From Your Minister
Dear Ones,
The new congregational year has begun, and with it we’re exploring our Soul Matters theme of Building Belonging. This rich theme has me thinking about how building belonging is a spiritual practice that we engage in for ourselves and others.
Even when we find places where we feel belonging, they don’t stay that way without our efforts. We’re responsible for helping places of belonging stay strong and vibrant, and for continuing to expand belonging to include more people, to widen the circle. This becomes even more complicated because belonging means different things to different people, and we all have our own reactions.
One response to this is creating a community of communities – a phrase that I’ve borrowed from UU religious educator and 8th Principle co-creator Paula Cole Jones and that you may have heard me use over the past few years. As UUS grows, we’re intentionally creating multiple smaller communities – some defined by identity, others by interests – within our congregation while also attending to how all our communities come together. I hope you’ll learn about some of these communities at our Opportunities Fair on September 7, and then, as the months unfold, join and help strengthen one or two of them.
Another response to building belonging is working on how we understand it and talking with others about what it means to them, as well as working on how we talk about Unitarian Universalism. We’ll be engaging with this through worship services and an Articulating (Y)Our Faith workshop on September 14, but you can dive in more deeply by joining a covenant group that engages with our monthly Soul Matters themes (contact Nic Kaplan at [email protected]). Then, on October 9, 23, and 30 from 5 – 8 pm you can learn even more at the Managing Dynamics of Difference training at UUS that we’re co-sponsoring with Johnson County Interfaith Coalition (contact me at [email protected] to sign up).
There are also many more ways you can help build belonging by volunteering to teach religious education once a month, attending our mind and spirit groups, engaging with our justice teams, helping support other members and friends, helping keep UUS functioning, and much more. I hope that as you read the rest of this newsletter you find one or two ways of engaging that speak to you.
Love and Blessings,
Rev. Diana
