Rally and Witness

At GA, I attended the rally described below, to raise awareness about family friendly (and unfriendly) legislation. Quoted below is the follow up e-mail from UUA's Congregational Advocacy and Witness group, fyi:

On Friday, June 27th, you were among over 650 Unitarian Universalists who gathered with interfaith and community leaders in Stranahan Park to demonstrate our support for BGLT and immigrant families. We listened as an immigrant family told us about the injustice that they and others in their community are experiencing. And you filled out a Valuing ALL Families card pledging to Stand on the Side of Love and support family-friendly legislation.

Now you can take the next step in supporting immigrant families by following
this link and urging your Representative to support the Child Citizen Protection
Act:

Fifteen percent of all families in the United States include at least one non-citizen parent and a U.S. citizen child. Many of these families are at riskof being torn apart by detention or deportation. The Child Citizen Protection Act would return judicial discretion to immigration judges so they can take into account a family's well-being. Judges would be empowered to preventdeportations in cases where an undocumented parent's deportation would harmfully affect his or her citizen child.
>
Let your Representative know that you value ALL families, and urge them to support the Child Citizen Protection Act!

For more information about how the Unitarian Universalist Association can support your work for immigrant and BGLT rights, you can:

Check out the UUA.org Social Justice webpages on Immigration

Learn about Unitarian Universalists and the New Sanctuary Movement
Read Welcoming Our Neighbors: An Immigration Resource for UnitarianUniversalists
Sign Up for the monthly Unitarian Universalist Immigrant Justice Email List
Sign up for BGLT Network News

Gifts Among Us workshop

I attended an excellent workshop called "Exploring the Gifts Among Us" about leadership development in our Congregations, conducted by Rev. Nancy Brown and Rev Terasa Cooley. They have put their power point slides on the web (along with some of Rev. Cooley's other presentations probably also worth a look) here is a link to the pdf version.

One of the many learnings from this 3 hour workshop is the importance of:
simply talking to others in the Congregation (see the slide that says Conversation, Conversation, Conversation!)

How useful these conversations would be for leadership, both connecting current leaders to the Congregation and encouraging new leaders!

For example: We might ask Board members to have a conversation (a real one!) with one person in the Congregation that they do not know, perhaps once a month. One question they could ask is, what do you think? what are your passions? how can you serve? Well, 3 questions...I'm curious! But I think the conversation is more important than the specific info gleaned.

Another message rang clear from this workshop: the mark of a leader is the capacity to encourage more leaders.

In fact, the above is the only quality all leaders need to possess (otherwise, it is a mixed bag, choose the leader that has the right mix for the issue they will address!) Of course, there were also slides about empowerment, how to support new leaders and the complexities of doing this basic work well.

Mary Ann Muller also went to this workshop. We both bubbled over talking about it, feel free to ask us about it; start a conversation!

Forrest Church

I won't soon forget Forrest Church, his acceptance speech on receiving an award for service to Unitarian Universalism was so impressive that I very much regretted missing his lecture at GA. I will read his books.

William Sinkford called him "the most widely heard Unitarian Universalist voice of his generation" both has a parish minister and theologian. All Souls Church of New York has given him the designation Minister of Public Theology.

Sinkford's and Church's talks also acknowledged that this is Church's last GA. After battling cancer for some time Church received the news that it was terminal. Soon after this news he composed a book called "Love and Death"--a sum of his sermons over the years, or, as he jokes in the video below "the one great sermon every minister has in 'em."

The way Church approaches his death, lives this part of his life, shows the presence of grace, I believe. Not grace delivered from God-on-high, perhaps, but a grace cultivated by Church himself. I'm interested to find out how he did that.

I found some videos of Church's sermons on UU TV, a great website.

For the librarians who look him up, his catalog name is F. Forrester Church.

Afterthoughts: Ethical Eating

After thoughts about the debate/voting on the Study/Action Issue.

Sorry that I couldn't poll our Congregation about the issues, but I tried to vote with you all in mind. In the debate, here were some of the arguments for choosing Ethical Eating: Food and Environmental Justice for study/action, much reducing in my notetaking:

• This is an issue for folks of color; the youth also massed on this side.

• It involves choices we make everyday

• It will help us learn to talk about ethical treatment of animals

• It should garner the highest participation among Congregants, not just the activists, it will unite our collective concerns, there could be chocolate communions (my heart skips a beat!)...

So, I was won over. I thought of friends from the Congregation who I had heard express concern over these issues, especially the treatment of farm animals raised to be eaten, and I raised my orange card for a yes!

Want to know more about the issue? Might start with the proposal. And there is the article on Eating Ethically from our UU World. Also, if anyone read this who knows about the issue, please comment with some links, or thoughts!

I appreciate the focus that choosing a study/action issue gives us, especially in social justice work, which is not to say other issues are sidelined, and peacemaking continues to be on the table as it moves from study/action to formulating a statement of conscience. I need to learn more about that process.

And, I have to give the loyal opposition their voice, here were the arguments for Nuclear Disarmament.

• Not a trendy issue, but very important now and many national leaders from all camps are calling our attention to the issue.

• Too complex? No, 3 proposals for nuclear proliferation sent to Congress were defeated by grass roots lobbying, mostly by religious organizations.

• The problems are solvable, but require serious attention.

• We are in a hole on this issue, it needs attention for us to stop digging.

Heading Home

Jimmy, Mary Ann and I headed home today, made great time and looking forward to a wistful Sunday night after the big trip and a short week at work 'cause of the fourth. We stopped for lunch in Daytona Fl. (we missed the exit that had Steak and Shake, with regret. But found a mall devoted to bikers, I think most of the stores sold Harley Davidson in one way or another, anyway, we had good bar-b-que, large portions and quick service! Home by 5pm.

I worshiped at 8am

The worship service I attend this morning at 8am sustained me through this long day. The sermon by Rev. Dan Schatz "Reflections of a Unitarian Universalist Pacifist" was wonderful. Rev. Schatz won the social witness sermon award from the UU Ministers' Association and they were spot on! I think you can hear his homily here:
http://www.uua.org/events/generalassembly/2008/112314.shtml

I voted!

After the worship service this morning, I attended the Plenary session as your delegate and I voted on something!
But that wasn't until after 11am and we started at 8:30.

During that time, we had reports! from the Board of Trustees (they are working on "ends" statements, reviewing the election process and trying to stay out of the details; that made me feel better!) Rpts from the Executive staff of the UUA, the Treasurer (he has a good sense of humor, also seems very reliable and a committed UU.) The annual program fund raised $7 million this year! There is a "committee on committees" Ha! And reports by the lovely Beacon Press (they have a blog) and the Journey Toward Wholeness transformational committee. Rpts from the associated organizations: the UU Service Committee (they altered their logo) and the UU Women's Federation (I can't believe I'm not a member; they are having a convocation Feb 26-March 1 2009 in Houston TX see www.iccuw.com) And then we left off reporting and started recognizing folks: two breakthrough Congregations (both great!) and 12 newly completed Green Sanctuaries ( this work is being transferred to the UUA Stewardship Office to administer from the UU Ministry for the Earth, which developed the program.) Forrest Church. And we recognized UUA staff and a really worthy local service project, and then we were ready to vote!

Our vote was to select a Congregational Study Action Issue from two proposed:
1, "Ethical Eating: Food and Environmental Justice" or 2 "Nuclear Disarmament" Both proposals come from the Congregations and this process is facilitated by the UUA Commission on Social Witness.

The issue we vote on will be recommend as the focus of study for social witness for our Congregations. After two years of study, a statement of conscience on the issue may be drafted for approval by GA and then that will be implemented for two years. So, that is 4 years of focus on this issue. There is some overlap. The current study/action issue is Peacemaking.

Anyway, although there is ample opportunities for workshops outside the Plenary, debate during is quite controlled. Four statements of 2 minutes each can be made for each proposal (and, of course, were made) and then we voted.

I voted for the Ethical Eating proposal, which received the majority of votes.

More later!