By the time the Annual Meeting comes around, we’ve once again nearly completed another year in the life of the Fellowship. This is no small thing, especially considering the lingering effects of the pandemic and the state of the world in general. There have been days in the past few years when I truly wondered whether we’d be able to keep this community alive and well. But we have! And we have so much to be thankful for, most of all each other and our shared commitments to being a UU congregation.
I sometimes fantasize about what it would look like if EVERY MEMBER came to the Annual Meeting, every year. What it would be like for ALL of us to gather to acknowledge and thank each other, to discern together what our next priorities are, what the world is now calling us to do. Can you imagine? To think together about how well we’ve lived into our mission. To discuss together needed changes. To encourage one another to stay together and keep going– to trust that what we do here makes a difference. I know that in the real world only some of us will gather. I understand that people have many different ways of being part of the Fellowship, and that not everybody is able, or available, or all that interested in how our small local democracy works. And yet – don’t forget that the life and future of the Fellowship do depend on those who gather – who elect new officers, who affirm that those folks willing and able to serve are living up to our ideals, who hear and take to heart all of our challenges and successes in the past year.
The religious life is nothing if not a life of making commitments. To the many, many of you who do so – some for many years and some just now beginning – my gratitude is deep. I look forward to seeing you at the Annual Meeting on Sunday (May 19) – in person or online – as we do this beautiful work that belongs to us all!