Month: April 2021 (Page 2 of 3)

Letter From the Ministers: A guilty verdict, accountability, and working toward justice.

April 20, 2021 /

Dear Foothills Community,

We breathe deeply in relief for the news of Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict on all three counts. We pray that this brings some amount of solace to George’s family. We hope it signals a turning point in our nation’s willingness to hold police officers accountable – an outcome that so many black families have been denied. 

Yet, we also know that this verdict does not represent justice. Justice requires systemic change and a world where Black Lives always Matter. Justice requires ending the school to prison pipeline, the new Jim Crow, the insidious persistent presence of white supremacy within each of us and across our lives. Justice requires repentance. Justice demands an accounting of the violence and harm that reside at the root of our nation and the caste system that keeps us all from true freedom. Justice demands a true change in how we operate, a turning away from this culture of death.  

We also know that no verdict can take away the trauma and the grief of what happened to George Floyd or the accumulation of pain after incidents just keep coming, especially for people of color. We are especially holding in our hearts the people of Minneapolis and those closest to this trauma. No verdict can change what happened at the end of the 9 minutes and 26 seconds. And so, even as we are grateful for this outcome, we lament and we rage. We demand change.  

Unitarian Universalists of color are leading a vigil tomorrow, Wednesday, evening at 6:30 PM MST. We encourage everyone to join in this space to pray and hold space together. Please invite anyone you know who is seeking community to be together, to breathe together, and to grieve and support each other – and to gain strength for the continued work ahead.  

In solidarity,

Rev. Gretchen, Rev. Sean, and Rev. Elaine 

April Fool’s Pranks

April 15, 2021 /

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Last week we asked you to share a favorite April Fool’s Day prank. Here are your responses:

  • Conspiring with my son’s coworkers at Avo’s to prank him on our dinner take out order last week.
  • Convinced my brother I won $1000.
  • I used plastic food models at work. I brought them home and set the breakfast table with the fake food. The models were really realistic and fooled the kids.
  • “Not my own but memorable: NPR interviewed gardening maven Barbara Damrosh about her recipe for compost lasagna! They did it totally straight, discussing the luscious flavors and fragrances and then ended. It was left to us listeners to remember what day it was.”
  • My daughter went into display settings on her brother’s computer and flipped the screen sideways. We said maybe he clicked on an April Fool’s virus. He was convinced she had broken his computer!
  • My husband was looking out the window toward the public bathroom in Remington lot and said to me” that guy came out of the bathroom without any clothes. I got up to look and….
  • Oh the worst was about 10 years ago my husband wakes me up first thing in the morning. He tells me he had forgotten, but we had a big potluck dinner event for Larimer County that night (he was working with the county courts at the time) and we needed to bring a casserole! I was freaking out and running to the kitchen to see what we had to make and he let me know it was April 1st. I was sure mad at him at the time for freaking me out but it really was funny nonetheless😂
  • On a hot day I would not mind if someone taped the sink sprayer.
  • Our son would rubber band the trigger on the kitchen sink nozzle so it sprayed in your chest when you turned on the water. We never learned. Got us every year!
  • Putting googly eyes on things at the grocery store.
  • The Rapture happened and no one qualified.
  • When riding my horse, being told by stable mates to go find a ” left-handed bit stretcher”!!! (I know better now!!😁)

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Prayers for the Trees: A Letter from Rev. Gretchen

April 15, 2021 /

Dear ones,
 
It is the time of year when I worry about trees. 
 
It started just before talk of the last storm started up – and my worry proved warranted! Even weeks later, limbs lie forlorn at the base of trees all across the city, taken out by the heavy springtime snow. Or worse, the ones hanging half attached where they once reached for the sky.  
 
This week, I’ve tried turning the worry into prayer. I’ve been praying for the green buds beginning on my cherry blossom, the small shows on the peach tree, and the emerging leaves on the lilac. And by prayer, I actually mean I go out and whisper words of encouragement. Come on babies, you can do it! 
 
Anyone who has lived in Colorado for any number of years knows these worries/prayers. Too many years, the snow comes just as the flowering starts, or heaving snow sours the new leaves just as they find their voices. 
 
Trees in Colorado spring remind us every day of life’s possibility and fragility, how quickly starts can become endings, and the thin line between life and death.  
 
This week, as news broke of another death of an unarmed Black man by a police officer, just a few blocks from the trial of the police officer who murdered George Floyd, sparking last summer’s racial uprisings and awakenings; a year into the pandemic where, despite the good news of the vaccines, infections are rising rapidly, and still too many people are grieving loved ones lost too soon.
 
Like the trees, we know what it is to live on the thin line that straddles life and death, praying that we’ll all hold out a little longer, push through, survive.  
 
This Sunday, we will be kicking off a week of Earth Day-related opportunities with a service connecting us with the wisdom of trees (with inspiration from the 2018 novel The Overstory). In the swirl of life, as we straddle both possibility and fragility, it’s so good to be able to check in with ourselves and with each other, and remind ourselves of what really matters. I hope to see you this Sunday at 9 on zoom, or in the comments on Facebook at 11! 
 
With love, and in partnership,

Gretchen  

Join us this Sunday at 9:00 am using Zoom – link here. 
Or at 11:00 am using the usual livestream on Facebook or the website.

This Sunday’s Earth Day Service is multigenerational  – there will be elements for all ages! We’ll have:

  • Kid-friendly songs led by our Children’s Music Leader Kara Shobe
  • An all-ages meditation guided by our Family Ministry Team
  • An online activity packet for kids to engage with during the parts of the service that are more geared toward adults.

Parents – Please remember that it’s okay if your kids don’t sit attentively for the whole service! If your child(ren) wants to come in and out, eat, or move about during the service, that’s okay! Church is about showing up as you are, and we embrace the beautiful chaos of family.

Easter Stories

April 8, 2021 /

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Happy Easter! Last week we invited you to share either a favorite Easter tradition or a fun memory. Thanks to everyone who shared something! Here are your responses:

  • Dying easter eggs
  • Easter baskets!
  • Easter dresses: mine was always pink and my little sister’s was yellow. We dyed eggs and hid and hunted them all day indoors and out.
  • Easter egg hunts with my children when they were young.
  • Eating ALL the candy, especially chocolate!
  • Eating chocolate bunnies
  • Going to a Waffle House in Atlanta to admire hats after church services ended.
  • I adopted an Easter tradition from a beloved aunt. The Easter bunny at our house left each child a colorful yarn path throughout the house to the hiding place of her basket. Now our daughters do the same for their kids, saying that stringing yarn all over their homes is a pain. Exactly the kind of tradition to pass on! Happy Easter!
  • I make Easter baskets every year for my kids. My daughter is 21 now but I still make sure she gets a chocolate bunny😁
  • In the Unitarian church I grew up in we always received a small potted flower. I started this in Foothills, years ago, I hope you still do🌸
  • Large 4″ chocolate coated Easter eggs, center pieced of Easter basket for egg hunt w/ 3 siblings
  • My children grew wheat grass in the Easter baskets that they fed to our rabbits on Easter day so everyone got treats
  • My tulips are about to bloom while my crocuses and daffodils are still just emerging, having been buried under massive piles of snow.  Ah, spring!
  • Not a biggie in my family but there was usually lamb for dinner.
  • One of the good things about Alzheimer’s is that you can hide your own Easter eggs. Oops! I think I forgot to buy eggs.
  • Rowdy Mothers annual Easter Egg hunt — we found real (rotten) eggs in our backyard for months afterwards, LOL!
  • Son Will toddling around finding eggs in grandma’s backyard with family friends.
  • Three feet of snow on Easter in Montana in 1983

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Honoring Eleanor VanDeusen

April 7, 2021 /

At our March 25th meeting, the Board of Trustees, in recognition of her 22 years of invaluable service to this congregation, paid heartfelt tribute to Eleanor VanDeusen, Foothills’ director of family ministry, and affirmed the granting to her of three months or up to 14 weeks of paid sabbatical leave.

Eleanor has nurtured generations of Foothills children to grow in spirituality and community since she began leading our Religious Education program in 1999. Some of the students in the RE program when she arrived are now raising children of their own in Foothills’ embrace, completing a full cycle of the spiral of life in our community, a cycle that has been nourished and empowered by Eleanor’s deep and abiding care, creativity, energy, and wisdom.

Under Eleanor’s tireless coordination, two decades of inclusive, responsible, and emotionally healthy Our Whole Lives sexuality classes have helped affirm and empower thousands of youth in our community.

Eleanor’s spirited and joyful collaboration has made Foothills’ annual Buckhorn Family Retreat an end-of-summer tradition knitting connections across generations year after year, strengthening the fabric of Foothills as a community and a congregation in profound and lasting ways.

Under her leadership, the annual Chalice Camps have transitioned a generation of younger children into their summer vacations and given older Foothills youth some of their first work and leadership opportunities as camp counselors.

Week in and week out, Eleanor has generated creative and inspiring rituals and worship opportunities for youth, coordinated youth music programs, and nurtured religious education teachers in their invaluable contributions to our congregation.

As a board member of the Liberal Religious Educators Association, Eleanor has been a national leader in our larger Unitarian Universalist movement and has mentored up-and-coming religious educators in their professional development.

It is not possible to elaborate the full scope of Eleanor’s impact on Foothills Unitarian Church and the larger community. Nor is it possible to fully express the gratitude, admiration, and love that our congregation holds for Eleanor VanDeusen. But both will echo on for generations to come.

With gratitude, 

Sue Sullivan, on behalf of the Foothills Unitarian Board of Trustees

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