On Sunday, March 27, we celebrated the release of Senior Minister Rev. Jen Crow’s new book, “Take What You Need: Life Lessons After Losing Everything.”

The event features a conversation about the book between Rev. Jen and Minister Emerita Rev. Kate Tucker, who accompanied Jen on her book writing journey as a sounding board and reader.

The book is a moving and vulnerable account of loss following the house fire that Rev. Jen and her family experienced in 2016—and a testament to the transformative power of love. In it, Jen invites us to explore the expected and unexpected turns our lives can take—and all the ways we can pay attention to what we truly need to survive the painful moments and live a life of meaning. Survival guide, spiritual companion, and a light in the dark, Take What You Need offers hope, humor, and real-life spiritual tools to meet the hardest moments of our lives.

View the recording from the event here:

More about the book:

What do we truly need to face the expected and unexpected turns our lives can take?

Jen Crow’s transformation was triggered, quite literally, by a bolt of lightning. That jolt, which destroyed her home in a subsequent fire, forced her to consider what she really needed as she looked to rebuild her life.

Take What You Need : Life Lessons After Losing Everything (March 22, 2022) opens new perspectives for all of us looking to understand our past, our unexpected suffering, our failures, so we too can begin charting a course forward—one drawn from resilience and hope. We see with the immediacy of someone who nearly lost it all that our possessions won’t carry us. Our responses to the regrets, losses, separations, addictions, and unexpected twists and turns of our lives are shaped by the spiritual values that sustain us and the people who support us.

Crow invites us to explore the expected and unexpected turns our lives can take—and all the ways we can pay attention to what we truly need to survive the painful moments and live a life of meaning. Survival guide, spiritual companion, and a light in the dark, Take What You Need offers hope, humor, and real-life spiritual tools to meet the hardest moments of our lives.

Read this week’s issue of our newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal March 24

Read this week’s newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal March 17

Read this week’s email newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal March 10

Please join us in the sanctuary or via livestream on Sunday, March 27 at 1:30 p.m. to celebrate the launch of Rev. Jen Crow’s new book, Take What You Need: Life Lessons After Losing Everything.

Connect to the live stream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvKMLVsdeRk

The book is a moving and vulnerable account of loss following the house fire that Rev. Jen and her family experienced in 2016—and a testament to the transformative power of love. In it, Jen invites us to explore the expected and unexpected turns our lives can take—and all the ways we can pay attention to what we truly need to survive the painful moments and live a life of meaning. Survival guide, spiritual companion, and a light in the dark, Take What You Need offers hope, humor, and real-life spiritual tools to meet the hardest moments of our lives.

The event on Sunday, March 27 will feature a conversation about the book, its meaning, and its message, between Rev. Jen and Minister Emerita Rev. Kate Tucker, who accompanied Jen on her book writing journey as a sounding board and reader. Jen will also read aloud excerpts from her book, answer questions, and be available to sign books after the formal part of the program is done.

Books will be available for purchase at the event, and proceeds benefit First Universalist Church.

This event, which will also be live-streamed, is free and open to the public.

About the book:

What do we truly need to face the expected and unexpected turns our lives can take?

Jen Crow’s transformation was triggered, quite literally, by a bolt of lightning. That jolt, which destroyed her home in a subsequent fire, forced her to consider what she really needed as she looked to rebuild her life.

Take What You Need : Life Lessons After Losing Everything (March 22, 2022) opens new perspectives for all of us looking to understand our past, our unexpected suffering, our failures, so we too can begin charting a course forward—one drawn from resilience and hope. We see with the immediacy of someone who nearly lost it all that our possessions won’t carry us. Our responses to the regrets, losses, separations, addictions, and unexpected twists and turns of our lives are shaped by the spiritual values that sustain us and the people who support us.

Crow invites us to explore the expected and unexpected turns our lives can take—and all the ways we can pay attention to what we truly need to survive the painful moments and live a life of meaning. Survival guide, spiritual companion, and a light in the dark, Take What You Need offers hope, humor, and real-life spiritual tools to meet the hardest moments of our lives.

Read this week’s issue of our newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal March 3

Shared by Velma Wagner, Betsy Allis, Stan Sattinger, and Kira Berglund

We were notified on February 17, 2022 that First Universalist won an award as a runner up in the Cool Congregations Challenge, a part of Interfaith Power and Light, a Religious Response to Global Warming. This national award shows that people of faith are united by concerns about the climate crisis and are taking action. First Universalist was one of 12 Runners Up.

Four members of First Universalist Church were aware of the role of food issues in worsening greenhouse-gas emissions and created the Food Solutions Team in February 2020 as a part of the church’s Environmental Justice Committee. We launched the initiative “Honor the Earth and the Food We Love” to engage congregants in climate offsetting measures by eating less animal products and reducing food waste.

We chose to engage congregants in making these two changes:

• Minimize household food waste by improving meal planning and food storage
• Reduce household consumption of animal foods by substituting plant-based foods.

We know the potential impact that congregant households can have by reducing their food waste and eating less meat and more plant foods is high. This impact has been verified by scientists as reported in the Drawdown analysis of the top 100 proposed climate solutions where food-waste reduction and plant-rich dietary substitutions are ranked #3 and #4. (Project Drawdown, The World’s Leading Resource for Climate Solutions, https://www.drawdown.org/)

Orchestrating our appeal was challenging. Some congregants did not understand the growing urgency of the climate crisis. The pandemic occurred right in the beginning of our appeal, so we pivoted to holding our sessions on Zoom, which meant we couldn’t gather and share food for over a year.

 The Food Solutions Team educated and engaged First Universalist congregants in these ways:

• We convened workshops on food waste and plant-rich eating. These included videos, lectures and presentations by a professional vegetarian dietician, a county recycling professional with expertise in food waste and a lay expert in the connection between food and climate change. We viewed and discussed the film “Eating to Extinction.” Participants pledged to make specific behavioral changes and to report their progress to the Food Solutions group.
• We provided support to pledgers with periodic online gatherings to allow pledgers to share experiences, challenges, tips and solutions.
•  We interviewed and videotaped 14 congregants and one church staff member about personal experiences reducing food-waste and eating less meat and more plant foods. We produced a montage of the highlights of the interviews. These testimonials offered powerful accounts of how it felt to have made and honored their commitments on behalf of the climate. These testimonials have been used to promote and add to many of our programs.
• We held five plant-based potluck gatherings to highlight the tastiness of vegan foods. All but one event was held outdoors. Each event featured a short educational interlude on some aspect of food waste or plant-rich diet offered by a guest speaker. We had cooking demonstrations and talks by the owners of X-Marks and Wholesome Minnesota. We promoted these potluck events using several vehicles, including our Environmental Justice newsletter and the church’s weekly bulletin, embedding the recorded testimonials in our notices.

From March 2020 to December 2021, over 100 congregants participated in one or more Food Solutions programs. Although informal pledges were made at all ten programs, participants were asked to make written commitments and report follow up results in five programs. Sixty five participants submitted pledges identifying one or more specific actions they were prepared to take to eat less meat and more plant foods and/or to reduce food waste. Just over half of these pledgers reported taking 177 steps to curb meat intake and eat more plant foods and 135 actions to reduce food waste. Based on this participation, we believe we have succeeded in alerting many in our congregation to the climate impacts of foods.

We decided to engage youth in our congregation, so developed a curriculum for 6^th graders in our Religious Education program. They will learn how all ingredients purchased, meals cooked and food wasted by their families profoundly affect the world’s climate. In each of four lessons they will learn about earth-friendly gardening and will cook a dish with others. They will be encouraged to eat less meat and more plant foods. Fun, professional teaching will be offered by collaborating with Midwest Food Connection, a Minneapolis firm. We are planning to make our curriculum available to other churches so they can replicate our model.

The 7^th Principle of Unitarian Universalism instructs us to have respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. Improving the wellbeing of our planet through the Foods Solutions appeal was very much in keeping with our faith.

The multi media exhibit Visual Prayer is on display in our Social Hall Universal Gallery February 27 through April 10. It can also be viewed online.

The exhibit was created by the Interfaith Artists Circle, artists who are diverse in traditions, observance, and beliefs. An important component of the Circle is study. The artists select a theme and invite distinguished scholars to teach them, offering a foundation in spiritual learning and an opportunity to inspire them as they create their individual works. 

The artists chose Visual Prayer as the theme for this exhibit, feeling that prayer is the human connection to a higher presence, personally and communally.  As they explored prayer through art, their goal was to find commonality and connectivity among religions and to appreciate and respect our similarities and differences. 

The Nominating Committee is now recruiting candidates for leadership positions on the Board of Trustees, the Foundation Board, and the Nominating Committee for the 2022–2023 church year. Serving on one of these bodies enables you to represent other church members to ensure that the church moves forward in alignment with its visionary goals. Members have unique opportunities to collaborate with our ministers and other lay leaders to advance the church’s mission! Positions are for a three year term.

Apply here!

Below are brief descriptions of the different positions:

Member of the Board of Trustees: Trustees partner with the congregation and professional staff in shaping the vision and long-term goals of the church. They articulate these aspirations through policy and collaborate with the Senior Minister to see they are fulfilled. A fuller description of the position can be found here. 

Member of First Universalist Foundation Board: Board members serve as stewards of the Foundation endowment. They solicit grant applications, review applications, and select grantees to be awarded funding. A fuller description of the position can be found here.

Member of Nominating Committee: Committee members screen and recommend candidates to the congregation for vacant positions on the Board of Trustees, the Foundation Board, and the Nominating Committee. A fuller description of the position can be found here.

Requirements: You must be a member in good standing of the church. Elections occur at the Annual Meeting on Sunday, June 5. Please consider either nominating yourself or encouraging a fellow church member to apply for this important work. 

Applications are due by Friday, March 18, and the application form can be filled out here.

If you have questions or would like more information, please email the Nominating Committee at nomination [at] firstuniv.org, or contact members of the Nominating Committee: Jim Ramnaraine (chair), Cathy Manning, Ray Dillon, Valerie Garber, Evelyn Browne, and Susannah Marshall.

The acorn and the oak are the same one. The seed come to life, the fruit grows the living, and both are one and the same.

As for our community of faith, we commit to tend each other, one-by-one; to nurture the neighborhood by loving our neighbors each; to strengthen the web of life right now, from right where we are.

Yet it takes only a glance to notice how other lands where hearts are beating beside us, hearts and lands to which we are just as closely connected, other lives no less entitled to care, with hopes and dreams as pure and true as ours.

Is it even practical to work for the promise of world peace right now? There are hearts, lives, families, institutions, laws, addictions, and relationships in need of peace right here already. How do we divvy the time? How do we halve the attention and still make a difference together?

What if they weren’t other lands and other hearts at all? How would we live if the borders of community and world good were just and only as tough as the acorn shell. What if loving the world and rebuilding the community close were the sign and sprout of themselves and each other, the acorn and the oak, one and the same?

What would we need to imagine to love the world as ourselves? A bigger togetherness.