Today’s “Ponderings” is more along the lines of “bits and pieces of what’s on my mind,” and probably yours, too:

First of all, good news, the Supreme Court has rejected a petition from former Kentucky clerk Kim Davis to overturn the 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. That means that Obergefell v. Hodges remains the law of the land! But, how can we not take this for granted and remain vigilant to ensure marriage equality for all?

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Second, I delivered your food donations last week. They were very much appreciated and this will be an on-going collection for on-going needs. But more than that, our allyship is appreciated and much needed. Please come talk to me if you want to know more about how to help migrant families being affected by our current immigration policies. What Shared UU Value do you want to act out in the world through this work?

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Healthcare: What will we do if we lose coverage or can’t afford insurance? How will we get medical care? How will we care for one another? What is going to happen? There are a lot of questions around this issue for many of us and we need to start talking about it, researching options, and supporting one another. And while I do not yet have answers for any of these questions, it is my goal to provide you with worship and programming that supports our overall well-being through generating Joy and finding ways to live healthily together. For what else is the purpose of community? Evolution points us in this direction.

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We shared this quote from Rev. Galen Guengerich in worship yesterday:

“Gratitude is a sense of feeling a deep connection to ourselves, the people around us and the natural world. It’s a recognition that we are made up of relationships. You know if you take the physical entities that make up the world and take everything else out and squish them together, you literally would have only a handful of material. Everything else is relationships. So gratitude is the recognition that everything that makes life possible and meaningful to us comes to us from sources beyond ourselves. And how else could we respond to such a gift other than gratitude. But it also means that we recognize that we owe something back in return to the people and world around us. So I like to say that gratitude is a life of reciprocity with other people and with the natural World.”

One of the takeaways from this quote is the theological belief that relationship is everything! That is why, in Unitarian Universalism, our faith is centered on covenants. Covenants are in our Principles and Shared Values. We make them with each other during meetings, as board members, and as a congregation. AND THEN, we live into them. When that becomes difficult, we ask for support, generally from our Right Relations Committee. I am so grateful that we have board members who understand that to live as a faithful UU means to really work on our relationships, and they do. When they encounter difficulties, or struggle, or conflict, or concern with one another, they get together and talk it out, work it out, and come back to the table (literally) in a transformed way so they can better serve the whole team, and ultimately, the entire congregation. And they do this hard work instead of walking away, breaking apart relationships. Because if relationships are everything, what happens when we give up on them or don’t put in the effort to transform ourselves so we can have healthier relationships?

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I’ll leave you with all of these questions for your own ponderings this week!

Take good care of yourself and each other,

Heather