ISSUE 79

JANUARY 2023

While several of my colleagues questioned my plan to return to church in December, I was resolved. I couldn’t imagine not being here for the whirlwind that is this season in our church. It has been a joy to be with you again. As we enter a new year though, I am grateful that our theme for the month is the Path of Finding Our Center. It is easy to get a bit off-kilter in December.

Finding our center is not about being self-centered. It is instead about finding our way home.

It’s not about staying there, of course. Rather it is about connecting anew with who we are and have always been beneath our goals and regrets and to-do lists. It is that core of original blessing gifted to us at birth that informs our joys, values, and connections.

The New Year is often about resolving to do this or that thing that we imagine will make us happier by improving our looks, finances or some such. The Path of Finding Our Center is about belonging again to ourselves. Trusting that within and beyond the doings of our days, there is within each of us a “hidden wholeness” as Thomas Merton wrote. When we tend to it, we will find connection and guidance.

The Path of Finding Our Center is one that invites practice. Each of us will need to discover what helps us return to the path. Perhaps it is silence or poetry or sitting with sacred text. Maybe it is a meditative walk or listening to music. It will be slightly different for each of us.

However, we get there, the benefit is clear. Our interactions with others come from a more whole and holy place. It’s not about appearing centered. It is about living from a place rooted in our values and hopes rather than reacting out of our anger and fear. It is about getting still, so we can move in the direction of our choosing rather than flying off the handle in a chaotic spin. It is about leaving other voices behind until only one remains and we recognize it as our own, as Mary Oliver described in her poem “The Journey.”

This is a worthy endeavor for a new year. I’m so grateful to be in it with you.

January - The Path of Finding Our Center

Lao Tzu said that at the center of our being, you have the answer; you know who you are, and you know what you want. The challenge, of course, is getting to the center of our being. There is always so much noise and so many distractions.

Likely we have all known of, if we have not known them personally, someone or ones who seem able to turn down the noise and go inward. Viktor Frankl, survivor of a Nazi concentration camp maintained that regardless of circumstance we can choose who we will be. As a psychiatrist, he described it this way. “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”

Let this rumble in you for the course of a walk or a day. Then, name a time in which you embraced that space. That is, you didn’t react, you responded. What did you learn about yourself?

Spend another moment in reflection and call to mind people you have known who seem to regularly choose that space. Who are they? What have you learned from them?

Board of Trustees Report

Hello JUC friends! Here is the summary from the December 8, 2022, Board of Trustees meeting:

Welcome Back, Rev. Wendy. The Board welcomed Wendy back, heard about her sabbatical, and updated her on all that occurred at JUC during her absence.

Making Room. The Board discussed the ongoing Making Room project.

Anti-Racism Work. The Board talked about the importance of congregational anti-racism work and planned for an upcoming anti-racism workshop to be held in 2023.

Budget & Compensation. Carol Wilsey described the process for reviewing and evaluating JUC’s proposed budget. Assignments were made regarding which board members will serve on the budget-review team.

Path of Wonder and Planned Giving

The duality of wonder is intriguing. Simply being alive and in tune with our environment opens us to wonder and awe. What happens to us as our life in this place is spent is “a wonder tinged with apprehension.” Estate planning, or financial life decisions, can reduce our apprehension and that of our loved ones.

Leaving a legacy gift to JUC is a way to keep JUC strong, so that it will be here for those who come after us to share the path of wonder together. Contact our Planned Giving team: Bud & B.J. Meadows or Carol Wilsey

Finding Your Center

During my mid to late 40’s I read many, many self help books. I was working hard to achieve the seemingly impossible goal of “being ok with myself.” Now, in my early 50’s, I feel like I have a better understanding of what I need to do to maintain a centered, (mostly) positive self concept. One book that helped me tremendously was “The Happiness Trap” by Russ Harris. Through this book I discovered that I had the mistaken notion that the way to the ultimate emotional mastery was to completely get rid of any negative emotions. Jealousy, anger, sadness were emotions to overcome and my job was to learn to never experience those emotions.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. :)

What a surprise it was to learn that I actually needed to learn to feel ALL of my feelings; to accept them without judgment. This seems so obvious and I had no idea I wasn’t doing that until I started working through the exercises in the book. One technique Harris uses is called expansion. You have to scan your body for where your feeling is located (a challenge in itself) and then consciously visualize “making room” around your feeling to give it space to just be. While sometimes it is very hard to find your feelings in your body, this technique helped me accept my various emotions in a way I had never done before.

I realized through reading this book (and many others) that identifying your emotions is one of the first steps needed in order to find your center. If you can’t identify and label your feelings you are in a constant state of confusion with no idea where your center is even located.

This month in our K-5 FE classes we are going to focus on helping our kids label their feelings. We will introduce them to a feelings wheel - something I highly recommend for people of all ages! We will then help them learn to come back to a place of centeredness when they are feeling strong emotions. Centering is a central theme in our middle and high school classes as well. The 6th graders in Neighboring Faiths are exploring out from their UU center to discover what other religions might teach them. 7th Graders in OWL are beginning to find the center of their sexual identity and 8th graders in COA are beginning to go deep within themselves as they develop their personal belief statements. Our High Schoolers are learning to center themselves as people of action.

I hope that during this month of Finding Your Center you will be able to find some strategies, techniques and spiritual practices that will help you “be ok with yourself.” We are all on this journey and I hope that you will feel supported by your church as you walk the road of self-discovery and self-acceptance.

Happy New Year, friends! I hope you enter this year feeling loved, rested…and centered.

This first month of the new year at JUC is devoted to the path of finding our center. But what on earth does that mean?

I think it’s important to understand what “centered” isn’t - namely, what it looks like isn’t necessarily a constant. In the course of a lifetime - heck in the course of a few months, sometimes - every conceivable life circumstance can change. And if we think of centering as getting back to a specific set of parameters, we’re bound to find ourselves thrown off kilter in the very act of trying to re-center. We’re likely to get very frustrated with ourselves when we can’t seem to get back to the place we were before but circumstances now dictate must change, and that can result in feeling even more uncentered as a result!

Rather, “centered” for me at least means being able to return to a healthy equilibrium - mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially - without being constantly reactive to changing circumstances.

Because as humans, we shouldn’t be expected to be unflappable - or pretend to be unflappable - in the face of every challenge. In fact, such a stance often turns out not to be the healthiest course of action, as it requires us to ignore the natural warning signs, and the necessary actions, to recognize unhealthy situations and move ourselves to safer, more life-giving ones. On a personal scale, this could look like avoiding getting necessary mental or physical health treatment. On a global scale, this could look like ignoring climate change until it is too late. In short, an artificial centering that ignores real hardships and subsequent difficult emotions and spiritual struggles, requires us to gaslight ourselves.

And yet, this is often what we’re taught by our society to expect of ourselves and of others - not accidentally. As we continue to learn, white supremacy culture helps concentrate power in the hands of a few through reinforcing certain cultural norms - in this case, the norms of perfectionism and “objectivity.” (And to see how this ties in with consumer capitalism, one need only consider that a very emotional worker is seldom the most productive one.)

Constant stoicism doesn’t serve us, friends.

So I’m curious: how do you know when you’re “centered?” What do you do when you’re not? If you think of a time when you’ve felt complete and ready to face the world,

What does your body tell you?
What does your mind tell you?
What do your loved ones tell you?
What do you tell yourself?

This month, we’ll explore what it means to find our center, both individually and collectively. But right now, I’d like to leave you with news of some upcoming events and opportunities at JUC that support our communal centering efforts:

In response to many pressures among youth in general, faith exploration and pastoral care teams will be facilitating offerings on youth mental health, starting soon and continuing throughout the year.

Pastoral care teams will also be sponsoring an essential life documents workshop early this year, to support folks in having a more secure grasp of how to be legally and medically prepared for unexpected life events.

As a way to focus on the values we as a congregation center in our wider community, Justice Council will engage the congregation in a fun and creative social justice fair on Sunday, February 26! There will be food, activities, celebration, and an opportunity to interact with the many justice teams and learn about how they support systemic change in our communities - and how you can, too!

And finally, JUC is putting together a pastoral care associates program for JUCers who may be interested in training to provide spiritual support to others in their community. Being able to provide - and ask for! - spiritual support from one another is one of the most important ways we can remain spiritually centered as a community. The first phase of this program will include an opportunity for you to explore whether this might be a good fit for your interests and talents, so watch this space and don’t be shy!

As we continue to have conversations about finding our individual and communal centers, take care of one another, and watch this space!

Shop BIPOC

ShopBIPOC is an online directory collaboratively developed by Center for Community Wealth Building and eleven other organizations/congregations that work with small businesses. It is an online marketplace designed to make it easy for individual and institutional consumers to locate local Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) owned businesses - everything from restaurants to candle makers to architects to concrete contractors to jewelry makers to therapists and many things in between. Imagine the impact it will make if each member of our congregation makes a purchase from a business featured on ShopBIPOC! That is the power of congregation.

Jefferson Unitarian Church is proud to be a founding member of Co-Purchase Colorado, an initiative launched by Center for Community Wealth Building, to support faith-based entities in aligning their purchasing with their racial and social justice values. We are one of ten active members that meets monthly to share progress, challenges, and identify current spending categories that we could look to new vendors to fulfill – specifically, local small businesses owned by People of Color, women, LGBTQIA+, or veterans. The primary emphasis, however, is with People of Color, in light of the well-documented racial wealth gap that exists at the local and national levels.

We have been able to refer some of our longstanding vendors to our Co-Purchase Colorado (CPC) partners, which helps these small businesses reach new customers. And, through CPC, we connected with Media Vine Productions that supports our live streaming needs, as well as Kenyatta Computer Services, that supports our IT needs. It looks like Co-Purchase Colorado is on track to report that partner congregations collectively spent over $100,000 over the course of 2022 with small, local, People of Color-owned businesses.

CPC partners’ interest in shifting our spending to align with our commitment to the Black Lives Matter movement, was an impetus for the creation of ShopBIPOC, a free online directory that makes it easy for any consumer to align their spending with their racial justice values. Step-by-step and by joining with others, we are creating the change we want to see in the world.

Jeffco Interfaith Partners (JIP) Update

Bruce Martin

Happy New Year! Let me introduce myself, I am Bruce Martin and with the assistance of my wife, Cathy Martin, I will be serving as the representative of JUC to the JIP. I am assuming the role held by Andy Melick for the past few years.

JIP is a multi-congregational effort to pool our support for Metro Denver Habitat for Humanity (MD H4H). JIP is made up of eight Jefferson County congregations and a Kiwanis club. JUC was one of the founding congregations of JIP nearly thirty years ago.

Our JUC commitment to JIP includes three efforts. The first is to support the October pumpkin patches in Arvada and Lakewood as our major fundraiser each year. This allows us to partially sponsor the construction of an affordable housing unit by MD H4H. Our second effort is to raise additional funds within our own congregation as able to support JIP. We have done this by designating one of our third week Sunday collections to JIP. And our third effort is to provide a volunteer work force on “build days.” This is when our group is assigned a day to work on our supported housing projects.

This past fall’s pumpkin patch fundraiser was very successful. Gross sales exceeded $100,000. Over half of the proceeds go to the Navajo Nation in New Mexico for growing the pumpkins. JIP netted over $45,000. Along with the other funds raised in the past year we will be able to put $60,000 toward our 2023 MD H4H house sponsorship. Another $5,000 will be put toward one of MD H4H’s international partnership efforts. Nicely done JIP and JUC!

Stay tuned for info about upcoming spring build days. MD H4H is preparing to start work on a new housing site in Wheat Ridge. That is where we will be volunteering.

Cathy and I hope to see you out on a build day in the near future!

Mindfulness Meditation at JUC

Tina Voelker

Try this: sit in a comfortable upright posture, close your eyes, and just listen. Even if you are sitting in a seemingly quiet place, you will probably hear many different sounds, and they are constantly changing. At the same time, you will also “hear” your mind chatter. Notice that you cannot predict what you will hear next, either from the outside world or from your mind. Notice also your reactions to what you hear. You might decide that the bird’s song is pretty, but the motorcycle is annoying. Some of the chatter in your mind makes you feel good, some of it makes you cringe.

This activity, sitting still and noticing, is the essence of mindfulness meditation. How long can you sit still and just listen like this? Most of us soon feel a strong and growing urge to get up and do something. We are more comfortable as a “human doing” than as a “human being.” If you manage to resist that urge to get up, and you keep sitting still, you will probably soon get lost in your thoughts. You stop noticing the sounds outside, you stop noticing the chatter of your mind, and you become immersed in whatever story that chatter is telling you right now. This happens to me continuously while I’m meditating. But as soon as I notice that it happened, well, there I am, back to noticing.

Mindfulness meditation is a way of training yourself to become more aware of the present moment and to pay less attention to the stories that your mind is telling you. This makes you less susceptible to being tossed this way and that by your minds’ stories. In other words, it is a centering practice.

If you’ve been thinking of giving this practice a try, or if you are already an experienced meditator and want to engage with some like-minded folks, you are heartily invited to try out JUC’s Mindfulness Meditation group. Our group’s goal is to support our members’ mindfulness practices. The group is a reincarnation of a JUC Buddhist group that was started over 25 years ago. In our current form, we meet on Zoom every Sunday evening at 5 pm. Attendees briefly “check in” by sharing current joys or sorrows. We go off camera to meditate for about 30 minutes (typically silently but sometimes with a guided meditation) and then spend the remaining time discussing a theme. The theme, and often a short reading to get us started, are emailed to the group ahead of time. Some examples of themes include different mindfulness practices and diverse teachers’ advice on how to practice. Each Sunday stands by itself and we welcome those who can only attend occasionally. Contact me if you have questions or would like to be on our e-mail list!

Looking Toward New Horizons for Social Justice in 2023

Judy Douglass

What does it take to promote social change? It’s mainly you and me lending a helping hand to individuals and families who are experiencing hard times - poverty, mental illness, bad luck.

It takes us all to understand NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard) and talk to our friends and neighbors about the need for housing. Yes it’s more traffic but shelter is essential for healthy communities. Supportive shelter with case workers is needed for folks who need professional services.

It takes us all to understand the systemic reasons for all of the above. We need to be aware of the decisions that our County, City Council, city planners, and multitudes of other government agencies make.

That’s what JUC’s Community Action Network (CAN) and our partner Together Colorado do. We focus on systemic change. We do this with your support by looking at legislation and government policies/procedures.

Together Colorado has identified five areas of legislative priorities where we will be researching, communicating with legislators, and taking action in 2023 -- legislation that reflects our UU values. Finally we will be asking for your help to call, email, tweet with your government representative to move social justice forward, inch by inch.

Build Trust Between Youth and Law Enforcement

We support legislation to protect youth from deceptive and manipulative tactics used during interrogations and a bill to end the prosecution of children ages 10-12.

Dignity, Not Detention for Immigrants

We are supporting a bill to end Intergovernmental Service Agreements between ICE and sheriffs and prevent additional privatized detention centers in Colorado.

Improve Air Quality

We support a legislative effort to help improve air quality and reduce ozone pollution so that we can all breathe clean air.

Renters Rights and Eviction Reform

Shelter is a basic human need, We support statewide legislation to clarify the conditions under which someone can be evicted providing peace of mind, stability, and protection against retaliation and discrimination to renters across Colorado.

Sustainable and Affordable Housing

Housing justice and environmental justice go hand in hand. We are supporting legislation to

ensure that people can stay in the communities they call home while also ensuring that newly

built housing is affordable and sustainable - for our communities, state, and the planet.

If you have questions and/or would like to be added to the JUC CAN Action Alert list to receive occasional important alerts and updates about housing issues and legislation, please send an email to communityaction@jeffersonunitarian.org.