Author: Rev. Sean Neil-Barron (Page 9 of 10)

From Foothills Member Anne Fisher

I have been a volunteer for Homeless Gear for a little more than 4 years.  I volunteer for two of their programs — Street Outreach and the One Village One Family program.   When I first started coming to Foothills 2 years ago, I quickly became engaged as the Homeless Gear Village Liaison to Foothills.  As many of you know, our Villages have now accompanied seven adults and 24 children into stable housing.  I have served on three Village, two with Foothills.  I hope some of you will consider joining a Village this year.

Today, I would like to share some of my experiences with the Street Outreach program.  You may be less aware that there are three of us from Foothills that go out once a month.  Our goal is three-fold:

• to build relationships – providing hope and companionship
• to deliver life-sustaining supplies – food, warm clothing, blankets and sleeping bags in the dead of winter, and tarps and rainwear in the pouring rain
• to connect the homeless to available resources – making referrals to other services that are available in our community

Not long ago, I met a young woman who was living out of her car.  When I talked to her, I learned that, until recently, she had been living with her abusive father.  She had decided she had had enough.  Because she had nowhere to go, she is now homeless.

As we talked, I sensed her strength.  Obviously, she had the strength to move out of an abusive home.  I asked her if she had a job – many of the people we meet do work, but they cannot afford housing based on their low wages.

She did not have a job, but said she wanted to get one.  I referred her to the Homeless Gear Hand Up program that successfully placed 193 people into jobs last year and 39 so far this year.

On another cold night, we met a woman and her husband, complete with a stereotypic shopping cart.  In the cart were two large black bags that I assumed were their life’s belongings.  She was dressed in a skirt and blouse, and a lightweight sweater – not much clothing for the anticipated 14 degree temperatures that night.

It turned out that those two black bags were indeed her prized belongings – they were her two children, 5 & 6 years, who were fast asleep in the cart.  We gave them food, warm jackets, hygiene products, and talked. We got them connected with the Murphy Center for Hope where we can hope they get case management and other services to help them move on.  Maybe, one day, they will become a candidate for the One Village One Family program.

What I have learned is that the homeless are often the victims of circumstances – they have been laid off from a job or are veterans from Viet Nam, Iraq, or Afghanistan who now suffer from PTSD.  But ultimately, the people we meet are people like you and I.  They ask for relatively little.  They are vulnerable, often alone, and I am constantly overwhelmed by how incredibly grateful they are for little we can offer.  I also know that by reaching out with courageous love and building these relationships with people experiencing homelessness, I have been transformed.

Rev. Sean Neil-Barron

Rev. Sean is Foothills Acting Senior Minister while Rev. Gretchen is on Sabbatical.
Responsible for Worship, Justice Ministries, Faith Formation Strategies and sits on Foothills Executive Leadership Team with Director of Finances and Operations Katie Watkins.

Sean was born on Treaty 7 land in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and comes to Foothills after four years in New England where he completed seminary at Harvard Divinity School where he studied alongside future imams, rabbis, justice activists, and other Unitarian Universalists. Sean is a self-proclaimed nerd — particularly about history, current politics, science, and Star Wars. Outside of ministry you will find Sean hiking or cooking up a storm with his partner Charles, watching his son’s basketball games, all under the watchful eye of their dog Dollie.

by Jane Everham and Anne Fisher

The church’s seventh OVOF family will end participation in the mentoring portion of the OVOF program soon.  This is always a bittersweet time for the Village – saying, “Good-bye.” This single mom and two teen girls are now securely housed in an apartment in Loveland. And they are in the process of qualifying for a Habitat for Humanity house. The mom has paid off many bills and has a plan for being out of debt very soon. She is eager to start a savings account, an act that is both symbolically and literally important to our OVOF families.

Between 2015 and December 2016, Foothills congregants formed seven Villages, and those Villages mentored seven adults and 24 children into stable and secure housing. Our Village members have supported a family for at least 6 months, serving as mentors, advocates, and sources of moral support – often their greatest need.

Many of our OVOF Village members at Foothills have been on sabbatical for a while now. Who is ready to accompany a new family?  Are you new to the congregation?  OVOF may be your path for engaging more deeply in our efforts to reach out with Courageous Love. There are families available and Foothills mentors have had an incredible impact on our community.

What we do:  Each Village is made up of four to six FUC congregants who agree to accompany and support a homeless family for 6 months.  The Village meets with the family once a month for a couple of hours each time. The Village Lead agrees to contact the family once a week. The church has raised funds (up to $1500) that can be applied for the Family’s initial down payment on rent – that alone can make a difference between remaining homeless or being able to move into stable housing. Then our job is to guide them onto a path of independence and self-sufficiency. Sometimes that includes sharing information about budgeting or accessing community resources, but more than anything, we often “just listen.”  In my experience with the two families I have worked, both have been very grateful for all we do for them AND they always comment how much it means to them that we meet with them and give them the opportunity to problem solve – and vent.

Stay tuned for new OVOF updates:  Homeless Gear is also in the process of expanding the OVOF program to include support for individuals and families that are coming out of Domestic Violent situations.  They will be partnering with Crossroads Safe House and taking referrals directly out of their 8-week shelter program to make the transitioning process smoother and more robust.  Once they exit the program at Crossroads, they will be paired with a Village consisting of two to three volunteers that would help them with finding housing and give them continued support throughout the following 6 months of the program.

If you are interested in signing up again or for the first time, contact Gretchen.

Rev. Sean Neil-Barron

Rev. Sean is Foothills Acting Senior Minister while Rev. Gretchen is on Sabbatical.
Responsible for Worship, Justice Ministries, Faith Formation Strategies and sits on Foothills Executive Leadership Team with Director of Finances and Operations Katie Watkins.

Sean was born on Treaty 7 land in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and comes to Foothills after four years in New England where he completed seminary at Harvard Divinity School where he studied alongside future imams, rabbis, justice activists, and other Unitarian Universalists. Sean is a self-proclaimed nerd — particularly about history, current politics, science, and Star Wars. Outside of ministry you will find Sean hiking or cooking up a storm with his partner Charles, watching his son’s basketball games, all under the watchful eye of their dog Dollie.

Patricia Miller speaking at Foothills on Jan. 22nd

My name is Patricia Miller and I am an immigrant. I was born in El Salvador and immigrated to Colorado during my country’s civil war. As a middle class family, we owned a house, had a bank account, and had a good job that we could present as evidence that we were worthy of a US immigration visa. 11 million other immigrants who came here in search of a better life did not have the same financial advantages. But the violence, poverty and hopelessness of their situations forced them to immigrate too. In the words of Warsan Shire, “no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.”

When Trump opened his presidential campaign by accusing Mexicans of being rapists and criminals, he tapped into a widely shared sentiment in our society. After he was elected president, I felt such frustration that I was compelled to do two things: attend a like-minded place of worship, and become an activist for good.
While the church I attended was ignoring politics altogether, Foothills Unitarian Church posted those beautiful signs out front; among them, “We love our Immigrant Neighbors.” Here I found people who were grieving the presidential election and all its divisiveness just as fiercely as I was. I became determined to pass that love forward.
At that same time, a local grassroots organization named Fuerza Latina, or Latin Taskforce, organized an Immigrant Support Community meeting. I felt called to this group for many reasons; the main one being that when people don’t have rights, they are easily and frequently exploited and they struggle to pull themselves out of poverty.
Undocumented immigrants are a net positive for public budgets – they contribute more to the system than they take out. But the value of immigration cannot be reduced to a spreadsheet. Immigrants do not simply make America better off. We make America better – through our entrepreneurial spirit, our low incarceration rates, our culture, and our strong family values we enrich our communities.
Through fact-based sharing of information, Fuerza Latina aims to build support for undocumented immigrants in our community. We want to destroy the myths and prejudices that have been burned into our collective consciousness.
Thank you so much for supporting the work of Fuerza Latina so we can build a more resilient and inclusive community. And thank you for opening your arms and your church to this immigrant. I light our chalice in gratitude and in the hope that we can continue to work together to welcome everyone and to seek for justice for all.

Want to get involved?

The Fort Collins’ Immigrant Advocacy Group Fuerza Latina has been organizing powerfully in the past few weeks, creating what they are calling This is Our Home, a network of grassroots committees working on everything from addressing hate speech and bullying in our community to working with the police and the city.  Join one of these committees and help our community be the place we want it to be. Contact Cheryl Distaso. Within our congregation, we are working to hold a workshop with the Interfaith Community about what it means to be Sanctuary Congregations, and to work together on providing safety for immigrants in our community as many other congregations have done over time.  If you’d like to be involved in this effort, contact Anne Hall.

Rev. Sean Neil-Barron

Rev. Sean is Foothills Acting Senior Minister while Rev. Gretchen is on Sabbatical.
Responsible for Worship, Justice Ministries, Faith Formation Strategies and sits on Foothills Executive Leadership Team with Director of Finances and Operations Katie Watkins.

Sean was born on Treaty 7 land in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and comes to Foothills after four years in New England where he completed seminary at Harvard Divinity School where he studied alongside future imams, rabbis, justice activists, and other Unitarian Universalists. Sean is a self-proclaimed nerd — particularly about history, current politics, science, and Star Wars. Outside of ministry you will find Sean hiking or cooking up a storm with his partner Charles, watching his son’s basketball games, all under the watchful eye of their dog Dollie.

“Returning to a well-loved story that gives me strength”

Chalice Lighting, Nov 20, 2016

Scott Denning

For the past 10 years, I have told the story of the Three S’s of Climate Change: Simple. Serious. Solvable.

The Three S’s is a story about how the world really works that connects directly to people’s lives. There’s no way to sugar-coat the threat of climate change: We do have to talk about that middle S. Instead of “Serious,” you might call it “Scary.”

It’s very important to never stop at the second S! The story of the two S’s is an unmitigated tragedy, like ending The Lord of the Rings with the capture of Frodo in Mordor at the end of The Two Towers. The two S’s is a story of despair and hopelessness. It sucks the joy out of life and drains us of any motivation to do anything about climate change.

By contrast, the three S’s is a story of hope and a call to action.

Climate Change is Simple: We know that adding CO2 to the air warms the climate for precisely the same reason that day is warmer than night, summer is warmer than winter, and Phoenix is warmer than Fargo. Heat in minus heat out equals change of heat. All the Earth’s heat comes from the Sun, but if “heat in” was the whole story the Earth would just get hotter and hotter until it melted and vaporized! Heat out is IR radiation that passes through the atmosphere. We’ve known since Abraham Lincoln was president that CO2 absorbs IR radiation, so it slows down the heat out. When the Sun adds more heat to the Earth than it can emit through the CO2-rich air, it warms up.

Climate Change is Serious: CO2 is not like the Denver brown cloud of smog. Smog hurts our lungs because it’s chemically reactive. CO2 is chemically inert in the air. It’s thermodynamically spent, the ashes of the Earth’s living carbon cycle. Some of it will remain in the atmosphere for many thousands of years after we stop burning coal, oil, and gas. Without very strong international policy to rapidly convert the entire world economy system to carbon-free energy, we will add as much heat to the World in the next two human generations as was added over 10,000 years to end the last Ice Age. The world would be transformed as much as deglaciation, but 100 times as fast. That’s way too fast for ecosystems to adapt. We’d leave our descendants with a ruined world of mass extinctions, droughts, and floods. All the coastal cities in the world would be lost to rising seas, displacing half of humanity. And the misery would last for millennia. Not just the 7 billion people currently on Earth would suffer, but also hundreds of generations yet to be born.

Thank God Climate Change is Solvable! We know exactly what to do to avoid catastrophe. We have to stop setting fossils on fire! From an engineering point of view, this is a solved problem. We have a wide range of non-carbon alternatives ready to deploy that can provide abundant energy to both the developed and developing world, enabling a bright future. It will be expensive, but no more so than the incredible accomplishments of our ancestors: indoor plumbing, rural electrification, interstate highways, the Internet.

All that’s lacking is political will. And there’s the rub.

I was personally devastated by the results of the election, and have watched in horror as new Cabinet posts are filled with zealots who propose to tear up everything we’ve accomplished through 20 years of hard work and delicate diplomacy.

I realize that my story has left me deeply vulnerable. Will we now lose that critical third S?

To move forward into the future, I need faith. The story of the Three S’s is ultimately a story of moral courage.

It’s wrong to wreck the world.

We must pull together with our children and grandchildren and with everyone around the world, to build a sustainable future. A song from my youth said, “to sing the blues, you’ve got to live the blues and carry on.” Remember the refrain? “Rejoice! Rejoice! We have no choice, but to carry on.”

I light the chalice this morning to honor that sacred flame in the darkness that is our deep and abiding faith in the goodness and courage of people everywhere.

Rev. Sean Neil-Barron

Rev. Sean is Foothills Acting Senior Minister while Rev. Gretchen is on Sabbatical.
Responsible for Worship, Justice Ministries, Faith Formation Strategies and sits on Foothills Executive Leadership Team with Director of Finances and Operations Katie Watkins.

Sean was born on Treaty 7 land in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and comes to Foothills after four years in New England where he completed seminary at Harvard Divinity School where he studied alongside future imams, rabbis, justice activists, and other Unitarian Universalists. Sean is a self-proclaimed nerd — particularly about history, current politics, science, and Star Wars. Outside of ministry you will find Sean hiking or cooking up a storm with his partner Charles, watching his son’s basketball games, all under the watchful eye of their dog Dollie.

On Sunday afternoon, I  spent a gorgeous fall day at our first Food Bank @ Foothills.

Everyone unleashed courageous love by showing up and BEING there!

Rev. Sean Neil-Barron

Rev. Sean is Foothills Acting Senior Minister while Rev. Gretchen is on Sabbatical.
Responsible for Worship, Justice Ministries, Faith Formation Strategies and sits on Foothills Executive Leadership Team with Director of Finances and Operations Katie Watkins.

Sean was born on Treaty 7 land in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and comes to Foothills after four years in New England where he completed seminary at Harvard Divinity School where he studied alongside future imams, rabbis, justice activists, and other Unitarian Universalists. Sean is a self-proclaimed nerd — particularly about history, current politics, science, and Star Wars. Outside of ministry you will find Sean hiking or cooking up a storm with his partner Charles, watching his son’s basketball games, all under the watchful eye of their dog Dollie.