From Our President Archive
It is a Season of Thanksgiving. Our Community is moving forward.
Change of attitude and heart has sprouted among us.
During this season, please look to enactment of our principles and look forward to what we may mod el in a world fraught with anxiety and turmoil.
The first action any of us may take is to give thanks to each and all of our community for the wondrous world we may promote by practicing our principles with each other.
Give through your actions and through your financial contribution to forwarding our vision with an appreciation for what you each bring, in heart, in soul, in mind, in money, and in caring I thank each of you.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for your smiles and hugs. Thank you for your voice in sharing what you deeply believe. Thank you for your participation. Thank you for searching your inner self and finding new ways to view one another.
Fondly,
— Ron Crane
Revisiting Our Principles
There is a wallet sized card (printed by UUA) on the table as you enter the foyer.
It lists our Principles and the Living Traditions we share. I strongly suggest you acquire one of these cards and carry it with you.
I carry one. I also carry an extra to give acquaintances who ask what Unitarian Universalists believe.
When I have a few moments, I review these Principles and take an evaluation of how I’m doing on each. I also ask myself which ones I need to give more awareness and effort.
As we are nearing the welcoming of a new minister it behooves us to do some preparation.
Let us prepare ourselves in mind and spirit to utilize our Principles as an impetus to begin anew what we strive to become.
Welcome Rev. Greg!
Welcome to each of you as you learn more about yourself and learn more about each other.
As a beginning, try our first Principle:
"We covenant to affirm
and promote:
The inherent worth and
dignity of every Person.”
Don’t forget to include yourself as one of those persons."
Fondly,
— Ron Crane
Summertime Help
This Summer is an unusual time for our Church.
We don’t have a sitting minister.
We don’t have some committees functioning with the full complement of members.
For example: Until Rev. Greg arrives, Pastoral care will be provided by members of the congregation and neighboring ministers.
If you have need for Pastoral Care contact Nurit Gordon at the office: 310-829-5436 ext 100 or Ron Crane at his home number (available from the church office).
HELP! Second Sunday Supper for July and August needs hosts, workers, and main courses. Established in 2008, Second Sunday Supper provids nurturance in numerous ways. Please join in our practice of community by giving time, talent, and caring.
Our community thrives when we give service to the Church and to the world at large. What have you given of late? I’m not just talking about fundraising. I’m talking about sharing your time and attention.
We have 340 members. If each of them gave four hours a month of service that would be 1,360 hours. That would be the equivalent of 8.5 full time persons.
Join in and make this The Summer of Living and Giving Generously (and don’t stop when Fall arrives).
Fondly,
— Ron Crane
A Call to Accept Our Differences and Understand Each Other
As Unitarian Universalists, we jointly give voice to the value of diversity and the acceptance of diversity.
Our congregation has been effective in acknowledging diversity of race, sexual expression, gender, and sometimes spiritual and religious expression.
We have not achieved our best selves as individuals and community in curiosity, understanding, compassion, and acceptance of diversity in governance, process, and acceptance of difference in point-of-view.
We now celebrate the many ways in which Rev. Rebecca has aided us in our journey. We have great appreciation and great concern for her and her family.
As we move to become our best selves, it is time to also look within our selves to see what we have learned.
Let us look within our selves to seek what we have learned of late of the acceptance of the beauty of diversity of opinion. Look within our selves to seek what we have learned of the acceptance of the complexity of community and how community requires sharing, not winning.
We are in change. Let us use that change to make a better world.
Fondly,
— Ron Crane
FROM OUR VICE PRESIDENT: Building Better Beloved Community
I have a vision for the UUCCSM phrase of the year to be “building better beloved community.” And I’m turning it into a short form right now, because I’m going to be referring to it a lot. Also, if it’s shortened, maybe you’ll forgive how I start using it grammatically inappropriately in sentences. (Thanks in advance for that.)
B3C is elemental. On a personal level, it’s what each of us hopes to get from being in this place. It feels good to be valued by others. From B3C springs feelings of worth and dignity. On a community-wide level, B3C is a natural consequence of making a regular practice of valuing justice, equity and compassion in human relations. In B3C, we accept one another and encourage each other to spiritual growth in the congregation. Notice how B3C is interconnected with our first, second and third UU Principles? If we keep B3C in the forefront of our minds, we will have an amazing year together.
As I think about how I want to spend my hours, days and weeks this year, I can think of no better aspiration than B3C. And I’d like to share with you what that’s going to look like for me. Maybe it’ll inspire you.
Here on the hippie West Coast, we use the term “namaste” (roughly translated “the divine light in me bows to the divine light in you”) a lot. Namaste will be my mantra for manifesting B3C. If I can keep that divine light front and center, it will color my speech and action; and it’s bound to begin to color our community.
Namaste is about more than bestowing a silent blessing on to everyone I with whom I come into contact. By making a practice of namaste as my mantra, I’m bound to see worth and dignity in others. I’m compelled to speak kindly to others. And I’m humbled by the divinity of others.
I expect my family relations will grow more peaceful. I see the potential for church life to become richer and more
rewarding as well.
With B3C as the highest aspiration, and namaste as a mantra, I can imagine creating right here at UUSM “a community of kinship such as God might recognize it” as Father Greg Boyle at Homeboy Industries says. I don’t know that my higher power has recognition abilities, but the sentiment is powerful to me, nonetheless.
Here’s to B3C in 2017 with you, divine friends. Namaste.
— Jacki Weber
PS – I’m standing in as your board VP to write this column in December, as your President, Ron Crane, takes time to grieve the loss of his beloved husband, John. Ron treasured John in a way that I ASPIRE to treasure my most intimate relationships. I can’t imagine what mourning looks like to Ron. I just want to give him the space to do it. Peace.
Put Aside Differences and Become a Beloved Community
We have three months before the arrival of our Developmental Minister, the Rev. Greg Ward.
We have spent the last two months celebrating the contributions of the Rev. Rebecca Benefiel Bijur, our settled minister for the past seven years.
We have been studying and practicing “Right Relations” as a mirror to our frailties in our practice and skill of Right Relations.
We have received a strong invitation to “look hard” at our individual strengths and weaknesses in attempting to live with respect for other’s opinions. We are attempting to create a community where respect for difference might regulate a powerful urge to bifurcate the community into us/them, right/wrong, and good/bad.
NOW is the time to realign those energies.
Now is the time to end this division within our Church. Our Community needs to put talent and time into being our best rather than overtly and covertly trying to win. HELP!!
Through cooperation rather than separate operation we must continue the nascent effort to create a community where we intentionally work together to change our small world by acting as a model of caring and conciliation.
We each need to evaluate our words and deeds to determine whether they promote or detract from our principles.
I ask each of you to explore new mindsets that will be directed toward caring, sharing, and understanding. I ask each of you to work in conscious caring to achieve a community that is actually beloved.
Failing that, we are only an angry, disrespectful, and failed model.
Join one another with intention to achieve in practice what we tell the world what we believe in principle, and what we work to become. Let us do this NOW.
Fondly,
Ron Crane
Ron Crane
A Note from Our President
I had planned to focus my president’s column this month on the right-relations process. The Right Relations Task Force, however, did a fine job of describing the progress we have made and the next step. Please see their report below. Thank you.
— Ron Crane
The President’s column will not appear this month due to preparation for the board retreat and the vicissitudes of life.
— Ron Crane
Building Right Relations and Making New Acquaintances
The Long Term Right Relations Task Force is operative. Its members are: Rev. Rebecca Benefiel Bijur, Helen Brown, Leon Henderson-MacLennan, Emily Linnemeier, Vilma Ortiz, Margot Page, Tom Peters, Beth Rendeiro, Sue Stoyanoff, John Sussman, James Witker.
Please thank each of them for committing to the project and expressing with time and action their dedication to the community. They have begun the work with our consultant, Nancy Edmundson. You’ll be hearing more of how you may be involved in the coming weeks. Timely reports will follow.
Another issue: The board wants to provide information and transparency. How would you best receive such information? Speak to a board member and let us know what works most comprehensively for you. Don’t just send an email or letter — speak to them. Conversations make acquaintances, which just might lead to friendship.
And a suggestion: How many new acquaintances have you made at church in the past three months? I note that we tend to drift to our usual group of people during the social hours.
We have the social/cultural/spiritual context in which to meet folks with whom we don’t have acquaintance but do have commonality (like the UU Principles). Let us stop talking about being a community and actually create a more cohesive one. Meet at least two new people and follow up by connecting regularly with them.
Cold-calling for acquaintance may be frightening, terrifying, exciting, pleasing…. I could go on, but just spot someone who looks interesting and tell them that “Ron said I had to do this in order to make the church a better place.” We will all benefit.
Fondly, Ron
—Ron Crane
The Task Force on Right Relations
As I engage in our congregation’s Right Relations process I’m impressed with the number of differing perceptions that can be held by even a small group of people.
How we learn to allow those perceptions to be expressed, and influenced, is what we are engaging in the Right Relations process.
The invitations to the Long Term Right Relations Task Force membership have been made. More invitations will follow to fill the membership. The arc of the action will be given to you by Nancy Edmundson in the coming month.
We have no lack of capable congregants. We had over 40 names in nomination by the board. These numbers show the depth of people we have to call on in the next year as the process unfolds. Every name represented talent that we as a congregation need.
The time has come when you are invited to start thinking that we are in the process. “Right Relations” isn’t something that is going to happen in the future. It is happening now. I invite you now to watch for all those perceptions I was talking about. Attend to what is happening within the process. Share your perceptions and listen to the perceptions of others. There will be many future opportunities to engage with groups in our congregation in Right Relations conversations and process, and it all begins with each of us paying attention to our own perceptions and listening more deeply without judgment to others.
— Ron Crane
I like the scientific spirit —
the holding off, the being sure but not too sure,
the willingness to surrender ideas when the
evidence is against them:
this is ultimately fine —
it always keeps the way beyond open —
always gives life, thought, affection,
the whole man, a chance to try over again
after a mistake —
after a wrong guess.
WALT WHITMAN