The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Santa Fe

News and Events

Sunday Services

Religious Education classes for children and youth run concurrently with the 11:30 service through May 25. Please note that as of May 4, nursery care will be available only during the 11:30 service. Religious Education classes end on May 25 with an all-ages art Sunday.

On June 1 our summer schedule begins with one service at 10:00 a.m. Nursery care and activities for preschool through elementary-age children will run concurrently with that service throughout the summer.

Tags: Worship and Music Lifespan Religious Education

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Important Notice to All UUCSF Members

Please put a notation in the memo line of your check or contribution if it is toward your pledge. Otherwise, please indicate in the memo line exactly what it is for. Pledge monies are applied to any outstanding balance you may have and then to your 2008-09 pledge. We thank you for your help in this matter as we work to do the financial accounting for UUCSF.

Kathy Mannick

Tags: Congregational Care Administration

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Four Committees Urgently Need Your Help

Caring Committee

Millie Dew and I have acted as co-chairs of the Caring Committee for more than three years. In the spirit of “sharing the care,” we would like other members to step forward and take over the chairmanship.

Please call us if you would like more information on the workings of the committee.

Berta Hanna, Millie Dew
Chair, Caring Committee

Grounds Committee

Last October we sent out the call for a new chair for the Grounds Committee. Spring has come, and now we absolutely must activate the Grounds Committee. We have lots of volunteers for work parties, and Joan Farnum has volunteered to maintain the playground area. But we need a chair to organize activities and particularly to see to maintenance of the courtyard. The committee has a budget of $300 for supplies.

Please email or call me with your offer to chair this committee. Our grounds await TLC!

Karolyn Eisenstein
Trustee, Board of Trustees

Social Affairs Committee & Fund Raising Committee

The Board of Trustees is asking for volunteers for the Social Affairs Committee and the Fund Raising Committee. The Social Affairs Committee helps out by organizing food and refreshments when we have special social functions. The Fund Raising committee sponsors special events that raise money for the congregation. Please email or call me if you are willing to serve on either of these committees.

Gene Farnum
Trustee, Board of Trustees

Tags: Congregational Care Administration

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Forum News, Sunday, May 11, 8:30 a.m.

Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, will discuss the unprecedented crises that threaten all of humanity and much of the life around us. These crises, and American global power in decline, open new political and moral possibilities. Redirection of policies is critical and tied to the issues of “national security” and nuclear “deterrence.” Come and join this important discussion.

Laura Clarke
Chair, Sunday Forum

Tags: Lifespan Religious Education Community Outreach

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Congregational Council Meeting, Saturday, May 17, 9:00 a.m.

The next Congregational Council meeting of committee chairs and program conveners is scheduled in Fellowship Hall on Saturday, May 17. Come for coffee at 8:45; the meeting will run from 9:00 to noon. Although the bylaws call for a minimum of two meetings of the council per year, this committed and energetic group has elected to meet five times this year.

Come prepared to review goals accomplished this past congregational year and look ahead at next year. We’ll also discuss the final budget numbers voted for programs in the semi-annual congregational meeting on April 20.

Please call me regarding any questions or suggestions for the council work.

Angela Merkert
Vice President, Board of Trustees

Tags: Congregational Care Administration

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Lost and Found

A box labeled “Lost and Found” has been placed on the floor directly outside of the UUCSF office to have a central place for lost and found items. Should you find any articles, e.g., glasses, sweaters, or other things that have been left in the building, please deposit them in the box. Conversely, if you think you may have left an item in the building, please search the box!

Bev Brunson

Tags: Congregational Care Administration

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RE Youth News

On April 27 a meeting of junior and senior high youth and their parents was held in Fellowship Hall. We enjoyed a terrific potluck and then began making plans for resuming Youth Nights and organizing a Youth Adult Committee. We also thanked Fred Bowman for his past two years as our paid Youth Program Coordinator. Despite the fact that there is not money in the 2008-2009 budget to pay Fred, he has offered to continue organizing campouts and social justice trips when he is able. UUCSF is extremely fortunate to have Fred, who is so dedicated to our youth.

The first Youth Night, a movie night, was planned for May 4. The second is on Sunday, May 18, from 5:30 to 8:30, when there will be a game night (including badminton) and a taco dinner. At this meeting, plans will be discussed for this summer’s youth nights, camping trips, and other activities. Any youth who would like to participate in future youth group plans is welcome to attend. Two adults, including parent volunteers will be “on duty” each week.

Alice Springer, DRE

Tags: Congregational Care Lifespan Religious Education

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Unitarian Universalist Women’s Federation, Saturday, May 17, 11:30: Psychiatrist Eliza Schmid: As We Age…The Changing Faces of Depression

Eliza Schmid is a “Renaissance” woman. With a medical career—first in pathology, then in psychiatry—and now a full-time painter, Dr. Schmid exemplifies the essence of the phrase “living life to the full.” She hikes, she leads German conversation groups here at UUCSF, and shortly she will be flying to Berlin for the opening of an art exhibition where her works will be featured.

Beginning her medical studies in her home country of Austria, Eliza Schmid studied to become a physician. Prior to that, during her first marriage, she had three children. In 1971 she received her M.D. degree at the University of Vienna and remained in that city for her internship and residency in pathology.

By 1976 she had received a fellowship to Stanford University in anatomic pathology. After one year, she moved to Los Angeles where she worked as a pathologist at Cedars Sinai Hospital. It was there that she made a drastic change.

As Dr. Schmid says, “My guardian angel suggested to me that in America I could actually do what I had always wanted to do, which was psychiatry.” By 1981 she completed her new training at the University of California and became board certified in psychiatry. “Between 1981 and 2002, when I moved to Santa Fe,” she says, “I never worked in private practice.” Rather, she chose to work in the state hospital, the county hospital in L.A., walk-in clinics, and the California prison system. She received additional training in neuropsychiatry, which she says enabled her to treat “patients with chronic neurological problems who often end up in psychiatry.”

We are honored that she has agreed to speak to us on a topic that is near to her heart, depression. Everyone has been affected by this phenomenon, either personally or through a friend or family member. And its reach seems to be ever-widening.

Eliza Schmid loves to paint and in the last three years has had art shows somewhere most every month. She is presently showing at the Verb Gallery in Albuquerque.

We know Dr. Schmid will have something of value to share with each of us! We look forward to having you join us on May 17. For reservations, sign up on the clipboard in the foyer, call Juniper Stein at 986-1722, or e-mail her. Lunch is $6.00 for members of UUWF, $8.00 for nonmembers. Yearly membership dues are $30.00.

Pat Kutay, Karen Armitage & Dona Durham
Co-Chairs, Program Committee

Tags: Congregational Care Community Outreach

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From Your Community Minister: An Occasion for Guilt and Celebration: Mother’s Day

I yearn for Mother’s Day messages. Yet when they come, I feel guilty and unable to take the words to heart. Was I always there? No. I shudder to realize the difference between what I know now and what I knew then, when I was too young for awesome responsibility; too naïve to understand child development or to finesse nurture.

I am grateful to D.W. Winnicott, a child psychiatrist and object relations theorist of the British psychoanalytic community, for carefully observing mothers who came to him for help. He talked about ordinary good enough mothering. He stressed that it’s best if mothers don’t strive for perfection.

He says when mothers attune to their babies, they typically are what their children need, mistakes and frustrations included. Ordinary mothers are good enough.

I think I saw what he meant one Sunday. While listening to a sermon, I became distracted by a mother and her little girl, about 8 months old. The more distressed the baby became, the more engrossed I became. First the mother bought some time by smiling and winking, and the baby watched mother’s face and smiled back.

After half a minute the baby fussed, so mother stuck her tongue between her lips and made a tiny “th, th, th,” sound. Baby moved her tongue and lips trying to copy mom. She spit up and mom yanked a cloth from the diaper bag pocket. When baby squirmed some more, mother looked exasperated, but tapped her finger on her mouth saying, “shhhhhhhhhh.” Then she tapped her finger on baby’s mouth and baby gurgled some quiet sounds and reached toward mom’s mouth. Mom lifted her higher on her lap and let baby put her finger over mother’s mouth while mother said, “shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

After some more tearful peeps, mother tried another position. Baby looked over her shoulder while she patted her back. In the meantime she untangled a blanket around baby’s foot. Then she spread the blanket on the chair next to her and fetched a cloth book and laid baby on her back so she could twist and toss the book, and then find her feet.

Shortly after that, baby sounded distressed and mother rubbed her tummy and pretended to tickle her just enough to change a sour face into a little giggle. Then mother gently bounced her baby on her knee and held her around the waist so baby’s hands were free. Baby waved them in a clapping motion. Mother smiled while she quietly cadenced, “Ah bub bub bub bub bub bub” and baby mimicked back, “Ah bub bub bub bub bub bub” with a slobbery smile so big it made me smile too.

I enjoyed watching that ordinary mother doing what she could. I don’t remember those intricate relational moments with my children. It’s the big events and often my most glaring mistakes that stare me in the face. I recall a tender heart and doing what I could, as limited as that was.

Leona Stucky-Abbott
Associated Community Minister

Tags: From-the-Ministers Congregational Care

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New Books in Our Library: Teacher Man; Nothing but Trouble; Plato and a Platypus Walk Into A Bar

Teacher Man by Frank McCourt. We’ve all read Angela’s Ashes, the prize-winning account of McCourt’s childhood in Limerick, Ireland. This book follows him through his 30-year teaching career in New York City schools and how this career formed his second career as a writer.

McCourt relates with high wit and sharp tongue his very unconventional teaching methods that leave a lasting impression on his pupils. (One assignment is to write “An Excuse Note from Adam or Eve to God.”)

Days in the classroom and evenings spent reading, writing, and drinking with other aspiring writers led McCourt to develop his ability to tell a great story as he works to gain the affection and respect of unruly adolescents. “The same dark humor, lyric voice, and gift for dialogue are apparent here…The teaching profession’s loss is the reading public’s gain, entirely.” Kirkus Reviews.

Nothing but Trouble by Michael McGarrity. Santa Fe Police Chief Kevin Kerney is asked by his old boyhood friend, now a professional rodeo rider, to serve as a technical advisor on a contemporary Western movie to be filmed along the Mexican border. Kerney agrees and shortly after beginning the job finds a dead man on a road near an isolated border crossing.

Thus the plot is set for the tenth Police Chief Kevin Kerney novel and all the assorted dangers, intrigues, and adventures told in the fast-paced and riveting manner that a McGarrity novel provides. “Michael McGarrity gets better and better. How good it is to follow a detective created by a man who has been there and done that.” Tony Hillerman.

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into A Bar…Understanding Philosophy through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein. Harvard philosophy majors Cathcart and Klein take us on a wonderful, dizzying ride through western philosophy loaded with limericks, one-liners, and cartoons. This is not your average textbook! Highly recommended by UUCSF member Bobbie Adelman.

Cynthia Josephs
for the Library Committee

Tags: Lifespan Religious Education Congregational Care

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Report on Green Transport Sunday

Kermit the Frog notwithstanding, it seems to be getting easier to be green, judging from the high participation in our Green Transport Sunday celebration of Earth Day on April 20. We had 110 participants, 63% of congregants attending that morning. The most popular modes of transportation were carpooling, walking, bicycling, and “hybriding.” Green Transport Sunday is now an annual event. Each year we’ll try to raise the stakes a little (we hope to achieve 100% participation) and add new challenges.

If you have friends who attend other congregations, churches, or temples, please try to recruit them to organize some kind of green event in their organization. Though it is only a token in terms of the immensity of the change required, the act of translating intention into reality actually does change behavior (it has changed mine). We all know that our self-indulgent life styles will have to be modified. Ours is a small effort, but we believe it is worth doing.

Thanks to all of you who so cheerfully participated and got into the spirit of the event. Special thanks to all of you who worked to make the day a success:

• Violeta and Darrell Anderson
• Ralph Bruening
• June Jameson
• Trish Judd
• Pauline and Bob Lagacé
• Ann Morgan
• Lynn and Don Roberts
• Barbara Stein
• Doug Stewart
• David, Emma, and Samuel Thompson
• Del Wilkinson and Schubert

Onward! Let’s keep plugging away at reducing our carbon footprint. And let’s do whatever we can to elect leaders who will actually take on this issue, the most urgent challenge of our time.

Trish Judd
for the GTS Committee

Tags: Community Outreach Congregational Care

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Covenant Corner: Saturday, May 10

The next meeting of the Covenant Group Facilitators’ Steering Committee will be held in the UUCSF Library on Saturday, May 10, at 9:00 a.m., with coffee and assembly at 8:45.

The Steering Committee has invited all known past facilitators to the meeting to convey their successful experiences as well as problems they encountered. If you are a former facilitator and would like to share your experiences, please come to the meeting and RSVP to Roberta Shaw at 982-9674, extension 15.

Maurice Webster

Tags: Congregational Care Worship and Music

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Looking for Building Keys

I am trying to update our Key Log, which is very out of date. Please let me know the number of keys you have and the ID# on the key. If you no longer need your key, please turn it in at the office. I’d appreciate an email or call at 982-9674, extension 14. Thanks.

Bev Brunson
Building Coordinator

Tags: Congregational Care Administration

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Call for Cooperation

As most of us know, our administrator, Pat Waganaar, has not been well in recent weeks. Pat is now on a short-term disability leave of absence. We offer warm wishes for her speedy recovery as she completes diagnosis, healing, and rest.

A team of volunteers, the UUCSF Task Force for Administration, has been assembled to handle essential administrative duties during her absence. A volunteer will be in the office to answer phones and act as receptionist from 9:00-noon weekdays, and several task force volunteers will frequent the office as they learn and do other jobs. Staff members Alice Springer and Roberta Shaw will have increased duties as well.

Additionally, Bev Brunson, Personnel Committee Chair, will act, per our policy manual, as Staff Supervisor during Reverend Furrer’s sabbatical, and as Building Use and Rental Coordinator for an unknown period of time.

We ask that you bear with and support our endeavors with particular patience and consideration during this unique period. Let’s make this a time we will all remember as one of cohesion and cooperation for us, and successful recovery for Pat.

George Weston
President, Board of Trustees

Tags: Congregational Care Administration

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From the Minister

On May 4 I commence my sabbatical. The word sabbatical has the same root as Sabbath — and refers to the six on/one off cycle of rest and renewal proposed in Exodus and Leviticus as a way to keep life in balance.

My personal plan has four components: physical, spiritual, mental, and social. I hope to get in better shape physically by taking Iris, our dog, on longer daily walks. I hope to engage more spiritually by going camping and by also signing up for some retreats. The mental dimension, for me, will include studying thriving anti-racist, anti-oppression, multicultural congregations both within and beyond the UUA. The social dimension includes my hope that Deb Holder and I will be able to visit our daughter Meredith in her new home in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

A successful sabbatical, however, is only half about the minister; congregational renewal is equally important. I feel confident that the strategies congregational leaders and I have put in place over the last twelve months will help insure just that. Our Worship Associates, now numbering approximately fifteen, will be leading Sunday services. They are a cohesive, creative group who are growing in their passion and feel for designing excellent worship. We are also putting together a Pastoral Associates Team, a strong group of UUCSF members with some professional training in one of the helping professions, who will be available for pastoral care and attention throughout my absence. We also plan to make the Pastoral Associates a permanent ministry of this congregation, formally commissioned sometime next fall.

Properly designed, sabbaticals are a good thing all around: everybody is renewed and refreshed and rejuvenated. Let us do what we can to make it so!

Yours in faith,
Stephen

Tags: From-the-Ministers Congregational Care

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Stewardship Canvass

We’re celebrating! We made our final report to the Board of Trustees last week, and as of April 14, our total is a bit higher, as last-minute pledges have come in.

The total amount received in our 2008 canvass is $309,130. This is by far the largest amount ever contributed in an annual canvass.

We are both delighted and thankful. We are thankful to each and every pledger. We are thankful to all of you who hosted pledge events, who attended these events, and who helped us with phone calls and word-of-mouth support. This wonderful outcome (and there are a few pledges yet to come in) would not have been possible without the generosity of the whole congregation.

We mailed confirmation of your pledges and your preferred method of payment on April 14. If any information contained in your letter is inaccurate, please let Trish Steindler know, either by e-mail or by phone.

Thank you from: Manley Allen, Wayne Coe, Oralynn Guerrerortiz, Esther Jones, Jim Preus, and Trish Steindler.

Tags: Congregational Care Administration

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First Sunday Giving, May 4

We have chosen the Environmental Education Resource Center for the month of May. UUCSF’s own Doug Stewart is the Project Coordinator for this center, which is located in the Southside Branch Library. It provides the latest information on our rapidly changing environment to students, teachers, and interested individuals and groups. Global warming is a primary concern and materials are available in Spanish and English for all ages. There is also an outreach program for groups outside the library, with videos, films, speakers, etc., available. No charge is made for these important services to our community. We hope that the congregation will provide a generous contribution to support the work of the center.

Please make your checks out to Environmental Education Resource Center to put into the donation basket or the box in the foyer. Cash is also very welcome. Many thanks!

Evelyn Cole
First Sunday Giving Coordinator

Tags: Community Outreach Congregational Care

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Music on Barcelona, Friday, May 2, 5:30

The eighth concert of the seventh season of Music on Barcelona’s Soirée Musicales will take place on Friday, May 2 (note this is a change from the usual last Friday of the month), and will continue the tradition of unusual and varied programming on this recital series. The hour-long concert begins at 5:30.

Featured will be a Beethoven clarinet trio (Jim Preus, Tom Terwilliger, Jack Anderson); a Baroque ensemble under the guidance and direction of Robert Shlaer, performing a quartet by Telemann; and the Santa Fe Flute Choir, under the direction of Carol Redman, performing a transcription of a Haydn symphony and Monochrome V by Peter Schickele.

The Soirée Musicales are presented in an informal setting, and the public is invited. A free will offering will be taken.

Jim Preus
for Music on Barcelona

Tags: Worship and Music Community Outreach

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DRE Dialogue: Thoughts on a Youth Adult Committee

In order to better serve our junior and senior high youth, the RE Committee is considering the formation of a Youth Adult Committee (YAC) in our congregation. There are many UU congregations in both the U.S. and Canada that have such committees, including our neighbors in Los Alamos and Albuquerque. The Mountain Desert District also has a YAC, which plans district-wide youth conferences, trainings, etc. A congregational YAC not only benefits the youth program but also the wider ministry of the congregation that it serves. The membership of a YAC includes a cross-section of the congregation: junior youth, senior youth, parents, and adults who do not have teens in the program

Generally a YAC has three major functions, which are to

1. help youth plan for activities and events that are of interest to them,
2. provide an opportunity for learning leadership skills, and
3. provide an avenue for adults and young people to find common interests and ways to combine efforts in fulfilling the mission of our congregation.

Communication between youth and adult members is greatly improved through the work of such a committee. The committee work itself sets an example for working together and youth-adult activities provide hands-on experience for the entire congregation. What better way to get acquainted than to work or play together?

I am still gathering information from other YACs. Meanwhile, UUCSF parents and youth will be meeting soon to talk about their ideas for such a committee. In our budget for the new fiscal year that starts May1, we will not be funding the Youth Program Coordinator (YPC) position. We are fortunate, however, that our current YPC is willing to continue working with our youth, especially to get them to conferences and away on interesting and transformative trips. We hope that by the next budget year this position will be funded once again — our children and youth are our future. In the meantime, a YAC has the potential for creating new and collaborative bonds that will strengthen our work together. If designing such a group sounds intriguing to you, please call me at the office. I will keep you informed as our work progresses. I hope that it will include some of you!

Alice Springer

Tags: Lifespan Religious Education Congregational Care

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From Your Community Minister: An Apology

OK. It is time for me to face the music, to practice what I preached, and say I’m sorry for botching my last note to you in El Centinela. I failed to nuance my version of South Africa as I made the point that self-knowledge is necessary for reconciliation. I suggested that because South Africans endured a public confessional process, they would be better able to hear Jeremiah Wright’s comments, if they were about South Africa, than we have been able to hear them in America.

While I was arguing for a fuller understanding of ourselves, I painted a limited view of South Africa. I practiced the very thing I was speaking against — presenting images that don’t reflect the whole.

I do believe that South Africa’s confession of the wrongs of apartheid is a key aspect of their hope for tomorrow; their hope to right some wrongs so their country can live past the anguish that still shows itself in racist attitudes and actions. Confession, like its friend, conversion, is only a gesture if it is not acted upon year after year to prove itself valid. With its many limits in size and scope, the confessions in the Truth and Reconciliation process, reported widely within the country during its operation, and compiled in a 2,739 page report, helped make a nation aware of its abuses.

Still, any attempt to picture South Africa must be profoundly complex. Nelson Mandela rose to the challenge of transforming cultures and blazed a trail on which the humanness and the dignity of a nation could walk, without denying the reality of either. Unfortunately, national struggles can’t be resolved quickly. Severe poverty in black townships continues to shatter upward mobility and prompts crime. Many of the problems that persist in other governments, such as government corruption, nip at the heels of South Africa. Only now are black women voicing the oppression they suffered at the hands of black men. Feminism is becoming a hot word in South Africa.

With abounding difficulties bubbling in a national cauldron, hope abides, but is not secure. The work of reconciliation continues. On Friday, May 16, 2008, South Africans will be gathering in small diverse groups in community spaces to personally hear each other’s stories, with the hope that listening to each other’s stories will create new pathways for reconciliation and nation building. The idea of telling stories is an international phenomenon supported by the Museum of the Person and Center for Digital Storytelling. Doing that as an act of nation building seems characteristic of South Africa’s conscious intent to remember its history and learn to transcend it.

This is the part of South Africa that resonates with the ministry of pastoral counseling. It resonates with UU principles and with our own struggles to reconcile differing views both within and beyond our congregation. I have to smile when I think of us hosting a fundamentalist speaker. This must be a kernel of what it is like for South Africans to sit in a circle and tell each other their stories.

Leona Stucky-Abbott
Associated Community Minister

Tags: From-the-Ministers Community Outreach

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