ISSUE 44                                                                                                                                                                                     FEBRUARY 2020
Our theme this month couldn't be more relevant: resilience. Science teaches us that resilience is a material's ability to absorb energy when it is deformed elastically, and then release that energy. There is a similarity in humans. So, this month, as a religious question we explore our human ability to absorb energy and release it in a way that reflects our values and who we would like to become. 

Playfully, I have described this as the practice of bouncing. Experience teaches us that our lives will be impacted by a variety of personal and communal events. Some of them take our breath away. And yet, life chooses life. Breath continues to come in and out.

Of course, we may be alive, but are we thriving? Have we been flattened by the experience or did we have sufficient elasticity that we absorbed the impact and released it in ways that had us continue to live in accord with our values.

This being Black History month, we have a chance to note systems and structures that were designed to flatten a people and keep them flattened. And yet, in countless ways, we witness collective resilience.

In this church, as we continue to explore whether we can relocate our church into a bigger facility, we have reason to pause and honor JUC's resilience. As a church, we have never just survived, we have absorbed the energy and allowed ourselves to be shaped in ways that would allow us to respond to a larger call.

I'm also thinking of our Going Deeper groups and the opportunity they afford our members to show up, as they are, where they are, whether flattened or in the midst of the storm or in the thick drudgery that can be our work-a-day existence or in joy. These groups, through the practice of deep listening and authentic sharing, expand our elasticity. They help us hear the still small voice inside and remember that "we are enough." None of us are the best or worst thing we have ever done; nor are we the best or worst thing that has ever happened to us. Through resilience, we return to our lives as full and loving participants, shaped by experience, but not determined or limited by it.

It's going to be a great month.
In This Issue
Integrity  and Planned Giving
Making an estate plan is practicing integrity. If you don't have a plan, the State of Colorado has one for you. Y ou may have an incomplete "accidental plan" when you title property, list beneficiaries of retirement plans or life insurance policies but this is not the whole picture. 

The state will generally pay your debts and distribute your property along genetic lines.  This leaves nothing for friends, causes and organizations you may want to support. If you leave minor children, their care may be entrusted to persons you would not choose or not have the financial support they need. E mpower the future of JUC by including it in your estate plan.  Contact JUC's planned giving coordinators: Bud & B.J. Meadows , Mike Kramer or Carol Wilsey
Not long ago I was talking with one of our affiliated community ministers, Ruth Rinehart, about the topic of resilience. It's a matter of no small interest given her ministry dealing with sober living and addiction. She reminded me that one of the key elements in determining, on average, how people will turn out as adults is how many adverse childhood experiences they had when they were young.

There is an online assessment you can take, only 10 questions, that details the kinds of things that are considered adverse childhood experiences. Things like --
Before your 18th birthday, did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often...
  • swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? or act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?
  • did you often or very often feel that no one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? or your family didn't look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?
  • did you often or very often feel that you didn't have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you? or your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it?
There are other questions about violence, sexual abuse, divorce, mental health, prison, and others. You can imagine. Or maybe you experienced them yourself. Research shows that the more of these experiences you have as a child, the more likely you are to struggle in a variety of ways as an adult. The trauma is long lasting, and doesn't end when you escape the experience. They inform your whole life. 

And yet, some people who have had these kinds of experiences also end up doing well as adults. Which raises the question -- what builds resilience in the face of such massive forces with such long shadows? It likely won't surprise you to hear that love lies at the center of resilience in these circumstances.

Researchers are looking at all kinds of ways that love manifests and then asking how we can grow that kind of love in our world. Those techniques include teaching parents ways to be engaged with their young infants in order to break generational cycles of neglect or violence. But even if you don't have children at home, or ever plan to, you can still help build a loving resilience, because studies suggest that even one caring and involved adult in the life a child who is struggling can make a world of difference. Just one caring and involved adult can be the difference between a resilient adulthood and one marked by perpetual struggle. How amazing is that?! I hope we can all be that one person for someone in our days. 
Living Unitarian Universalism Resilience: For the Strong of Heart
A few weeks ago, I was having lunch with a dear friend. Deep into our conversation, she said, "You have it so easy being Unitarian Universalist. You can just believe whatever you want to!" This is not the first time someone has told me being UU is easy as there seems to be an assumption that our 4th Principle, the free and responsible search for truth and meaning , gives UUs permission to believe whatever we want to believe. First, no -- UUs do not get to believe whatever they want to believe and having a free and responsible search for truth and meaning takes serious head and heart work. 

Being UU takes resilience. It requires reexamining and reassessing beliefs continuously for as James Luther Adams described in the first of the Five Smooth Stones; Religious liberalism depends on the principle that 'revelation' is continuous. Meaning has not been finally captured. It takes a conscious choice to question and not only claim our beliefs but to attempt to live them in this ever-changing and sometimes unrelenting world we live in. No one thing or person tells us what and how to believe. It is our responsibility to discover and rediscover these every moment we are graced with breathing. Unitarian Universalism is not for the faint of heart.
 
Rev. Lilia Cuervo, a native of Colombia, South America, was the first Latin American woman ordained in the Unitarian Universalist denomination. She pioneered full-time ministry in Spanish in San Jose, CA, where she served for six and a half years. In her 2011 sermon Unitarian Universalism - Not for the Faint of Heart, that kicked off her four-year ministry of multiculturalism at First Parish in Cambridge- she asks the following questions:
 
A religion that does not give you a creed, or has an authority figure to show you the way to heaven, is a religion for whom? 
A religion that encourages you to trust your own intuition, that direct experience of the sacred, and to listen to the divine within you, is a religion for whom? 
A religion that does not give you any assurances of an afterlife, but encourages you to live every moment to the fullest according to the highest ideals of humanity, is a religion for whom? 
A religion that encourages you to evolve according to newfound truths, is a religion for whom? 
A religion that encourages its members to live in the difficult questions, rather than to accept easy and personally untested answers, is definitely a religion for whom? 

For the strong of heart.

Jefferson Unitarian Church's Religious Education program is where our young people begin in their responsible search for truth and meaning. They are introduced to this journey by inspirational stories, learn about world religions and meaningful activities based on our monthly themes. And each lesson is also built on developing UU resiliency. We not only provide resources in our UU values and principles, but we also include an invitation to be something different than the world they are typically exposed to. A place where value has more relevance than the images they might be exposed to in the media or on social media. Learnings that offers an antidote to things like bullying, harassment, and racism. We teach our children this resiliency because sometimes it is far easier to succumb to negative peer pressure, be silent instead of using courageous voices, and to go with the flow instead of responding with justice and compassion. 

Unitarian Universalism develops our resiliency as we face our own limitations and learn to lean into them. It challenges us to interrupt injustices, asks us to decenter ourselves to make room for our siblings of color, and continue to question ourselves and the world around us in the name of justice, equity, and compassion. If that does not take a strong and resilient heart, I do not know what does.
 
On January 20, tens of thousands of marchers gathered at the Martin Luther King, Jr. statue in Denver's City Park, part of the 35th annual marade which began with speeches by Mayor Michael Hancock, Governor Jared Polis, and former Governor John Hickenlooper. This year's marade drew a counter protest from Black Lives Matter 5280 and the Colorado Poor People's Campaign, protesting Denver's camping ban policy. As the people moved by foot or wheel down Colfax Blvd, music and singing was alive and present, as can been seen in this example from the 2015 marade. 

The power of music to unite, to uplift, and to provide resilience offers a gift to those who are suffering and those who need hope. For some, music can be a creative outlet when the world seems to have veered off of its course, as in this song by Melanie DeMore, written the day after the 2016 election.

There are times when a person's situation closes in, when life's circumstances become more and more unbearable. The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron gives a key to resilience: "If you ask why we meditate, I would say it's so we can become more flexible and tolerant to the present moment." UU musician Sarah Dan Jones offers a musical breathing practice here.

These songs and others like them can lead to the practice of transformation, of taking outer circumstances and changing our relationship to them, of allowing ourselves to shift in ways that ensure our thriving in the present and future. They can give strength and resilience, as does this poem by J. Patrick Lewis, set to music by transgender composer Mari Esabel Valverde. "Know a million bells can drown out fear."

THE POOR and dispossessed take up the drums
For civil rights-freedoms to think and speak,
Petition, pray, and vote. When thunder comes,
The civil righteous are finished being meek.
Why Sylvia Méndez bet against long odds,
How Harvey Milk turned hatred on its head,
Why Helen Zia railed against tin gods,
How Freedom Summer's soldiers faced the dread
Are tales of thunder that I hope to tell
From my thin bag of verse for you to hear
In miniature, like ringing a small bell,
And know a million bells can drown out fear.
For history was mute witness when such crimes
Discolored and discredited our times.
 
Making Room Progress Report
There are so many elements in considering JUC's possible move to the much larger Lakewood Church of the Nazarene campus (LCN)! Here are the latest developments.

Budget projections: Church administrator Carol Wilsey and other key staff/lay members are working on a projected operating budget for the new campus. There's a lot to analyze. For example, the LCN campus has a large solar array, which offsets the utility costs we might expect for a facility that size. Other costs will certainly go up, such as cleaning and snow removal, but some will be relatively constant for a time, like our supplies budgets and, for now, staff costs. This budget analysis definitely qualifies as a work in progress. Carol and company are working hard to get us the information we need to make sure we can afford this move.

The LCN property: Good news! Initial environmental inspections by outside contractors show no active exposure to lead or asbestos within the church buildings. After reviewing the 300-page draft reports, JUC Board member and environmental consultant Andrea Aikin is requesting a little additional material, but says "the data look good." Anyone who knows Andrea's high standards knows this is high praise indeed.

Capital campaign: Based on an encouraging Financial Feasibility Study conducted last fall, the Board has set a capital campaign goal of $4-million. This money would be used for the swap/$2-million purchase of LCN and for moving into the facility and making it JUC-ready. That would include things such as moving costs, furnishings, sanctuary sound system, security, a bit of paint and flooring to spiff up the place, and some remodeling work. To raise this money over the next three years, the congregation's Wider Horizons campaign will kick off with a daytime LEAP multi-generational celebration at LCN on Leap Day, February 29. Wider Horizons steward visits and pledging will extend through April. The Foundation Level phase for members planning to pledge $10,000 or more is underway through February.

Your thoughts: Moving to LCN IS a congregational decision! The Shared Ministry Team is now planning forums for this month and beyond so everyone has a chance to ask questions and get more detailed updates. In the meantime, remember to check the Making Room website for updates, and be sure to check out the FAQs - you may find answers to some of your questions there.
 

The theme for the month of February in our church is "resilience." The Oxford English Dictionary defines "resilience", most pertinently, as "[t]he ability to recover readily from, or resist being affected by, a setback, illness, etc." As we enter what will undoubtedly be a tumultuous election year at this turbulent time in our nation's history, consideration of the concept of resilience is most timely.

The future of our national government aside, resilience is a quality that our congregation is likely to be in need of as The Making Room initiative continues. As a Board and as a congregation, we will have to deal with questions like: How much money will be raised in the Capital Campaign? What if we don't reach the Capital Campaign target? Even if we do, what if that is not enough money to do everything we want (at least not for awhile) with the LCN property? If we make the move to LCN, will it be successful? How will 'success' be measured? How long will that take?...and so on and so on...

Clearly, anyone who has ever moved from one house to another or from one community to another knows that not everything necessarily goes smoothly and entirely according to plan. However, hopefully the ultimate result of any such move is rewarding and well worth the discomfort and angst along the way, particularly if one adopts an attitude of resilience. As such, let us all aspire to be sufficiently resilient to deal with the challenges that will continue to be associated with the monumental, prospective move of JUC.
There are days where we silently struggle, days where everything goes wrong, days where we just can't seem to shake the funk we are in. Having a bad day seems to be an inescapable part of life. Every human has had one (or likely more) of those days... and something beautiful has been born out of this eons-long slurry of negative emotions and difficult experiences. In my own highly-technical jargon, these are called bad day songs . 

These bad day songs take on many forms. Musicians have always been singing about loss of loved ones and places and time. There are spirituals that speak of experiences almost too painful to bear. Songs exist that speak about resistance, sadness, anger, envy, even the general angst of life itself. And I am certain that we have all heard our fair share of breakup songs before. 

Songs like this give voice to our suffering, allow us to see what is going on inside of us and rest in the knowledge that we aren't alone in feeling this way. The notes and words coax our fingers open, loosening our tight grip on whatever our hearts are holding on to. And some of that negative energy escapes -- through our singing, humming, foot-tapping, dancing, whatever it may be. 

This is the power of the bad day song . When everything seems too much to bear, this music gives us resiliency in the face of our strong emotions and hard circumstances. The next time you are having your own bad day, I hope that perfect song comes on at just the right moment and lends you the strength to go on. 
In January, I was blessed to spend a week with the Rev. Tandi Rogers in her "Religious Education for a Changing World" class at Meadville Lombard UU seminary in Chicago. Our week included creating and participating in many various ways of growing our souls and thinking about how best to facilitate faith formation in our congregations. 

The seminary archivist allowed us to examine religious education materials from our Unitarian and Universalist roots dating from the early 19th century all the way up to the last sixty years of Unitarian Universalist curriculum. I was struck by the "cutting edge" nature of the materials and the innovation and forward thinking of past educators. 

From the early days until the present, our liberal religious predecessors encouraged the faithful of all ages to question, use reason and science, explore other cultures and religions, and engage in social justice. Religious educators were continually experimenting with new ways to encourage learning and transformation.This was radical when the standard of the day was rote memorization of scripture and standardized regurgitation of theological concepts.

Today, religious education is a vehicle for lifelong spiritual development and can manifest in many ways, not just the traditional Sunday school model for children and youth. We learn together in small groups or workshops for adults, retreats, Our Whole Lives classes, online communities, or multi-generational worship. The UUA offers online resources for congregations or individuals to grow our spirits and maintain right relations.

As we examined the archives, at times there were gasps of disbelief from my fellow seminarians when we identified misogyny or racism unconsciously embedded in some of the old religious education materials. Today, as a denomination, we are beginning to understand the necessity of valuing  and lifting up the perspectives of people with marginalized identities in order to ensure that all voices are heard.

Despite the harms we could identify in our peek into retired UU curriculums and materials, overall we came to appreciate the early UU's who, in the context of their time, were seekers of truth and justice. They had the courage to take risks for what they believed was right and good. As a faith, we will continue to struggle with our limitations and imperfections, but Rev. Tandi's class left me feeling inspired about the future of UU faith formation as we continue to innovate and "think outside the box."
If you're reading this, you're already connected to JUC happenings through our email list. Through that list, JUC inspires our members through the monthly IGNITE newsletter, shares announcements about events through the Weekly Connection email, and sends out other important information about church business, including the Making Room initiative. But did you know there are even more ways to connect digitally with our congregation on a deeper level?

The Member2Member Google Group allows members to send out direct messages about JUC and JUC-sponsored events. All messages are moderated (reviewed for accuracy and appropriateness before posting). If you aren't on the list, click here to register.
 
JUC also has three primary social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) where theme related content is posted daily.  We also have a closed Facebook Group for our families that you are invited to join by  clicking here . 
 
The very best thing about social media is that it's interactive and brings people together. Please engage by commenting on how our posts are impacting your life. Post your own photos and reflections on JUC events you've attended. If you're shy, (cyber or otherwise) send me stuff and I'll post it for you. Let's get connected!
 
Habitat for Humanity Update
Swansea Homes Open House

On the evening of January 7, Habitat Metro Denver held an open house at its latest construction site, Swansea Homes, located at 43 rd Avenue and Elizabeth Street. All of the hundreds of volunteers who worked on the seven houses completed so far -- including the house JUCers helped build last year in coalition with Jeffco Interfaith Partners -- were invited to a walk-through and had an opportuni ty to meet the new residents. Thank you to Linda Hartman and Steve Stevens for attending.

Unfortunately, the family which had been selected for our 2019 h ome failed to complete their "sweat equity" hours and has been de-selected. Habitat is in the
process of  screening applicants for a new family, so the home dedication is on hold. To qualify for a Habitat home, candidates must be working; must be spending 40% or more of their income on rent; must have good credit; must assume a $90,000 mortgage; must put in 200 hours of work on the construction of their own house or another H4H house. And, homeowners are prohibited from selling their house at a profit. Habitat offers a hand up, not a hand-out.

Our 20th House in 2020

This year, Jeffco Interfaith Partners will sponsor its 20th Habitat new build. As a founding member of the coalition, JUC has helped with every house so far, and 2020 will be no different except that this year we're getting an early start. JUC will provide volunteers on Saturday March 14 and again on Friday June 12. Stay tuned for details, but if you already know you want to work with us, please save those dates. The house will again be at Swansea Homes, same site as last year. Everyone deserves a decent place to live, and Habitat for Humanity's mission is to make that possible.