Dear Friends,
Happy Equinox!
It’s a beautiful sunny day. I’ve been “social distancing” for about 10 days now, as I know many of you have. Taking the trash and recycling around the block to my trash cans today, I saw two people I never met walking their dog. From 50 feet away, I yelled, “HELLO! NICE TO SEE YOU!” I realized that I’m beginning to get a little desperate for human contact!
Some of us are confined alone in spaces, some long for a moment of alone-ness in a house full of people and animals where we’re never alone. All of us are struggling to land in this new normal, this new way of being, this new world. And all of us have each other. What a blessing that we don’t have to struggle alone!
The troika—Rev. Terri and Arif and I—and the staff—Allison and Paul and Jennifer—and so many of you!!! –too many to name–have been working to maintain the heart of the church in this new day. Ministry teams have been gathering, people have been reaching out to one another via FaceTime and phone and Zoom and email. The term ‘social distancing’ is not accurate for what we need to do right now. We need to connect with one another socially while keeping physical distance to keep ourselves and each other healthy.
To keep connected, we need to hear from you. What is going on for you and what do you need? If you are longing for more connectivity, there are many opportunities at this congregation and coming from other UU communities across the country from which to connect. Jennifer and the CYRE team have cooked up an ambitious and engaging schedule (view the UUCM Online Community Calendar here). We’ll continue to gather online for worship on Sundays on Zoom (here is a post to help you get started on Zoom). If you do not have a computer, you can dial in and at least listen to your community!
We can use a great deal of help moving forward in these days: If you’d like to pre-record a video —a slide show of beauty, your family acting out a story together, you making music, other creative ideas—create away!!! We want to see one anothers’ faces! Those of us who can’t be around children would especially love to see beloved children from the community. If you could help by calling and checking in on other folks to see how they’re doing, or if you’d appreciate a regular check-in call from someone, we’d love to hear from you. The care team, which is a fabulously generous group of women, could use more people (of all genders) to help as needs emerge for grocery runs, phone calls, and other help. We’d especially love some younger folks to help out as elders are at higher risk of infection doing the out-in-the-world services.
As time goes on, we’ll be trying different kinds of activities and gatherings. If you have ideas, let Rev. Terri or me know. Meanwhile, stay hydrated, get plenty of rest, and find something to laugh about every day. I’ll close with a link to a video that made me laugh, as it was both funny and really true (how could they see inside my head?).
Warmly,
Rev. Meg
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