Minister's Message

A message from UUFD Minister Rev. Jamie Boyce

February 1, 2025

Dear UUFD Community,

During the month of February, we will explore what it means to live love through the practices of inclusion. Just as the national landscape is abandoning commitments to inclusion and belonging, we will embrace and celebrating our commitment! Now is the

time to connect with those who are longing to belong, as poet Chad Snyder writes:

To belong

Is

To be longing

For wholeness

Of the beloved

Of all

Who belong

And are longing.

Living love through the practices of inclusion asks us to celebrate the human longing to for connection and community and to address the barriers to belonging. We must long for the wholeness of our community and welcome change along the way.

Unitarian Universalist leader and Religious Educator CB Beal invites us to consider practices of “Pre-emptive Radical Inclusion” which “leads us to make decisions about what our next moves will be to involve everyone within those spaces where we have leadership responsibility”. In our shared ministry model, we each have a role and responsibility in the work of inclusion, of widening the circle of concern and care.

May courageous love continue to guide us, holding us in beloved community, during these difficult times. We need each other now more than ever.

In faith and love,

Rev. Jamie

To arrange a meeting, or pastoral care conversation, please reach out to me at minister@durangouu.org.

President's Message

A message from Board President Tim Miller

February will be another busy month at UUFD. We’ll have a board town hall on February 2nd starting at 11:30am in the sanctuary. I’m pleased to announce that Dan King has accepted the board’s invitation to join us as a member-at-large. He takes the place of Jill Bystydzienski and plans to stand for election for a full term at the annual meeting in May.

We’ve been engaged the past two months managing the replacement of our ageing air conditioners and gas forced-air furnaces with a system of electric air-source heat pumps. The first two units bracketing the chancel have provided enough heat to keep us in the sanctuary. The two larger roof-mounted units should be operational soon. This project allows us to end direct fossil-fuel use in the sanctuary and better utilize our solar array’s output. In Spring 2025, we’ll recruit a magnificent group of volunteers who, under the guidance of some highly-skilled handy-persons, will improve the sanctuary’s “building envelope” by adding wall insulation and caulking leaky air pathways in the ceiling.

UU Stewardship Consultant Kay Crider comes to Durango February 14-16. She will facilitate a “Next Steps Consultation” weekend with a series of meetings designed to assess UUFD’s capacity and enthusiasm for campus improvements such as new fellowship/meeting space. Please read the e-announcements next Friday (2/7) for details on her meeting schedule. I look forward to your robust participation and engagement.

Pledge campaign launch is also imminent. After 2 ½ years of ministerial transition, we are hoping for some generous pledge growth this spring to support Rev. Jamie’s ministry and UUFD’s mission. Concurrently, teams/committees will be solicited in February for their budget requirements for the new church year starting July 1, 2025.

Board Secretary Sherrod Beall is leading an effort to understand how we might rent weekday space in Columbine House to a daycare provider, allowing us to add much-needed capacity in our community and diversify our sources of operating income.

And, last but not least, on Friday, February 28th , 7:00pm, the UUFD Recital Series resumes.

Regards,

Tim Miller

UUFD Office Hours Change

Beginning the first week of February, office hours are changing to:

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 10am-3pm.

This is to better accommodate the schedule of the congregation and staff. Please email Nikki with any questions at information@durangouu.org.

Office hours are posted on the office door, office phone voicemail inbox, and the office administrator's email signature.

February News from Faith Formation

“I think overall, the position on a whole host of issues should always be toward inclusion and equity.” ~Loretta Lynch

A primal human need is to belong—to be included.  Every single person we know needs that secure feeling of belonging—where they are valued, respected, and included.  Whether we’re in second grade longing to be included in a circle on the playground or a wheelchair-bound adult unable to cross a street because of a curb, we know what it’s like to be excluded.  It feels awful.

And yet, inclusion is the most simple thing—the making space for all of us to have that sense of belonging.  I suspect that the curators of Soul Matters Sharing Circle couldn’t know how timely or important the February theme of Living Love through the Practice of Inclusion would be.  



Belonging is the thing we all want.  Inclusion is the environment where that happens.  This is inferred in all our UU values, especially those of love, equity, pluralism, and generosity.  Our journey this month, a continuation of our human story.

Faith Formation for Kids

Val Pals is underway where the children and adults who signed up have been matched for this fun multi-generational activity of secret valentines.  



The middle school kids are working on a skit that demonstrates the practical application of our UU values (justice, equity, transformation, pluralism, interdependence, and generosity).  Inclusion is a big part of this where the gifts, interests, and ideas of all the kids are brought into the fold. Each week, the kids will explore various practices to include people, to include even painful stories, to include love for ourselves, to include our faith and traditions.

OWL For Elementary is Coming in March.  Watch this space and the Faith Formation News for details.

Faith Formation for Adults

Several new covenant groups using Soul Matters Sharing Circles materials have formed, and there is still room to join.  

If you’re a parent or primary caregiver of children, a family soul matters group may be for you. 

Click here for more information.  

If you’re new to UUFD and you’d like to connect with others along this same bend in the path, click here for more information about the Newcomers Soul Matter’s Covenant Group.

If you’re a creative to enjoys expressing yourself through music, art, or writing, the Creative Matters Covenant group may be for you.  For more information click here.    

Personal Faith Development – February:  Living Love Through the Practice of Inclusion 

This lovely poem by Jan Richardson clearly identifies that primal need to belong as hunger.  We’ve all felt this.  And that the same time, the author demands us to be inclusive so no one is left on the outside of the circle. Our own need to belong must include others, making our circle ever bigger, ever more inclusive.  True belonging cannot exclude.  To do so, creates the “them, and us” mentality we see everywhere in our society. This results in huge chasms that invites and incites us to see different as evil.

Inferred in the notion of belonging is “community.”  Toward that end, here’s an invitation to deepen and broaden your own community through conversation with friends that begin with powerful inclusion questions.  These might be things like:



• If you could go back and change a moment of being excluded or excluding someone else, what would it be.
• Have you ever had an unexpected joy because your invited or included something or someone into your life you were initially resistant to?
• Have you ever had an a cosmic or spiritual sense of being includes—that feeling of being one with everyone and everything around you.  If yes, how did that experience change you?

In closing, consider this: “[Inclusion] is almost always the by-product of expanding the table: God is right-sized. Rarely, if ever, do you do the work of hospitality, authenticity, diversity, and agenda-free relationships and encounter a smaller, more selective God.” John Pavlovitz

Social Justice & Responsibility Team News

RISE UP!

Before you read this (and please read this!): click here and listen to this Andra Day song.

There were 40 of us, some UU folks and some new friends, who came together on January 26 to consider where we, the Preserve Democracy Team, currently are and where we want to go from here during these difficult times in our country. We acknowledged feelings of frustration, anxiety and a mix of multiple other emotions, but most of all anger. Anger about the harm being done to our people and our planet by the orders and appointments of the Trump

administration. And we decided to RISE UP and channel that holy rage into actions to resist and to shape what may come.

We are in the process of prioritizing our areas of focus/actions at the local, state and national level and intend to create subgroups within the team to discern specifics of how to carry out those priorities. We know we cannot do everything if we want to have an impact, so we are looking to determine where our focused energies should be. We will continue to partner with other groups and agencies who share our concerns and purposes. We will continue to keep you informed so that you may join in when you feel called to do so.

Underlying this work is our deep recognition that as we unite in community we build strength, wisdom, resilience and capacity for change over the long haul. We have each other’s back and we intend to do the same for our wider community. We will rise up for each other a thousand times over, as thousands are doing across our nation.

“All we need, all we need is hope

And for that we have each other

And for that we have each other

And we will rise

We will rise

We'll rise, oh, oh

We'll rise”

By Andra Day

Pledge Drive Kick-off!

Dear UUFD community,

We are all on a spiritual trip together as a community, united by activities that strengthen our community, here in our town built around a river.  The river is metaphorically our life's journey, the church is our spiritual journey. Some of the many outdoor activities available to us as a community are pictured on the logo as well as the river and mountains that surround us. Thus, we are Tripping Together.

The annual pledge campaign paves the way for the future success and sustainability of our spiritual community. Let us join together in generosity and pledge our financial support to accomplish our mission “Love Courageously. Inspire Spiritual Growth. Work for Justice.” 

Elaine Collins, June Russell, Roberta Eickman

Pledge Campaign Co-chairs

Click here to view a member testimonial from Chris and Jodi Nute.

Call for Social Media Volunteer

The Communications Committee is seeking someone to manage our social media accounts (Instagram and Facebook). We are looking for someone who would like to promote UUFD values and events, activities in the community that align with our values, and raise awareness to our social climate and how we can all support and stay involved! 

If you have capabilities in graphic design, we have a Canva account for you to use (not required). Please email our Communications Committee chair Lynn Griffith at lynnmgriffith@gmail.com if you're interested!

Recital Series

The second recital in this year’s series will take place on February 28, 2025, and will feature Richard Silvers, violin, Brandon Christianson, violin, and Mika Inouye, piano.  The program is centered around three trios for the unusual combination of two violins and piano.  It will include a joyful and lyrical set of dances by Dmitri Shostakovich (unusual for this composer), a monumental and gratifying romantic trio by the masterful but relatively unknown Norwegian composer Christian Sinding, and ending with the virtuosic pyrotechnics of Pablo Sarasate’s classic “Navarro.”  Silvers and Christianson will also present Sergei Prokofiev’s beautiful and fiendishly difficult “Duo” for two violins.

I wish to take this opportunity to thank all those who assisted with my recital and reception last November.

The Recital:

Welcome–Rev. Jamie

Sound engineer–Tom Miller

Tickets and page turning–Tricia Bayless

The Reception:

Coordinator–Pat Senecal

Set-up and Clean-up–Rollie Butler, Connie Jacobs, Susan Koonce, Bonnie Miller

Wine server–Steven Guy

Food and beverages–Lisa and Steve Goveau, Sheryl and Steven Guy, Teresa 

Jordan, Susan Koonce, Elizabeth Long, Bonnie and Tom Miller, Carolyn and Tim 

Miller, Aline and John Schwob, Marta Snow



~Marilyn Garst

UUFD is Hiring!

UUFD is in need of a music director and pianist (one person) depending on interest and abilities. Compensation is competitive based on experience, etc.

If you have friends, friends of friends, relatives, etc. who might be interested in this part-time position, please have them contact Rev. Jamie Boyce at minister@durangouu.org for information.