Rev. Dr. Molly Housh Gordon

Dear UU Churchers,

One of the things we are seeing, as our federal government is systematically dismantled, is the culmination of a decades-long campaign to divest from the collective. Public services have been privatized or simply removed. Public spaces have been enclosed or sometimes destroyed. And our shared life has suffered deeply.

So have our spiritual lives. As interdependent beings in an entirely entangled cosmos, it does us great harm to be isolated from the connections that constitute our very being.

Caring for the collective, then, is an act that is both political and very very personal. Caring for the collective is a religious mandate, but it is also a necessity for our individual well being. All of us need all of us to make it, and all of us are diminished when we fail to attend to the “all” that makes us up.

What does it look like to care for the collective? It means showing up in public spaces and public life. It means turning our attention outward in material ways, investing in shared work, broader conversations, and deeper connections. It means attending most profoundly to those shoved out from the center of our shared life and whom we can only catch when we pool our resources and work together.

It means more than that, too, because you each hold an important piece of the collective. How will you care for the collective this month and beyond?

See you in church,
Rev. Molly

Director of Religious Education Jamila Batchelder

This month we are thinking of care for collectives, of how we are going beyond our walls and joining with others to create the world we want to be. One of the most significant ways our religious education program serves our wider community is through our Our Whole Lives (OWL) sexuality education program, where a significant number of our youth participants come from the broader community.

This year, we are serving more youth than ever before (close to 40) in three different classes. This comes at a time when sexuality education that is comprehensive, inclusive, affirming, and centering bodily autonomy and consent feels more urgent, radical and necessary than ever before.

We were able to expand our programming thanks to contributions from our 2023 CoMo Gives campaign, so thank you again for all your support of our program and know that you are making a difference!