Regardless of the outcomes of the elections this month, our body politic needs healing. No doubt this is why our collaborators at Soul Matters chose Repair for the November 2024 theme, and indeed our Community Team voted for this selection when asked for input last spring. But the small group packet we’re using this month … Continue reading Note from Pastor Isa – November 2024
From our friends at Soul Matters: This is your chance to listen carefully.Your whole life might depend on what you hear.– Joyce Sutphen Listening helps us find our way. The listening of therapists allows us to navigate our way through life. We turn to prayer to hear God’s guidance. We listen to experts so we … Continue reading The Practice of Deep Listening (October 2024)
Mac Benavides was enthusiastically voted in as Board Chair-Elect, in the (precedent-setting?) shortest UUFM Congregational Meeting in recorded history. The Board formed and empowered a search committee to hire an interim Coordinator of Religious Education to fill shorter-term RE needs and provide breathing room for a systematic and deliberative process of soliciting input from stakeholders … Continue reading October Board Update
From our friends at Soul Matters: Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently, until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will … Continue reading The Practice of Invitation (September 2024)
As recently announced, this month marks a time of retrospection, appreciation, transition and renewal for the UUFM Religious Education program. Our long-time RE director, Sandy Nelson, retires on August 31, after concluding that 22 years and more than 1000 Sundays were enough. If Sandy’s plan was to exit the stage in her prime with the … Continue reading August Board Update
Notes from Pastor Isa Our minister, Pastor Isabel, is away on study leave for the month of July. In lieu of a newsletter column, she suggested we share this poem from Worship Web, inspired by Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen’s chapter, “Our Work for Social Justice,” in The Unitarian Universalist Pocket Guide. To be a Unitarian Universalist … Continue reading A Note from Pastor Isa – August 2024
We are delighted to welcome Mac Benavides to the Board as our new Chair-elect. Welcome, Mac! The Benavides family thus continues their tradition of service to UUFM, with Ruddy having just completed a 2-year term as an at-large member. Emily Fraser, Pastor Isa, Joe Zalewski and I attended last week’s first-ever, all-virtual UUA General Assembly. … Continue reading July Board Update
FROM YOUR OUTGOING CHAIR: LET IT BE A DANCE To my dearly beloved UUFM Community, With this fiscal year coming to a close, the UUFM Board of Directors is now engaged in our annual game of “musical chairs:” (Sound cue: Let It Be A Dance) We are celebrating the service of three Board Members who … Continue reading June Board Update
From our friends at Soul Matters: We are renewed by so many things: nature, each other, memory, music, play, solitude, silence, and – of course – our faith. Through small groups, calls to justice work, worship, caring for one another, covenant and accountability, our faith breathes new life into us. But it also renews us … Continue reading The Gift of Renewal (June 2024)
Hello Beloved UUFM Community, Our Initiation of Called Ministry and Installation of Reverend Dr. Isabel Call Service is fast approaching. What a joyous and momentous occasion – and one that is inherently unfamiliar and special for our little Fellowship. We’ve received questions from a few – that we realize may be questions held by many … Continue reading May Board Update
