From the Minister

Just before getting back to a regular schedule (with a little less summer spontaneity) I’m taking a trip to Transylvania next week, and Jamie Petts and Skyla King-Christison are coming too. We’ll be attending an International UU Women’s Convocation gathering in Koloszvar with U-U women from many different countries, and making a very short visit to our partner church in Bozod Korispatak. I was the newly-called Associate Minister of the Fellowship in 1995, and also a member of the UUA Board of Trustees, when the Partner Church program began (first called Sister Churches) and my family and I traveled to Transylvania to begin this partnership. Members of the Fellowship have nurtured and continued the partnership for nearly thirty years now, through changes of ministers in both congregations.

I’m so glad that Jamie and Skyla are both interested and able to come to this gathering, as a way of helping sustain this partnership and other of our international UU connections into a new generation. Transylvanian Unitarianism is our ancestral home, our lineage. It was a product of the Reformation in the Catholic Church in the 15th and 16th centuries – it was the so-called Radical Reformation which moved away from trinitarianism. Unitarians in Transylvania (now Hungary and Romania) kept this liberal tradition alive through centuries, through dictatorships and communism, through war and peace. We have much to learn from them today, from the present-day Hungarian Unitarian Church.

This visit is part of that ongoing learning. And, from Sept. 20 – 30 our Partner Church minister, and her son will be visiting us! Rev. Katalin Szasz-Cserey and Mate look forward to being here again (for Mate, his first trip to the US), to spending time in Oregon and with us, and to continue the learning and the partnership. There will be lots of opportunities to get together with them, including an all-Fellowship Hungarian Dinner on Friday Sept. 27.

I’m grateful to worship team member Susan Sanford for hosting the September 8 Sunday Service at the Fellowship, which will include the annual Joining of the Waters ceremony. It will be an intergenerational service. I hope you’ll plan to be there. All are invited to bring a small amount of water from somewhere important to you, to share in the ceremony.

Summer is not yet over, but oh – the rain has been beautiful! It feels like everything with roots is no longer thirsty, and I feel the same way. I know it will get hot again soon, for at least a few more weeks, but it feels different now. That’s how things should be when seasons shift and move.

Seasonal changes are underway at the Fellowship too. This Sunday, August 25, is the last of our Summer Services – and we’ll be outside, weather permitting. (So far the predictions look good). It may be cool – bring layers. And given the spike in Covid again – I’m glad we can be outside.

The following Sunday, September 1, there will be no Sunday Service. We’ve been taking that Sunday as a break for several years. Not to worry if you think you’ll miss togetherness – come to the Saturday August 31 Pop Up Parking Lot Rummage sale and to the Monday September 2 Annual Tuna Roast Picnic (in Avery Park). Find out more about both in these weekly announcements and please sign up to help!

On Sunday September 8 we’ll regather with the Annual Joining of the Waters Ceremony — an intergenerational service. All are invited to bring a small amount of water from someplace that’s important to you, as we consider the gifts of water and autumn and a new Fellowship year ahead.

On September 15, we’ll start the new church year theme of Ancestors, Descendants and Us – How Shall We Live Now? Spirit Play for children, and YRUU for teens will re-commence on this day as well.

The last two weeks in September we’ll be hosting the minister of our Transylvanian Partner Congregation, Rev. Katalin Szasz-Cserey, and her son Mate. She’ll help us learn more about our Transylvanian ancestors and modern partners, and will be with us to rededicate our Memorial Garden on Sept. 29.

So many beautiful things coming our way in September. Until then, may blessings of summer days and harvests, blessings of friends and community, blessings of this circle of care and support – be yours, and may you pass them on to as many others as you can.

See you Sunday – Jill

So much of our time and energy, whether we are aware of it or not, goes into finding our footing, so to speak, or trying to find balance – mostly emotional or spiritual balance, though sometimes (especially as we age) our physical balance as well. The world we live in is so good at challenging our sense of balance – our sense of stability and even of trustworthiness. Too often we react as if the world is doing this to us personally – trying to make our own lives difficult. Usually however, Life, and the world, are simply doing what they do – being immensely complex arrangements between life and death, love and hate, beginnings and endings.

Humans have many ways of dealing with these realities! (That’s an understatement.) Religious beliefs and practices are often involved, as are power dynamics and ways of dealing with fear, and lots of other things. Not that most of us name these dynamics in ourselves – especially our ways of dealing with fear.

At the heart of spiritual searching, and sometimes of spiritual practice, is the need to respond to the presence of fear. For myself in this practice, sometimes I think I am learning and growing, and sometimes I’m pretty sure I’m mostly fooling myself. Because of this I have a sense that working together to address fears is very helpful. The political landscape in our country is part of the way the world is going, and it certainly adds to our challenges of trying to find and maintain balance in the presence of fear. For the next few weeks, I’m looking forward to talking about these challenges with all of you, as we make our way toward an election season which will need the best we have to give.

See you Sunday — Jill (PS: Ask me about my theory that tendencies toward authoritarianism around the world are closely related to un-articulated fears about climate change.)

Several years ago, in the first summer of the pandemic, we were trying to cope with the realization of a long road ahead of us, the unknowns at at every turn, the fear and sadness. Together we were building a daily practice of centering and giving thanks. This passage, written one August morning, reminds me of the never-ending need for that practice:

“How does a morning look and feel to you, where you are? And how do you know? Do you check a weather report first, or go outside? Do you gather resignation as you get out of bed, or catalogue current pains, or give thanks for a new day? Have you imagined or tried dedicating your first breaths to goodness or compassion?

Or saying a morning prayer as the first thing? Daily practice is about orienting and turning to the day aiming toward love. It involves taking in — being present to – more than assumptions and judgements we carry from yesterday. Taking in the sky, the clouds and trees, the sunlight and shadows, birds, flowers, insects, the fact of the earth. Being present to the realities of human limitations, our own and others, while at the same time remembering the immensity of time and space of which each and every life is one small part. Acknowledging, remembering, the possibilities for love (which contains justice and compassion and joy.) Reverence is a good word to describe this process of remembering, orienting and turning.

We begin in reverence for the day and for all it brings – everything welcome and not welcome, everything we think we know and all we do not. With thanks each breath that enters the body. With thanks for the hazy morning sky and the sun coming over the trees once more. With thanks for a chance to let love hold us and move through us for one more day.

May we breathe in and breathe out and bow to the morning, and to Life.”

I am so grateful for all the time and effort that has gone into making these Weekly Announcements what they are today – integrated into the website, easily readable on phones and other hand-held devices, convenient for folks who first simply need to know what, when and where. These have been beautiful updates, and have received lots of compliments And, I’ve heard from some of you that you miss a “newsletter” which you could read all the way through, which includes a broad look at the life of the Fellowship and UUism in general. I think we can have both, and should.

I’ve had conversations with a few people about a monthly publication which is more like a journal than a newsletter. Instead of including announcements about events, which the Weekly Announcements do very well, this journal would focus on ideas – our theologies, our philosophies of religion and religious exploration, our newly articulated shared values, our stories, our local and international partners, our own religious and spiritual commitments, and more.

I’m ready and willing to start this publication this month. I’d be happy to hear from any of you who might like to help – as writers, editors, planners, etc. I’d be happy to know if you have ideas for a name for such a publication. Please connect with me if you do.

Meanwhile, here in the depth of summertime, I encourage you to stop and be amazed by the bounty of our Willamette Valley home, if you aren’t already doing that every day. Amidst the swirling of politics and cultures, the changing Earth and climate, the too many details and the too few deep connections, help yourself pause to rest and see or feel or consider a larger view, a Life which is so much more than our own thoughts and experience. And in that pause, count a few blessings, and send blessings on to others.

See you Sunday — Jill

I’m thinking about brave persons throughout history – people who have risked everything, including their lives, for their commitments to freedom and reason, to democracy and human rights, to peace and justice. The excesses of empires and the fall of empires are not new in human history. I remind myself of this when I find myself gob-smacked, once again, to be witnessing such unbelievable events as those in our country in the past week. It feels like another world. If we are indeed seekers of truth, as we say we are, then this is no time to turn away, even if it feels like there’s nowhere to turn. There is more to learn – there always is.

I’ve been thinking and talking with others about what it might look like to “prepare” ourselves for the election season and its aftermath. I’m making no predictions – whatever the results, I think we’ll be in for challenges. In August, I’m hoping to begin discussions with as many of you as are interested about what we can do to prepare – at least to help each other.

Also in August we’ll begin a process of planning for the Fellowship — a visioning and prioritizing process, beginning with our grounds and buildings. Conversations around climate change, trees, energy use, the sustainability of the Fellowship as a community resource and more have led to a need for such a process, which will aim to help us prepare a 3-5 year comprehensive plan. If you are interested in this project – focusing first on our buildings and grounds – please plan now to join in one of two gatherings to share ideas – on either August 24, 9 – 11 AM or on September 14, 9-11 AM.

I’m so grateful for the group of Fellowship folks who are presenting the Sunday service this week, “Imagine Peace.” Bill Glassmire gave us the starting point with his questions: “What does PEACE mean to you? no war? good relations with your neighbors? a life with enough for everyone?” It’s easy to think that peace, or perhaps world peace, is too much to aim for, too hard to even imagine. Yet we know, we do know, that we either create more peace or create obstacles to peace with every action, every step we take.

Let’s not let our imaginations wither, for if we cannot imagine peace we cannot help create it. How DO you imagine peace? practicing humility? practicing forgiveness? being other-centered?outgrowing a need to be right? being less afraid? sharing space, sharing homes, sharing money? remembering that people are more important than things, that animals are as important as people? learning to center yourself in the breath which is given each moment? Was there ever a better time than now to give our attention to creating peace? Thank-you to all of you who are joining in this conversation.

Although the beginning of “Summer Services” is a little bit arbitrary, nevertheless we do make a change in our worship formats during most of the summer months. This year we’ll begin Summer Sunday Services on July 7 and end on September 1. Some of those services will be held outside, depending on temperature and weather — that part makes planning ahead a challenge. Just check the weekly announcements each week.

People have different approaches to Fellowship life in the summer. Some travel a lot, and take breaks from Sunday attendance. Others attend every week and don’t really distinguish between summer and other seasons when it comes to Sunday services. Whatever works for you, we look forward to seeing you at the Fellowship or online as often as you are able to come.

There are other ways to gather as well. For example, a concert this Sunday evening in support of our democracy action team stamp fund; a night at the ball park on July 28; a music sharing evening on August 7; seasonal Connect Up activities and more. And there will be furniture moving to share as we begin to empty out the classroom wing in preparation for renovations there.

Summer is a great time to invite others to get together – for walks, coffee/tea, gardening, movies, meals, etc. Find someone to share in a conversation about our Congregational Covenant of Right Relations, or about the newly updated UUA values (Article 2.) Or make an appointment to get together with your minister. If not now, when?

Whatever your approach to summer, may it be a time for building new connections and strengthening the bonds of community.

We hope to see you often.