Letters from Leadership (Page 5)
Each week, our leadership publishes a message to keep the congregation informed about what’s happening at UUCE.
Practicing Gratitude This Holiday Season – A Message from UUA President Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray
However you celebrate, holidays and rituals are an invitation for reflection. They remind us of our past, and they also invite us to be attentive to the present moment. Practicing gratitude helps us all to be intentional in naming the gifts that surround us, reminding us that we are loved and we all share a fundamental interdependence. Practicing Gratitude This Holiday Season – A Message from UUA President Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray – YouTube
From Religious Education
I don’t know how you all are feeling, but I’m certainly having trouble grappling with the fact that we’re in the midst of another holiday season while this terrible pandemic continues. It’s so hard to plan anything or imagine a time when we might be on the other side of this, but I do have faith that we will get through it. The pandemic has brought into sharp definition for me a new way of understanding our 7th Principle. Most of the…
Connecting With Gratitude and Our Interdependence
So much in our lives right now—the ongoing pandemic, attacks on our democracy and rights, and the increasingly frequent impacts of climate change—seeks to isolate us, to wear us out and wear us down. Turning toward a concrete practice of gratitude helps us resist the ways in which we are being called to isolation and division, because gratitude actually turns us toward each other. Gratitude reminds us of our interdependence, which is so critically and spiritually needed in our world…
Revitalization, Evolution, and Moving Forward …Oh My!
Revitalization, Evolution, and Moving Forward …Oh My! Earlier this year, when it became clear that UUCE could not support a full-time minister, many on the then-appointed Minister Search Committee still wanted to provide a service that would help our church community for years to come. After conversations between ourselves and some members of the Board of Trustees, it became obvious to us that what UUCE needs is not just better care for our members and friends, not just greater financial…
From Our Worship Team
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been asked a few times how the Worship Team is doing with the recent changes in leadership. For the first time in the history of our congregation, we are a lay-led church and the responsibility for Sunday services now lies squarely on the volunteers on the team. The good news is that we have an excellent team with a wide variety of thoughts, ideas, spiritualities, and heart-felt issues and causes. We last met on…
Let Us Give Thanks For Our Common Humanity – Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray
As our lives become busy making plans with friends and family and holiday celebrations in our congregations, I am mindful that this year marks the 52nd annual Day of Mourning protest—an event that began when Frank Wamsutta James* called upon hundreds of Indigenous Americans and allies to gather in Plymouth, Massachusetts and declare Thanksgiving Day a National Day of Mourning for Native Americans. James wrote: “History wants us to believe that the Indian was a savage, illiterate, uncivilized animal. A history…