Month: November 2018 (Page 1 of 2)

Habits of Hope

November 28, 2018 /

The month of December and the surrounding holidays promise joy and hope, and yet in these times, hope can be a real challenge.
Between caring for our loved ones, while also trying to take care of ourselves…all the while absorbing losses or disappointments of all sorts, strained relationships, the challenges of work and community…Even when life shifts bring good news, it can still feel overwhelming, like we can’t quite find solid ground.

And then there’s the wider world.

Even those most optimistic among us can feel pretty unsure where we can or should turn to for real guidance and reassurance that everything will be okay in the end, and the idea of being okay again feels really far off, either way. Longer than a lifetime. More than a generation.

Which is a new feeling for many, and certainly a challenge for the optimism of liberal religion.

Which is why we need to re-orient ourselves to new habits of hope.

Because hope is a habit, a muscle, and a choice. But it’s not a given. It requires our practice, our shared learning, our commitment, even, our discipline.

Over the month of December, we’ll be exploring the habits that help us cultivate hope for the long haul.

Habits where grief leads us not towards isolation or fear, but into a reflex of compassion, and care.

Where we don’t wait for a perfect moment to claim joy, but where joy is always now, even in the middle of everything.

And where we remain open to the mystery of all that is being born, and all that remains unseen.

This is the promise of solstice, and of the Christmas story, and of Hanukkah. And it is the story of our Unitarian Universalist faith.
That truth continues to be revealed.

That into this world there will arrive something totally new.

Something unexpected, yet longed for.

Something powerful, connective, and transforming that will arrive right in the middle of the chaos, in the darkness, in the wreck, in the mess, in the imperfection of regular, everyday life.

Even yours.

Gretchen

Share the Plate – October 2018

November 28, 2018 /

By Sue Ferguson and Jane Everham

“Share the Plate” for October raised $3,194.11 for Faith Family Hospitality (FFH), an organization that provides a great service to our community and gives busy Foothills members a way to serve without making a long-term commitment. We have so many new members at Foothills, that it is worth taking time to recount our history with FFH as it approaches its 7th anniversary as a ministry of Foothills Unitarian Church.

During 2011 we became a part of a community-wide effort to address the growing crisis of families experiencing homelessness. Our school district was reporting an alarming number of children whose families didn’t have stable housing and were couch surfing or living in their cars.

Thirty-two faith communities banded together to help. About half the congregations in FFH actually open their buildings and provide a week’s worth of housing to up to four families. The other half serve as support congregations and help out with volunteers and meals as needed. Our partner is Congregation Har Shalom. We were the first partnership to begin hosting families in January of 2012 and have continued to host quarterly each subsequent year.

It’s a process — first we begin to recruit volunteer help using the online app Signup Genius. When the FFH trailer arrives on a Sunday early afternoon, volunteers unload beds and turn the lower level of our RE building into 4 family-friendly guest rooms. Last year Foothills added a much-needed shower facility.

Families arrive between 5 and 6 pm. Volunteers prepare and serve a hot dinner each night and families leave each morning by 7 am after a light breakfast. Most go to jobs and school and they have access to the FFH day center in the Mennonite Church at Matthews and Oak if they need it. They return to Foothills each evening for the whole week.

The following Sunday morning early, volunteers pack up the FFH trailer and the families move onto the next congregation in the annual rotation. Using this system FFH provides food and shelter to four families 365 days of the year. The FFH staff provides case management and helps each family develop and implement a plan that leads to permanent housing. Over 80% of FFH guest families are successful and achieve that goal.

We host again the week of January 20, and will offer an orientation for new volunteers just prior. We have an amazing team of coordinators including Marla Nelson, Danue Laborde, Dannielle North, Julie Pass and Sue Ferguson. Those of us who treasure this work always end up feeling we receive so much more than we give!  Please feel free to chat with us, ask questions and consider joining us next year. sueferguson7@gmail.com

347 Highlights, 570 Wishes, and 197 Values Words Later…

November 26, 2018 /

Were you one of the 350 participants in the 22 visioning sessions that a heroic team of volunteer facilitators led last month, supported by our wonderful staff here at Foothills?

Were you moved and inspired by the time spent thinking about the past and future of this beloved community in the company of long-time and newly-made Foothills friends?

Were you wondering how we were going to turn these many hundreds of value words, stories, and wishes for Foothills’ future into actionable vision statements for the congregation to pursue in the next 5 to 7 years?

We – your Foothills Board of Trustees — were too!

We spent so much time trying to pull together so many sessions that we barely had time to look ahead to the next step in the process. (Our visioning consultant informs us that we exceeded any previous congregation’s participation in both sheer numbers and percentage of congregation taking part, that’s how engaged and enthusiastic Foothills members were in this process!)

We did have faith, however — fueled by many in-person and online meetings with the wise and skillful Laura Park of Unity Consulting — that the process would result in tangible, focused vision statements for the years ahead, visionary dreams that reflect the collective character of this congregation, its long history, and the hopes for its future that so many of you shared with us over the course of these workshops.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, the entire board of Trustees (Ed Beers, Sara Steen, Cheryl Hazlitt, Brendan Mahoney, Glenn Pearson and Sue Sullivan), Rev. Gretchen Haley, Rev. Sean Neil-Barron, and Laura Park spent Friday evening and all of Saturday surrounded by this data — distilling themes and common values and discerning where we saw the congregation wanting to go in the coming years.

The shared values we discerned will serve as touchstones for our board decisions and the policies that we write, and as guides and anchors for all that we do together as a congregation.

The vision statements that we identified will become our promises to each other and the larger community. They are what we will be asking ourselves to do together as a beloved community in the next 5 to 7 years. They represent what we want our ministers to lead, equip, and support us in doing – for us as individuals, for the Foothills community, and for Northern Colorado and beyond.

Because the task was so ambitious and the feedback was so generous from the many participants, we didn’t quite finish the work that weekend before Thanksgiving. There is some wordsmithing left to do, and perhaps some whittling down of a vision statement or two into a more manageable charge to the congregation and its ministers.

As a board we will finish that work up next month, and we’ll present the final values and vision statements to the congregation at our half-year congregational update meeting in late January.

We are deeply grateful that so many of you participated with such presence and enthusiasm. Unitarian Universalist churches are congregationally led – without the input of an engaged congregation, we cannot live into our spiritual ideals of embodying the democratic process and making collective decisions about our congregation’s life.

In faith and love,

Sue Sullivan,
Secretary
Foothills Board of Trustees

 

Gratitude & Grace: Connecting Church and Home

November 25, 2018 /

[vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]By Lauren Farley

Our family has never been the sort to say grace or hold hands and said “thank you” at dinner, but lately we’ve hit one something we love. Most dinner times now, we do a family version of a “Joys and Sorrows” ritual.

We got the idea from our Religious Exploration classroom group with the 1st and 2nd graders. There we pass a bowl of stones, everyone shares their name and a joy or sorrow on their mind or heart, then drops a stone into a bowl of water. We hear about all the “Big Important Things” in the lives of our little ones – playing with friends or going on a trip, missing a traveling parent or faraway relative, saying goodbye to pets, the anticipation and nervousness that comes with moving to a new house…

And the bowl gets snatched, and the water gets kicked over, and the stones get lobbed from waaaaay too far away.  Because…. Children! At home, there are spills from diving over dinner, bickering about who goes first, hyper-focus on which random stone is JUST the right one, strange floaties in the water from grimy 7- and 5-year old fingers. It’s beautiful.

“I’m so excited to go trick-or-treating!”

“I got to spend time with coworkers that are normally in all different parts of the country, and today we all got to be together.”

“I’m happy for the snow.”

“We get to vote and choose new leaders tomorrow, and I’m so excited for that, but also really worried and nervous that the voters might make bad choices, and well I just don’t know how I feel today!”

“I’m sad that Grandpa Dick died lots of years ago.”

“It felt so good to spend time with our friends and neighbors at the party today.”

“I’m sad for the people in Pittsburgh that man hurt.”

“I still have this awful cold and I’m frustrated and grumpy and I’ve been snapping at everyone. I’m sorry.”

“I’m so proud of your hard work at the Food Bank today.”

“My joy is mama hugs!” (I’m pretty sure the 5-year-old was just angling for extra Halloween candy with that last one.)

Then just one more stone, for all the joys and sorrows left unspoken. I asked my 7-year-old why he likes this and he said, “because we get to say how we feel.” Why is that important? “Because we don’t have zippers on our heads that you can open and see inside, so how else would you know?” My kids call it “Prayer Bowl.”

And there it is. Our feelings matter. We don’t have to know how we feel. Our feelings are safe here. I’m safe here. There is much to be grateful for in the gorgeous and startling way that children are so good at seeing straight into the heart of something their grownups think is beyond them.

May your family find just the right ritual for you to share feelings, gratitude and moments of grace.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”29833″ img_size=”medium”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Fear, Division, and Healing in America

November 18, 2018 /

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]By Foothills’ member Ariana Friedlander 

Since moving to Fort Collins I’ve joked with friends that the only people here who know I’m of Jewish decent are either Jewish, anti-semitic or from New York…to most people here, I’m just another white person.

While I wasn’t raised going to Synagogue, studying the Torah or celebrating the Jewish high holidays, I’ve always been proud of my Jewish heritage. Although I’ve known about the struggles and antisemitism my family has experienced, I myself never really feared for my own safety…not until 2016.

After the 2016 election I experienced a new level of fear. Upon reading headline after headline about Anti-Semites in the White House I became severely triggered. I would lie in bed at night shaking like a leaf as images of my family being round up and hauled off by Nazi’s flooded my mind.

I honestly can’t tell if the bulk of the isms I’ve experienced in my life have been sexism, ageism or antisemitism. But generally, those moments have been subtle, not life threatening, more just that feeling of not being welcomed, accepted or respected because of one or all of the things people can hold against me. Or those off-handed comments that perpetuate stereotypes you write-off as someone meaning well and not knowing better (something I now know I need to speak up about instead of write off).

So, I myself was shocked by the intensely fearful reaction I had in 2016. My Great Grandparents had left Europe before World War II. So it’s not like I am the descendant of Holocaust survivors. And yet, this fear response to anti-semitism is ingrained in my DNA, literally through transcription genes that were awakened in 2016.

The shooting in Pittsburgh not only breaks my heart, it reawakens the fear. And I scratch my head feeling dumbfounded that there’s so much hate brewing. That other’s fears are so great they feel justified to take innocent lives, without investigating the source of their own pain. It feels absurd to me that beliefs about superiority, especially of certain races, nationalities and religions are becoming more common in the age of the global economy.

The real challenge I face is to NOT fight fear with more fear, but to be more discerning than that. After the 2016 election when my body convulsed with fear I had to keep reminding myself that my family was not in imminent danger. I had to repeat that to myself over and over again while I took deep breaths to calm my nervous system down for over an hour at a time.

And as I laid there I wondered, is this how “they” felt after Obama was elected? Were “they” too shaking with fear, seeing horrible images of their family being attacked in their minds? Did their images of fear feel as real, as visceral as mine?

As I considered that, I felt for the proverbial them. I felt an understanding for the strong, visceral reactions of people that have vehemently opposed our last president. Even though I don’t understand their logic, I can relate to feeling so afraid.
And then I felt sadder.

If only we all knew how to understand our physiological responses. If everyone possessed awareness of their triggers and that their strong fear responses aren’t typically signs of impending danger but indicators of unhealed trauma and pain. To understand that our neurochemical reactions cause each of us weave a story that only captures a sliver of our shared realities. And to allow such moments to be an invitation to step back, open up and explore a deeper understanding of different perspectives before reacting out of fear. If we would all do that (which we innately can), then we could begin to cope, heal, and ultimately co-create a better world together.

And so, I continue walking this path of discernment. Seeking justice, using my voice and living my principles. I will not give into the fear by abandoning my Jewish last name or provoking other’s by calling them names. Nor will I pretend that there isn’t a problem. Perhaps the single most common thread across our divided land is that there is a great pain and a great suffering we are all shouldering. And all I want is simple, to heal it![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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