It was great to be back at UUCL today! I enjoyed seeing many smiling faces, enthusiastic helping hands, and the worship service message was something I needed to hear. Ben did a great job. Thanks, Ben!

My big takeaway from Ben’s message was that Unitarian Universalism has so much to offer fed-up, hurting, angry, and confused people leaving other, generally more conservative, faith traditions. Of course, I know that we have a lot to offer, that’s why I have committed so much of my life to Unitarian Universalism for the past 17 years. But it’s so helpful to hear how someone else articulates the abundance of what our faith offers to the world. To hear Ben say that we need to offer people love and acceptance, listening ears and caring hands, helps me to affirm and clarify how we need to move forward as a congregation. We need to focus on that “connection” piece of our mission statement.

What will deep community connection look like? It will be wrapped around covenant and communication. Writing a congregational covenant together will guide our understanding of the expectations we have of each other for being together in a UU faith community. Good, healthy and direct communication will ensure we keep to these expectations, help one another when we fall short, and strengthen our bonds. Healthy communication will get us closer to the truth of what it’s like to be together in caring ways rather than keep us separated by stories of speculation and unknowing of another’s perspective and experience.

Your UUCL Board of Trustees will be working to schedule covenant workshops. We will also be introducing some more streamlined ways to communicate as a congregation. In addition to new communication tools, I hope to be finding ways to strengthen our communication skills and emotional intelligence through worship, small groups, and even creative workshops.

Our UU faith looks different than other faiths. To be a faithful Unitarian Universalist means to nurture loving and affirming relationships with one another, with the Earth, and with all of life. Whether our spiritual path guides us towards theism, deism, pantheism, agnosticism, atheism, or naturalism, what binds us together as a faith is that we believe that the power of our loving relationships can redeem us all right here and right now because we are all worthy and we are all a blessing. Our relationships really are everything.

Take care of yourselves, take care of one another.

Heather