Read this week’s issue of our newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal Feb. 4. If you are not currently receiving our emails and would like to, sign up here.

The poet Emily Dickinson writes: 

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

Over 150 years later, Michael Eric Dyson, in his book, Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, writes something similar: “To be blunt, you (white people) are emotionally immature about race…We are forced to be gentle with you, which is another way of saying we are forced to lie to you. We must let you down easy, you, the powerful partner in our fraught relationship…You get upset when we tell you that whiteness has often been damaging and toxic. You get angry when we tell you how badly whiteness has behaved throughout history.” Dyson’s writing makes one wonder: How long can the truth be told slant? What is the collective moral cost of half truths and indirect truths being told?

When witnesses are sworn into a court of law, they promise “To tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” As a country, we claim to value the truth, and yet we can scarcely face and acknowledge our history, riddled with myths and outright lies, and the ways that that history is still alive today. 

What does it take to hear the truth? To tell the truth? What shifts and gets unlocked in our bodies, our families, our churches, our communities, the body of our country, when we start taking the risk of telling and hearing the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable, challenging, and dangerous?   

Archbishop Rowan Williams writes, “Truth makes love possible; love makes truth bearable.” These words suggest that truth by itself is not enough. Truth and love must dance together, striving to open the tight, defensive, scared places within the human heart. 

This month, we will explore the spiritual work of hearing and telling the truth in love. 

This month, please join us for these Sunday services:

• Sunday, Feb. 7, with Rev. Karen Hutt
• Sunday, Feb. 14 with Rev. Justin Schroeder
• Sunday, Feb. 21 with Rev. Jen Crow
• Sunday, Feb. 28 with Rev. Arif Mamdani

And these Wednesday services:

• Wednesday, Feb. 3 with Rev. Jen Crow
• Wednesday, Feb. 10 with Rev. Justin Schroeder
• Wednesday, Feb. 17 with Rev. Karen Hutt
• Wednesday, Feb. 24 with Rev. Karen Hutt

Read this week’s issue of our newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal Jan 28. If you are not currently receiving our emails and would like to, sign up here.

Read this week’s issue of our newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal Jan 21. If you are not currently receiving our emails and would like to, sign up here.

Read this week’s issue of our email newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal Jan. 14.

If you’re not currently receiving our emails and would like to, sign up here.

The First Universalist Foundation Board is accepting nominations now through Friday, Jan. 29, 2021, from First Universalist congregants (regardless of membership status) and senior high youth in the church. One (1) person must submit a nomination backed by two (2) co-signers. Nominee organizations that are selected will then be sent our grant application.

At this time the Foundation welcomes nominations of organizations that address racial justice, climate justice, and human rights. We are also interested in organizations whose leadership include Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), women, or individuals from disenfranchised communities. This year we are particularly interested in supporting organizations with smaller budgets (for whom our grant may make a significant difference) and newer organizations or initiatives who are addressing the disparities that events of 2020 have laid bare. Organizations who have not applied for a Foundation Board grant in the past are encouraged.

Historically the Foundation Board has given out grants ranging from $5,000 to $20,000.

Please note the Foundation’s mission and giving criteria which will heavily inform our decisions.

Nominate an organization here: 2021 Foundation Nomination Form

Mission Statement

First Universalist Foundation acts as a catalyst for social change by promoting and supporting the development of emerging leaders, youth, young adults, and/or disenfranchised communities through monetary grants to nonprofits working in those communities.

Giving Priorities and Criteria

1.  Demonstrate the potential to address one or more causes or forms of injustice.

2.  Work to engage youth, young adults, and/or disenfranchised communities in the work of social change.

3.  Have a commitment to measuring the impact or success of the funded program.

4.  Focus on the Twin Cities community.

5. Organizations with annual budgets of less than $1,000,000 will be given greater priority.

6. Organizations that have been funded 3 times in the last 5 years may be considered lower priority.

Questions? Please email: foundation@firstuniv.org

More information about the First Universalist Foundation may be found here.

Read this week’s issue of our newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal Jan. 7

As we move into 2021, clear that we cannot return to “normal,” how will we actively “choose change,” re-imagine our lives, our purpose, the structure of our society, and the things we focus on?

The answer to these questions rests in choices both small and large. Change sometimes feels impossible, but we forget that change is dynamic, alive, lurking in every corner, and is happening all around us, all the time. Change can begin when we speak the truth, when we turn toward the feeling rising in us, rather than push it away, when we name what is real for us, and listen to what is real for others, and when we stop, and take a breath, before we respond.

In her book, Parable of the Sower, science fiction writer Octavia Butler writes, “All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change.” These words invite us to consider: What does it mean to choose change? To step fully into the “God flow,” the river of change, wide awake, and let it work on us, and us on it, as it shapes our relationships, spirit, and the course of our lives?

When it comes to choosing change, the poet John O’Donahue offers these questions to reflect on: “Where could I have exposed myself to the risk of something different? Where did I allow myself to receive love? What reached me today? How deep did it imprint? What did I avoid today?” 

This month, through message, song, prayer, and video, we will explore what it means to “choose change” and to embrace the lasting truth that is change.

This month, please join us for these Sunday services:

• Sunday, Jan. 3 with Rev. Justin Schroeder
• Sunday, Jan. 10, Remembrance Sunday, with Rev. Justin Schroeder and Rev. Arif Mamdani
• Sunday, Jan. 17, MLK Sunday, with Rev. Justin Schroeder
• Sunday, Jan. 24 with Rev. Jen Crow
• Sunday, Jan. 31 with Rev. Justin Schroeder

And these Wednesday services:

• Wednesday, Jan. 6 with Rev. Justin Schroeder
• Wednesday, Jan. 13 with Julica Hermann de la Fuente: Change, Part 1
• Wednesday, Jan. 20 with Julica Hermann de la Fuente: Change, Part 2
• Wednesday, Jan. 27 with Julica Hermann de la Fuente: Change, Part 3

Rev. Justin Schroeder, Rev. Arif Mamdani, Lauren Wyeth, and Julica Hermann de la Fuente gathered on Zoom in the early afternoon of Dec. 31, 2020, to share words of care with our congregation in the wake of the yesterday’s fatal police shooting in Minneapolis, not far from where George Floyd was murdered by police in May. Watch their video message here.

Our Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) congregants are invited to a BIPOC only group, meeting tonight at 5:30 p.m. on Zoom (see today’s Liberal newsletter for the link to join). Julica will lead BIPOC adults and high school youth in prayer and help hold community with and for each other as BIPOC people.

The entire congregation is invited to join us for worship this Sunday, as we hold our anger, grief, and commitment to continue to create a different and more racially just world than the one we currently know.

Read this week’s issue of our newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal Dec. 31.