The First Universalist Foundation Board is beginning its 2020 granting season and wants to hear from congregants about which organizations would be good candidates for a grant.

The Foundation Board is particularly interested in organizations that address human rights at risk, racial justice and climate justice. The Foundation seeks organizations whose leadership includes people of color, women and other underrepresented groups. Historically, most grants have ranged from $5,000 to $20,000.

Members of First Universalist are invited to consider which organization(s) would be good candidates for a Foundation grant, and nominate them using this form.

Nominations will be accepted until January 28. This is a great opportunity to support groups working on social justice issues. Last year the Board received 24 nominations from congregants and awarded $100,000 in grants to 11 great organizations.

If you have questions, email the First Universalist Foundation Board at foundation [at] firstuniv.org.

Learn more about the First Universalist Foundation, including its history and giving priorities.

Read this week’s newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal Jan. 2

Read this week’s issue of The Weekly Liberal here: The Weekly Liberal Dec. 26

We are delighted to announce that the General Contractor we’ve selected for our building renovation project is Flannery Construction, a woman-owned business that came in with the best price and the best responses to our vendor policy questions about equity and racial justice practices in their business. Flannery Construction has done a considerable amount of work with non-profits, including with Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative.

In November, we hired an Owner’s Representative—a project manager who works directly for us, advocating for our best interest with our future contractor and our present architect. The Owner’s Representative we hired is Chelsea Waters from Watershed Partners. Chelsea recently brought Bethlehem Lutheran Church through several major building projects and she comes to us highly recommended for her efficiency, wisdom, and eye for cost-savings.

With the selection of our general contractor and owner’s representative, we are now moving into the next phase of our project as we make choices about what to include and exclude from the overall scope of the project. A team of staff and congregants have reconvened to work with our owner’s representative, architect, and general contractor to evaluate the options, make choices, and develop plans and a project calendar. In alignment with the goals of the capital campaign that raised funds for this project, we are using these guiding ideas:

• Make our building as accessible, welcoming, functional, and safe as possible
• Work within our budget
• Keep the mortgage paid off
• Attend in equal parts to deferred maintenance, sanctuary improvements, and other building improvements

We are moving forward with the expectation that all work will be completed this summer, between May 2020 and September/October of 2020. We will be sharing more information in the new year and communicating regularly with the congregation as plans for renovations develop.

Read the full issue of this week’s newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal Dec. 19

This week, Rev. Justin writes:

Dear First Universalist Church,

As my family and I prepare to leave on our six month sabbatical, this poem, “Clearing,” by Martha Postlewaite, has been a guiding light:

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worthy of rescue.

Creating a clearing is not a new practice for me; I have created small clearings through meditation, prayer, and journaling. All have been helpful. What is new is the length of time in which to truly create a sizable clearing in my life. I am imagining sabbatical as a time of creating and living into a generous, luxurious spaciousness, to discover what’s really true in my life right now, and to notice what is lighting me up. My intention for sabbatical is to pay attention to what my life is asking of me right now. 

And as I prepare to leave, I want all of you to know a few things:

• I promise to come back from sabbatical! Though six months feels like a long time, it will go quickly, and we will see each other again soon.
• The church is the strongest and healthiest I’ve ever seen it. With our Co-Senior Minister model, and a great working relationship with the Board of Trustees, we’ve created shared, collaborative leadership that is not dependent on a single person. 
• I am taking this sabbatical time seriously, listening deeply to my inner wisdom and knowing, and listening deeply to the spirit of life/Love/God. I trust that this time away will strengthen my family, my own spirit, and my ministry. New clarity, insights, and commitments will emerge from this time away and shape the chapters to come at First Universalist. 

While I am away, may the long time sun shine upon you, may all love surround you, may the pure light within you…guide your way on. May you be blessed and be a blessing. I love you. 

With love and care,
Rev. Justin

Read the full issue of this week’s newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal December 12

In this week’s issue, Rev. Justin Schroeder writes:

On Sunday, as I listened to Rev. Karen Hutt preach her sermon, “Home: A Philosophical Problem,” she so stirred my heart, that I took out my journal and jotted down some notes, to capture what I was thinking and feeling. I sat with both the comfort and discomfort of these questions: “Where do I feel homeless in my life? Where do I feel homeness and at home?” Since Sunday, I’ve been sitting with these questions, and they are pushing me toward new ways of being, new ways of exploring how I can be at “home” in a variety of settings and with a variety of people. 

 These questions also make me think about our Holiday Giving Project, and being at home in a new set of holiday practices. Specifically, this year, the entire congregation has been invited to reconnect with core spiritual values, and to re-imagine what joy and justice might look like this holiday season (a time that that is often filled with consumption, hecticness, and overwhelm.) We were invited to reduce our spending and consumption, not as a sacrifice or punishment, but as something good for the planet and good for our spirits, and then to pool our collective savings to give a gift to Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism (BLUU), our Holiday Giving recipient.

This Sunday, during both worship services, we will collect our special Holiday Giving offering for BLUU. In giving and receiving this Holiday Gift, we begin to find a new “home” for ourselves in the winter holidays, one that is focused on what brings us joy and is in alignment with our values, one that cares for creation by reducing consumption, and one that calls us to support black leaders and leadership as a part of our lives. These practices invite us into a new way of being, both around the holidays, and throughout the year. 

This is the work of our church. 

With care,
Justin

Read the full issue of this week’s newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal Dec. 5

In this week’s Liberal, Rev. Jen Crow writes:

Do you ever find yourself thinking and planning and saving and daydreaming for so long about something that you wonder if it will ever actually happen? I’ll admit that there have been days when I have wondered if our building renovation would ever actually happen. We’ve been thoughtful and methodical. We’ve taken in new information and explored new options. And this winter, we’ll mark 3 years since the launch of our capital campaign, Not for Ourselves Alone: Building an Inclusive Future, that raised $4.5 million to help our building better serve our mission and our community. Since that time, many of you have made and continue to make generous financial gifts to help us fulfill our vision of a stable financial future and a building that truly welcomes all. 

During this time of discernment, we’ve paid off our mortgage and weighed our options. We continue to right size our expectations to meet our budget – and we are moving forward. In November, we hired an Owner’s Representative – a project manager who works directly for us, advocating for our best interest with our future contractor and our present architect. As we do with every contract over $5,000, we used our vendor policy to guide our decision, ensuring our resources are spent in alignment with our values. I’m thrilled that our new Owner’s Representative is Chelsea Waters from Watershed Partners. Chelsea recently brought Bethlehem Lutheran Church through several major building projects and she comes to us highly recommended for her efficiency, wisdom, and eye for cost-savings. It didn’t hurt that Chelsea knows our space already, too, having grown up in our religious education program with first-hand experience of the shag carpet that used to grace our social hall. 

We expect to hire a General Contractor within the next two weeks, and then move into a period of value engineering – which is a fancy way of saying that our Building Team will work closely with Chelsea, the contractor, and the architect to get as much of what we are hoping for as possible. We’ll create a final draft of our plans, and if all goes well, we can expect to begin renovations before the end of June. 

While things have moved slowly for some time, we are about to change gears. All of our imagining and planning is taking shape, and the speed is about to pick up. As we keep you informed about all that is coming, we will also be asking for your help. We’ll be identifying tasks that we can do together – and asking you to pitch in. We’ll need your good spirits and willingness to try new things as we make way for this long-awaited change. After a time of waiting, something new is about to begin.

In faith, 
Rev. Jen Crow
Co-Senior Minister

Read the full issue of this week’s newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal Nov. 21

In this week’s issue, Rev. Jen Crow writes:

Yesterday, November 20th, marked the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside to memorialize those who have been killed in the past year because they don’t fit squarely into the categories of male or female, or more precisely, because they don’t fit into somebody else’s idea of what an either/or gender should look like. Transgender Day of Remembrance began in November of 1999 as part of an effort called, “Remembering Our Dead,” created by Gwendolyn Ann Smith. “I am no stranger to the need to fight for our rights, and the right to simply exist is first and foremost,” Smith said. “With so many seeking to erase transgender people – sometimes in the most brutal ways possible – it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice.”

This year, 331 lives were lost in documentable ways because of someone else’s brutality and intolerance of transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary people. The majority of those killed were transgender women of color – people who experience the impact of multiple oppressions and land squarely at the bottom of our soul-crushing systems of patriarchy, sexism, racism, and transphobia. 

All over the world yesterday, people spoke the names of those who have been killed this year, and so many more names went unspoken. We know that people who experience oppression, let alone multiple oppressions, experience higher rates of addiction, depression, health issues, and trauma. We know that many of our trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming siblings have died because they feared seeking medical treatment, could not find care, or completed suicide. We remember them all. 

And we remember this truth: all of us are whole and holy and worthy. We don’t have to earn it. We are born this way. Worthy of love and affection, worthy of safety and basic human rights, worthy of a place in this world to grow and shine with all of our uniquenesses and particularities. We arrive here worthy of unconditional love and we remain worthy of that love our whole lives long, even and especially when we live into the beautiful, multiple expressions of our own particular lives.

In faith,
Rev. Jen

Read the full issue of this week’s newsletter here: The Weekly Liberal November 14

Rev. Justin writes: I believe that one of the central tasks of a faith community is to invite us to reimagine who we are, who we might be, and how we are in relationship with life itself.

Cultural messages inform us that our worth and value is dependent on how much money we make, or the kind of work we do. A faith community invites us into a different paradigm, proclaiming that we are already loved, and that we have inherent worth and dignity, regardless of profession or the amount of money we have. 

Cultural messages inform us that if we’re suffering, struggling, or barely getting by, that there must be something wrong with us and that we’re not trying hard enough. A faith community invites us to consider that suffering and struggle are part of being human, and that some suffering and struggle is created by unjust systems and structures.

Cultural messages of the Holiday Season push us to consume, consume, consume. They tell us that joy is in finding the best deal, or getting the newest gadgets, no matter the cost to our wallets or the planet. Yet we know in our hearts (and research has confirmed) that there is no true joy or justice in heeding those messages. 

Given this reality, the First Universalist multi-generational Holiday Giving Team is inviting you to reimagine what joy and justice might look like in your life during this Holiday Season. Starting November 17, and running through December 15, we’re inviting the congregation:  

• To reimagine what truly brings us joy (and creates a more just world) during the season, and to put in motion new practices and ways of being that might live with us throughout the entire year.
• To reduce our holiday spending, so that collectively, as a congregation, we can pool these savings and make a substantial gift to the black-led organization, Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism (BLUU), this year’s Holiday Giving recipient.
• To engage with our Holiday Giving Social Hall display, to learn more about Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism, to learn new ways to engage the holidays, and to reflect on how joy and justice-making can be intimately connected. 
• To participate in our December 15 service, when we’ll give and receive our special offering to support the incredible work of Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism. 

We are living in times when the old ways of being, the old patterns and habits, no longer serve us, or the planet we inhabit. Beginning this Sunday, we’re inviting you into a new way of being this Holiday Season and beyond! 

We’ll see you in church,
Rev. Justin (and the Holiday Giving Team)

Read the full issue of this week’s Liberal here: The Weekly Liberal Nov. 7

In this week’s issue, Rev. Jen Crow writes:

Last week, the Twin Cities were host to an historic event in Unitarian Universalism – the first ever Harper-Jordan Memorial Symposium convened by BLUU (Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism), Proclaiming a Black Unitarian Universalist Theology.For 4 days, Black Unitarian Universalists shared their lived experiences, beliefs, theologies, and spiritual practices. Our adjunct minister, the Rev. Karen Hutt, presented at the symposium, and First Universalist member, Lena K. Gardner, continues to lead and support BLUU in collaborative and innovative ways. 

Attending the closing worship service last Saturday healed my heart. As I entered that space, I felt clear that as a white Unitarian Universalist, my job was to sit back and listen, to sing and participate, to worship, and to no way be in charge of anything except noticing my own thoughts and feelings. This service was not in fact for me, but it healed me all the same. We were led by so many amazingly talented Black and often queer religious professionals and musicians. Those who are so often pushed to the margins took their rightful place in the center. 

The wisdom and lives of our ancestors were welcomed in, and appreciation was given – not only for those who came before us, but for the younger ones who are teaching us, too. Early on in the service, everyone was invited to move to the edges of the sanctuary – each individual out there on the edge became one small piece of the larger circle that would hold our personal and collective experience. A candle was passed around the circle, hand to hand and person to person, until the flame moved forward first to light the BLUU chalice, and then to light the chalice of Unitarian Universalism. We acknowledged the light of each individual, the light of this powerful Black-led Black-focused collective within Unitarian Universalism, and we acknowledged the light of Unitarian Universalism that holds us all. We sang to each other as the light moved, promising to hold one another in love, promising to see all of who we are.

This is the kind of Unitarian Universalism that I want to support and build and live within. This is the kind of church we are striving to create. May we live true to the words of Starhawk that we so often say in our services at First Universalist, creating a community where ” a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, and voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power.”

In faith and hope,
Rev. Jen