Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Weaving the Web

October 11, 2009
Rev. Amy Zucker Morgenstern

At our congregational workshop with the church-vitality consultant Alice Mann last week, she asked us to retell a “signature story”: a positive story about UUCPA that we heard about, or lived, that stuck in our minds as important. Some of the stories people shared:

The story of how, when California churches were being compelled to bow to McCarthyism by swearing a “loyalty oath,” the minister and Board of Directors refused, even though it meant a fine and other possible repercussions.

The story of a junior-high student sitting in the patio on a Sunday morning and realizing that a teenager just a few years older than him was helping lead the service.

The story of a young woman listening to teenagers in the youth group discuss what they believed and whether they wanted to join the church, marveling that this was a matter of their free choice, and deciding that she wanted to join a church like that.

The story of a painful dispute between friends, and how one of them was inspired by the words of our relational covenant that call us each to make this community what we want it to be, and called the other to offer her apologies. She received an apology in turn and the relationship was repaired.

These stories tell messages about who we are at our bestÑwho we want to be: a congregation that puts its values into action even when it’s risky, that wants to hear from its young people, that trusts people to choose their own path, that calls us to right relationship. Many of the stories we heard were complex, with mixed motives and mixed results, but over and over they told of a community that, while it sometimes drifted from its principles, then remembered them and “walked the walk.”

What is a “signature story” of our congregation for you? Will you tell it to me? Will you tell it at coffee hour to each other?

— Blessings,
Amy