Our Church is a busy place this month, offering numerous opportunities for nurturing spiritual growth. We hold our annual Midwinter Retreat on Saturday morning, February 11, welcoming children, youth and adults with an engaging selection of activities and workshop sessions. Many folks are busy reading The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona-Mexico Borderland and looking forward to the upcoming discussions of the book. And we have a lively group participating in the New UU Class that Sarah Rothwell is facilitating.
The turning of the year brings with it many lists of Top 10 Favorites. It's become my practice to share with you what I've been reading, enjoying and finding edifying over the past year. My list includes a mixture of fiction and non-fiction; only one was new in 2011. Here are my top 10 reads for 2011:
I write to you on the airplane, bound for San Francisco - where I'll attend the American Academy of Religion meetings, visit old friends, and then head to Seattle, where John will join me for Thanksgiving with our son, Jonah. My two-month sabbatical will soon come to an end: I'll return to Church December 6.
The first time I attended a Unitarian Church, I was astonished by the number of faces I recognized there. If only one of these friends or acquaintances had told me about the church, I would have found it years earlier.
Now all these years later, I've lost track of the number of times I've heard a similar story from someone who has just discovered one of our congregations. And the thing is, it may not really be all that hard to invite someone you know to church.
I'm writing to you from northern Minnesota, where I am sitting by the lake enjoying a quintessential summer day. The dragon flies are dancing above the water, there's a gentle breeze, bird song and pesky deer flies. At the moment the lake is quiet, although it has peeks of boating activity and even fireworks in early July. Our son Jonah will join us in late July from Seattle...he's timing his visit by the ripeness of the blueberries. You can see where his values are!
In the old days, Unitarian and Universalist congregations would pretty much close their doors for the summer, suspending services and other activities until the return of families from
It's been a long winter, but the signs of spring are finally here. Leaves are opening, the plants are growing; the last day of frost is usually during the first week of May. We can confidently say spring is here, at least most of the time.
Have you noticed the number of young adults who have found their way to our congregation in recent months? Many find us online and enter our community through our website. Others come because they've heard about us from a friend. In our UU world, young adults are defined as 18-35 years old. I came to Unitarian Universalism when I was a young adult and I'm excited to see so many young adults finding us right now in Rochester.
