This weekly pastoral message by the Interim Ministry Team comes out on Wednesdays. Rev. Meg, Rev. Terri and Arif will take turns writing or recording a video. 

This week I was part of an 85 car caravan protesting the indifference towards workers’ safety and lives at a poultry processing plant in rural Minnesota where COVID is rampant.  The workers are largely Somali and Latinx immigrants.  It felt like very little to offer, to put signs on our cars insisting on workers safety and drive back and forth in front of the plant, but the workers appreciated the support and it was on the front page of the Minneapolis paper, so hopefully some pressure is being felt.

I sincerely hope that the caravan protest has some kind of impact.  Honestly, though, I was so grateful for any small action I could take that I needed to be there whether it did or it didn’t.  The combination of witnessing indifferent cruelty with homebound isolation is a bad one for me. I need to find paths to resistance or boil in my own rage.  I need to know other people are as angry as I am, and also ready to resist.

In this time of pandemic there is a great deal I don’t know, no one really knows.  But here’s something I absolutely do know.  There is no life that is expendable.  We are bound to one another in an interdependent web.  Our well being is in one anothers’ hands. Continue reading →

This weekly pastoral message by the Interim Ministry Team comes out on Wednesdays. Rev. Meg, Rev. Terri and Arif will take turns writing or recording a video. 

How are you doing, dear friends? We will ask this again and again because it can be easy to forget, easy to check out, easy to get caught in the swirl of doing or the weight of unease that are these days and weeks and months. So in this moment, pause before going further and ask yourself … how are you feeling, what is your body telling you, what about the tenor of your voice, the edge it may hold, the exhaustion you may feel, the autopilot you may have engaged, the getting it done mode, or the letting it go. How are you doing? How are you feeling? How are you?

This pausing and paying attention is mindfulness, a word that has become common in a diverse range of both secular and spiritual spaces. It is used by therapists, educators, business people and others. The intentional act of being more mindful is ultimately an entry into noticing and reducing reactivity or reactive patterns. When mindfulness is done as a spiritual practice, the experience can offer deeper insight into how things really are — the impermanence of life and existence — and the compassion we can bring to ourselves and others in light of this understanding. Continue reading →

The UUCM interim ministry team will now be sharing a weekly pastoral message on Wednesdays. Rev. Meg, Rev. Terri and Arif will take turns writing or recording a video. This replaces Friday’s “In the Interim” post from the troika. The Friday Update email will continue to go out with events, announcements, news, and board updates. This week’s post is offered by Arif Mamdani. 

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

These last many weeks, I’ve been returning again and again to these words from Dr. King. This pandemic has done a great many things, amongst them, it has underscored what we UUs know as our 7th Principle: “Respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are all a part.” For many of us, this is a time when we uniquely feel this “network of mutuality” when we are uniquely, even viscerally aware of our common “garment of destiny.”  Continue reading →

The UUCM interim ministry team will now be sharing a weekly pastoral message on Wednesdays. Rev. Meg, Rev. Terri and Arif will take turns writing or recording a video. This replaces Friday’s “In the Interim” post from the troika. The Friday Update email will continue to go out with events, announcements, news, and board updates. This week’s post is offered by Rev. Meg. 

Dear friends,

How are you?   I mean, really, how are you?  It’s easy to say, “Fine.”  It’s easy to remind ourselves how lucky we are to have a roof over our heads, food to eat, toilet paper, no violence in our home,  enough money that we’re not scared about surviving.  (If these descriptors are not true for you, please reach out to a minister immediately for help!)

But really, we’re not.  We’re under a huge amount of stress, as this physical isolation becomes a new normal, and we read the news about the thousands of people dying, and we watch many government officials who are dangerously out of touch with science, as we watch business people who prioritize money over human life, as we watch unsafe practices from our neighbors and loved ones, as we understand the disproportionate share of the burden which, once more, poor people and people of color are bearing for us all.  We’re not fine.

Monday I had my first complete day off from both churches for over a month.  To my surprise, despite my to do list, I didn’t get out of bed till 3 PM!  I feel fine now, but my body needed to collapse from the weight of the grief and stress of this time.  I encourage you to respect your body’s needs similarly in this time.

Recently I read a list of descriptions of life under stress which gave me pause.  A facebook post from a colleague asked,  Are you experiencing any of these symptoms?
And then offered this list… Continue reading →

The UUCM interim ministry team will now be sharing a weekly pastoral message on Wednesdays. Rev. Meg, Rev. Terri and Arif will take turns writing or recording a video. This replaces Friday’s “In the Interim” post from the troika. The Friday Update email will continue to go out with events, announcements, news, and board updates. 

Dear UUCM Friends,

What a month it’s been!  Who could have imagined on Valentine’s Day how profoundly life would change for all of us by St. Patrick’s Day?  And as we look towards future markers on the calendar, uncertainty looms.  All we know for sure is that more change is coming.

It has been wonderful to see this community rise to the occasion.  You have checked in with one another, reached out to those who live alone or are more vulnerable to COVID 19, celebrated daily accomplishments and witnessed daily trials for one another.

For the three of us, when we see beloved faces begin to appear on the Zoom screen at worship each week, our hearts melt a bit. How wonderful that each square on the screen is filled with the face and name of someone to whom we feel so profoundly connected!  As we get more proficient with technology, more of you offer your gifts and talents, as always, to offer experiences grounded in love and beauty for the community, whether in worship, religious education, or social justice work. Continue reading →