January 8, 2020
Minister’s Message
Dear Friends,
It is good to be back at the Fellowship, returned to ordinary time after holidays and travel for family visits. It is good to be home.
On Sunday, the prairie winds quite rattled the Fellowship. Rattled me anyway. There was a lot of creaking. But the Fellowship building has good integrity, a solid and sturdy frame, strong for whatever the weather throws at it.
Our metaphoric Fellowship is strong as well, our community full of helpers and doers and folks who show up to care for and support each other. We are a community with integrity. Our Seven Principles—printed on each Order of Service and on the bookmarks in the pews—they hold us together. The mission and vision of the Fellowship—which we recite as a chalice lighting most weeks—they hold us together.
And like a building, even a metaphoric structure needs maintenance. It needs a check and a review of the structural supports, to ensure they are strong, that they continue to do the job for which they are intended. We have to ask this of ourselves, of our relationships within the Fellowship. We must, because the metaphoric Fellowship, the community through which we love and care for one another and the larger world and the planet and life itself, this community is more important than any physical structure, more important than the physical Fellowship building. The integrity of our relationships is everything, especially at a time when we are battered and threatened by climate and justice crises, when the menace of war seems part of political brinkmanship and many lives are held too cheaply.
So, I ask as a way to check the soundness of our relationships as a Fellowship—Have you spoken to a person you do not know or recognize? Have you learned the name of a child? Have you reached out to a member of the congregation who is suffering? Have you offered yourself to the life-giving and love-affirming Fellowship in the ways that you can? May you always say “Yes” to life and love, “Yes” to our life- and love-sustaining community, as you remember, today and every day, that you are loved, you are worthy, you are welcome, and you are needed. May you feel it so, and may it be so.
Blessings, Rev. Rita
News from EdJ
Last year, the Fellowship affirmed a Rapid Response Policy, pre-authorizing the Board and the Minister to respond to incidents designated by law enforcement as hate crimes. Following up on the work of our 2019 Trans Initiative, EdJ would like the congregation to consider revising the policy to include any violations of the human dignity and safety of our LGBTQA+ siblings in the Greater Mankato area. You can find more details about this request in the Board President’s Notes. Here is another link {this should be to wherever you put the Rapid Response thing from Tony] to the requested changes and the process for congregational discernment. On both Sunday, January 12 and Sunday, January 19, there will be a table designed in the Fellowship Hall for conversation about this proposal. You are welcome there with your questions and comments. We will hold the vote at the mid-year meeting on January 26. The Rapid Response Policy is one way we serve justice and build community.
Climate Justice Book Discussion
Please join Rev Rita on Wednesday, February 12 at 7:00 for a discussion of the UUA 2019 Common Read, Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class, and the Environment, ed. By Manish Mishra-Marzetti and Jennifer Nordstrom. The book is about 150 pages of short essays, costs less than $20 and is available from the inSpirit UUA Bookstore https://www.uuabookstore.org/
In fall 2020, UUFM will embark on a renewal of our UUA Green Sanctuary certification. We are forming a team who will plan environmental and climate justice events and speakers, as well as take us through the renewal process. Perhaps this book will spur you to participate in our next big congregational initiative. Looking forward to seeing YOU!
Blessings and best wishes, Rita