In a service that echoed the installation in 2011 of the Rev. Rebecca Benefiel Bijur as settled minister of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica, the congregation held a Ceremony of Celebration and Release for Rev. Rebecca on Saturday, June 3, 2017. In the crowded sanctuary, sometimes tearful, sometimes laughing, members of the congregation were joined by UU ministers, neighboring clergy of other faiths, and community members, who were visibly saddened by Rev. Rebecca’s departure from UU Santa Monica.

The UUSM choir performed a new piece written by Rima Snyder in recognition of Rev. Rebecca’s ministry. The Rev. Janet McKeithan of the Church in Ocean Park, representing the Santa Monica Area Interfaith Council, and Gabriella Rosco of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice praised Rev. Rebecca as a leader devoted to social justice. The Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels of First UU Church of Los Angeles brought greetings from the district UU Ministers Association. Other speakers included Minister Emeritus Ernie Pipes, Director of Religious Education Kathleen Hogue, and Director of Music Dr. Zanaida Robles, along with current and former presidents of the congregation.

The sanctuary was again full to capacity on Sunday, June 4, when the congregation had a final Sunday service under Rev. Rebecca’s leadership. A highlight of the service was a chalice extinguishing reflection by Cassie Winters, reprinted on page 3. Congregants lined up to bid farewell to Rev. Rebecca, who remained in the sanctuary for over an hour sharing hugs with melancholy members of the congregation.

 

DeReau Farrar’s Tribute to Rev. Rebecca

 

Hello, dear friends! I love my new home, but oh, how I have missed you!

 

The Rev. Rebecca Benefiel Bijur is an alto. And, by the way, Jonathan is a baritone with a high extension that sometimes allows him to ing low tenor parts, if needed.

 

When Rebecca arrived here, she brought ith her a song. It was her song. I wonder how any of us have had the opportunity to hear it. I am not asking if you’ve heard her sing. We’ve all heard the clear, pure singing she has often led with here. I wonder if you’ve heard her song. I have. It’s gentle, yet somehow strong. It’s simple, yet somehow very deep. And, it is so damn smart! Oh, I hope some of you have had the chance to hear it! Now, I’m a choir director. Part of my talent (I hope) lies in my ability to hear when someone in the choir is singing out of the texture and louder than everyone else. Usually, that tendency comes from people who feel relied upon as leaders and are expected to define where the music is going. However, by doing this, the musicianship is lost. The harmony is lost. I wonder how much that is happening in this place. I wonder.

 

Here is my hope. Rebecca, my hope for you is that you keep singing. Keep singing your song. I know, first-hand, that it is life-giving.

 

And, my hope for you, dear friends, is that every voice, from this point forward, that sings from this pulpit, would be heard by a congregation filled with open ears and open hearts. And, that you will commit to singing in balance and in harmony with those voices. Rebecca and all of you, I wish you blessings on all your

tomorrows.

UUSM Member Cassie Winters’ Chalice Lighting and Extinguishing for Rev. Rebecca’s Final Sunday on June 4 

Chalice Lighting

Good Morning.

My name is Cassie… and well, I’m just Cassie. I’m not a minister, a board president, or even a lay leader.

And because of that, I want to say that I feel like it is a huge honor to speak at Rebecca’s last service…I mean, it may not be…but it certainly feels that way to me.

Well, we have certainly taken the extremely long way around this very prickly thistle patch of leave-taking and heartfelt and sorrowful goodbyes… and I want to thank you, Rebecca, for that… for having the heart space to hold all our grief. It is my hope that your work in our grieving process and the work we must continue to do will leave us in a better space to welcome a new person…a space that is potentially better than the space to which you came.

I am hoping that you will be gracious with me for a bit as I speak here today as I know that I have only been coming here for almost a year and a half now, and I was not here when all of this began. For those of you who were here when I spoke last…remember when I asked about a few different scenarios and if it would be emotionally difficult for you to ask for help? I must confide in you that this is extremely emotionally difficult for me to ask for your help when I am keenly aware that it might not be well received by some of us. And even though asking for a bunch of socks and underwear was big…this ask feels even more intimate than underwear.

And after all of the beautiful and eloquent speeches yesterday I am feeling that what I have to say does not compare or measure up. And I feel so emotional and vulnerable right now that I worry that what I say will not be as coherent and as eloquent as I would like.

There is this part of me that wants to help heal the hurt in the congregation and the hurt with Rebecca…but I cannot go back in time. And so, all I can do now is to try to help us heal now and to help us not repeat what has happened in the past.

Maya Angelou is often misquoted as saying, “when you know better…you do better” … even by me. But, what she really said was, “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”

And it is similar and means mostly the same thing. But I think that what she said emphasizes a FORGIVENESS of ourselves for when we knew less. Because you cannot know something until you know it.

But she also issues a challenge…well, now that you know better… it is up to you to do better. And as Rebecca once said, “Our desire alone to do better…sometimes falls short.”

And why is that? Mostly, it is because we are human and we come with baggage and patterns of behavior that often stem all the way from our childhoods. We also, and this is very important especially here with Unitarian Universalists who tend to be very intellectual but also very big hearted…we also sometimes have feelings that are contrary to how we think we SHOULD feel.

I’ve spent the greater part of this year talking to many of you and listening to your stories…your stories in the church and your personal stories. And one of the most important things I heard was that you felt a certain way about something…like you felt hurt, abandoned, or not important. And then sometimes you felt guilty for having those feelings because they did not match what you now know and what you value. And very often, when we feel something that we don’t think we should feel…we stuff it down…we try to pretend that we don’t feel this way. The problem with that is that those feelings are still there, and the more we ignore them the more resentful we become. And we begin to not come to church, to not work on that committee, to not interact with that person, and even sometimes — to not treat that person well. It is ok to have a feeling that you don’t necessarily agree with. The important part though is to still talk with the person with whom you have this conflict.

So many of the conflict stories I’ve heard involve us having our feelings hurt about something that, 90% of the time, the other person has no idea that we are hurt or angry.

And so, I ASK these TWO things of us.

One: Please, when you have a conflict with someone where you feel hurt or angry or even just frustrated, please go and talk with that person. You will very likely find that once you tell someone how something made you feel… a couple of things will happen. One, you will feel better for putting it out there. Two, you will probably get a better understanding of where the other person is coming from. And three, you may feel heard…and sometimes, especially when we still don’t get our way…being heard is enough and helps us move forward.

And Two:

Let us endeavor to do better.
Let us turn our hindsight into foresight
So that when we fall short or veer from our course,
We can make corrective adjustments right away.

Let us endeavor to do better.
Let us hold each other in our grief
And accept that we grieve over different things.
Let us make space for human compassion in our relations
Because we are responsible for not only ourselves
But for each other

Let us endeavor to do better.
As Rebecca once said,
“When you pay attention to what matters most
ou let go of the little things.”
And because we know now what we may not have known before
We know that if we do not do this
We cannot do better

AND… let us endeavor to do better.

RIGHT RELATIONS: Harvesting Best Behaviors

Your Right Relations Team held three successful Sharing Stories of Conflict Transformation events in May and June, and approximately 50 of you participated. Over the summer and into the fall, the Right Relations Team will harvest your stories to identify the behaviors that our congregation identifies as necessary to being in community and working through challenges and conflict. These will form our Covenant of Right Relations, which we will present in the fall.

Even though we finished holding sharing groups, we still need your Stories of Conflict Transformation (submit through the Google form found at https://tinyurl.com/uuconflictstories or by emailing us at rightrelations@uusm.org). If you did not attend one of the groups, we encourage you to add your story by using this link. The Google form will instruct you in the process! If you would like to speak to a member of the Right Relations team about your story, please contact us; we are here to help.

As we have held our sharing groups, we are mindful that many members are sharing stories of conflict that do not get resolved or transformed. That doesn’t mean that transformation is not possible in the future. It does reflect that as a congregation we have practiced a habit of tolerating or avoiding conflict. Therefore, we seek to initiate and strengthen conflict transformation practices and habits. As you reflect on and share your stories, we encourage you to tell a story through the lens of appreciation and transformation! Your stories of conflict transformation will directly support the drafting of our Covenant of Right Relations.

Please plan on attending our fall events on congregation covenant. Meanwhile we are here over the summer with regular Listening Circles, our Sunday information table, and as a resource for support by using “Note to RRTF” (http://archive.uusm.org/system/files/members-only/a_note_to_rrtf_. pdf).

Our Right Relations Task Force and Interview Team look forward to hearing from you and hearing your story: Helen Brown, Liza Cranis, Vicky Foxworth, Wendi Gladstone, Cindy Kelly, Audrey Lyness, Linda Marten, Emily Linnemeier, Margot Page, Tom Peters, Vilma Ortiz (co-chair), Kim Santiago-Kalmanson, Nalani Santiago-Kalmanson, Alison Kendall, Beth Rendeiro, Rima Snyder, Joe Straw, Sue Stoyanoff (co-chair), John Sussman, Linda van Ligten, Cassandra Winters, James Witker, Patricia Wright, Steve Young, and Sylvia Young.

We share the folling story from Karl Lisovsky. At the end, Karl reflects on the behaviors that he sees as turning the conflict to conflict resolution.

“WHO GETS THE SANCTUARY? A STORY OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION”

We had not had a Sunday Spotlight in at least a year. This occasional Church event, an open mic kind of thing that we do after a Second Sunday Supper, has recently fallen off the calendar for lack of interest on the part of organizers and participants. I decided to re-animate the practice by doing a small concert. It would be Kai Landauer (my artist name) and Eric Scerri, my buddy and lead guitarist. I scheduled the Sanctuary for June 11th and began making preparations: getting my niece to do some publicity graphics, and preparing the music. I was told when I scheduled the room that there would be “something having to do with Right Relations going on in Forbes.” I didn’t give this much thought.

On May 18th, Beth Rendeiro emailed me, and said that on June 11th, Right Relations (RR) would be hosting Second Sunday Supper and holding the final Conflict Transformation Circle afterwards. She said that it “wouldn’t be a good thing” for the Spotlight and the RR meeting to happen at the same time. She offered that if the Spotlight was a definite, that RR would have to reschedule. “Or... would [I] be open to changing the Spotlight to July?” I responded that in my mind the Spotlight was “a definite”.

On May 19th, Vilma Ortiz was more direct. She said that there was a conflict between Right Relations’ scheduled event and the Spotlight. She acknowledged that through her own oversight, RR had not scheduled the Sanctuary. Would I please “be willing to reschedule Sunday Spotlight,” for if I didn’t, the sharing group simply could not happen, as busy summer schedules would preclude the sharing circle from taking place.

Somehow, on this second email, I was able to get out of my own space enough to see that RR was in a serious bind: they had been working for over a year hosting meetings and working together for the good of the Church community. Now, at the end of this year, they wanted to have one culminating event, beginning by hosting the Second Sunday Supper, and then having the final sharing circle. The only thing that stood in the way of this plan was the Spotlight that I was planning. Once I came to appreciate the situation in this way, I could see no reason for insisting on the Spotlight, and agreed to reschedule.

Here’s what I get from all this, the “behaviors” to be “harvested” (to use RR’s vocabulary):

• Beth began the exchange by gently sensitizing me to the situation, and then simply posing a question (was the Spotlight a “definite”)
• I initially stood by my plan.
• Next, Vilma made the case more strongly that the two events were incompatible.
• Furthermore, she took responsibility for not scheduling the room in the first place.
• I realized that the Right Relations event was time sensitive, needed to happen on that date, at that time, while my Spotlight could happen at some later date. So I rescheduled the Spotlight.

Lesson: When the community’s purpose comes up against an individual’s agenda, that individual ought to think carefully about pushing too hard and thus compromising the larger group’s purpose.

Worth noting: this whole affair represented a challenge of, well, right relations; we simply had to find a way to resolve this rather minor conflict.

UUSM 90th Annual Congregational Meeting

A Farewell Party for Long-Time UUSM Leaders; A Thank You from Peggy and Rick Rhoads

The UU Santa Monica Faith in Action Commission (FIA) hosted a wonderful farewell party for Peggy and me on May 26. Seventy-four adults and a few children joined us for the potluck dinner in Forbes Hall despite it being the Friday evening of Memorial Day weekend.

Our friends David Guerra and Carlos Gomez sang revolutionary songs in Spanish. Rhonda Peacock wrote a song about us based on “Old McDonald Had a Farm” and sang it, accompanied by Teri Bond, with everyone joining in on “e - i, e - i, o.” Rhonda also wrote and performed “Ode to Rick and Peggy.” (I posted both on FB.)

We thank our friends Deborah Decker and Peter Hermann, who got the ball rolling by volunteering to host the party. FIA leaders thought there would be too many people to fit in their apartment, thus the change of venue. Cathie Gentile took the lead in organizing/setting up/cleaning up, assisted by Leslie Beauvais, Ed Brand, Sheila Cummins, Mary Davis, Deirdre Dietel, Tom Early, Roberta Frye, Barbara Gibbs, Wendi Gladstone, Joyce Holmen, Audrey Lyness, Mike Monte, Norm Richey, and James Witker. Our thanks to all these friends. Barbara sent us photos (see my Facebook page for 13 more pictures). Deirdre took Polaroid photos of everyone and gave them to us in two albums. Stan Bemis drew a sketch of Peggy and me on which many of the participants wrote messages. Our profound gratitude and thanks to all.