Sunday Worship, July 12 at 10 AM
Our online service will be the last with the troika, who are completing their two-year interim with UUCM. As a special treat for the congregation, and for the troika’s own sense of completion, the service will be streamed from the church sanctuary (with no one but staff present). If you’d like to say goodbye in person in a socially distanced way, join us after the service from 11-12 for a car recessional. Meg, Arif and Terri will be outside in the upper loop to chat with folks as you “drive through” in your car. (Please note that the building will be closed, so if you do this, use the bathroom before you go!!!)
Category / From the Ministers
Mid-Week Minister’s Message 7/1/20
Dear friends,
I’ve just emerged from the first-ever-All-Virtual UUA General Assembly (GA)! Almost 5000 people gathered online to worship, learn, reflect, vote, and be with one another for five days.
As with moving from live to virtual worship on Sundays, there were pluses and minuses. It was the third biggest GA in history, because so many more people could afford to go than are able when attendance includes travel, food and lodging. People with accessibility issues, fragrance sensitivity, hearing concerns could attend more easily and get their needs met. And hundreds of people attended things like the budget hearings and business meetings who may have ducked out if we’d gone in person, where conversations with folks we met in the hallway might have led to coffeeshops instead of business. Continue reading →
Mid-Week Minister’s Message 6/24/20
Whenever we interact with each other as a community — during Sunday morning worship, in small groups, by email, in the Facebook group, wherever — we are doing so in intentional relationship. We are practicing ways of being together that aren’t always how things are in other spaces. We are fostering a culture that says, we need one another. Or more specifically (in words from the Rev. Theresa I. Soto): “All of us need all of us to make it.”
Get that? To make it.
How do we do that for each other? How do we honor each other’s inherent worthiness by fully recognizing that we truly, deeply and urgently need one another? And because all means ALL, how can the very act of being in relationship help to dismantle the structures and systems of oppression and racism that don’t want some people to make it? Continue reading →
Black Lives Matter
The following joint message was emailed to UUCM members and friends on June 16, 2020. It has been updated with contact information for board members.
From Your Ministers:
Dear UUCM, over the past few weeks, your interim ministry team has been engaged in multiple levels of ministry with you in relationship to the awful murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of the police. Many in the congregation have been present at the many protests. Many have visited the scene of his death. Rev. Meg and Rev. Lisa Friedman held a listening circle in which we heard your pain, your anger, and your uncertainty about quite what to do. Each of your interim team has, or will lead services that speak to racism and white supremacy, and we each have, or soon will, offer thoughts in our Wednesday messages. Each of us is impacted differently by Floyd’s death and the subsequent protests. Some of you were there personally, or had family members who were tear gassed by police, while others worried if the unrest would reach the quiet streets of your suburbs. Each of us is impacted differently.
Our time as your interim ministers grows short. On July 31st, our time with you will end. With so little time and with such big events occurring in our world, we are working closely with your board of directors and program council to collectively hold and shape the congregation’s response. Below is a message from your board, and as you’ll see, they are picking up on the fact that we are each impacted differently and want to engage the congregation more deeply in understanding where you are as a body, and what that means for UUCM moving forward.
From Your Board of Trustees:
The murder of George Floyd and the resulting protests in Minnesota and around the globe have rapidly changed the world and views on the Black Lives Matter movement. Leadership at UUCM fully supports the anti-racism movement and taking a hard look at white privilege. Following a listening session held by Rev. Meg and Rev. Lisa, the congregation has also been actively discussing these topics in board and council meetings. Initial steps have been taken – the program council deliberated June’s offering recipient and reaffirmed our commitment to Avenues after verifying that they primarily serve people of color in Minneapolis. We have also taken steps toward sourcing BLM buttons and posters for distribution to membership and are planning to read and discuss the book My Grandmother’s Hands in July and August to catalyze broader anti-racism efforts.
We as a board also want to hear how these events have affected you and what actions you have taken on a personal level. Church leadership needs to understand what members individually think and feel, and how the congregation wants to move forward in these efforts both internally and externally in the short and long term. We also recognize broader conversations within the UUCM community are needed. Planning for further conversations about anti-racism efforts are underway. Please email a board member with your ideas. The efforts will be critical in framing who we want to be and where we want to go as a community.
President: Fred Hulting (incoming); Robert Brooks (outgoing)
Vice President: Cathy Bujold (assuming new role); Melissa Martinson (outgoing)
Directors: Julia Antonsen, Bill Arnold, Becky Halat, Shelley Buss (incoming), Betty Hartnett (incoming), and Cindy Busch (outgoing)
Mid-Week Minister’s Message 6/10/20
15 years ago, I started a regular meditation practice that completely changed my life. Not quite a year prior, we had welcomed our first child into our lives. As a young first time parent, I didn’t know what to expect. And, as a just plain “young” person, I didn’t have any of the tools I have now to help me negotiate all this.
And so, I screwed up in more or less all of the ways one might. As a new parent I was angry and frustrated and in retrospect embarrassingly full of ego and blame and an inability to give voice to my real feelings, needs, fears, and doubts. I knew I wasn’t showing up as the parent or spouse I wanted to be, and I felt terrible. As my daughter’s 1st birthday drew near, I was more and more convinced that things needed to change. Continue reading →
