Building Belonging: Preparation When building a structure, the site must be prepared: weeds pulled, debris cleared, excavated, and leveled. When building a community, we can ask ourselves what “weeds” need to be pulled, what “debris” cleared from our culture? Are we echoing too much of a problematic American culture? Unitarian Universalists are historically counter-culture, ever widening our circle of belonging. How wide can we go? Excavating the site might turn up some relics, some to keep and some to discard. How deep will our values take us? How can they reshape the way we build belonging? This Sunday will offer us an opportunity to reflect, to challenge ourselves, and to prepare our hearts and minds for change. What we build inside our faith community should not look like what is being built “out there” if we are to truly live into our Shared UU Value of Transformation!