From the President – September 18th

We had a very full and productive meeting of your Board of Trustees this week. This is year two of working with our policy-based governance. It is exciting, challenging, enlightening, and inspiring work. As I mentioned last year during the congregational meeting, when I began doing this work, I thought, “Why don’t we just go get some other (similar) congregation’s policy book and edit it to fit our congregation?” But it doesn’t work that way. Our policy-based governance is uniquely ours and it takes ALL of us, ALL of UUSS, giving lots of input and thought and time to create it.

Guiding us are our key governance pieces. You can find these on our website, but I’ll share them here:

Mission
Connecting in spiritual community, we
celebrate life with joy
grow in compassion
create justice

Vision
We will boldly live our Unitarian Universalist Principles,
within our church and in service to the larger community
We will nurture mind and spirit through lifelong learning,
engagement and growth
We will create a community that welcomes,
embraces and supports all
We will worship in ways that comfort,
inspire and challenge

Our 2018-19 Annual Focus of Ministry (AFoM)
is to create a more kind, just and loving community.
To this end, we will:
  • Practice holy curiosity and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.
  • Identify, recognize, and educate ourselves about the barriers that impede the creation of Beloved Community so that we can begin to dismantle them.
  • Continue to collaborate with one another to live more fully into our governance shift (bylaws, handbooks, policies, procedures, purposes and practices, etc.).

Open Questions

  1. What will it look/sound/feel/smell/taste like when we grapple with, address, disrupt, and/or dismantle the culture of white supremacy within ourselves, our congregation, and the communities around UUSS?
  2. Where/who/how do we want to be in 5 years?
  3. What might we need to let go of in order to live into our Mission and our Vision?
I would love to hear from you about the open questions. Please feel free to contact me about your thoughts on them.
As I mentioned last week, I want to hold up open question number one here again: What will it look/sound/feel/smell/taste like when we grapple with, address, disrupt, and/or dismantle the culture of white supremacy within ourselves, our congregation, and the communities around UUSS?

I am looking forward to begin working on this complex and vital issue, even though it will be challenging work. There are several upcoming events that will begin to inform our work on this open question.

First is the Congregational Common Read, brought to us by the Anti-Racism Team.  The book is “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo. If you would like a copy of the book, please sign up in the Great Hall after service or contact Kat Wolfram at kmwolfram@gmail.com or by phone (518) 322.6628. The cost of the book is $16. The ART will begin the 3-Sunday discussion in October, on the 21. I am currently reading the book; it is difficult and brilliant and enlightening. We have so much important work to do. I look forward to meeting with many of you and discussing the ideas that DiAngelo posits.

On October 20th, we will have another opportunity to meet as a congregation and discuss open question one. You will hear more about this from the Strategy Advisory Committee, as well as the Anti-Racism Team. Keep watching Circuits and read your Order of Service for more information about this Congregation-wide event.

Yours in service, faith, and love,
Mindy