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I am currently taking an 8-week Crisis Center Training in order to be a volunteer on the crisis phone lines back home in Alachua County, FL. The training is intense, and incredibly valuable, and the process is some strange combination of timeless and speedy. The core of what we are being trained to do is something anyone in a helping profession would recognize immediately: compassionate presence, active listening, and unconditional positive regard – the cornerstones of empathy. This program, like so many others around the country, takes average everyday folks and in sixteen long classes over eight short weeks, turns us into “well-equipped beginners,” ready to companion all sorts of folks in desperate straits, seeking help.
This reminds me of the “charge to the congregation” at the ordination of a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago, in which the minister declared that you don’t have to have “Rev.” before your name to be a minister to life. We are here to help each other, to minister to each other and our hurting world, every single one of us. We are here to be ever more deeply with each other in a lifelong process of growing, healing, and bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice (to paraphrase Unitarian minister Theodore Parker who said the words that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. then ignited and made famous). Sometimes that means simply being “in the well” with each other as we say in the crisis training, getting down into the darkest parts of someone’s pain and despair with them, where the only lifeline may arrive in a moment of knowing we are not as alone as we might have thought.
It can be very easy to lose track of that in the urgency of life (talk about timeless and speedy!), when sometimes the minutes seem so long but the weeks and months and even years just whip on past. Now that we are in the midst of our annual discernment as a congregation, namely the Stewardship Canvass and annual changeover in leadership, our relationships to each other and our connection to our own sense of purpose have a particular moment to shine. How will each of you choose to minister to each other, to the community, to the world, from right here in our little corner of it? Slow and steady will win that race, and every action counts. I believe in you.
We have some great events and programming coming up this month. I hope you will participate as much as you’re able and give your spirit a chance to refuel in good company! I’ll be back in the pulpit with you all for November 16th, and we will have our next Community Conversation on November 18, 2025 (there will be a zoom-in option for those who can’t make it in person, details in that section of this newsletter). Until next time!
Yours in gratitude,
Rev. Samara
Samara Powers (they/none)
Unitarian Universalist Minister
"Justice is what love looks like in public." Dr. Cornel West
*Generally, if someone indicates “none” here it means to use a name instead of a pronoun for that person. For example, “Fenwick wants you to refer to Fenwick by name instead of using any pronouns when speaking about Fenwick.” If someone indicates more than one type of pronouns choice here, usually that means either way is suitable/welcomed.
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