Year: 2021 (Page 5 of 23)

A Beacon for Progressive Values

November 12, 2021 /
Make your 2022 pledge today!

Foothills Unitarian Church is a community made possible by the generosity of our members. We don’t provide a “fee-for-service.” We offer ministry to anyone who participates in our community and needs us. Each ministry has direct costs, from social justice to caring, small groups to Sunday Worship, climate justice to family programming, and so many more. 

If each person who makes up the church gives within their means, as a community, we cover the costs of our ministry. We can continue offering our ministries freely. We can maintain our role as a beacon for progressive values in Northern Colorado and beyond. 

We are thrilled you are part of our community and hope that this year, you’ll invest in sustaining our beloved church family and growing our impactful work.  We have some big goals to fulfill our BOLD VISION, and we hope you’ll join us by making a 2022 pledge (a promise to give an amount of money that works for you over the course of the year). Pledges are so important, because they help us plan our work and operate within our means.

As a committed member of our community, we hope you’ll take a few moments to do these three things: 

1) Consider… Your personal pledge carefully. 

  • What can you commit to give in 2022? (suggested above) 

  • Are you on the path to 5%? Check this resource out to learn more about why we suggest supporting our beloved community with 5% of your household income. Five percent may seem like a lot to start, so we encourage you to calculate 5% then use that as a starting place to discern what is the right amount for you to pledge.

  • What method are you using for payment? Checks, monthly ACH withdrawals, and stock donations require the least amount of fees incurred by the church. If you would like to use a credit card to pay monthly, consider covering the 2.9% processing fee. 

  • In 2022 we are creating a special fund to help us hire a full-time Music Director. We must fully fund our operating budget first, but if the music legacy of Foothills Unitarian Church is your passion, consider giving to this special fund and helping us make this hire a reality!

2) Commit... To hold space for the future of our community with your resources. Your gifts build a legacy of courageous love, justice, spiritual grounding, intellectual curiosity, and more for generations to come.

  • Please submit your pledge by our December 1st deadline, so we can plan for the coming year and enter 2022 in a strong financial position. 

3) Cultivate… An internal culture of giving among engaged congregants

  • Sign up to reach out to 5-10 friends in the church who might need to hear more before submitting a pledge. There is space on the digital pledge card to volunteer to help with this as one of our Stewardship Partners. 
Make your 2022 pledge today!

Thanks for your partnership in sustaining and growing our impactful and loving community. We are so grateful for your investment!

In partnership,

The Foothills Team

Making Peace with What Haunts Us: Day 2

November 11, 2021 /

During her sermon on Sunday, Rev. Gretchen talked about how ghost stories can be a way to say “this happened, and it won’t really ever be over – even if we don’t talk about it. And that can be ok. Because we learn to live with it. We find ways to come to terms with it – even make something beautiful out of it.”

Sometimes when the ghosts come from our childhood, they can feel amorphous – maybe we can’t name them exactly. After all, most of our personal ghosts – and even many of our collective ones – aren’t neatly packaged into stories to be shared. So today, I invite you into a practice from trauma-trained somatic coach Abby Vernon.

Practice:

  1. Find a picture of yourself as a child.

  2. Take time to be with the image of younger you and allow any feelings and/or sensations to arise and flow through.

  3. Ask what your little self was thinking and /or feeling and what they may have needed.

  4. Offer your little self support and any care that comes up now, in this moment – perhaps they need a hug (hug yourself), they want to play (do something that helps you feel playful), or they may need to express their emotions (hold space for that expression – cry, scream, laugh).

If something specific arises during this exercise – a particular ghost – I invite you to name it. “This happened here. It may never really go away fully. That’s okay. I am worthy of happiness and peace. I can be both the child in the picture and the caring adult that child can lean on while being a work in progress.”

Kicking Off For the Future

November 9, 2021 /
Make your 2022 pledge today!

We are a church that meets the challenges of now by planting seeds for the future.

  • 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 to 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 we saw past the present moment of 2017 to envision a more possible future.
  • You can see this beginning now with our fiscal sponsorship of the BIPOC Alliance.
  • You can see this in our investment in Online Worship and Digital Ministry, our creative return to in-person services, our Wellspring Anti-Racism program…. 

We aren’t just providing tools to manage the present moment (which we are!); we are finding ways to be a part of creating the future. Which is why we’re thrilled to kick off For the Future, an initiative to ensure we can not only continue but also grow our programs, services, justice work, and more next year.

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!

In partnership,

Rev. Gretchen

Making Peace with What Haunts Us: Day 1

November 9, 2021 /

“Allow” by Danna Faulds

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado.  Dam a
stream and it will create a new
channel.  Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground.  The only
safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.

As humans, we often attempt to control our feelings – to micromanage our reactions to memories, seasons, songs, and more. Chris Germer and Kristin Neff who developed the idea of mindful self-compassion suggest that two steps are required before we can create space for our ghosts – before we can allow, which will in turn make room for the next steps.

Step One: Soften
We need to release our resistance to the feelings, memories, regrets, uncertainties that visit us. Drawing on Rumi, we need to let the guests that knock at our door in. We can’t come to terms with our ghosts if we slam the door in their faces.

Step Two: Soothe
We need to offer ourselves and our ghosts loving-kindness. We need to embrace that whatever we’re experiencing – any thought, feeling, haunting – is a normal part of being human.

Only after these two steps can we allow – create space for our ghosts – so that we can compassionately move through them or integrate them.

Practice
Over the next few days, I invite you to practice softening and soothing. When you are visited by a ghost, first, sit with it. Invite it in. Notice how it feels in your body. Next, practice soothing. Consciously remind yourself that what you are experiencing is a normal part of being human. Things cling to us. It can take years to move through our ghosts. We may have ghosts that come and go over time. And that’s okay. Tell yourself, “What I’m experiencing is a normal part of being human. I offer myself, including my ghosts, kindness and compassion.”

Living with Ghosts

November 5, 2021 /

The school board election this week – and the long months preceding it – reminded us again just how difficult it has become to talk to one another when we disagree. Even in our relatively small community, our public dialogue has become so polarized that we often forget the power of direct conversation. The power of deep listening even if, in the end, our opinions don’t change.
 
In watching the divisions in our broader national and Northern Colorado communities deepen, I’ve been reminded of just how grateful I am that our covenant at Foothills and as Unitarian Universalists invites us to practice something different. Not only the covenant you may be most familiar with – the one we say together every Sunday – but also our Covenant of Right Relations, which states;
 
We covenant to build a religious community guided by love and sustained by respectful relationships which work towards the greater and common good. Believing that building healthy relationships is a spiritual practice, we aim to listen appreciatively, speak with care, express gratitude, honor and value our differences, and assume good intentions. We will communicate directly, honestly and compassionately, particularly when we are in conflict, and we will not expect to always get our own way. When we feel hurt or when we hurt others, we will try to forgive, make amends and connect in a spirit of love. In celebration of the common purpose that unites us, we will do our best to abide by this covenant.

This covenant asks us to go back to the simple yet sometimes difficult practice of open and direct communication, and the now radical act of assuming good intentions.  It reminds me of Brene Brown’s suggestion that we should always assume that people are doing the best they can. Which doesn’t mean that every behavior is ok. Not at all.  But it does remind us that we are all human.  And being human is often really hard. Especially in the middle of this pandemic that just won’t end, and with job and money stress flying high, and issues of grief, and illness and struggle in so many people’s lives.  Maybe we’re all doing the best we can. Which brings us back to compassion.
 
This fundamental challenge of being human – with other humans – is basically our topic every Sunday! But it is the particular focus of our new series we are launching this week, Living with Ghosts. During this series, we’ll explore coming to terms with the stories and people and experiences that haunt us. 

We’ll consider the history that lives in every challenges we face today (i.e. how hard it is to talk to each other when we disagree!), and ways to exorcise shame and create space for something entirely new to take shape.  

We’ll explore beliefs that we’ve outgrown, and how to form new beliefs.

Just in time for the upcoming holiday season, we’ll consider our family stories that we’re holding on to, and the cultural myths we’ve inherited – and we’ll engage in practices of both ghost busting and ghost be-friending. 

In the same way that our covenant creates space to safely and lovingly face conflict with each other head-on, Living with Ghosts will offer space for each of us to contend with the memories, people, and choices that remain unresolved within us, and give us a chance to come to terms with the past so that we can better embrace the future.  Especially in these darkening days of winter, it’s a good time to lean in to the work of looking within and taking stock.  

Speaking of darkening days, don’t forget that daylight savings time ends this Sunday – enjoy what I’ve always called the Holy Autumnal Day of Refreshment 😉 

There are four ways to join us this Sunday. Visit foothillsuu.org/Sunday to save your spot. And check out our series spiritual practice below.
 
In partnership,
 
Rev. Gretchen

Make space for exploring, coming to terms, and making peace with the things (memories, people, choices, and more) that haunt you. Twice a week for four weeks, you will receive a practice or meditation via text or email. There isn’t a set outcome. It’s an invitation to explore acceptance, release, and integration.

Click here to sign up.
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