Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Always Learning

January 27, 2006
Rev. Darcey Laine

In the last Newsletter, Amy offered her top 10 favorite accomplishments of UUCPA. I’m going to go back a little further with my list, back over the whole five and a half years I have been part of this community.

1. Creating sacred space: About four years ago a concern emerged in our leadership that we had been neglecting maintenance on our buildings. I promised to support them in helping the congregation recognize this as a priority, and to explore a theology of space. The church has seen a great variety of major and minor renovations during this time, but there are three that delight me most. Our beautiful labyrinth was first laid by our youth in 2004, and renewed by an intergenerational team this fall. The new library with its beautiful wood shelves is a special space and a great resource created by a committed team of volunteers. Our infant-toddler rooms also delight me. I feel proud to show parents a room now filled with natural light streaming through our new windows, furnished with developmentally appropriate and finely crafted wood furniture, and decorated with hand-made quilts, and a mural hand-painted by our members.

2. Opportunity Center: As Amy mentioned in her column, I am thrilled that we came together to help build this important center for our homeless and at risk neighbors. The architectural plans embody our respect and care. I hope the new center will always feel like a part of our church’s ministry to the larger community.

3. Coming of Age: For the past eight 8 years our congregation has offered this program jointly with other congregations in the Pacific Central District for our 8-10 graders. It requires a significant commitment from youth, parents and congregation. When youth complete their yearlong program they know they have done something important, and so do we.

4. Healthier finances: Our finance team has worked carefully and consistently to end a period of deficit budgets. We have become more realistic in our budgeting, and more generous in our giving. Over the last five years, the average pledge per contributing member grew by 10.3% per year, compounded! What a wonderful gift to each other and to the future of this church.

5. Response to the war in Iraq: As the U.S. prepared to go to war in Iraq, an ad hoc group formed that brought a resolution to oppose the war to a successful congregational vote. This grass roots movement coordinated with the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center to create bus caravans to peace demonstrations, and found many ways to help our members express their political will. After the war began, this group became known as the “Peace Umbrella.”

6. Peaceful classrooms: While we were marching in the streets to protest the war in Iraq, I wondered what we could be doing at home to teach our children about peace. A team of volunteers came together to explore how to ensure our classrooms are peaceful. They learned that creating clear and predictable rules, procedures and rituals helped clarify what we expect of one another when we are at church. The core outcome was our set of four rules that extend through the whole RE program “Be Safe, Be Kind, Be Respectful, Listen.”

7. The Rainbow Year: In the spring of 2001 the Children’s RE Committee designed a two-year rotating curriculum, which alternates between a “Chalice Year” and a “Rainbow Year.” We talked about how we might tie Worship, Adult RE and Children’s RE together to create a unified church curriculum. In 2004 we decided to go for it. Worship leaders have worked with Adult and Children’s RE committees to create a year that would help us focus on the six sources of our UU faith as a whole community. Amy even draped the branch with rainbow fabric for our ingathering, and Kristina (our then staff secretary) designed an icon for our newsletter. It was an exciting experiment in integration, that continues into this “Chalice Year.”

8. Caring Network: This network was formed long before I came to the church, and is one of the best ways we use our helping hands and loving hearts. When families stopped by my house after the birth of my son for a “Baby Café” I was awed and overwhelmed by such an outpouring of care. I hear such stories regularly from people whom the Caring Network helps after the birth of a child, a difficult illness, or the death of a loved one.

9. Covenanting: I learned in seminary that “we teach by how we are.” It matters not only what we do as a church, but also how we do it. I also believe that healthy relationships make a healthy church. So each time I began a new partnership with a new parish minister here at UUCPA, we took the time to write a covenant. This process of exploring our shared expectations about how we would work together, what we want to achieve, and what we would do if things went wrong helped get our partnerships off on the right foot. I attribute my wonderful working relationship with Amy in part to the strength of the covenanting work we did together. The Committee on Ministry also created a covenant for their work together as a model for exploring congregational covenanting. This became a wonderful document still used by the committee and available to other committees wanting a starting place for their own covenants. This work spreads in wider ripples as a team now works to create a covenant for our whole community.

10. Children’s Chapel and Family Chapel: At the start of the 2001–02 church year, we began the practice of starting each Sunday with a special worship service for children. This year we transformed this service into the new “Family Chapel.” This service is a chance for families with children (and all who love children) to worship together, and is one of the joys of my week.

It was hard to stop at 10 once I got started. There are so many things to be proud of at UUCPA.

p.s. I can’t wait to add “Became a Green Sanctuary Congregation” to that list.