall. We will gather to start the parade at The Clock circle between Heth and Dalton (dining hall).
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sun 6:30-7pm 0+

Addiction and Recovery Support Space


Meditation room for those in 12-step recovery programs
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sun 7pm-Midnight and M Midnight-Midnight 14+

Ingathering


Welcome to SUUSI! At Ingathering we learn about our coming week together and remind ourselves of what it means to be in intentional, covenanted community -- and also in our sweet SUUSI spot of welcoming faces and awesome music! This year we will be celebrating our 75th SUUSI-versary. Our three Concert Hour musicians will also be sharing some music with us.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sun 7-8pm 0+

Meditation Room


Quiet space for meditation
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sun 9pm-Midnight, M Midnight-Midnight, Tu Midnight-Midnight, W Midnight-Midnight, Th Midnight-Midnig 14+
Monday 21st July 2025

Monday Morning Multigen Worship


We are excited to once again begin our SUUSI worship week with a multigenerational worship service. Rev. Lauren Levwood, our youth chaplain, and Elizabeth Schell, our worship coordinator, have a joyful service in store for ALL AGES focused on centering love within our UU core values. Be prepared for some goofy (snort) UU humor! We are also excited that Billy Jonas will be providing music for this spirited service! Please note that this service will start earlier than usual - at 8:30am - in order to include our children, youth, and parents before morning programming and mandatory parent meeting.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture M 8:30-9:15am 0+

Addiction and Recovery Support Meeting


Connect with others in recovery and determine times to meet during the week (note there is one meeting already schedule on Wednesday)
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture M 5:30-6:30pm 14+

Monday Evening Worship


Join us for our first evening worship service of the week: "Love at the Edges," led by Rev. Bill Neely with music by Caroline Cotter. Love is at the center of our denomination's new Shared Values. This reflects our tradition as well as who we are becoming, as we are a faith rooted in love that is still ever-growing in it. How does this love that remains central to who we are, lead us beyond ourselves to neighbor, stranger, and newcomer? How can our "center" strengthen us for ministry at the edges? Bill Neely is one of five Neelys who love SUUSI. He began attending in the 90's at the invitation of someone he would eventually marry. They now bring their kids, and it's their favorite week of the year. Bill is the Parish Minister at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton, NJ. He previously served congregations in Detroit and Memphis, and his first UU congregation was the Unitarian Church of Norfolk, Va (now Coastal Virginia Unitarian Universalists). He enjoys mud runs, coffee, the moon, pizza, and all Pittsburgh sports.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture M 7-7:45pm 0+
Tuesday 22nd July 2025

Meditation Room


Quiet space for meditation
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sun 9pm-Midnight, M Midnight-Midnight, Tu Midnight-Midnight, W Midnight-Midnight, Th Midnight-Midnig 14+

Addiction and Recovery Support Space


Meditation room for those in 12-step recovery programs
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sun 7pm-Midnight and M Midnight-Midnight 14+

Group Meditation


Join Lindsay Caddle LaPointe and Heather Roy for a multigen morning meditation experience available to all ages. Activities include: sound baths, embodiment practices, and reiki that will prepare you for the rest of your day at SUUSI.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture TuThFW 8:30-9am 0

Tuesday Morning Worship


“What Love Would Have Us Do” Join us for Tuesday morning worship led by Rev. Edie Love, our YA chaplain. How does Love being at the Center of our faith translate into action? Rev. Love invites us to move beyond words, promises, and feelings, to active liberation. Musical offerings by music coordinator Shirley Mier and friends.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Tu 9-9:45am 0+

12-Step Recovery Meeting


Come share experience, strength, and hope in this all-Program 12 Step meeting. We're here for you!
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Tu 10-11am 14+

Tuesday Evening Grief Worship: "Centering Love in Times of Loss"


Worship led by Nurture Co-Chairs, Rev. Kimi Reigel and Rev. Dr. Cynthia Landrum, and our Worship Coordinator Elizabeth Schell Our SUUSI community is its own congregation that annually comes together. Part of our worship week includes marking certain important passages. Our Tuesday evening worship is the time we set aside to gather and grieve our losses since our last time together. We name and honor losses of SUUSI community members and family as well as other kinds of losses and complex changes in our individual and communal lives. Musical offerings by Shirley Mier, Janette & Star Muir
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Tu 7-7:45pm 0+
Wednesday 23rd July 2025

Meditation Room


Quiet space for meditation
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sun 9pm-Midnight, M Midnight-Midnight, Tu Midnight-Midnight, W Midnight-Midnight, Th Midnight-Midnig 14+

Group Meditation


Join Lindsay Caddle LaPointe and Heather Roy for a multigen morning meditation experience available to all ages. Activities include: sound baths, embodiment practices, and reiki that will prepare you for the rest of your day at SUUSI.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture TuThFW 8:30-9am 0

Wednesday Morning Worship


This morning's worship service is a collaboration by Billy Jonas and Caroline Cotter. Expect to experience more SUUSI miracles: rhythm and movement and spirit and story. Food for the body and soul!
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture W 9-9:45am 0+

Wednesday Evening Worship


"The Love Boat," worship led by Rev. Dr. Michael Tino Midway through this cruise we call SUUSI, there have probably been some plot twists that you weren't expecting. How do we re-center ourself in the radical love to which Unitarian Universalism calls us so that SUUSI can be the transformative experience of loving community that it is meant to be? We will meet on the Fiesta Deck after Water Aerobics to explore this with joy, faith, and warmth. The SUUSI Boyz will be joining us for the cruise. Michael Tino has dedicated every spare neuron in their brain to SUUSI for almost 30 years, having discovered a call to the ministry as a Teen Staff member here. Twice the SUUSI Director, they are attending this year with their husband and Middler daughter, who looks forward to "SUUSI Party" (aka Community Time) all year. They serve as part of the Lead Ministry Team of the Church of the Larger Fellowship and in multiple volunteer roles around our faith.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture W 7-7:45pm 0+
Thursday 24th July 2025

Meditation Room


Quiet space for meditation
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sun 9pm-Midnight, M Midnight-Midnight, Tu Midnight-Midnight, W Midnight-Midnight, Th Midnight-Midnig 14+

Group Meditation


Join Lindsay Caddle LaPointe and Heather Roy for a multigen morning meditation experience available to all ages. Activities include: sound baths, embodiment practices, and reiki that will prepare you for the rest of your day at SUUSI.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture TuThFW 8:30-9am 0

Thursday Morning Worship


“Tasting the Bitter & the Sweet: A Love Feast" What do our taste buds have to do with our beliefs? with our experience of the divine? with our relationship to our bodies, our spirits, and one another? This morning's worship will give us space to recommit ourselves to love, ourselves, and one another and will include a Love Feast of fair trade chocolate: a nice morning pick-me-up! Worship led by SUUSI worship coordinator Elizabeth Schell. Elizabeth Schell and her family have been attending SUUSI since 2010. Elizabeth attended Union Theological Seminary in NYC many eons ago and presently deals in the ministry of crafting, running a yarn shop with her co-conspirator/crafting partner Rik in Asheville, NC. She especially enjoys being able to support the worshipping life of her SUUSI family.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Th 9-9:45am 0+

Thursday Evening Rites of Passage Worship


Welcome to the SUUSI House of Love where we strive to be a radically hospitable family that tends to each other thru all kinds of transitions of becoming ourselves. Each year our SUUSI community takes time to dedicate our children, bridge our teens, and bless community members who have transitioned in their gender identities. A significant and joyful event in the life of our SUUSI community. This tends to be a packed service so plan accordingly. Worship led by Rev. Phoenix Bell-Shelton Biggs (teen chaplain), Rev. Lauren Levwood (youth/middler chaplain), Rev. Edie Love (YA chaplain), with Jessie McKeon (teen staff), Cate Farrell (YA staff), and Elizabeth Schell (worship coordinator). Music provided by Shirley Mier, Lock, & Friends. If you would like to be part of this celebration, or if you have a child to be dedicated, please email nurture@suusi.org no later than NOON Thursday. (The Teen Chaplain and Teen Director will coordinate bridging teens.)
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Th 7-7:45pm 0+
Friday 25th July 2025

Meditation Room


Quiet space for meditation
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sun 9pm-Midnight, M Midnight-Midnight, Tu Midnight-Midnight, W Midnight-Midnight, Th Midnight-Midnig 14+

Group Meditation


Join Lindsay Caddle LaPointe and Heather Roy for a multigen morning meditation experience available to all ages. Activities include: sound baths, embodiment practices, and reiki that will prepare you for the rest of your day at SUUSI.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture TuThFW 8:30-9am 0

Friday Morning Worship


Love-Centering and Leave-Taking: a closing ritual led by SUUSI Pagans and friends with music by Billy Jonas. This ritual will happen in Hurburt Auditorium, same as the rest of the week's worship experiences and will be accessible to all.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture F 9-9:45am 0+
Saturday 26th July 2025

Meditation Room


Quiet space for meditation
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sun 9pm-Midnight, M Midnight-Midnight, Tu Midnight-Midnight, W Midnight-Midnight, Th Midnight-Midnig 14+

Closing Circle


Join us to say goodbye and share our love of SUUSI and one another. Gather at Pocohontas end of Moffet Quad for Closing Circle at 9am. We have adapted our Circle to be more accessible and include chairs and scooters for those who might otherwise not be able to participate. Our sung chant remains the same: "Dear friends, dear friends, let me tell you how I feel: you have given me your treasure, I love you so." If you would like to volunteer to help shepherd our closing circle, sign up or see Elizabeth.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sat 9-9:30am 0+

SUUSI 2025 Volunteer Opportunities

Event # Event Type Date & Time Age Range
Sunday 20th July 2025

19449

Meditation room set up


Help me move the furniture and set out the cushions
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sun 5-6pm 14+

18934

Banner Parade Shepherd


Help get our festive Banner Parade and Drumming launched before Ingathering! Call folks to gather at designated outdoor spot and then help shepherd folks to where Ingathering happening.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sun 6:30-7pm 18+

18935

Ingathering Usher


Be part of a Hospitality team for Ingathering on Sunday night: help at the door (including directing people to accessible entrances), assist participants in finding seats, etc. Position reports to Dana Taylor, lead usher.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sun 6:30-8pm 14+
Monday 21st July 2025

18936

Monday Morning Worship Usher


Be an usher for Monday morning Multigen worship! Be part of a hospitality team that creates a more welcoming space for worship Tasks may include welcoming participants, handing out items needed for worship, helping people find seats or meet other needs. Position reports to Dana Taylor, lead usher. NOTE: Monday morning starts earlier than other services.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture M 8-9:30am 14+

18937

Monday Evening Worship Usher


Be an usher for Monday evening worship! Be part of a hospitality team that creates a more welcoming space for worship. Tasks may include welcoming participants, handing out items needed for worship, helping people find seats or meet other needs. Position reports to Dana Taylor, lead usher.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture M 6:30-8pm 14+
Tuesday 22nd July 2025

18938

Tuesday Morning Worship Usher


Be an usher for Tuesday morning worship! Be part of a hospitality team that creates a more welcoming space for worship. Tasks may include welcoming participants, handing out items needed for worship, helping people find seats or meet other needs. Position reports to Dana Taylor, lead usher.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Tu 8:30-10am 14+

18939

Tuesday Evening Worship Usher


Be an usher for our Tuesday evening Grief worship service. This is an especially important service for our community and ushers help create a supportive and welcoming space. Tasks may include welcoming participants, handing out items needed for worship, helping people find seats or meet other needs. Position reports to Dana Taylor, lead usher.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Tu 6:30-8pm 18+
Wednesday 23rd July 2025

18940

Wednesday Morning Worship Usher


Be an usher for Wednesday morning worship! Be part of a hospitality team that creates a more welcoming space for worship. Tasks may include welcoming participants, handing out items needed for worship, helping people find seats or meet other needs. Position reports to Dana Taylor, lead usher.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture W 8:30-10am 14+

18941

Wednesday Evening Worship Usher


Be an usher for Wednesday evening worship! Be part of a hospitality team that creates a more welcoming space for worship. Tasks may include welcoming participants, handing out items needed for worship, helping people find seats or meet other needs. Position reports to Dana Taylor, lead usher.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture W 6:30-8pm 14+
Thursday 24th July 2025

18942

Thursday Morning Worship Usher


Be an usher for Thursday morning worship! Be part of a hospitality team that creates a more welcoming space for worship. Tasks may include welcoming participants, handing out items needed for worship, helping people find seats or meet other needs. Position reports to Dana Taylor, lead usher.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Th 8:30-10am 14+

18943

Thursday Evening Rites of Passage Service Usher


Be an usher for our Thursday Evening Rites of Passage service! This is another significant service in the life of SUUSI when we dedicate new babies/children, bridge our teens, and do a glitter blessing for members of our community who are changing names or pronouns. Be part of a hospitality team that creates a more welcoming space for this important worship service. Tasks may include welcoming participants, handing out items needed for worship, helping people find seats or meet other needs. Position reports to Dana Taylor, lead usher.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Th 6:30-8pm 14+
Friday 25th July 2025

18944

Friday Morning Worship Usher


Be an usher for Thursday morning worship! This is our last worship service of the week with an earth-centered focus. Double check the location of this service as it is sometimes in a different space. Be part of a hospitality team that creates a more welcoming space for worship. Tasks may include welcoming participants, handing out items needed for worship, helping people find seats or meet other needs. Position reports to Dana Taylor, lead usher.
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture F 8:30-10am 14+

19450

Meditation room pack up


Pack the cushions and pillows back in their boxes
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture F 1-1:30pm 14+
Saturday 26th July 2025

18945

Closing Circle Shepherds


Be part of a team supporting our final SUUSI gathering: Closing Circle. People needed to: help setup chairs for the seated parts of our accessible closing circle; help with calling folks to gather at the Closing Circle location; help with getting people into circle formation; to help with leading our closing song. Help support making this last gathering organized, safe, and meaningful!
Location:

Price: FREE
Nurture Sat 8:30-9:30am 14+