This year’s UU General Assembly proclaimed and explored “the Power of We.”  Each year we gather as representatives of congregations to shape the work of our Unitarian Universalist Association.  This year, we took a step back to consider a larger perspective.  Who are we together?  What do we want our faith to be?  One of … Continue reading Jonalu’s Journal — July 2019

What does UUFM mean to you? Here are some possible answers (no one of these will be true for everyone, but each is true for someone): Place of inspiration and learning about myself and the world Place where my children feel comfortable playing and making friends Sense of knowing others and being known Opportunity to … Continue reading Jonalu’s Journal — June 2019

On May 5, 1819, two hundred years ago, William Ellery Channing delivered an hour and a half long sermon on the Biblical text, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”  The sermon did more than focus on the role of reason in religion, though that was part of it.  It laid out the … Continue reading Jonalu’s Journal — May 2019

In February, our theme was trust.  Have you noticed how the themes move into one another?  We went from trust, to journey in March and to wholeness for this month.  We need trust to make the journey.  We need to journey to reach wholeness.  As we strive for wholeness, I thought it might be a … Continue reading Jonalu’s Journal — April 2019

In the last year, UUFM has had a sudden uptick in membership.  Currently, more than a quarter of our membership is new in the last year.  That’s a tremendous amount of change for everyone. This congregation does well with change.  When we’ve experimented with how we worship and with how we organize ourselves, people have … Continue reading Jonalu’s Journal — March 2019

As we approach Valentines Day in this era of #metoo, trust may be a good thing to think about in our personal lives.  We’ve witnessed tremendous violations of trust in the public sphere, and the reports just keep on coming. For most us, though, trust doesn’t feel like a public issue, or even a theological … Continue reading Jonalu’s Journal — February 2019

Why would we think about doing things differently? That’s the basic question whenever we begin looking at possibilities in our personal or congregational lives.  You’ll see elsewhere in this newsletter that the Board has set January 20 as a congregational meeting to talk about exploring a possibility, that of whether we could build a new … Continue reading Jonalu’s Journal — January 2019

As I write, we still don’t know how many people were killed in the California wildfires, though more than a thousand are unaccounted for.  Nor are the Camp Fire and Woolsey Fire yet fully contained.  Environmental devastation on this scale is hard to imagine, much less comprehend. At the same time, on the other coast, … Continue reading Jonalu’s Journal December 2018

As we move into the holiday season, many of us will be visiting with family who we don’t see routinely. And sometimes, there are tensions and even clashes. How do we get through them? I came across a column by a colleague and friend, The Rev. Joanna Crawford, in Austin, TX, which gives a simple … Continue reading Navigating Life — and Holidays — with Feelings

We are Unitarian Universalists.  We are brave, curious, and compassionate thinkers and doers. We are believers in what is good, what is right, and what is just … We are a house without walls, a congregation without spiritual boundaries, and a movement towards a more action-oriented faith in yourself, your god, and your beliefs. Those … Continue reading Jonalu’s Journal November 2018