Jeremy Duke, 2026-27 President
Greetings,
This month I begin my term as president of the UUCC Board of Trustees. I thought I would take this opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Jeremy Duke, and I have been attending UUCC since 1999. My wife Kyna Byerly and I officially joined the church in 2001. We have been members now for 25 years! Kyna and I have three adult children who grew up attending UUCC and RE. Our daughter Rachel currently facilitates the teen group as an adult leader for YRUU.
My first connection to UUCC occurred through my attendance at a Covenant Group (a precursor to Chalice Circles). I have valued opportunities for group experiences at UUCC that have allowed me to form relationships with folks looking to explore meaning, connection, and spiritual and human growth. I see the Board of Trustees work as one of those opportunities!
For the past year our Board President, Kim Wade, has led the board in exploring its role in the spiritual leadership of the church. She did this not by supplying answers but by asking “Big Questions.” In addressing these questions, we have had conversations that have led us to think about how the policy and financial health of the church relates to its spiritual mission. It has been an exciting and motivating time to be on the board and have these conversations. And, I look forward to moving this work forward.
If I can be of help or service to anyone please feel free to reach out. My contact information is in the church directory, or you can always stop me after service. In future articles I hope to outline in more detail the ongoing work of the board as we continue building and caring for our beloved community.
Jeremy Duke
2026-2027 President
Rev. Monica Clark-Robinson, Sabbatical minister
Hi UUCC Churchers,
As our nation approaches its 250th birthday, I find myself wondering what it means to mark such an anniversary in a time when many of us feel more worried than celebratory about our country’s future. Our history, too, contains so many harms that have been done. How can we think about this anniversary while holding all these hard truths about our past and present?
In her book Imaginable, futurist Jane McGonigal writes about “urgent optimism,” which she describes as recognizing the challenges and risks before us while remaining hopeful that we have something to contribute to meeting them. Urgent optimism is not denial, but is instead the conviction that our actions still matter.
McGonigal writes, “Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous.” After all, many of the most transformative chapters in our nation’s story began as impossible dreams: self-government, abolition, women’s suffrage, civil rights, same-sex marriage. Someone had to imagine them before anyone could build them!
Historian Rebecca Solnit reminds us that “to be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart.”
I don’t know about you, but that kind of sounds like our covenantal, transformative, “love at the center” faith to me!
Perhaps that is the invitation of this 250th anniversary for us. Not to celebrate uncritically, nor to surrender to despair, but to practice urgent optimism. What future seems impossible today, but might one day become our shared reality? Can we ask: “What can’t love do?” and allow ourselves to radically imagine a softer, gentler, more loving, and more just future for our country?
In faith,
Rev. Monica