UUFD Newsletter, Sept. 2020

September 2020

At the Time of Ingathering, Know we are Fundamentally Linked

Rev. Katie's Animas View

It seems like every conversation I have is peppered with some commentary about school -- from my clergy colleagues’ gallows humor about what they’re calling the “August Madness” with brackets like the usual Spring basketball playoff season, in this season placing bets on which college shuts down in person classes first, to congregants sharing notes on how they navigate grandparent led hands-on teaching.

There is no institutional memory for this way of managing education for any of our children, whether they are preschoolers, early primary grades, high-school age or being very warily sent off for their freshman year of college.

In our region alone, I’ve heard of different scenarios for how our various school districts are managing the coronavirus plans. To me, some seem reasonable, others, frighteningly irresponsible.

Thankfully, colleges are postponing fall sports (which sounds better than cancelling), even though the football program at my alma mater brings in over one hundred million dollars annually. At smaller schools like Fort Lewis College, operating on a much tighter budget, the president has taken a voluntary salary cut due to the loss of state funds due to the pandemic.

Our families are overcome (see the "Parents and Caregivers" article later in this newsletter) with what have become long-haul parenting dilemmas. Do we send the kids back? How great is the risk? How do I continue my own work? What about their mental health? What about my own?

“Confusion reigns” was the title of a recent New York Times article, but it is more than confusion; it is depletion of all the reserves.

I want your spiritual home to be the touchstone of your values for you in this time. It may not look like it did last year, with fist bumps or hugs at the front door, but we are here as a place of love and trust, a people who are “fundamentally linked to each other” as our UUA president the Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray reminds us.

I hope you will make every effort to join us as we gather together on September 13 for our annual ingathering service where we will use the element of water to forge that connection.

I love you.

Rev. Katie

September Services (all services held online)

To join a Zoom worship, look for the link on the UUFD website. Need help learning to use Zoom? Try this video tutorial or this FAQ.

SEPTEMBER THEME: Renewal

September 6

Low Road Capitalism

-Rev. Paul Langston-Daley, pulpit guest

American Capitalism has its roots deeply entwined with slavery in America. It is deeply interconnected to our political system as well. We have accepted this model, and American corporations have continued to engage in violence and brutality to maintain power. What can we do to change our systems? Join us as we explore this topic and center our lives in love.

September 13

We Are All Longing To Go Home

-Rev. Katie Kandarian-Morris

We’ll celebrate our water communion today, gathering water from our homes, our pond, our river, our reservoirs. Take a picture of yourself and your water, send it to Rev. Katie (by 9/9), and we’ll feature you in the service.

September 20

Love With No Exceptions

-Rev. Katie Kandarian-Morris

It’s been 250 years since John Murray preached his first sermon on American soil. Come, hear how Universalism has made a difference in many lives today.

September 27

The Poignancy of Living in These Days

-Rev. Katie Kandarian-Morris

Among so many other important things we note, we are also living in what is named in Judaism “the High Holy Days.” These are days of taking stock, for making amends, to recognize “the deep poignancy of living in these days.”

President's Message

Frank Lockwood, President, UUFD Board of Trustees

We are just at the beginning of our new fiscal year at UUFD. It started July 1, 2020 and ends on June 30, 2021. Most of us will be glad to put last year behind us, as the year ended with the ongoing effects of COVID–19 permeating almost every aspect of our lives.

As a congregation, however, we “showed up” when we needed to and we prospered in the way we faced this and other challenges. Despite the obvious shortcomings of a Zoom Sunday service, we have showed up in healthy numbers since these services started, even through the summer lull. Now, as we start this “new year,” challenges continue. The Board of Trustees has charged a Pandemic Policy Task Force with researching and identifying best practices for in-person gatherings during this COVID-19 pandemic. We should have their first draft of recommendations early next month.

We also showed up when an asylum family needed housing. Liza Tregillas and the Social Responsibility and Justice Team, led by Bonnie Miller, spearheaded this effort which has resulted in our new residents of Columbine House, Elizabeth and Liober and their young child from Cuba. We are helping this family in a variety of ways, not the least of which is a GoFundMe campaign which is off and running. Please consider donating something to help this family in their transition to our community and the United States. Click here for the GoFundMe campaign.

Finally, our Board of Trustees welcomes brand new board members John Redemske and Rachel Lasiewicz. Most of you know John as the able Chair of the Building and Grounds Committee and all the work he has led to make our chapel more user friendly. Rachel is a new UU member and comes from years as the controller and Interim CFO of LPEA. We welcome a professional accountant to be our new Treasurer, and acknowledge the hard work both Tim Miller and Mark Swanson have done to help us transition from a "Family" sized congregation to a "Pastoral" to a "Program" church. These names reflect generally recognized categories that a growing congregation experiences and the changing needs of each size.

Get out the vote!

Social Responsibility and Justice special feature

Are you in a tizzie over politics? There’s a fix for that: action! When we start doing something about a situation, anxiety tends to fade.

There are two ways we can get involved politically: partisan and non-partisan. We exercise our partisan muscles as private individuals when we support specific candidates. Tax-exempt non-profit organizations such as UUFD cannot support specific candidates, but do get involved in non-partisan efforts to make the democratic process freer, fairer and more inclusive. Working to increase eligible voter participation is perhaps the most important way to do this.

Vote Forward is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower grassroots volunteers like us UUs to help register voters from under-represented demographics and encourage them to vote. Vote Forward builds tools to enable Americans, wherever they may be, to encourage fellow citizens to participate in our democracy. Each of us signs up, is approved and selects a specific group of 5-20 people to whom we write letters. These are people whom Vote Forward has identified as eligible but unlikely to vote.

How does it work? You go to the Vote Forward website and register. If you are approved (you will be), Vote Forward gives you a list of 5-20 names and addresses. You download form letters and write your personal message within. Please, no partisan messages. Place in stamped addressed envelopes and wait for directions from Vote Forward when to mail – not too early, not too late. See a sample letter below.

Bonnie Miller (Social Responsibility and Justice) and Sherrod Beall will help organize our UU effort. For fun and encouragement, we might organize a virtual letter writing party and try for some funding to support mailing costs.

After looking at the Vote Forward website, if you are interested in joining a UUFD Get Out The Vote campaign, just let me (Graham Smith) know. Go ahead and download however many letters you plan to write. Bonnie, Sherrod and I will let you know about the virtual letter-writing party when we all would complete our letters. Prepare your heartfelt story on the importance of the vote so you are ready to complete your letters at our gathering. Current thinking is that the mail date will be mid to late October, but that could change if Voting Forward judges that USPS is slipping in timely mail delivery.

We hope you will join us to Get Out The Vote!!

Graham Smith, smigr001@gmail.com

Parents and caregivers: Our Faith Formation team is here for you.

Faith Formation introduces a new curriculum for fall, and warmly welcomes you back from this crazy summer

Greetings, parents!

It has been a summer unlike any other. The change, uncertainty and worries related to the pandemic, along with mounting tensions and stressful events across our nation — not to mention it’s an election year — have no doubt left us all feeling in need of respite.

We know our church community’s parents have weathered these trying times without their usual support systems and routines. We know shifting work and school lives have been a day to day challenge, and you’ve been stretched to the max. We know each family amongst us has been trying its best to make summer feel a little more normal.

We’re all doing what we can, where we’re at, with what we’ve got.

We understand that a break from so much online activity has, for many, been essential. As a turn in the season approaches, and much about the future remains uncertain, many may find they’re yearning for a return to routine, familiarity, and some sense of normalcy.

In the face of so much uncertainty, a return to UUFD services can provide families an opportunity to re-center, to reconnect with one another, and with your family’s most deeply held values. We are ready to continue providing a safe space for liberal religious education offering the children and youth of our congregation important connections, and their families too.

We are here for you. We are so ready to welcome you back.

This will be an exciting year in Faith Formation at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Durango. As people of faith and peace, we are called to respond bravely in thought, word and deed to rampant racial injustice in our nation.

Above all, we are tasked with educating our children to be advocates for racial justice and allies for people of color.

This year, we will frame our church’s teachings about the inherent worth and dignity of every individual through Raising Anti-Racist Children, a curriculum developed by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church in Charlottesville, Virginia (see article below). It will be a year of growth and challenge for us as a nation, and we shall guide our children and youth through it with courage, honesty, and visions of possibility and change. To sign your child up for the 2020-21 church year, click here (this will take you to Breeze, our online church management program).

-Sara Sautter

Fall Faith Formation Curriculum: Raising Anti-Racist Children

Calling all brave, curious children! Join us as we explore our new faith formation topic, anti-racism. Starts September 20.

As people of faith, we are called to actively teach our children to be anti-racist, to be advocates of racial justice, and to act as allies for people of color. These developmentally-appropriate lessons draw on the work of anti-bias educators Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edwards and have these four goals:

Each child will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.
Each child will express comfort and joy with human diversity; accurate language for human differences; and deep, caring human connections.
Each child will increasingly recognize unfairness, have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts. Each child will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discrimination.
Each child will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discrimination.

Lessons will take place via Zoom breakout rooms during regular 10 am worship services. However, our experience has shown that very young children do not thrive on Zoom, so Kindergarten and younger children will receive selected picture books to read with their caregivers along with simple discussion prompts.

Please enroll your child for the 2020-21 year using this link. By enrolling your child, you will be signing them up to receive materials through the U.S. mail that accompany and expand the lessons. Your enrollment means that you will encourage your child to attend Sunday lessons, to use these materials and that you will volunteer to sit in on the lesson at least once during the fall and winter.

With questions, please contact Sara Sautter.

Recital Series 2020-21 Update

After weeks of dilemma and a heavy heart, I cancelled the first two recitals scheduled for the fall on Sept. 25 and Oct. 30. I have had phone conversations with the musicians involved with these, and of course they understand since they are dealing with the same COVID issues in their New Mexico cities. This decision is in line with decisions made by all the other Classical music organizations in town--no live performances until at least the first part of 2021. Perhaps we can have a partial series with those scheduled in 2021 on Jan. 22 and April 23, but even that is optimistic thinking.

Marilyn Garst, Artistic Director

What happened at the board meeting?

Meeting highlights from Teresa Jordan, Secretary of the Board

Did you know you can always see the approved minutes from Board meetings on our website here? Here are quick highlights from our most recent meetings:

Notes from August 11, 2020 board meeting

Approved temporary use of Columbine House, free of charge, by a Cuban family granted asylum status.

Notes from August 25, 2020 board meeting

Observed Chalice Lighting and listened to Opening Words read by Rev. Katie Kandarian-Morris
Accepted Minutes from July 21 Board Meeting, August 11 Special Board Meeting, and Membership Report
Heard Treasurer’s Report from Rachel Lasiewicz and reviewed financial summaries
Approved revised Faith Formation Safety Policies developed by Interim Faith Formation Director Sara Sautter and team
Read and heard Interim Faith Formation Director’s Report by Sara Sautter
Approved funds for new computer needed for use by Interim Faith Formation Director
Approved WiFi Internet upgrade to all UUFD buildings
Approved Charter for Stewardship Committee revised to include year-round functions
Heard Minister’s Report
Agreed to continue following UUA Pandemic Guidelines until September Board Meeting when recommendations from UUFD Pandemic Policy Task Force are expected
Agreed that use(s) of UUFD buildings or grounds need(s) to be pre-cleared through the UUFD office by contacting the Office Administrator to help keep staff and users safe
Heard Closing Words from Frank Lockwood, President
Agreed on schedule for next meetings: