by adminuucm

From the Board: July 2020

The UUCM fiscal year begins on July 1. With it, we welcome Fred Hulting as the new President of the UUCM Board of Trustees and offer a warm and grateful farewell to Robert Brooks, who has served in this role for the past two years. Below are Robert’s parting reflections on the state of the church and of the world.

John Lennon said, “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” 2020 has certainly given us lots of that life. In January the Board posted our congregational record, initiating our search for a new minister. We had planned more congregational listening sessions, our annual pledge drive, our congregational survey, revisions of UUCM bylaws, fulfilling our first annual focus goals in the council of ministries. It looked like a sprint to the finish line for fiscal year 2020. Then the pandemic arrived.  Continue reading →

by adminuucm

Mid-Week Minister’s Message 7/1/20

meg-rileyDear 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 →

by adminuucm

Mid-Week Minister’s Message 6/24/20

terri-burnorWhenever 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 →

by adminuucm

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. Continue reading →

by adminuucm

Opportunities to Act, Learn & Give #BlackLivesMatter

Are you feeling overwhelmed or uncertain about what to do? Below are specific suggestions provided by the interim ministry team and staff.

Act

  • NEW: Request an absentee ballot to reduce crowding at polling locations. Sign up to be an election judge. Students 16 and 17 years-old can even be election judge trainees. The more staff available, the more polling places will be open.
  • Conduct an audit of businesses you regularly frequent; replace at least one-quarter with those that are owned by people who identify as black, indigenous or people of color.
  • June 20, 9 AM & 5 PM: Attend the digital justice gathering of the Poor People’s Campaign Mass Assembly & National Moral March on Washington
  • Turnout for UU the Vote to fight systemic racism in the justice system, in the streets, and at the ballot box. Connect locally through MUUSJA (Minnesota UU Social Justice Alliance) by emailing Karen Wills at director@muusja.org.

Learn

Give