by adminuucm

Mid-Week Minister’s Message 5/6/20

terri-burnorThis 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 →

by adminuucm

Social Generosity Offering: May 2020

The May UUCM Social Generosity Offering will go to The Link.

The Link  supports nearly 3,000 youth and young families each year, offering programming in three areas:

  • Housing & Supportive Services:  Twelve housing programs that provide safe and stable housing and offer supportive services that are grounded in trauma informed care, housing first and positive youth development. Programs serve youth, young families and youth who self-identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

  • Juvenile Justice: Positive community-based alternative programs for youth in the juvenile justice system in Hennepin County. They work to find positive solutions to prevent the youth from dropping out of school and engaging in further criminal activity.

  • Safe Harbor: Provide shelter and supportive services for sexually exploited youth, including trauma informed care, harm reduction, positive youth development, victim-survivor-leader model and culturally inclusive services.

Find more information on The Link here.

How to Donate: You can donate online using PayPal or a credit card at bit.ly/uucmsocialgen. You may also mail a contribution to UUCM at 2030 Wayzata Blvd E, Wayzata MN 55391. Simply make your check out to “UUCM” with “Social Generosity” in the memo line.

by adminuucm

From the Board: May 2020

Each month, a member of the board will share a reflection on the Soul Matters monthly theme and the state of the church. The Soul Matters theme for May is Thresholds. This month’s post is offered by Julia Antonsen.

The monthly Soul Matters theme for this month is “Thresholds”.  Hearing the word made me think of the threshold of the doors in our lives and each threshold means different things depending on when we cross it.  The threshold of the outside door as we hurried out of the cold into the house in winter.  It that same threshold we cross on the beautiful spring day with enthusiasm of the warming sun as we leave our homes, even if it is to just sit in the sun.

We cross our threshold of church where we enter with the busyness of the week with hope of seeing our friends and leave that threshold having made connections and feeling better.  Even when we enter our virtual church, it is when we chose to enter that unique place, we are crossing into community through a threshold of our devices. Continue reading →

by adminuucm

Mid-Week Ministers’ Message 4/29/20

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. 

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 →