Month: November 2021 (Page 1 of 3)

What Captures Your Heart?

November 30, 2021 /
Donate for Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday is all about finding a place to give that captures your heart. It’s about spending money in a way that reflects your deepest values.

At Foothills, our budget reflects our deepest values. From children’s programming to justice work, everything we do is funded by you – our beloved community members. We’re excited to share just a glimpse into the impact we’ve had in 2021 (stay tuned for our full annual report coming next month!):

  • We played a crucial role in launching the Vaccine Equity Coalition, a grassroots effort by local organizations to improve access to the Covid-19 vaccine in BIPOC and Latinx communities. The Spanish-language call line created by the coalition registered 2,700 community members for vaccines, and five community clinics administered 1411 vaccines. And these numbers don’t capture the enormous effort involved in organizing outreach, addressing vaccine hesitancy, 2nd dose reminders, community updates on new variants, and more. Our work helping to form and support the coalition led to us being honored with BizWest’s COVID 19 Health Care Heroes Ally Award. 

  • 267 children and youth participated in our Family Ministry programs so far this year! We offered three in-person outdoor Kids Camps, weekly high school youth group, a Blessing of the Animals, a Blessing of the Backpacks, and 15 middle schoolers participated in our Coming of Age Program. We were also able to relaunch the Our Whole Lives Sexuality Education program, in which 23 8th & 9th graders are currently participating! 

  • From meals and individual outreach to grief support and caring cards, we provided over 600 acts of care. 

  • 280 people participated in a small group. 

  • 198 people were involved with racial justice initiatives, including training, book groups, social change teams, and community partnerships. 

  • We continued to house families experiencing homelessness in our building through our partnership with the Family Housing Network, and we were named Family Housing Network’s Partner Organization of the Year. 

  • Over 1,000 people joined us for one of the 112 Sunday services we’ve held so far this year, and the YouTube videos of our services received over 37,000 views. 

  • We shared $65,000 with our community partners doing important work, including LGBT support, suicide prevention, and racial justice advocacy.

While 2021 has been a great year of engagement for our church, the Pandemic and all that came with it continue to be difficult for many in our community and beyond. We remain committed to showing up every day to care for each other, to strive for a world free from oppression, and to offer a home away from home where all are welcome to find grounding and belonging. All our work requires funding, and we are working hard to close our budget out strong.

We have set a big goal of raising $10,000 today for Giving Tuesday.

If you have already made an end-of-year gift, thank you. It not only makes a difference for our Foothills Community but also for spreading our progressive values and Courageous Love in Northern Colorado and beyond.

If you haven’t yet made a gift, we hope you’ll consider making a gift to Foothills Unitarian today – but if it’s not us, we still hope you’ll find a place to give that aligns with your hopes for the future. Because together, we can unleash courageous love across Northern Colorado and beyond.

Give Today

Making Peace with What Haunts Us (Day 6)

November 30, 2021 /

Today, Kelsey offers a short audio guide on how to respond (rather than react) when one of your ghosts is triggered.

Audio Guide for Responding to Ghosts

Notice of Congregational Meeting: December 5th

November 22, 2021 /
Review Meeting Packet

NOTICE OF CONGREGATIONAL MEETING

The Board of Trustees announces Foothills’ fall congregational meeting at 1 pm on Sunday, December 5th, online, for the purposes of approving the 2022 operating budget. Please CLICK HERE to register for the Congregational Meeting.

Unitarian Universalist churches are independent and self-governing. Annually, each congregation must vote to approve its budget for the upcoming year.

Foothills’ Board of Trustees has reviewed the proposed budget prepared by Ministry and affirms that it is fiscally sound and sufficiently funds the work of advancing the congregation’s seven vision statements in the coming year.

Our bylaws require a quorum of 10 percent of our membership to convene this budget approval meeting. We encourage all friends members of the congregation to attend. Per our church bylaws, in order to vote in congregational meetings, you must be on the membership rolls at least 30 days in advance of the meeting.  If you are unsure of your membership status, please contact the Foothills office at (970) 493-5906.

There will be an opportunity for detailed review and discussion of the budget on Tuesday, November 30th at noon on Zoom. The zoom room link for this question and answer session can also be found at www.foothillsuu.org/today for November 30th.

The meeting agenda will consist of the 2022 budget approval, a year-end report from the ministry, and a building expansion update, as well as our annual celebration of new births and remembrance of members who have died during the year.

We look forward to seeing you at this important moment in the life of our congregation.

Sue Sullivan
President
Board of Trustees

Making Peace with What Haunts Us (Day 5)

November 22, 2021 /

Rezmaa Menakem, trauma therapist and author of My Grandmother’s Hands talks about how the memories and trauma of our ancestors lives in our bodies. This trauma manifests as white body supremacy. We need to recognize, work through and metabolize this trauma. Only in this way can we begin to heal our bodies and the social body of our nation.

For Day 5 of Making Peace with What Haunts Us, Eleanor VanDeusen, Foothills Director of Family Ministry, offers this grounding technique – tapping into the memories and wisdom of our ancestors –

Listen to a guided meditation.

Meditation Text:

Find a comfortable seat, on the ground or in a chair. 

Notice where your body makes contact with the surfaces it is touching.

Notice the temperature of the air on your skin, the sounds in the room, the smells.

Bring your attention to your breath and how the air flows in through your nose and out through your mouth, lips slightly parted. Rest in your breath and just notice your body’s energy. 

Imagine the quality of your energy – its color, it’s texture, it’s temperature and vibration

Now imagine that energy draining slowly down into the earth.

Starting from the top of your head, imagine it slowly passing your eyebrows, your chin, neck, chest, belly, hips, knees, ankles and feet…draining all the way down into the earth

Now imagine that you begin to draw earth energy up… up from the earth and your ancestors.

Imagine the color, energy and vibration of that energy from your ancestors as it moves slowly up through your body.

Notice where that energy settles in your body.

What memories and wisdom do your ancestors want to give you today?

A lesson from 2017

November 19, 2021 /
Make your 2022 pledge today!

We are a church that meets the challenges of now by planting seeds for the future. In 2017, the Foothills Community responded to the unprecedented election of Donald Trump by giving over $200,000 more than previous years. At the time, we knew we were responding to the likely impacts of the Trump administration on immigrants, people of color, women, climate justice, and personal wellbeing. Yet, we didn’t fully realize just how much that giving in 2017 would prepare us to meet the crises of 2020-2021.

You can see this in our work with ISAAC and Sanctuary Everywhere. We responded to the crisis of the Trump Administration’s anti-immigrant policies by sponsoring the interfaith sanctuary coalition. We nurtured that small organization, helping it grow into the primary crisis support for immigrants in Northern Colorado during the pandemic, with over $800,000 given out last year! All possible because in responding to an overwhelmingly dire present moment, we looked out toward the arc of what our community is about… we raised supports and funds for a vision in 2017 that enabled a more impactful future.

We were the first church to offer asylum seeker Ingrid Encalada Latorre sanctuary in 2016 so she would not be deported and separated from her children. The more work we did with her – reaching out to attorneys, talking to legislators – the less sure we were about what the path forward could be for her. Since Ingrid left sanctuary with us in December 2017, she and her children (Bryant, Anibal, and baby Elizabeth) have been in sanctuary at the UU Church of Boulder. That is until last week when Ingrid was finally granted a stay of removal! Ingrid and we never lost faith that a path would emerge. And all the groundwork laid years ago – fundraising, volunteer hours, and other resources – finally paid off.

These stories illustrate the power of preparedness and how by committing now to the future we want, we can effect real change when the moment arises.

In these challenging times, we each have a choice between going into despair and checking out or making choices and commitments that shift the future. As we learned in 2017, where we invest now directly impacts our ability to fully respond to each moment that arises.

The future we are for is more beautiful than any of us can imagine individually. And you can be a part of continuing and growing this visionary work. 

With your pledge, you help us meet this moment – with all of its continued challenges – and create a more beautiful future.  

We don’t know what the future holds. We never do. But we know that with your partnership and your continued generosity, we will be unleashing courageous love in new and bolder ways than we can yet imagine.  

Make your 2022 pledge today!
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