PWR Newsletter - May 2024

A soft spring snow graced our Pacific Western Region Assembly, held at the First Universalist Church of Denver on April 19th and 20th. The theme was “Threads that Connect, Stories that Inspire” and the event was true to the theme in so many ways. This was a multiplatform Regional Assembly with over 130 in person in Denver, and many more participating on-line. This was multi-site event, with the Mid-America Assembly happening the same weekend, with some shared on-line programs.

There was fun, with PWR scavenger hunt and a craft room! There was food, with the tastes of Colorado! There were great conversations between people from all over the region. Though most in-person attendees were from the mountain west, some traveled from as far as Washington and California. Many people commented that one of the great parts of this event was the chance to connect with people. Some of this happened at designated lunch tables with conversation topics like “justice committees” and “chalice lighters”.

Saturday afternoon featured a gathering sponsored by the PWR Transitions team. They gave an update on the ongoing work of regionalization and gave people a chance to share their hopes and dreams. One participant said, “I now have a better understanding about the past, present, and future of the Pacific Western Region.”

Our Regional Assembly offered workshops on Saturday morning. Topics ranged from Multigenerational Future to a networking session for newsletter editors, to the story of our Boulder Valley congregation collecting 140 weapons to be turned into garden tools. Attendance was high at our workshop on Antiracism and Multiculturalism in our congregations. There was also a very moving worship service from the Revs. Summer Albayati and Sarah Gibb Millspaugh addressing the pain and fear we face in these difficult times of war and dehumanization. This service featured Rev. Summer’s gift of Islamic drumming as well as hanging flags of our prayers outside the church. It was described as “powerful and healing”.

The high point of the weekend for so many who participated was our keynote address on Friday evening. Our own UUA President Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt joined in dialog with Rev. Dr. Karen Georgia Thompson, the President and General Minister of the United Church of Christ. These two amazing women sat together on the stage in Denver and talked about the future of liberal religion and the quest for justice. We were urged to speak out loud about the theology that grounds our work for liberation. A Regional Assembly participant put in well when they said, “their call to us to be prophetic people practicing theology in the public square was inspiring.” Many came away not only inspired by their words, but by the example of leaders from two liberal faiths working together.

This amazing keynote address will be available on LeaderLab for all congregations to use and watch. You can watch this keynote today.

Tuesday, May 7
12-1:30 ET / 11-12:30 CT / 10-11:30 MT / 9-10:30 PT
Resonance: A communal exploration of what’s alive in UU faith formation
Religious Education Professionals (REPs) are invited to join us on Tuesday, May 7th for a collective deep listening experience called Acoustic Resonance. Here we will share stories about what is alive, vital, or promising in our work in congregations.

This Resonance exercise is both a spiritual practice and organizing strategy developed by Movimiento Cosecha (www.lahuelga.com), inspired by the work of Paulo Freire, where storytelling and deep listening combine to establish deeper connections -- connections upon which movement building can take place. Let's build something together!

Religious Education Professionals (REPs) are warmly welcomed into this quarterly collegial gathering hosted by your UUA’s Faith Development Co-Lab, a joint working group of the Lifespan Faith Engagement and Congregational Life offices.

Registration is open.

Register Your Congregation Now! Reimagine Together: From An Extractive Age to a New Era - The UU Climate Justice Revival, September 28-29.

Join with hundreds of sibling congregations across the continent for our national UU Climate Revival, offering inspiring collective worship, creative learning, and new frameworks at the intersection of climate and justice. The UU Climate Revival will equip UU congregations to enter into a new era of climate action—one that intentionally and faithfully breaks down silos and cultivates relationships that lead to flourishing collaborations that transform our congregations through climate justice. Open to every UU congregation of every size and budget, we will provide facilitation toolkits, training, music, projects, coordinated justice action and more!

UUA President Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt invites all Unitarian Universalists to our first-ever UU Climate Justice Revival in this short video. Because of her training as an environmental ethicist, this work - this calling for climate justice - is central to President Betancourt's hopes and dreams for all Unitarian Universalists.

Learn more and sign your congregation up to participate at the event page.

The work of spiritual community is complicated in the 21st century. The need for faithful leadership that is grounded and resilient is imperative. This is all the more true for leaders within our communities and congregations who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPoC). All too aware of this need, Congregational Life is excited to explore and co-create a network with congregational leaders that support them in this time in emergent ways through Taproot: A National BIPOC Space. BIPoC Leaders rooted in the Unitarian Universalist congregations are invited to take part in this monthly, virtual gathering. Second Thursday of the month. The next gathering of the year will be Thursday, May 9th at 8p ET/7p CT/6p MT/5p PT. Details and registration.

UPLIFT Transgender/Nonbinary+ Pastoral Small Group

May 10 at 5pm PT / 8pm ET

What is pastoral care, exactly? Pastoral care is support with navigating life—big and small things, joys and hardships and all those mixed together. It’s not therapy, but a way for us to be in community together, supporting each other. This is a space to share the hard stuff and to hold the hard stuff that others are navigating in their lives. It's a supportive, judgment-free place to connect with other trans/nonbinary+ people. This year, the pastoral space is for adults only. If you’re a child or a youth and you’d like to have a space to talk about the hard stuff, let us know by registering for the pastoral space and putting a note in the registration form comments. Register Here.

Faithful Grounding

May 23 at 4:30pm PT / 7:30pm ET

Join our Side with Love Fun & Spiritual Nourishment Squad for an hour of spiritual sustenance and grounding with others organizing on the side of love. Come drink in the music, meditation, play, and prayer. We end with a Connection Cafe for those who wish to talk together. Show up as you are, whatever is in your heart, and with your camera on or off as you need. This gathering happens monthly on the 4th Thursday of the month at 4:30 PT, 5:30 MT, 6:30 CT, 7:30 ET. Register Here

UPLIFT Transgender/Nonbinary+ Monthly Gathering

May 28 at 5pm PT / 8pm ET

Join the UPLIFT monthly gatherings for trans, nonbinary, and other not-entirely-or-at-all-cis UUs and friends of UUism. Join us to connect with other trans/nonbinary+ UUs and co-create support and community across our faith. All you need to bring is yourself (and other trans/nonbinary friends, if you’d like)! These gatherings are a cozy community space where we connect with each other with games and breakout groups, share ideas and stories on all kinds of topics, listen to music and poetry (often by trans/nonbinary+ creators), and much more! This is a drop-in space, where folks can come and go as it works best for them, and where people can join us at any time. Register Here.

The Midwest Unitarian Universalist Conference has endowed funds, established in the early 1900s, to offer financial support to elderly Unitarian Universalists, both lay persons and retired ministers and their partners in the UUA MidAmerica Region and Mountain Desert District of the Pacific Western Region. Funds have been used to assist in the purchase of hearing aids, mobility devices, and medical expenses. More than $3,000,000 has been distributed since the Conference was formed.

In 2018, the Midwest Unitarian Universalist Conference also established a Munroe Husbands Grant fund to assist Lay-led congregations in the MidAmerica Region and Mountain Desert District of the Pacific Western Region. These funds have been used for leadership development, procurement of technical equipment needed for multi-platform meetings and services, attendance at conferences and General Assembly, and religious education program development. Since its inception, more than $21,000 has been distributed in support of Lay-led congregations.

For more information visit our website.

Love at the Center: Unitarian Universalist Theologies. Available as an e-book now!

Unitarian Universalists as a progressive religious community hold a humbling expectation to periodically re-evaluate the freely chosen covenant that holds us together. While this work impacts the bylaws that define our governance structures, it also gives life to the values we express in common cause. We do this work to live into the Unitarian Universalism of the future.

In response to the Article II Study Commission and the more than 10,000 Unitarian Universalists who answered complex questions about the values that guide their faithful living, it is clear that the value most describe as central to their faith, to their living, and to the mission of their congregations is love itself. We are a people guided by, and centered in, our engagement with all that love requires.

Our pressing task now is to ask ourselves and each other how this understanding calls us forward, individually and collectively. We may agree that love is central, but what
does that mean to us and what does it require of us? It is in that spirit that we asked more than two dozen leaders in our movement the question of what it means to put
love at the center of our faith.

In these pages, you’ll find personal testimony to love’s power, reminders of the centrality of love throughout the long histories of Universalism and Unitarianism, and theologies of love drawn from many different expressions of Unitarian Universalism—from the natural world to the justice rally, to a loved one’s deathbed, to the quiet moment before a worship service begins. May Love at the Center serve as an invitation to deepen your own understanding and practices of love.

Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt is the tenth president of the Unitarian Universalist Association. She was elected in June 2023. Rev. Dr. Betancourt’s twenty-year ministry has included serving as a parish minister, seminary professor, scholar and environmental ethicist, and public theologian.

Unsubscribe | Manage your UUA subscriptions

Pacific Western Region - UUA
P.O. Box 567
Brighton, CO 80601
United States